Magic performances have certainly led to fascinating discoveries about how the different sexes react towards magic as well as epiphanies that reveal fleeting glimpses of the inner machineries of our mind. And now… I boldly present these sweeping generalisations:

1. Girls prefer performances that appear to be paranormal i.e. such as mind-reading or coincidences. Guys prefer performances that are more visual in nature i.e. changing of colours of the backing, bring a card back to the top after being inserted to the middle stack.
2. Girls are more willing to suspend their disbelief and be surprised. Guys are well… SUPER CYNICAL! - always trying to figure out how the effect works. For these friends, enjoyment stems from the satisfaction of unravelling the performance! And not surprisingly - perhaps an unfortunate consequence of our educational heritage - a lot of them are indifferent to seemingly paranormal performances. 
3. For girls, enhancement of the performances can be done by establishing emotional bonds as well as personalising the effect of the presentation. For guys, it is best to be simply straightforward and to-the-point. Clean and crisp.

ETC ETC ETC. So what is the point, you ask. The main takeaway is that certain tricks work better for certain class of personalities. Hence, an ability to accurately typecast audiences so as to select the most effective performance is highly important indeed! 

Anyway, something more interesting: in my journey of magic exploration, I have discovered certain presentations which could be tweaked and enhanced such that they take on a… rose-tinted edge ;)

Such experimentations are amazingly and amusingly awesome! Thus far, one of my favourite concoctions, which I have since christened “Star-crossed Lovers”, has been rather well-received. In fact, just the verbal explanation of the effect was enough to impress Funx! This is totally pushing fun and creativity to the max :D

---

…are mind-blowing!

It’s truly fascinating to immerse yourself into a whole new world of mystique, intrigue and magic (literally and figuratively). You learn how amazing your hands can get as you shift your fingers in ways and angles that you have never tried before and as you get familiar with the body of the cards. You start seeing things in novel ways as your mind undergoes a paradigm shift. Perhaps a little more self-consciousness is injected into you as you evaluate your every trick multiple times before you are confident enough to perform it “under the heat”, as magicians may call it.

If I may use an analogy, it would be as if discovering for the first time that the rainbow isn’t really made up of seven colours, but rather seven bands of colours, which from afar can never be distinguished by the naked eye. Nuances are often lost in displacement, and learning magic helps to regain this perspective, one might say. 

Essentially, the mind and body is so much greater than the average individual may comprehend. After all, heavy conditioning in our youth towards education-oriented behaviours have led us to adopt certain styles of thinking, and hence particular ways of using our brain. In actuality, these ways utilise a mere fraction of our maximum mental capacity - well, the proliferation of examinations and ever-increasing spotlight on results have since resulted in premature streamlining and specialisation of the mind.

Of course, learning magic is not the only way to explore about our mind and body in greater depth. Sports and the arts are also excellent platforms. In fact, a hasty generalisation might be to say that the learning of unorthodox disciplines (by which “orthodox” would mean the usual combinations of science, mathematics and language) will unlock new possibilities in ourselves!

I’m not too sure how much of these speculations are actually grounded in facts and studies, but a cursory view of life in general might review the truth in them. In any case, it’s time for my unearthly hour sleep (it’s 3am!!!) before I awake to another week of work. How dreary… but life goes on. 

C’mon, the glass is half-full. We have to keep that in mind, always.

P.S. I ALMOST FORGOT. I am currently practising this rather interesting feat of magic and I will be needing help from a few friends! So don’t be surprise if I enlist your help this coming week! And don’t worry, it’s going to be great fun :D

---

Page 1 of 1