I was lucky enough to bump into Paul Harris at LVMI 3 years ago. No, he didn’t show me any magic (given how tall the guy was, I was probably at a bad angle anyway), but the honor of finally meeting this living legend in person was awesome enough.
The Art of Astonishment was one of the first books I read when I was starting out, and at the time I’ll have to admit I just sort of breezed through it. Yes, I read through all the effects and learnt them, but in hindsight what I was really doing was just taking each item at face value and going ‘oh, I can do this… no, this one’s too hard… where can I find the gimmick for this?… I don’t know if this would work…’ so and and so forth. Flash forward to present day, and the only thing I do from the book is a variation of Reset. Kinda sad, don’t you think?
With that in mind, I dug out my old copies of the series and set out to not just re-read them, but to study them as well. So far it’s been a week and I’m on p.49 of Vol. 1, with 13 pages of notes to go with it – that’s about a trick a day. Reading the book for the second time round, I’m noticing so much that I just blatantly missed before. The theory in each essay is amazing, and looking at each effect from a reverse-engineer’s point of view really helps to give insight into the creative process - How did he think of this premise? Why this solution? How can this concept be applied elsewhere?
As magicians, our goals are to create solutions for problems that don’t actually exist. Why would anyone want to do that, you ask? The truth is, behind this whole charade of patter, sleights and misdirection, deep down inside we do this because we want to re-create for others that feeling we experienced when we were shown ‘the trick’ – that moment of total wonder and amazement when a coin vanishes from your hand or a total stranger reads your mind, and you just know in your heart that this is what you want to be doing for the rest of your life.
Having been doing this for 6 years now, there are times when I forget why I do this and treat it as ‘just another thing I do’. Performing David Regal‘s ‘Flight Attendents’ for a spectator this weekend and experiencing the total minute of astonished silence afterwards, I realized that I live for that moment, and all the little pieces of strange that unleash it.
Hm. Interesting. Maybe I should take a closer look as well when I get some time free from school and stuff?
I am also guilty for running through these books, without actually letting them sink in. I think one of the reasons is that Mr. Harris’ way of expressing himself is hilarious. Because of this, the books are read for entertainment value, and reading between the lines is lost.
[...] I met Paul Harris at the LVMI a few years ago, he told me about a huge new project he was working on. Dubbed True Astonishment, [...]