I had a decent performance a few days ago which lasted about 20 - 30 minutes involving mostly card routines and a final mentalism effect.

Most of my materials are John Guastaferro's ideas and i took quite a while to master those moves and displays. For those who know, i did "Intuition", "Out of the Blue", "Stress Card", "Ultimate Fate", "Club Sandwich", "Double Monte", "Lost & Found", "Bizarre Prequel - Bizarre Twist", "Jazz Fusion", "Gemini Prediction" (mental with cards?) and finally Richard Osterlind's "Imp Pad". A group of 6 were watching me and to be frank, it's my first close-up experience in front of so many people.

What i'm trying to say is, when dealing with the pasteboards, i always have to keep on going, one ahead, one ahead of the audience, making sure i do things right so that i won't be an anti-climax and i can deliver the patter well and have a better showmanship.

What i don't know is, it was hard. I just have to keep on going, making jokes, fill the silence in between routines, making eye contacts(which i didn't do well), etc. I regretted one thing though.

I forgot to look, hear and feel my audience's reactions!

The targets' reactions are what i consider priceless and the bulk of why i keep on doing magic. But i totally screwed it up. I'm depressed for a while.

Then came my "Imp Pad", which had served me well for a long time. (I included the Imp Pad for variety, and i forgot to perform "The Closer" coin bend somehow.) For those who knows, everything is in place and what i can really really do is to talk, give patter, all the showmanship i have.

The targets were amazed (i can see them) and i felt really good about it.

I'm not saying the regular deck of cards don't yield reactions. It does incredible things and i love it.

Oh well, i guess i'm a newbie in cards and need more time/experience to truly enjoy what i do with cards like how i was with my stage. -_-

Dont worry about not being able to make eye contact with the specs. IMO, it would be better that you look at your cards and know what you are doing, rather than look at your audience and fumble or flash.

Doing your routines long enough with the same presentation will give you the confidence you need to watch your audiences reaction the next time.

yea i guess it just boil down to doing MORE magic and gaining experience.

Great post.

It's always good to talk about real life experiences.

Oh and yes, self confidence is needed. Were your hands shaking when you performed?

Also, I realised that you performed quite a large number of effects. If I were you, I'd try to perform about 4 effects for 20mins. Yeah, maximum impact, with minimal work. That way, your audience won't be bored.

Nice story dude. Keep up the good work.

thanks Blackwing for the kind words.

yea exactly, i felt i'm doing TOO many things. my hands were shaking for the first effect but i was fine after i warmed up. (had some vodka before the show.)

It's just unlike stage which i used to do. on stage i just dragged and build up the climax and everybody goes WWWWWOOOOOOOOWWWWW..

For this, everybody is like wow, wow, WOW, WOOW, wow, ok, WOW.. Get what i mean?

-salutes all cardicians-

Nice narrative post you have there. It's sad to hear that you felt depressed for not looking, hearing and feeling your audience's reactions. Given your well-planned routine and careful handling I'm sure your audiences love your performance. But I feel that it's too much effects for one performance. Your audiences might not absorb them all.

Good luck for your future performances.

That's all you need, buddy ;)

I guess your performance wasn't as bad as you'd think it was. I bet you if your specs like magic in general, you should be fine. Good job!

I see your all your materials for this performance came from Guastaferro's Brainstorm (with the exception for Impad)? While I can't and won't judge how it works for you since I've never seen you perform, but I found that Brainstorm's materials are more advanced than Ammar's ETMCM series, thus you have to be perfectly aware that there are more sleights involved... which only means, if you're just starting to perform (which is awesome, btw) it may result in you stumbling across silence and short gaps between each move. In addition to that, you have to think of the patter which will divide your focus to the whole thing, thus making your "magic" seems more like a series of happenings, instead of a flow of imposibilites. Hope you get my drift.

My best bet is for you to show the easy stuff to your audience, for now. That way you can be involved in the whole experience as well. Plus it makes you become more competent in PERFORMING, as opposed to doing continous sleights. At the same time, keep on practicing the hard stuff at home, and when you feel that you're flawless at it, go show off the new ones ;)

thanks for the replies guys.

Actually my performance isn't bad at all. i worked very hard for this and it worked well for the spectators. i'm just saying that i did not enjoy it as much as they do or as much as i could have.

In fact, my audience are dumbfounded and refused to play cards with me(we had mass finger guessing game + Vodka after that).

I just started performing close-ups for cards recently though i had experience with ACR, 2 card montes, several revelations moves, coin bends, metal bending... This bunch of audience are skeptical, 2 of them have watched Huron before, and i know i just have to do something different.

Brainstorm worked, totally.

Bottomline? I didn't enjoy it.