A Tragic Story of Bad Magic

Ronald Hayden

But I have developed a policy of opening all my business presentations with a trick. It's a personal challenge to myself. My body -- not my brain, just my body -- gets very nervous when I start to perform in front of an audience and I shake pretty seriously. Try performing Needle Thru the Balloon while experiencing delirium tremens. It's just not natural. Forcing myself to do the most potentially embarrassing and out-there thing I can right up front is my way of confronting it. Fortunately for my audiences, the shaking goes away a few minutes into a show.

So recently I had my first business presentation in a while coming up, a co-presentation with my boss, and I needed a trick. In the three years I've worked at my current employer, I've already used up the vanishing handkerchief in a thumb tip bit (always seemed hokey to me, but to my mystification, one of the most popular tricks I've ever performed), the pencil through the $20 bill (Timothy Wenk's Misled), and one or two of my other standards. I was trying to screw up my courage to do the Needle Thru the Arm, but my boss was not happy about me bleeding all over the place at the start of a presentation she was involved in.

While I fretted -- would this be my first presentation without doing magic? did I not have the guts anymore? would that mean I was finally going to let this thread die out of my life? -- out of the blue a magic store moved into my neighborhood. My neighborhood is all fancy coffee shops and refined ethnic restaurants and the like, not a place I would have ever imagined a magic store. The first magic store close to me!

I've only been there once so far, but what an impact it made... I stopped in on a Saturday, not planning to buy anything, but maybe willing to get a video on close-up stuff or something. I talked to the owner for a while, while kids came in and out buying plastic vomit and the occasional cheap magic trick, and I told him the kind of magic I like: In your face stuff with no gimmicks -- no "magic boxes" or the like. Real miracle kind of stuff -- thumb nail writers and the like. After a while I decided to purchase a video on coin magic, but before I could, he said "Wait, I've got something to show you. I think this is exactly what you need." And he proceeded to borrow a dollar from me, crumple it up about a foot from my face, and float it in mid-air. I was standing right there and could see absolutely nothing. He uncrumpled the dollar and gave it back to me, as simple as that. He was right -- this was exactly my kind of magic, and I quickly switched from buying the video to buying this. I had my trick for my presentation.

In this public forum I will simply call it Invisible Thread; it's enough to know that a practically invisible thread is involved, and that doesn't give you any real clue of how this trick is accomplished. An absolutely incredible trick -- my partner, not a very impressible person when it comes to magic -- gave me a Wow response when I showed it to him; and he was standing about five inches away. I quickly, I have to admit, got over-infatuated with this effect. Drunk, really. I felt like doing it everywhere -- it was just so cool. When I went to the corner store, I almost showed it to the clerk for no reason.

This leads me to the tragic part of my story. Every time a friend came over or we went out with a friend to dinner, I showed the floating bill. At first it went well. But then I got a little cocky -- it just seemed so foolproof and invulnerable. After a friend claimed I must have tied a string around a candle on the restaurant table (yes, I was using the candle, but the rest of her theory was just impossible!), I decided to prove her wrong: Later at home, I attached the gimmick to a piece of stereo equipment about 10 feet across the room from where I was sitting -- no candles or anything around this time! The distance would make it impossible to think I could have "tied a string" to something. I did this knowing her husband would be walking through the room at any moment, but figuring I'd be done before then. But then something went wrong. Somehow I missed attaching the bill to the thread -- it just fluttered to the ground. Had the thread broken or what? Before I could figure out what had happened, her husband walked in; before I could do anything, he crossed in front of me. Suddenly he stopped -- "What's this???" he asked, reaching down to touch this invisible something he had run into.

Believe it or not, I didn't learn my lesson. A few nights later, we went to dinner with a friend and his mother. After a while, I showed them the floating bill (I loved being able to do this effect in the middle of a crowded restaurant!) -- it went well. Then my friend requested that I show it again. Yes, I knew that a waiter would be delivering food any minute, but I couldn't help myself -- this trick was just too cool. So I got set up to show it again, and from outside the scope of my vision a hand and a plate suddenly appeared -- the waiter. No problem, I just subtly moved the thread aside. But then the hand came again and reached right in front of me -- and before long he managed to get it completely wrapped around his palm and fingers (breaking the thread in the process). General hilarity ensued, with me trying to get it unwrapped from his hand, while whispering to him "Don't worry, I know what it is..."

After this I was simply depressed. Clearly I was a screw-up. Here I had one of the greatest illusions I've ever seen (particularly given the ability to show it anywhere anytime) and I was frittering it away by being an idiot. I knew the risks in all the situations, and I didn't control them, like a real magician should. Further, I had no real presentation -- I was just doing the trick, and if it screwed up, I looked like a fool. Perhaps I wouldn't do it at the business presentation after all -- perhaps it was time to finally give up on the magic thing and concentrate on the other parts of my life.

But I couldn't give up on my personal challenge to myself to always perform magic during a presentation; that would just be too much of a failure. So I decided to close my presentation by floating a piece of paper that was relevant to the subject I'd been discussing. Beforehand, though, I practiced several times, first in my office, then at the place where I'd be presenting, and I made sure to close some blinds that were letting too much direct sunlight into the room, and I showed the effect to a couple of people at the exact spot I'd be performing, to make sure they couldn't see anything. I was not going to screw up this time, dammit.

So I did the presentation with my boss, and I closed with the floating piece of paper (standing about seven feet away from anything a string could be attached to...), and it went wonderfully. People gasped and laughed and afterward came up and stared at my lapel, trying to figure out where I possibly could have tied a string. My boss thought it was great, and remarked on it several times in the next couple of days.

I'm back on the upswing. Maybe magic really is part of my life. But, dammit, if I'm going to keep doing it, I have to get serious about it. I have to evolve a real performance style, and some professionalism to keep me from taking stupid risks. Doing it half-assed for the rest of my life is just going to depress me more.

Next time I'm going to do the Needle Thru the Arm.