I have been thinking.

Thinking so much that if I do not post it now, it will be lost and gone forever, swimming inside the depths of my brain never to see daylight again.

It suddenly dawned upon me that I should recant the statements I made about the expose of Liu Qian's Prediction effect even before its revelation.

Did Yumi and the certain magic association kill the art when they exposed Liu Qian?

I am starting to doubt that.

Sure the damage is done. However, if we look at it on another perspective, the craft of magic (yes, not art. We aren't even close) was promoted. The expose just reveals our true colours with regards to magic as a craft. Some of us (I'm talking to non-serious performers, hobbyists and th like), have become "Secret-chasers". Like what Darwin Ortiz mentioned in his incredible book "Designing Miracles", that we as magicians are constantly falling into this trap of seeking for tricks that does not have a method. I'm not here to expand on this. For more details on what this is about, BUY THE BOOK AND READ IT! PAY THE 60, 70 or even 80 DOLLARS FOR IT! Whatever the magic shops out there are charging. I doubt they even receive orders for that wonderful book.

Okay, enough rant. Let's move on.

The bottom line is this. What started all these malice? Probably that Liu Qian is getting more and mroe famous and jealous bigots (idiots, egocentric people) want to take him down. Wait. Pause for a moment.

Doesn't this mean something?

Look at the amount of stuff out there trying to expose or even attempting to explain the effects and wonders of Derren Brown, Criss Angel, David Blaine, Cyril, etc. One thing in common, they are really successful. Pause again.

Doesn't this mean something?

Before I go on, if you are thinking in your mind that whatever Criss Angel, David Blaine, Derren Brown, Liu Qian, Cyril, etc. does are already out in the market, I can just buy them. Or even saying that it is only the hype that are making them successful, then STOP READING NOW AND CLOSE YOUR BROWSER. You are totally missing it. Quit magic. We can do without you.

Yes, I sound like a wise-ass, proud, egoistic nut. Face it. Many don't get the point. I am not elevating myself. My intention is to bring reality to you to see how low we really are bringing this craft to. I am not really high up there to start with already. Don't even mention the rest who are doing tricks injustice. Now close your browser.

Ok. If you are still reading, you still have hope. It took me quite a while to realize that I was almost without hope also. Congrats. But if you miss the point and continue reading, please be enlightened or be prepared to hate me for life. I am going to be nasty. I warned you. You still have a chance to close your browser, NOW!

What makes this people different from us? The fact is this, they are practicioners of the ART of magic. Excelling in their craft to bring the art to the next level. They are the only few people left that still can mystify, astonish and amaze audiences by being a magician. They are constantly one step ahead. Amazing audiences after audiences, they are certainly doing this craft justice.

In other words, they are constantly one step ahead of you.

Case in point. How many of you realized that there is an effect called "Lighting" and "Big Bang" before Derren Brown used it in his TV special?

Or even how many of you knew that the Raven existed even before David Blaine did it in his TV special?

Chances are there is not many of us knew it! They were probably selling poorly before those magicians did them justice by performing them wonderfully on TV. (You may say that Blaine have not done it well, but that's only AFTER you discovered the secret on the internet and know what to look for. Me included. Therefore we have no case of poor performance against him.)

If they did not strive for perfection in their craft, do you think they will receive that amount of press coverage?

They are GOOD. Period. They perform well. And they deserve the attention. I am guilty of criticizing them in the past. I recant those words if I ever say them knowingly or unknowingly. I apologize, if they happen to read this of course. :P

We, however, are chasing their secrets. Their techniques. Their utilization of magical principles. We are chasing their shadow. We are constantly one step BEHIND them. If we think we are EVEN on par, we would have been the ones who are famous.

Sadly, we aren't.

Instead we criticized. We try to "improve" them with our worthless comments. We point out where he flashed. We sometimes even expose them to make ourselves feel better.

We are wretched.

We are only making Magic retailers richer as we chase their shadow. Buying the DVDs on tricks they do. Buying props/gimmicks/gaffs/apparatus required for their effects. Copying their form of performance when it is inapplicable in our context. This really reveals an emptiness in our hearts as magicians, if we still consider ourselves magicians at this point.

When people start taking other performers down when they are good, then they must be really good that people in the same trade even, want to expose him. So what if Liu Qian in this case is exposed, he'll sure come up with something better with the aid of his consulting team next time and continue to mystify and enchant audiences.

We are spending money chasing after things that could have been channeled to the right sources and become better performers and pursue that state of perfection. Instead we aren't.

Are we, as a magic community, going to wake up and realize that we are really down low?

I know that this sounds discouraging. I write this because I am even more so discouraged as well when I am thinking about it. Are we done doing magic injustice?

*At this point I wanted to disclose the contents of a certain book to reinforce my point, however, due to the publisher's advice, I can't. If you really want to know, it has only a print run of 500 copies and it is complied by a magician with the used-to-be first name Phil... Go figure. I doubt you can find it. It's so unpleasant that it disappeared from the market.*

As always, please comment. I am not done with this post. I stopped here because my brain has. Thanks for your time to read this. I apologize if it is offensive. However, this is intended.

Kenneth

In addition to say, people who expose tricks are not killing the art.

Poor performance is the incriminating factor.

So stop ranting about so-and-so expose this or that. It does to magic only this much.

Our poor performance, however, is the main blame to the declining of magic as a craft. That's when people conclude that magic is "for kids", because we do not treat it with enough respect to perform properly!

Please, if you have any respect left for the craft we hold dear, do it justice. I beg of all of you.

Stop the whole "erm, I am still practicing this so pardon me for flashing". That's total rubbish. If I have not practiced a trick till I can do it reasonably well, I will not even show it. Room for mistakes allowed, however, my point is more of being confident about what you are performing.

Following on, here's a tip. STOP WATCHING DVD AFTER DVD, READING BOOK AFTER BOOK AND BUYING PROP AFTER PROP! This is the only way to improve your magic. Work on what you have. The more you watch, the more overloaded you will be. And before you perfect something, a new one will occupy you, trapping you in a vicious cycle.

For example (true story). I want to perform a think of a card trick. I read up Vernon's "Out of Sight, Out of Mind" in his Inner Card Trilogy. I start practicing. Then as I was practicing, I come across another version of the same effect using a different method. And that new method really looks more fair, spectator gets a selection of 12 cards instead of 9. I was going, AMAZING! So I started practicing that, discarding the old one I learnt. 3 weeks later, while far from reasonable performance of either of the 2 previous methods, I came across another version of the effect, this time, it really looked like it does not have method! I went crazy searching for it. I finally found the method to the elusive "Berglas effect" after 4 months, while during that time, not practicing the other 2 methods simply because the latest one I saw was much better. After reading through how the "Berglas effect" was done, I figured that it was too difficult. I gave up. Then I started practicing the very first method I came across.

During this whole time of almost a year, I could have amazed audiences with the 1st Vernon method that was already good enough. That is when I realized that I wasted so much time which could be channeled to the right things. (I currently do the 1st method, with slight touches I added after performing the initial method written reasonably well)

The key to performing well is to focus. With those cheaply priced crap with really appealing copywriting, we can lose focus on what really matters. The magic retailing industry capitalises on just that!

Not to say that magic retailers are bad, it's just that we are making very bad choices when it comes to aquiring our material. There is nothing wrong with T11, E, Penguin, dbSquared and other online magic shops. They produce in order to meet the demand. In the end, we are the ones keying in our (or our parents') credit card numbers at their checkout pages.

If we truly want to do the art justice, then start from here. I am practicing ninja rings again. I think its a beautiful piece of magic when done properly. How many of you bought a set last time and is now collecting dust in a drawer?

Food for thought.

Kenneth