Italy Lecture

ITALY LECTURE “Impossible Objects” CONCEIT and INSTANTIATION A THOUGHT The result of intellectual activity. 


A CONCEIT 
 A thought that holds the passion of a belief.
 
 A LECTURE The presentation of a “conceit” to another person through “terminology” and “display”. 
 AN INSTANTIATION

The presentation of a “conceit” to another person by “example”, or “expression”. So, as to for instance, a good Sunday: 
 “It’s time to go to church” is a “thought”. “Jesus is the son of god”. is a “conceit”. The church sermon is a “lecture” built upon the “conceit”.
 
 The Easter pageant or a movie like "The Greatest Story Ever Told" is an “instantiation” of that same “conceit”. Through the course our history we have decided, as a culture, that while we are curious, even

intrigued by the “conceits” of others, we prefer to have them presented to us as “instantiations”, rather than as “lectures”. A director will often tell an actor: “Don’t say it, play it”. We’d rather be “entertained” than “instructed”. For the sake of argument, let’s call everyone who attempts to make a living without getting a real job as an “artist”. That would include painters and sculptors, novelists and playwrights, musicians, actors, directors, and among many others, jugglers, ventriloquists and magicians. I would leave out dancers and circus performers because they end every job

either sweating, injured, crippled, or all of the above. Now we look at the first group, the artists, writers, musicians and all. Each of them draws upon an aspect of themselves, and they attempt to present that aspect to others in some winning fashion. They instantiate their conceit. Now some of these types deal with the notion abstractly; Picasso was less concerned with being understood than with expressing a passion. James Joyce wanted not to construct a narrative as much as to leave an impression.

Even music, presented without lyrics, as by a simple instrumental or full-blown symphony, will give 100 people 100 different ideas as to the creator’s conceit. Although here we are beginning to approach some consensus. Listen to “Appalachian Spring” and you get the idea you should dance. You hear “Pomp and Circumstance”, and you’re pretty sure someone should be graduating from something. Once we get to the performing arts, where we are as magicians, we find ourselves expressing a conceit that is more commonly agreed upon, for the most part.

Think about it. The crowd leaving David Mamet’s “Glen Garry, Glen Ross”, can hit a bar and disagree about his study of the eternal tragedy of men defining themselves through the ultimately exposed limitations of their chosen profession. The crowd leaving Houdini’s show would be sipping beers and agreeing that being able to get out of things is pretty cool. It's easy. The conceits we instantiate as magicians are often quite thin. “Where did the birds go?” “Where did the tiger come from?” or “How much do you have to pay a girl to do that?”

We do occasionally delve into deeper conceits, like “Human thought might be transmitted”, or “Gravity isn’t a law, just an agreement”, but for the most part the notions behind our exercises are so light-weight, that we tend to forget they exist. We perform like an amnesiac at a Morse Code key. We forget we’re sending a message. Here’s another thing: As magicians, our creative process is most often ass-backwards. We see a trick, or read one, or buy a prop that looks cool. We begin with the instantiation. Now we have to come up with a conceit.

We have to discover a reason to believe in this thing we're doing. Most importantly - In fact, THIS IS CRITICAL - we must understand that our audience assumes that we have a conceit. And if we haven't invented one, trust me, they will do that job for us. That is true of every art, but as magicians we run a special risk - In the absence of an expressed conceit, our audience will often assume that our message is: “I know something you don’t know. And I can do things you can’t do.”

That's a kind of the psychological equivalent of "cocking a snoot". HARRY DEMONSTRATES THE GESTURE. The act of “fooling people” can literally suggest that you see your audience as fools. And that suggestion can prove unappealing in many ways To an audience fellow who’s at a nightclub with a date, it can feel downright emasculating. At best, demonstrating superior skill is an exclusivating thing to do. It sets us apart from our audience. It isolates us. Trust me, we are better off when we present ourselves in a more considered way.

My childhood, back when I was learning to want to do magic, was anything but stable. Every three months or so I’d find myself in a new city, often with a new set of parents, always in need of a new set of friends. I used magic to make positive connections with my peers, mainly because I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be liked the way real people are liked. Later, as a street performer, while I was in search of money and girls, I never forgot that first of all I wanted to be one of them - by them I mean one of anyone else. To this day I'd bet even money that many of us who chose this

odd path began with, and still own, much of that same concern. Dai Vernon used to say “When the ball vanishes, look amazed.” That is to say, give your audience some direction in how they should feel and react. As far as you can, join your audience in the experience. Maybe the contemporary magic performer who best accomplishes this goal is Michael Carbonaro, who has a television show, “The Carbanaro Effect”, that seems to run 24 hours a day on the A&E channel in the U.S. Michael is impossibly adorable, and so cute you just want to pop him one. 


THE SELF REFERENTIAL DECK THE LOCKING DOUBLE-HEADED COIN WHERE’S TOM? THE MILLION DOLLAR BILL TRICK

PRODUCT “Where’s Tom?” (30) - 30 euro “Triple Feature” (30) - 60 euro “Double-Head Euro 50p” (8) - 18 euro