What I Learned One Night At The Close-Up Magic Competition

This is another autobiographical article, but with some lessons for anybody.

Although my interest has been largely dormant since moving to the USA 17 years ago, I have been an amateur magician since I was 16.

For most of the time, it was much more of a personal hobby for me than a desire to perform in front of audiences – and yes, I see the irony there, given that magic is a performing art.

But as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m primarily an introvert who does not enjoy being the centre of attention.

I had joined a local club in Preston, where I was born and lived at the time, and I went to a nearby convention for magicians some years, but it wasn’t until I moved to Northampton that my renewed interest began.

I knew there was a local club, but back then, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was no Internet and no easy way to find out how to join.

By chance, at a convention one year in 1993, I ended up sitting next to another magician, Richard, whom I’d never met or even heard of before, and we got talking, waiting for the gala show to begin, and it turned out he was a member of the Northamptonshire Magicians’ Club (NMC).

He suggested I come along, and that initial visit turned into a 12-year relationship that had me much more involved in the art of magic than I ever had previously.

At the first Annual General Meeting, I became the Club Secretary, and it was agreed, at our first committee meeting, that we should all participate in as many of the annual club competitions as we could – because many members did not participate, for whatever reason.

It didn’t sit well with me, not being a natural performer, but I did my part, entering most of them (there used to be four per year in those days), and never really expecting to win – but entering to do my bit.

To be honest, I never really put in the practice I needed, and it sometimes showed.

And then, for some reason, while on vacation in Morocco in late 2002, I decided that I would take the next competition, the Close-Up Magic Competition (i.e. magic that is performed in a more intimate setting, such as across a table), due to be held the following February, more seriously.

I had taken a few items with me, more for my own entertainment than anything else, and I never travelled without at least one deck of playing cards, and I created a short routine – we were limited to 12 minutes, after which you were penalized and/or disqualified.

And so, for a large part of those two weeks, I sat in the hotel lounge or out by the pool if it wasn’t too breezy, or in our suite, practising the four tricks that constituted my short act.

Other people probably thought I was crazy, playing around with cards and muttering to myself (which I prefer to call rehearsing my patter), and by the end of the holiday, I was confident that my act would work and that I would be able to perform it flawlessly.

Once back home, I continued rehearsals throughout January, and on the night of the competition, I found myself amongst eight other members, including other amateurs such as myself, one of whom was one of our junior members, and full-time professionals who performed magic for their living.

It was one of the largest turn-outs for this competition that I could remember, and I was, as always, nervous before it was my turn to perform my act in front of around 40 people, including other members, and their family and friends.

After the first five performers had been on, there was a short comfort break, then I opened the second half of the competition.

Once I began, the nerves disappeared (fortunately – as they usually did), and I found myself having fun.

As I’d expected, everything went as rehearsed – the lady I’d asked earlier to help me (who was not a magician herself) was wonderful, and the audience seemed to appreciate my act.

At the end of my 12 minutes, which I’d managed to time to perfection, I retreated to my seat and watched the remaining acts – and took notes, because I was still the Secretary at that stage and needed to write a review of the competition for the club’s newsletter.

After all nine performers had done their bit, the three judges retired to discuss what they’d seen, and I went to go and pay the landlord for the room rental.

It took longer than usual, and one of the members came to see where I was because they were ready to announce the winners.

I thought nothing of it, and assumed they just wanted everybody back in the room before the evening was concluded.

The man who announced the winners, the same man I’d met all those years ago at the convention, awarded the Juniors’ Cup to the only junior who’d entered. (This wasn’t a pity trophy though – if competition judges ever thought that nobody deserved one of the trophies on offer, then it wasn’t awarded, which was something I’d seen happen at least once before.)

And then it was time to present the overall winner with their trophy.

I knew I had done a good job, but the professional magician who’d followed me was very polished, as you’d expect, and in fact there wasn’t a bad act all night.

So I was very surprised when Richard announced my name.

But here’s the thing – it wasn’t winning the trophy that was really important to me. I was pleased for two different reasons:

1. I had proven to myself that if I put the work in, which I had for the first time since being a member, I was able to perform at a much higher level than I’d ever assumed. I know that pride is one of the so-called seven deadly sins, and it’s not a word I use very often, but in the sense of having accomplished something all by myself, then yes, I did feel proud.
2. One of our other members, Ken, is an accomplished close-up magician, and had been a member of the club since before I was born, and he had also previously won the two largest national close-up magic competitions in the country, so he knows what he’s talking about – and while he is a man of few words, the three words he did say to me afterwards, “Well done, Mark” meant much more to me than the trophy.

Conclusion

If there are any lessons to be learned from this autobiographical article, it’s these:

1. Comfort Zones. Doing things you find uncomfortable is how you learn and grow.

   I was a member of the NMC for many years (and still am, because they made me a Life Vice President at my last meeting before moving to the USA), and while I learned a lot of new tricks over the years, what I value the most is what I learned about improving my performing skills and my overall skills as a human being that resulted from that.

2. Competence. Just because somebody is a professional does not always mean that they are better than amateurs – it simply means that they have chosen to pursue what they do as a career rather than as a hobby.
3. Nerves. Being nervous is not a bad thing. There are those who say that if you don’t feel the butterflies in your stomach beforehand than you’re not ready.

   And as I mentioned, as soon as I begin performing (or, if I’m wearing a “performing outfit” such as a DJ, when I put one on), the nerves go away.

   On the occasions when that didn’t happen, I knew, with hindsight of course, that I hadn’t practised enough.

4. Practice. If you want to improve, then you need to both practise and rehearse (because these are usually different activities).

   I know this is common sense, but it’s easy to be fazed early on when you try something new and give up because it’s too difficult. You need to keep going until you push past that point.

   You also need to find a way to enjoy the practising part – because you’ll probably be doing a lot of it, and if you don’t enjoy it, it’s more likely you’ll give up.

5. Try Something Different. You can and sometimes should break the mold if you want.

   The first of the four tricks I performed in my act was done silently (i.e. no patter at all), which is common in stage magic, but rare in close-up magic.

   At one time, I would never have considered doing that, but having been in the club for almost ten years at that stage and increased my confidence, both in magic and generally, I felt that the trick would work that way, and be an unusual way to get the audience’s attention.

   What I did was not exactly innovative – I had seen are a few magicians who performed some or all of their close-up magic with little to no patter – but it was a bold and new move for me.

   You can tell sometimes that people use words to hide their discomfort, so sitting there, silently, performing a trick put a lot more of the focus on me and what I was doing. This was, of course, partly the point, but it was unnerving.