I recently lied to you. I told you that there are no facts in magic. There are actually lots of facts in magic. For example, here are some proven facts for you:

I’ll be back with more facts soon!

A lot of serious card magicians that I talk to are in a rush to learn too much too soon. They want to learn every sleight possible: first the Classic Pass, then the Dribble Pass, then onto Charlie Miller Cascade Pass before continuing with a Second Deal and a Bottom Deal. All of this in a few months.

I have a different point of view though. I take a single sleight and I work on it for a good few months. This gives me time to explore lots of descriptions on the move and ask lots of magicians for feedback and criticism. Most importantly, it allows me to concentrate and focus my practice sessions better than if I’m trying to learn too much at once.

Then, when I’m ready (normally when I’m getting proficient with the move), I start to fully research tricks that utilise the move and start playing around with my own ideas too. I think of this as the Royal Road to Card Magic approach; learn a move and then learn some applications.

If you’ve got a lifetime in magic ahead of you, I think this will be the best long term approach for learning magic effectively. Slow down, focus, experiment and enjoy. The end result will be an arsenal of effective, perfected moves as opposed to a large repertoire of poorly practiced and ill-used moves.

What will your chosen move for the next few months be?

Where are the facts that the best effects can be described in one sentence?

Where are the facts that being natural is the most convincing way to perform magic?

Where are the facts that people most name the number seven when asked for a number between one and ten?

Where are the facts that you shouldn’t open with a card trick?

Where are the facts that mentalism and magic don’t mix?

There aren’t any: these points are only observations made by magicians about their own performances. I hear too many magicians touting these ideas as facts, but while some of them give good advice, they have never been proven to work for every magician in the world. Because of this, we shouldn’t be afraid to take them, play with them and prove them wrong.

Late Saturday night (winding up about 1.30am), I was interviewed for another episode of iTricks.com’s Magic Week in Review. That’s right; they actually let me back on again. Nobody saw that coming!

This was a fun interview where Justin asked Todd Diamond and me some questions about handling failure in magic, Jeff McBride’s new show, performing card tricks on stage and lots more.

If you’ve got a spare thirty minutes, pop your headphones in and listen to the episode here:

I’ve been to LA five or six times before … but never left the airport. This time though, we hired a car and drove across the desert to see it for real. Our first stop, like true tourists, was to take a tour of celebrity houses and hang-out points. There was a problem though - our tourist guide made stuff up. Yup, he was just making stuff up throughout the entire tour. He lied about some of the places that movies were shot and then even worse, he lied about magic. He pulled up outside of the Magic Castle and gave us the history for it. “The Magic Castle was built for Houdini who performed there several times during his life. It’s where the rich and famous go to see magic.” Well, unless the seances actually worked, I’m pretty sure that Houdini hasn’t been around to perform at the Castle since it opened in the early 1960’s.

We were lucky though; Aaron Fisher had invited us to visit the Castle and find out the real history. He was the perfect host and arranged for his friend Josh Saks to give us a tour of the place while he performed his parlour act. We got to see Aaron’s act too and I have to say, he was on top form with a great act and some really creative magic. I’ve seen Aaron perform several times before and it was really great to see him work for lay people.

I also managed to hang out with a few magicians while I was there, but as this was a social visit with my girlfriend more than an opportunity to session, I kept it to a minimum! Along with Aaron and Josh, Tom Frank, John Lovick and Dan Sylvester were all around to hang out. Dan showed me some really creative magic, including some of his card work which I’ve never seen before.

The day after the night before, we continued with the magic! Tom Frank and Aaron Fisher took us to Malibu for a day at the beach, including sun, sea, food and magic! We sessioned on various ideas including some moves, poker deals, presentations and other effects. I’ve not had a session on a beach for a long time, so this was definitely fun! Tom and Aaron are both great magicians, so it was a lot of fun discussing ideas with them.

After Malibu, we made a start on the long drive to Lake Tahoe, where we stayed for a couple of days. I’m afraid to say though L&L fans that I didn’t get to see John or Dave. Sorry to disappoint.

And finally, we visited San Francisco. The city itself was nice, but didn’t appeal as much as I had hoped. However, I did notice something interesting: the homeless people and charity workers had way better introductions than most magicians I’ve seen! For example, I was happy to see the famous “Bush Man” who apparently earns $60k a year (tax free!) by jumping up on people from behind a bush that he crafted himself and then asking for tips. Another guy stopped me in the street wanted me to bet him $10 that he could tell me where I bought my shoes. And my favourite told me he was a member of the “Fun Police” and gave me a full rundown of what he and his team do … then he asked me to donate to homeless people. I’d love to see magicians apply some creative introductions in this kind of way. It’s been a long and tiring three weeks. What was originally a fun holiday turned into a magical one too.

That’s the end of this series of posts. Things are back to normal now and I’m firmly back into my normal life … but not for long hopefully! I’ll be posting twice more this week so be sure to come back!