Magic Is Easy, Magic Is Hard

The Magic Woods Forum currently has Teller as its special guest. The threads have been very interesting, and well worth a read. Teller was even kind enough to answer a question I asked him. The favourite post I have come across is the following where Teller is asked “What are your views on where the magic community stands presently?”. His reply is enlightening:

I find the magic community to be mostly a pleasure. Lots of happy
people, excited about their favorite subject. I love talking with
magicians late into the night.

Artistically magic’s problem is that it’s simultaneously too easy and
too hard. It’s so easy that to get a powerful reaction from the
audience, all you have to do is execute a trick deceptively. So the
dumbest, least artistic person in the world, with no talent, no
sensibility at all, and nothing to say, can get applause just by
doing a trick right.

On the other hand, a person with who wants to express himself through
magic has his work cut out for him. He has to come up with a
deceptive procedure for simulating an impossibility, then (generally)
write his own script, and stage and direct himself. It’s terribly hard.

There’s a piece I’ve been working on for more than a year now. I’ve
had help from David Ben, Johnny Thompson, Mike Close, Apollo Robbins,
Matt Holtzclaw, and Penn. I have shop staff of four, headed up by
Nate and Zeke, that works pretty much fulltime to build and revise
props. I’ve been creating and working this trick every night after
the show for about an hour since the middle of last year. When
complete, the trick will run 4.5 minutes at most, and look simple and
terribly easy. Most viewers who see it will, I bet, think it’s a
charming old trick I came across. Magicians may recognize its
ancestry and dismiss it as “old wine in new bottles.” They won’t
realize that it is an entirely new idea, and virtually every aspect
was wrestled from the jaws of impossibility.

That’s the nature of the beast.

Magic is easy. Magic is hard.

The original post can be viewed here.

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