I’ve just finished reading the excellent ‘Art of Astonishment’ series of books by magician Paul Harris. (That and work have kept me away from the blog for a bit!)
The 3 volume set includes most of his published effects from the last 30 years and is full of highly imaginative close-up magic. As I read through, I realised I had seen many of the effects from other magicians’ performances without knowing Paul Harris was the originator. I think that’s a great indication of how good the material is.
The theme that runs through the books is that magicians are facilitators helping the audience to experience astonishment - that childlike feeling of wonder when you see something inexplicable. It is that moment before the applause and laughter when people gasp and their mouths drop. As we grow up we are conditioned to reason things out and we lose our ability to feel ‘astonishment’.
Children are in this state almost all the time, because everything is new and amazing to them. That’s why performing sleight-based magic for young children often doesn’t work because they just think ’so what?’.
Getting to the point where the audience feel like you are helping them can be quite difficult in commercial situations. You often don’t have time to really get to know people and many audiences automatically slip into the ‘magician vs. spectator’ scenario because that’s what they’ve come to expect from magicians they have seen before.
The book does outline practical ways to facilitate and extend the moment of astonishment. For example, by not belittling the moment when the magic happens with jokes or body language, and by expressing a little astonishment yourself. These are subtle things that many of us magicians may do all ready, but it is very interesting to have the theory behind magic analysed like this.
This was supposed to be a bit of a review, but it’s turned into another ramble. Suffice to say ‘The Art of Astonishment’ is a great series of books I’d highly recommend.