Here is the second installment of my Who Are You? essays from the Ellusionist boards.
Who Are You? part I
Earlier this week we laid the groundwork for figuring out your identity as a performer. This grounding is essential to the process as the way humans learn is first through external manifestations of positive influence, and then internalizing it. For example, if you start to dress really nice and classy, you start to act the part over a given period of time. But it’s never so simple is it?
In the last article, we illustrated 5 essential points to starting out in building an identity.
1. Be you, but bigger.
2. Reverse engineer all goals.
3. Find your target audience(s).
4. Hang out with like-minded people so that you can create things valuable to them and you alike.
5. Expand your horizons.
Over the last few days, you should have been giving serious thoughts to these points. Now it’s time move on. Take the thought you’ve given to the last five points, and apply them to these next five.
1. Expand your interests into ambitions.
Everybody has passions. Everybody has hobbies. They make us more developed individuals and occupy our minds. But they shouldn’t be an aspect of your life that leads to neglect of other parts of yourself. The advice in this article is going to be in very general language, so while you apply it to magic, you can also just as easily apply it to the rest of your life and feel better overall.
The first thing you need to do is find a way that you can expand your existing hobbies into something more productive. Look into adjacent pursuits and see what crossover there is. Work with more people and start deciding where you’d like to go with this.
The important thing is to always enjoy it. Nothing is too geeky or out-there. You can always find a way to translate your passions into something productive. You will find unusual crossovers along the way, especially as you begin to think more and more creatively. You’ll soon learn that there are very few real boundaries as long as you keep an open mind.
A couple of magic examples that come to mind are Andrew Mayne and Docc Hilford. Andrew has said that he draws a lot of his inspiration from comic books and sci-fi. Consequently, he’s put out books and DVDs such as The Handbook of Superpowers, Shrinker, and Shock F/X. Docc is a fan of H.P. Lovecraft and translated that bit of horror art culture into one of his séance packages At the Mountains of Madness, named for the novella of the same name.
To start applying this, I want you to think of creative ways you can express your hobbies and passions. In this case, let’s keep it simple and see how you can do it through magic. Do you really love to cook? I’d love to see more magic about food. Have you always had an interest in psychology? The idea of a show that combines a lecture of the differing psychologies between men and women with dramatic demonstrations of mentalism using male and female volunteers sounds rather intriguing, wouldn’t you say? What about Dungeons & Dragons fans? I believe Ronnie James Dio (a.k.a. the coolest singer ever) once used stagecraft and illusion technology to fight a dragon in the middle of a concert. Food for thought…
2. Turn your ambitions into a product/service and market it.
Now that you’re thinking more about where you’d like to go with these hobbies, you should be producing things that are in demand by others. You’re still creating for yourself, yes, but you are also doing it for other people, even if they don’t necessarily share your passion.
If you’ve made it to this step, you should be meeting a couple of goals by now. Getting there is perhaps one of the hardest parts as it involves the most grueling work trying to get momentum. Cold calling, rejections, shotgun form letters, constant fishing for new work, scouring the trades… It’s going to be soul draining and painful, but the reward will be more than worth it.
The important thing is getting some credibility to your name. You want to work hard, deliver, and get those testimonials. Your efforts will be largely general at first because you can’t afford to be picky. When you’re looking to expand your work, you can join a networking group. When you’re starving, you cold call. That’s the simple truth, but I’m getting off on a tangent. The important thing is to get your name out there and get the momentum going.
You should also have a better idea by now of what you like doing in this field. Ironically, by focusing your work, you can actually expand your audience. People will take what you have to offer because you connect with them. You get a more consistent return on your efforts because people are interested in hearing from you and they will tell others about you.
To illustrate an off-beat example of this phenomenon in the real world, I’d like to present a story from Rick Maue. One year, he was attending a mentalists’ convention as a guest and lecturer. Originally, he was going to go to hear other people lecture, but at the last minute, several big names dropped off the roster, including Richard Osterlind. Rick knew the con organizer, who asked him to fill in for Osterlind with one of his own lectures. Rick agreed to do it as a favor to his friend.
Some of you may know that Richard Osterlind is a mentalist with no specialty per se. Like Banachek and Bob Cassidy, he’s a general practitioner of the art. Rick is both magician and mentalist, with a specialty in haunted magic. Not exactly the first person you’d expect to fill in for Osterlind. Apparently, the rest of the convention didn’t think so either. Rick actually had people coming up to him the day before his lecture, getting in his fact and accosting him. “Who do you think you are to take Richard Osterlind’s place?”
Rick brushed them off and did his lecture. The next day, those same people were coming up to him, not offering their apologies, but asking if they could get a copy of his lecture notes. The other convention attendees who had been open-minded toward the roster change were raving about the lecture to anyone who would listen.
If you know what your path is and stick with it, you will draw more people to you who will look up to you and support your work.
From here, take some large, seemingly impossible goals with the ideas we generated only minutes ago, and break them down into smaller and more manageable ones with finite deadlines. Let’s say you combined a love of cooking with magic. Your biggest long-term goal is to have a show where you are a magical chef and combine dinner and a show in one very neat stroke. Quite an ambitious project. To do that, you would need a story, routine, and a clear idea of what you want the audience to get at the end. Now you need to figure out what kind of foods are going to be shown throughout the show. Is it going to be a complete meal? A buffet? Nothing but desserts?
You keep working backward. Eventually you may decide that to truly get started, your first goal is to learn or create at least three new effects that involve the senses of taste and smell in some way. That’s pretty manageable. And it also has the added bonus of overall helping create a magic chef persona, not just that one show that is your ultimate goal. Don’t make it too easy on yourself, though. I’ll describe why in a moment.
Who Are You? part I
Earlier this week we laid the groundwork for figuring out your identity as a performer. This grounding is essential to the process as the way humans learn is first through external manifestations of positive influence, and then internalizing it. For example, if you start to dress really nice and classy, you start to act the part over a given period of time. But it’s never so simple is it?
In the last article, we illustrated 5 essential points to starting out in building an identity.
1. Be you, but bigger.
2. Reverse engineer all goals.
3. Find your target audience(s).
4. Hang out with like-minded people so that you can create things valuable to them and you alike.
5. Expand your horizons.
Over the last few days, you should have been giving serious thoughts to these points. Now it’s time move on. Take the thought you’ve given to the last five points, and apply them to these next five.
1. Expand your interests into ambitions.
Everybody has passions. Everybody has hobbies. They make us more developed individuals and occupy our minds. But they shouldn’t be an aspect of your life that leads to neglect of other parts of yourself. The advice in this article is going to be in very general language, so while you apply it to magic, you can also just as easily apply it to the rest of your life and feel better overall.
The first thing you need to do is find a way that you can expand your existing hobbies into something more productive. Look into adjacent pursuits and see what crossover there is. Work with more people and start deciding where you’d like to go with this.
The important thing is to always enjoy it. Nothing is too geeky or out-there. You can always find a way to translate your passions into something productive. You will find unusual crossovers along the way, especially as you begin to think more and more creatively. You’ll soon learn that there are very few real boundaries as long as you keep an open mind.
A couple of magic examples that come to mind are Andrew Mayne and Docc Hilford. Andrew has said that he draws a lot of his inspiration from comic books and sci-fi. Consequently, he’s put out books and DVDs such as The Handbook of Superpowers, Shrinker, and Shock F/X. Docc is a fan of H.P. Lovecraft and translated that bit of horror art culture into one of his séance packages At the Mountains of Madness, named for the novella of the same name.
To start applying this, I want you to think of creative ways you can express your hobbies and passions. In this case, let’s keep it simple and see how you can do it through magic. Do you really love to cook? I’d love to see more magic about food. Have you always had an interest in psychology? The idea of a show that combines a lecture of the differing psychologies between men and women with dramatic demonstrations of mentalism using male and female volunteers sounds rather intriguing, wouldn’t you say? What about Dungeons & Dragons fans? I believe Ronnie James Dio (a.k.a. the coolest singer ever) once used stagecraft and illusion technology to fight a dragon in the middle of a concert. Food for thought…
2. Turn your ambitions into a product/service and market it.
Now that you’re thinking more about where you’d like to go with these hobbies, you should be producing things that are in demand by others. You’re still creating for yourself, yes, but you are also doing it for other people, even if they don’t necessarily share your passion.
If you’ve made it to this step, you should be meeting a couple of goals by now. Getting there is perhaps one of the hardest parts as it involves the most grueling work trying to get momentum. Cold calling, rejections, shotgun form letters, constant fishing for new work, scouring the trades… It’s going to be soul draining and painful, but the reward will be more than worth it.
The important thing is getting some credibility to your name. You want to work hard, deliver, and get those testimonials. Your efforts will be largely general at first because you can’t afford to be picky. When you’re looking to expand your work, you can join a networking group. When you’re starving, you cold call. That’s the simple truth, but I’m getting off on a tangent. The important thing is to get your name out there and get the momentum going.
You should also have a better idea by now of what you like doing in this field. Ironically, by focusing your work, you can actually expand your audience. People will take what you have to offer because you connect with them. You get a more consistent return on your efforts because people are interested in hearing from you and they will tell others about you.
To illustrate an off-beat example of this phenomenon in the real world, I’d like to present a story from Rick Maue. One year, he was attending a mentalists’ convention as a guest and lecturer. Originally, he was going to go to hear other people lecture, but at the last minute, several big names dropped off the roster, including Richard Osterlind. Rick knew the con organizer, who asked him to fill in for Osterlind with one of his own lectures. Rick agreed to do it as a favor to his friend.
Some of you may know that Richard Osterlind is a mentalist with no specialty per se. Like Banachek and Bob Cassidy, he’s a general practitioner of the art. Rick is both magician and mentalist, with a specialty in haunted magic. Not exactly the first person you’d expect to fill in for Osterlind. Apparently, the rest of the convention didn’t think so either. Rick actually had people coming up to him the day before his lecture, getting in his fact and accosting him. “Who do you think you are to take Richard Osterlind’s place?”
Rick brushed them off and did his lecture. The next day, those same people were coming up to him, not offering their apologies, but asking if they could get a copy of his lecture notes. The other convention attendees who had been open-minded toward the roster change were raving about the lecture to anyone who would listen.
If you know what your path is and stick with it, you will draw more people to you who will look up to you and support your work.
From here, take some large, seemingly impossible goals with the ideas we generated only minutes ago, and break them down into smaller and more manageable ones with finite deadlines. Let’s say you combined a love of cooking with magic. Your biggest long-term goal is to have a show where you are a magical chef and combine dinner and a show in one very neat stroke. Quite an ambitious project. To do that, you would need a story, routine, and a clear idea of what you want the audience to get at the end. Now you need to figure out what kind of foods are going to be shown throughout the show. Is it going to be a complete meal? A buffet? Nothing but desserts?
You keep working backward. Eventually you may decide that to truly get started, your first goal is to learn or create at least three new effects that involve the senses of taste and smell in some way. That’s pretty manageable. And it also has the added bonus of overall helping create a magic chef persona, not just that one show that is your ultimate goal. Don’t make it too easy on yourself, though. I’ll describe why in a moment.
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