The Travels and Travails of a Freelance Colorado Magician

Writing today under the inspiration of #Reverb10, an online initiative to encourage you to reflect on this year and manifest what’s next. Today’s prompt come from Victoria Klein, author of “27 Things to Know About Yoga.”

Appreciate. What’s the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do you express gratitude for it?

My wife Karen earns the honors as the person I’ve come to appreciate most over the last couple of years.

How do I express my gratitude to her?

Tomorrow her office is having a chili cook off.

She’s down stairs cooking up her best pot of chili as I type.

I’m going to make this entry uncharacteristically short so I can go down and help her cook a dynamite pot of chili and then help clean up the kitchen so she doesn’t have to stay up too late.

It sounds schmaltzy, but it’s true.

Blogging this month under the inspiration of #Reverb10, a month-long annual initiative to encourage you to reflect and manifest. Each day you are invited to respond in your own way to a creative prompt. Today’s prompt come from Scott Belsky, author of “Making Ideas Happen.”

Action When it comes to aspirations, it’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen. What’s your next step?

Taking time this month to reflect and manifest with #Reverb10 an online movement to encourage you to delve into where you’ve been and where you are going. Daily prompts are given through out the month, and today’s prompt comes from Patrick Reynolds, author of the Knowledge Worker’s Survival Guides.

This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn’t mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present?

Goodness. An integration of mind and body? Tis a consummation, devoutly to be wished.

It is clearly not an event which arises as part of my normal state of affairs. My mind is too large a portion of what I do. Most of the time my mind forges ahead, while my body tags along as an afterthought. I mean, when does my body ascend to the level at which it could even be considered on par with my mind?

The nearest I come to experiencing this sort of thing with any regularity is when I am practicing sleight of hand. And let’s be clear, even though I practice every day, this integration of mind and body is by no means a daily occurrence.

In fact, when I begin to work on a new piece of magic, there is no sense of integration at all. The mind demands, and the body repeatedly fails to deliver. Mind and body are stubbornly at odds during these initial attempts.

Still my body and my mind begin walking the long road to reconciliation, and at some point – when the technique has been mastered and the movements no longer feel foreign — mind and body can take flight as one.

Recently I’ve been working on a classic magic effect, the Linking Rings. It is an excellence discipline for this type of exploration because it is a movement piece and it fully involves the body.

In fact, when I was a great deal younger, I remember my mentor, Mike Shannon, telling me that in order to master the Linking Rings, I needed to “experience the Rings as a dance.”

In my youthful exuberance I took that to mean that I had to give attention to the choreography and to create a series of movements that were aesthetically beautiful. And so I did, and was well served by Mike’s advice to think about the Rings as a dance piece.

Later, however, I came to reinterpret his maxim to mean that I ought to think of the Rings as my partner on stage. The performance of the Rings was a dance between two entities: myself and a set of inanimate objects. I had to learn to work with the objects, to understand their qualities, how they moved and how they responded. The Linking Rings was not about a magician alone on stage, but a magician sharing the stage with a living set of rings that had to be considered as an equal.

And while there was much to be derived from this interpretation, Mike’s words continue to unfold themselves to me.

Today, I interpret what he said to mean that the Linking Rings is more than a solo performance and more than dual entities sharing the stage. I believe he meant that the performance must be a single expression of rings/magician. An experience in which the integration is so complete that you cannot separate out where the rings end and the magician begins. A single flow forming a single experience. Not of a person and a set of objects, but of a unity.

Which brings me about as close as I can get to describing those fleeting moments of integration, because when practice goes well, it indeed feels as though there is no mind and body, but only a living flow.

Blogging this month at the prompting of #reverb10, an online initiative to inspire you to reflect and manifest. Today’s prompt come from Sam Davidson, author of “50 Things Your Life Doesn’t Need.” Sam asks:

What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?

On the 11th day of the month, in preparation for 2011, here’s my list of 11 things my life doesn’t need:

1. Fast Food – Fast food is always beckoning, especially because I spend a lot of time on the road. I’m often famished after a performance and I’m driving late at night when other restaurants are closed. But most supermarkets are open late too. I can get something more wholesome in 2011 and improve my health.
2. Doughnuts – I’m known for snarfing down lots of these, but why do I? They’re not that spectacular really. If I’m going to eat some calorie-laden confection, I might as well treat myself to something notable like tiramisu, baklava, or a linzer torte.
3. Clutter – I’ve got too many things that don’t have a proper place of residence. As a result they tend to accumulate in unsightly ways. No more squatters. If it’s a keeper then I need to store it. Otherwise, let it go.
4. Worrying about my unemployed brother-in-law.
5. Indoor-centric Lifestyle – I need to get outdoors more often. Less sequestering. Less contacting the world through my computer. Go to the lake. Walk to town. Spend time working in the yard. Ride my bike.
6. Inaction – Get busy. Stop dawdling. Make something happen. Today.
7. More Books – I’ve already got them by the box-full. Dozens of unread books that I acquired with great aspirations that have yet to manifest. Awaiting me are Plutarch’s Lives, Don Quixote, The Iliad, The Golden Bough, The Ramayana, The Seven Storey Mountain, Le Morte D’Arthur, Primitive Mythology, and scores more.
8. More Magic Props – As in the preceding entry, I’ve got enough. Boy, do I have enough.
9. Spam – Of course everyone hates spam, but I’ve become overly tolerate of sifting through and deleting these unwanted email messages. Now I take some action and start flagging these messages so they stop recurring.
10. Angry Birds.
11. Excuses – I’ve got a boatload already. Would gladly trade in all my excuses for a hefty set of  accomplishments in 2011. No excuses. Just the way Sartre would have lived it.

Ten days into a month long mediation reflecting on this year and manifesting what is next. #Reverb10 is an online initiative that encourages you to respond in you own way to daily creative prompts. Today’s prompt comes from photographer, writer and e-course creator, Susannah Conway.

Wisdom Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?

Participating this month in #Reverb10, an online initiative to encourage you to reflect and this year and manifest what’s next. Each day you are invited to respond in your own way to a creative prompt. Today’s prompt comes from Shauna Reid, author of The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl.

Party. What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, shenanigans.

This prompt serves to remind me that I need to get out more.

Or not. I’m not really a very social person. Oh, I like visiting with people well enough, but let us define some limits:

1. I don’t enjoy being in large groups with hundreds of others. I don’t like the jostling and the crowding. Enochlophobia is too strong a term; I don’t suffer from anxiety or fear regarding crowds, I’m not worried about being trampled or being exposed to germs, I just find crowds to be annoying.
2. In a related vein, I believe that talking is integral to the social occasion. If I have to shout in your ear to make myself heard, our opportunities for interesting dialog are severely limited. So it’s important that the noise level be managed, and on this point I’ve grown quite curmudgeonly.

So allow me, in my own asocial way to describe some gatherings that “rocked my socks off.”

About once a month, I go to lunch with two other magicians, Dr. Q and Sensei N. We go to Racine’s and unless our taste-buds are seriously out of whack, I’ll order the club sandwich, Sensei N. will have the steak & eggs, and Dr. Q will have the nutty cheese salad. What can I say? We stick to our favorites.

[Note: Because they have chosen not to cultivate an online presences -- no blogging, tweeting, Facebooking, or other behaviors of this ilk -- I've changed the names these two friends out of respect for their privacy.]

We go to Racine’s in Denver, because it is a place we can talk. And talk we do. We talk for three or four hours at a sitting. We sit down before the lunch rush starts, and we watch the restaurant fill up and empty out again. The waiter’s shift has ended, his replacement stops by dutifully to refill water and ice tea, and still we talk.

Reliving the past glories. Reminiscing about difficult audiences. Picking each others brains for solutions to difficult problems. Gossiping about other performers in our industry. And sharing ideas. Occasionally we will perform for each other, but more often we just talk. Magic is a tiny sub-culture, and it is cloaked in secrecy, so there are few people to whom we can talk openly. And so we talk.

We cover a broad spectrum of topics, but Dr. Q likes the esoteric concepts, sometimes mathematical in nature, that he can disguise and build entire magic routines around. He’s a performer and an inventor. Sensei N. likes jokes and gags; he lives for the laughter. I’m always looking for an piece of magic that I can build a story around, or a story that I can build the magic around.

My wife refers to us at “the 3 1/4,” based on an abstruse inside joke that arose when I told her of a similar but larger group of performers on the East Coast who called themselves “the 13.” And the slightly smaller group of performers in Arizona who called themselves “the 6 1/2.”

The other major “rock your socks off” social gatherings that I engage in are my almost weekly dinners with Bob Brown.

Bob is also a magician and a fellow theatre aficionado. He was the director for my three Boulder International Fringe Festival shows. And he writes a very interesting blog on deception (www.Deceptology.com).

Mr. Brown is also a consummate prankster and his activities clearly can be classified as shenanigans, but they must await a future blog post.

We dine a Turley’s in Boulder. Again, our choice of restaurant being predicated by our desire to talk.

Mr. Brown and I drink so much water — pitcher upon pitcher — we once considered calling our theatre troupe (from back in the mid-90′s, and now dormant), the “Glass of Water Theatre Company.”

If my luncheons in Denver provide new ideas, “My Dinner with Bob” is where thoughts are refined and perfected. This is where the heavy lifting is done.

Two-weeks ago we wrestled with a new idea for a piece of magic. And like many performance pieces of this genre, struggled with a recurring dilemma. The more impossible the magic became, the less dramatically interesting the performance became. And the more interesting the performance became, the less impossible the magic became.

After about three hours of discussion, we emerged, tired but victorious. Now I just have to build the necessary props and perform the effect 37 times to see if it works the way we hope it will.

Mr. Brown and I have know each other for so long and have developed such a vast collection of shared references that we speak in a form of short-hand. Instead of having to explain ideas from scratch, we make hermetic references, and ideas are conveyed as though we are speaking in code. At some point during the conversation one or the other of us might say, “one of the thieves was damned,” and we would know exactly what was meant.

So here revealed to you is how I partied in 2010, having my sock rocked off in social gatherings with one other person (or two), in a quiet restaurant, talking, and drinking copious amounts of water.

Posting this month under the influence of #Reverb10, an online movement to inspire you to reflect and manifest. Throughout the month you are give a daily prompt to encouraged to reflect and manifest in your own way. Today’s prompt come from Karen Walrond:

Beautifully Different. Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful.

There’s lots of ways we can approach this, but some are too easy.

In some instances learning to accept our differences can represent a watershed moment in our lives. If acceptance comes as a result of great struggle, if we travel through the fire and emerge stronger on the other side, it can have a powerful effect.

Embracing differences, however, might also be self-aggrandizement.

“I’m a Japanese-American, harmonica playing, story-telling magician,” is a line I’ve use to open my show for many years. I choose to highlight my differences because it points out the unusual qualities of my show.

And I’m comfortable being different in this way, as it makes my performance unique.

But that’s too easy. There’s no work to be done here. So what about differences that are not so easily co-opted? Or differences that challenge my self-esteem?

I’ll indulge in a moment of self-reflection here and notice that my approach to these daily prompts is beginning to reveal a pattern.

I spend a great deal of time dissecting the question, exploring the meaning of the question, delving into the nature of the question, and only a tiny portion of the post is dedicated my personal response, my feelings, my opinions.

My posts are 90% analysis and 10% expression. My blog posts are sanitized of anything personal. But why?

One answer is that I denigrate my feelings. Another is that I don’t want to risk sharing my feelings. Yet another is that for me to know someone, I need to know how they think. So I share how I think on the misguided assumption that my thinking will be of interest to others.

So we’ve pinpointed a difference; there is a difference in how I express myself to others. If there is beauty in this difference then it is a cold beauty indeed.

And for completeness sake, just because their is beauty to be found in these differences, it does not follow that we must accept these differences. We might acknowledge the beauty but still choose affect a change.

(Look! More analysis!)

Accepting differences or changing them? Which is the more noble path? I suspect whichever one requires the most work.

#reverb10 is an online initiative to inspire you to reflect on the current year and to begin to manifest the next year. Throughout the month you are invited to respond in your own way to a daily prompt. Today’s prompt was crafted by Cali Harris:

Community. Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011?

Community is closely bound, in my mind, to three words: generosity, relationship, and ethics.

Ethics finds a place here because of a maxim proposed by a former professor of mine, Don Darnell. He stated that a person behaved ethically when they acted in a manner that was best in the long-run. The more consideration that was given to the future, and the more foresight exercised by the individual, the more ethical their actions would be.

One element of community is that it must be forward-looking. If you and I interact, perhaps engaging in a business transaction, and we think only of what is best at this moment, then our behavior is ethically suspect (as per the principle stated above), but furthermore, we have no opportunity to join together in a community.

If you and I are to come together in a community, we must both consider what is best in the long run. We must look beyond the business we transact today and consider business we may do in the future. The more progressive our vision, the more ethical our conduct will be, but in addition, by considering the possibility of future interactions we are forging the bonds of a community.

Relationships are built on the interactions we’ve had in the past, but the strength of a relationship is also based on the potential for continuing to support each other in the future. So relationships, like ethics, are also forward-looking.

Lewis Hyde writes about the difference between a monetary transaction and a gift transaction. He asserts that monetary transactions exist for a single moment. Once an exchange is made, the two parties are no longer obligated to one another; they are free to depart, the relationship is terminated.

But a gift transaction implies that at some time in the future the gift will be reciprocated. So we are bound together by the giving of a gift, and the scales are perpetually out of balance. You give to me, so I give to you, so you give to me, so I give to you…And on into the future, with each gift serving to maintain our relationship.

Which brings us to generosity. A willingness to give without expectation of return, generosity is what initiates the cycle of community. An individual gives by their generosity and thus sets the scales in motion. Binding us together in an ongoing relationship, which obligates us to consider the future and therefore encourages us to behave ethically.

(Holy smokes! This train of thought is too dense for me to follow, and I’m the one who thunk it. Let’s disembark shall we?)

I’ve found generosity, relationship, and ethics in the Event community as represented by ISES Denver (International Special Event Society), a gathering of caterers, deejays, musicians, photographers, wedding planners, and other related professionals.

(Curiously enough, ISES was founded to promote ethics in the event industry, so we travel full circle. But clearly the foundation of ISES is built on community.)

I would like to more deeply connect with the community of magicians in 2011. We tend to be an independent lot (and somewhat rascally) so it may take some effort to manifest, but I’m game.

Blogging with the encouragement of Reverb10: a month-long movement to inspire people to reflect on this year and to prepare for the next. Every day, you are invited to respond in your own way to a thought-provoking prompt. Today’s prompt comes from Gretchen Rubin (author of “The Happiness Project”).

• Make. What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?

The last thing I made was this bit of magicial apparatus, a small device with a secret magic purpose. I refer to this item as the “Gronker Gimmick” because it seems only proper that a magical contrivance have a colorful name. Since I’ve never before had a need to discuss this device with anyone, it has only just now been christened.

Strictly speaking this gimmick is not required for the execution of my magic, but it affords me some niceties during performance and makes the handling a bit cleaner. Because of its subtle use even magicians who have knowledge of my show may still be perplexed as to the gimmick’s use.

I am fairly confident that only someone intimately familiar with the innermost working of my magic would recognize when and why I use this gimmick.

The Gronker Gimmick

In the nomenclature of magicians we distinguish between two types of apparatus: a “fake” (or “feke”) and a “gimmick.”

A fake is an object that is used openly by the magician, an object that the audiences sees but that is not what it appears to be. In other words, the audience sees the object but is not aware of its true nature. For example, a small block of lead, painted to look like a matchbox would be called a fake.

A gimmick is an item that is used in the performance of magic but that remains hidden from the audience’s awareness. The audience neither sees the gimmick, nor are they aware that the gimmick even exists. It works behind the scene for a secret purpose.

What I have made is a gimmick. For a portion of the routine it is concealed in my hand and is therefore painted a tan color to blend in with my skin. But because the audience never sees it, it need not be painted at all.

I've place the Gronker Gimmick on a 4-foot wide facsimile of a human hand to lend perspective

While it is true that in practice gimmicks can be any color at all, within the semiotics of magic, tan has become the standard color in magic for those gimmicks which are concealed in the hand. If one magician ever stumbles across another magician’s magic device and is uncertain as to how it might be used, if it were painted tan he or she would take this as a sign that it is meant to be hidden in the hand.

The “Gronker Gimmick™” is made from a link of chain. Using a dremel tool, I cut a small section (about 1/4″) out from the center of the link. The dremel tool is again used to polish the rough ends to remove any burrs. Finally, I used enamel spray paint to paint the thing tan.

In addition to the dremel tool, you will also want to use a clamp to hold the chain.

I cut and polished six Gronker Gimmicks in an evening. And after a brief series of field tests, I rejected four and kept two which were then painted.

Can you tell which hand is guilty of concealing the gimmick?

In practice the gimmick could be smaller and lighter, but because it need only be small enough and light enough to conceal in my hand, the gimmick has been over-engineered to ensure that it does not fail, even under great stress.

Early prototypes had moving parts but these proved unreliable as they would occasionally jam.

I make many of my own props and gimmicks. And in most cases, the materials I need can be  found in a hardware store or craft store. I am a stickler in this regard, but if I were to loose all my props, I could rebuild my act in a couple of days (and most of that time would be spent waiting for the tan paint to dry). If I’m on the road and something breaks or turns up missing, I can fashion a new prop without much trouble.

As to the purpose of the gimmick, I will say only this:

1. If you see my 90-minute stage show, at some point the gimmick will be in use.
2. The gimmick is only used for a single routine.
3. It resides in my hand for a only few moments.
4. Once it is set in place it stays there until the end when I retrieve it.
5. It is used to hold something together.

As for things I want to make, but need to clear time to do so, the list is extensive:

A device to extend a retract a length of cord with a tassel on the end, a contraption to hold securely and deliver easily a bundle of 100 sewing needles, a set of multicolored furoshiki in which to wrap my props, a gadget to propel a playing card upwards and out of the card case, a portable fabric curtain behind which I can hide as I affect an escape.

Reverb10 is an online initiative to encourage participants to reflect on this year and manifest what’s next. Every day through the month of December prompts are given to encourage you to reflect and manifest. Here’s today’s prompt:

• Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why? (Author: Alice Bradley)

I’m a bad blogger.

I’m also bad at improvising on stage.

I am an extreme introvert in this sense: My preference is to work through my thinking, carefully consider the alternatives, determine how best to convey my thoughts, select my words carefully, make all changes and revisions in a private and hidden process, and then — and only then — express my thoughts to the world; a single idea springing full-grown from Zeus’s thigh, overwrought and pedantic.

People mistakenly think that you must be an extrovert to be an actor, but truth is I love being on stage – so long as we stick to the script.

I have scads of stories about taking the stage as part of a comic duo with my friend Bob Brown. Bob hates to memorize lines, but he loves to improvise. I hate to improvise, but I love to memorize lines. We enjoyed/endured a delicious tension as each night, Mr. Brown would invariably depart from the script to venture into parts unknown, while I would be ever vigilant for the right moment to reel him back in and get us back on track.

This year I began to let go of holding on.

It began in an unexpected way with some rolfing bodywork I received. My intention when I pursued rolfing was to gain greater range of motion and to acquire more fluidity of motion. And while I did achieve these ends, there was an unexpected side-effect: my mind became nimbler.

During conversation, thoughts would appear and before I could refine, rework, and reshape them, I would blurt them out. And my friend began to notice the emergence of “a funny Gregg.”

Then it began to happen on stage too. I would hear a comment from the audience and I would fire off a response before deliberating the proper course of action. Taking greater risks, but being more alive in my performances.

Weird. I had taken Funkadelic’s lyric sentiment and inverted it: I freed my ass and my mind followed.

But I’ve only just begun to let go.

As for blogging, well, publishing blog posts has been difficult for me. Each idea for a post would begin to grow and expand, threatening to evolve into a doctoral dissertation, requiring more research and consideration before I could hit the dreaded “publish” button. So after 30 months of blogging I’ve eked out a mere 50 posts. (The aforementioned Mr. Brown, by contrast, posts three times every day. How very extroverted of him.)

My very participation in Reverb10 is a commitment to letting go.

Letting go takes practice. So for the month of December, taking my prompts from Reverb10, I’ll write something for my blog every day. Daring to post half-baked ideas, ill-formed thoughts, sentiments that I will express and later retract.

And we’ll see what manifests.