John Graham. A Real Magic Conversation.

Hi, welcome to Real Magic Review. My name is Steve Faulkner and this is my interview with John Graham. John Graham has written a book and John Graham has written a very, very good book. I will be doing a full review when I've finished it. There's about a quarter left but it's just great and you'll find out why if you listen to this interview. This interview is going to be brilliant for you wherever you are on your magic journey, whether you're a complete beginner, full of gold or completely advanced. And pardon me if you're thinking of taking stuff onto stage, close-up magic onto stage or parlour, but even if you're not, you'll gain an awful lot from this interview. It was a joy. John was a joy, not only because he was lovely and he really knows his stuff. I mean he really knows his stuff. He's been doing this for a very long time and he's given away his entire act here and all his theory. It's just, it's encyclopedic this thing. But also because we, as you'll see at the beginning, a few weeks ago we recorded an interview and it didn't record and we spoke for over an hour and it was just horrible. It broke my heart because it was such a lovely interview. I said we're not going to be able to recreate that but I said well let's wait three weeks, you know, and do it again so it feels fresh and it certainly did feel fresh. We didn't talk about any of the same stuff. It was a fresh conversation and I thought it was a better one because we were both in a different place. Well, I was in a different place. He was brilliant on the first one but he, you know, he's got three weeks of this book being out now. He's got a feel for how it's done so that's what I mean by that. Anyway, I will stop rambling which is very hard for me to do, you might recognise. If you know the channel, let's do the interview. Before we do that, please like and subscribe. Do all that usual stuff if you like it of course. Share it, that'll be great because I think this is shareable for magicians. Mention it on the forums, that'd be lovely and check out cardmagiccourse.com. It might not be called that anymore. If we're doing so much more than cards we might be changing the name so the links will work below. So use all the links below to the book, John's book and also the course, that'll be great. But anyway, let's go on with it. Here's my interview with John Graham. Says it's recording. Right, great. So look how shiny I am. This isn't just nerves. So for those of you, and it says it's recording, for those of people watching, I'll just explain what happened. We did a recording, well, did we do a recording? We did an interview about an hour and 20 minutes or whatever before Christmas. I was very excited. I hadn't done an interview for a while. I was very nervous and then Zoom at the end usually does this thing of going recording, converting and it didn't. And we both saw it. You said you'd seen it as recording and it just disappeared. Now, the terror now, obviously, but the amazing thing is you're here and you haven't just gone, no, I'm not going back there because I've wasted an hour and 20 minutes of my time. Honestly, it was great talking to you. It's not like it was work or anything. We had a conversation and it was enjoyable. So it would be like if we were on the phone talking. I mean, it was great. Yeah, and hopefully it records this time. Yeah, cool. So it's recording now. We'll know at the end. If not, you can slander me over the internet of being the most unprofessional person and get on the cafe and give me a going over. So that was good. But what's interesting is that at the time, I lost sleep. I was up all night. I was really, it did my head in. And then you forget that I was like, we can't record that again because it was so fresh. And now a month's past or whatever. And not a month, but maybe three weeks. And it does feel, you know, being the age of 48, I can't remember half of the stuff we said anyway. Well, I promise not to answer every question by saying, well, we went over that already. Yeah, I can't remember. I can't remember what I did yesterday. It's been Christmas. It's been very... No, I'm glad to talk to you and I appreciate you even being interested to talk to me and about the book. It's an honor. So it wasn't an ordeal for me. And you shouldn't let it stretch you out either. Good, man. Thank you. Thank you. And how, so that was, so the book came out what, did the book come out a month ago about? I would say about a month ago, maybe just under a month, maybe. It's hard to say because the days all sort of start blending in. But yeah, I think about three weeks before Christmas or so. So it probably was about a month ago. Yeah, so a lot, that's quite good. And there it is, stage by stage. A lot of you would have heard of it by now, would obviously go into the the book because it's a special thing indeed. But you now have a kind of handle on how it's gone, right? So where we, when we spoke, it only just come out. Obviously the initial interest was there and everybody was sort of positive about it. But how's it been going now? Yeah, it's been going great. I've been getting messages from a lot of magicians who are really responding to the book and saying some of the things that I hoped people would say and connecting with it in a way that I hoped that people would. And Josh and Andy at Vanishing Inc are saying they think this book is going to be evergreen, that it's just going to be this book that's always going to be desired by people once they get to that level where they want to do a stage show. So the response has been great. I've been, like I said, messages, a lot of encouraging posts and things like that. So really, really great. And what, when you say that that people have been sort of getting what you thought they would get out of the book or saying the things you kind of wanted them to say, what kind of things? And I suppose, I suppose you could tie that into what, what the main kind of thesis of the book is. Yeah, people who recognize that these are my working routines and that it really is solid information that I'm giving. I've had people say I've already added several of the tricks to my repertoire. Name Dropper, the, my take on Paul Harris's Deep Astonishment is getting a lot of response. People saying I already made that up. I'm already practicing it. I'm going to use it. And it's kind of, you know, it's nice, but that is one trick I would have loved to have kept to myself, to be honest. Yeah. No, sorry, sorry. I interrupted then. Because I do that. I'm a terrible interviewer. This is going to happen. It's okay. I haven't, I haven't talked to anybody but my kids for about three weeks, John. You have to put up with it. I've got so much to say, I don't know what it is. Honestly, I love them, but that school can't open early enough. I'm happy to hear it. Yeah, yeah. So that, on that, your, because it is, and I've talked about this before, but some people say this is out of my working repertoire. You know, you get so many releases now saying it's straight, and you look at it and you go, is it? You know, and I have mentioned that before. This is clearly your, because you go, you go through these sort of iterations, is that the word, of each trick as well. So you go, how you got to that point. So when you talk about the newspaper tale, you talk about, you went, then the Gene Anderson one, and then, so you've been through this process. You've put all those hours in. You've put all that work in. You've got to a point where you go, and this is, this is the one for me now. And is there, I mean, what is that feeling like when you put it out there? When you, when you put it out there and go, I'm giving it, giving it to everybody else. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, 20 years ago, I would not have even have told another magician what tricks I do in my show, even if I didn't change them at all. And if I was doing it just as the original creator taught it and released it, I was always keeping stuff to myself because I didn't want other people to do them. Or the thing like the Norman Ashworth dry erase board, where you erase it, the name of the card is, and then as you erase it, it says 10 of hearts. That's an old trick that's been out there for decades. But I didn't want to let, want to let another magician know that I was doing that because I wanted to keep it to myself. So I guess once you come to peace with it, you say, I'm going to put it all out there. And it, it is my working routines because this is a book that teaches my whole act. So I'm not, you know, faking anything along the way and everybody who's at MagiFest saw my complete show too. So they know what I teach in the book is what I actually do. So, um, I guess it's good because, you know, you know, you don't have that sense of holding onto something anymore. It's just out there. And if people see it and they respond to it, I'm sure you've had a magician comment on a trick of yours. Say, Oh, I really liked that thing you did with the whatever. And you're, you kind of accept the compliment, but you're also thinking, no, thank you, but please don't do it. You know, we all have that, you know? So I, I feel I'm fine with it, to be honest, I've come to terms with it. And if it helps people, great. And what we find is that, I mean, I don't think there's anyone out there who's going to say, I want to do his complete act just the way he does. I don't think people want to do that. I think they want to find their own voice and use the experience of others to kind Yeah. And I think there's something in that. And I think that there will be people that will, and I think you kind of alluded to this and I know Darren Brown's talked about it. He talks about international magic. And I talk about this idea of the idea of when you learn or where you're learning, you copy and then you, you perfect it and then you, you get creative. And this idea of copying at the beginning, when you're not experienced, just to get a feel of, of what something feels like with the idea of adapting. And I think that's the important thing. People are very sniffy about people copying routines, you know, especially the routine you get when you buy a trick. And I do it, you know, because I'm not comfortable with the trick. I want to get a feel physically for the trick. I want to know what it feels like when I say the things and then go, all right, now, now I can adapt it. And I think that that, that the three C's on it, copy, gain confidence, and then, and then create. And I think if you bypass that confidence thing, we can get really stuck. And I think that what you do here, if you, I mean, you say again and again in it, you know, these are my word for it. This is exactly what I do. You know, not exactly quoting, but there's a feeling that you're going to adapt it. And you have tricks from, you know, Harry Lorayne, Harry Lorayne, close-up card tricks. You've put on stage right up to more, I suppose, more, what we see is more classic kind of stand-up tricks. Have you had any, I just wondered if, and I wouldn't, wouldn't expect so, but you know, I've read the magic cafe. Have you had any kind of kickback on people saying, oh, you can't do these close-up tricks on stage? Because I hear that a lot from people who have never tried. And I wondered if there'd been any. I didn't have people saying you can't do it. I've had people saying, I'm surprised that you can do it. And I never thought to do it. The ring routine, which is basically a version of ring flight and a ring on string routine, and then culminates with the ring inside of a, of an envelope. A lot of people have done routines like that, but a lot of people are telling me, I never thought about doing that on stage. And for me, it came about from necessity of, you know, wanting to work on stage, but not having the material and saying, I'm going to take some material from my close-up repertoire and do it on stage just so that I can get through the time and do the time that I need to do on stage. But I find that it works. And there are other benefits that I wasn't expecting, such as doing a close-up trick on stage has the effect of drawing people in and making people pay a little bit closer attention to what you're doing. And I want to do a whole show. I mean, I wouldn't say do a whole close-up show on stage because eventually people will tune out and say, I can't see it. I don't know what he's doing. I'm not interested. But you do one trick like that towards the beginning of your show and then move into something more visual. It really has that effect of drawing people in. So yeah, I didn't have anybody say you can't do this on stage. Thankfully, maybe people are more open-minded and maybe people have done it, you know, and people know the close-up tricks that they do that can be seen by a bigger audience. Because we always run into situations where, you know, you might be doing walk-around magic in a restaurant and then 40 people come in with a bridal party. And you want to kind of entertain them and they're at one big table. So what can you do for that whole table to be able to see you? You're not going to do an actual stage trick. You're not going to do a torn and restored newspaper. But you might do the ring routine where everything is held up at chest height that everybody can see. And so since you know it works, do it for more than 40 people. Do it for 80 people or 180 people, 280 people. Yeah, and I suppose my question came from the fact that before this book or anything, you know, I get a bit, as a lot of people, don't get me wrong, I think the forums are great and they've got some great stuff in them. But I do get a bit disheartened sometimes when I see people saying you can't do this, you've got to do this. And sometimes that's from people that maybe haven't had the experience. And that's why I'm glad this is kind of the proof really because we know you've done it. We know you've taken these tricks out. We know they clearly work because you've worked them in. You don't do a trick for how many years, develop it. You know straight away don't you if a trick's not working. I've done it. I've taken tricks out and gone actually it's too down here and there's no way of adapting it. And I think that it kind of, this book takes that and it kind of quietens the naysayers. And I'm not saying there's thousands of them. But it also gives us a chance to work with what we've got. And you've got this whole idea about, you know, when you kind of come up with your routines, rather than just keep searching for more and more, you know, you work about looking at, you mentioned Tarbell a lot and people like that, looking back at what you can adapt as you have with, you know, your respect for Harry Lorraine and Chris Kenner and people like that. So just tell me a little bit about that kind of process of when you go from, okay, I've got a new routine. I need to find another 10 minutes for my show. Where do you go for that? What does that look like for you? Well, for me personally, it can be kind of tough because I have a couple of shows that I do that I really am at the point where this is the show. I'm not looking to put anything into it. And if I want to try a new trick out, the show is so structured that it becomes hard to just put a new trick in because you feel like you're throwing off the timing. So when I really start thinking about new material, I almost immediately start thinking of new material in the context of now a whole new show. And that's also hard because you want your shows to be different and you might do one magic show. So what do you do for your next show that you want to be different? And that's why you might be drawn to mentalism. So you're always trying to find a theme or a hook or something that makes your shows different. But when I'm putting something into the show, I feel like you have to do a new trick at least a hundred times before you even know if it's going to be good and if it's going to be worth doing. And I mean doing it a hundred times in front of an audience and still doubting yourself at that hundredth time. I don't know if this trick is going to work out or not. And you've been doing it for a year now and you're still tweaking it and trying to find ways to make it better. And eventually you might just drop it and then eventually you might go back and say, you know, that works. There's something there that I want to use. You know, I had one show that I put together and I said I'm going to do this show for one year just at all the places where I work on a regular basis so that everybody who comes there would be able to say, wow, this show is brand new. I saw this show, I saw that show, but this show was all new. So I said I'm going to do it for one year. And I did and then I stopped doing it and I was happy with some of the material and some of the material I wasn't happy about. But then I looked back and I said I was doing great tricks in that other show. I shouldn't abandon them completely. So I started bringing them back and incorporating them into another show. So basically taking almost two hours of material and condensing it into one hour of material or 55 minutes maybe of material. So I think there are different approaches to, you know, getting it on stage. And also one of the things that I love to do is to practice a trick in front of people close up and then doing it on stage. And that's what I did with Daryl's Rope Routine, a routine that I love that I've added nothing to. But I love doing the routine. Now that trick is too big to do at a table. I mean the longest piece of rope is about five feet long. But if you're doing a lot of walk around magic, why not use that opportunity to try the trick out? And if you can be deceptive with it, if people do not know what you're doing close up, you're probably going to be okay doing it on stage. But you can watch people's eyes when you're doing it close up and you see what they're thinking and what they might be suspicious of and how they're reacting to it and you get your timing down and people might say something and give you good lines. Now you take a trick that you've never done on stage and you can do it on stage with confidence and competence. People can tell okay this guy knows what he's doing. Even though it's a trick you've never done on stage but you have done it. So I guess there are lots of ways to go from close up to stage. Yeah and I'm always and that's and while I'm while we're at it I'll just let people know that's kind of the main like this this idea of taking close up to stage as you've said in a way in a way that isn't so obvious a lot of the time. I'm interested in I know there's a lot of ways of looking at it but I'm always interested in the way people do what the different ways are and I could people have got different approaches and I think it can be easy to kind of listen to one approach and say that's the approach and especially if if you've read the classics you know Strong Magic they're full of different approaches and I think people can accidentally not accidentally but also almost subconsciously say oh that's the way to do it because someone I really respect has said that and I think that's a really good thing of going actually this is one way yeah yeah but it but it may just be a spark of inspiration from from somewhere else and and with you know had I not read your your name dropper trick I got sent that to review quite a long time ago the um the Paul Harris um true true astonishment is that no that's the deep astonishment deep astonishment true astonishment is the DVD setting now um yeah and and I can't I love the trick and the premise and just just talk us through briefly what the the trick is because you'll massacre it I love the trick too and it started with the anything deck in um another uh the art of astonishment yeah yeah there's some more coming out in there it's gonna get very confusing for people like me and there's actually they're working on new two books that right now yeah yeah right which is gonna also have the word astonishment yeah um but it started with the anything deck which was you know you put a set of cards under the card case somebody picks a card you divine their card you ask them for a magic word they say a word like salt you know which didn't mean anything and then you reveal their card and you spread out the cards under the card case and there are letters written on the back of each one and it says salt so then with deep astonishment which Paul Harris worked on with Rodney Whitlock um there were a lot of improvements made you know and the big improvement was that the cards under the card case were a different color from the deck of cards that you were using but there were a lot of things that I did not like in the marketed version of deep astonishment such as the magnets the gimmick wallet there was a cue card that you use that you try to secretly consult during the routine and there were extra cards in the prediction packet at the end just extra cards that didn't mean anything so I really wanted to get rid of all those things and streamline it not to try to be creative but to try to come up with something that I could use for my own sake and I really work on it a lot probably more than any other trick and at one point I thought it was completely finished and I showed it to Paul Harris and I was doing a palm and Paul said why are you palming those cards and I explained to him everything that the palm did I said it enables me to finish clean I got rid of all the extra cards and he said yes but why are you palming those cards I said well the prediction packet is cleaner at the end and then this will help me with the reset and he said yes but why are you palming those cards I said okay Paul doesn't like palming we change the subject and talk about something else but in the back of my mind I kind of knew that Paul was right there's something better than palming the cards and then one day I remember the day when it hit me a way that I could eliminate the palm and before I could even go into the other room to grab a deck of cards and see if it would work I knew it was going to work and that's the way I've been doing it ever since so the effect is as I said somebody cuts to a card and now the other improvement that they made with deep astonishment by the way is instead of asking for a magic word you ask for the name of a person somebody that means the world to them and that alone makes the effect better so now instead of spreading out the cards and it says the word salt you spread the cards out it's the name of their special person and it says lily that has an impact on people same method no extra work is involved but seeing the loved one's name is definitely more powerful and and when they see the name that's it's just the best trick you can do for people I mean it's the strongest trick that I do and then I collect the cards put them back into the wallet from where they came and the whole trick is reset I'm ready to do it again with a different card for them to cut to yeah and of course with a different name as well and I love the fact that it's so compact like it's in my case right now I could grab it right now and do it I don't have to put something into my left pocket something into my right pocket these cards go here this has to go on top right before I start there's nothing like that you take out the deck you take out your prediction cards and you do it and as soon as you're done you don't reset it instantly you just put everything away and in the act of putting everything away you're set to do it again so and I can be this enthusiastic about it because it's only my handling this is Paul's trick so I might be very enthusiastic but I give Paul all the credit for it and I think that comes through in the book as well if that idea is you know you've taken those old you know it's an old school book in the way you're taking the tricks that aren't then you're not trying to like you said for the sake of creativity go right it's a new thing there's a new way of doing it and all those little things that that you've talked about there are interesting for me because you've taken a trick like I said I saw that trick deep astonishment or something one of that that one and I got it and I went right it's it's arguably ridiculously magical because a random word is so random isn't it but what you've done is you've I suppose you could in theory and only in theory argue that it's less magical because there are more random words than there are names right of course of course this is yeah but it isn't it's nonsense because it's kind of like saying I remember Gustav Kuhn in the um in his science of magic book I can't remember the name of it but um experiencing the impossible talks about why would it be more magical making something float that was really heavy than something that was a little bit lighter because you're making stuff float that's the trick but it's it's but it's that weird you know what I mean but it's that weird way we think but actually just by changing the script really and and making it a name that's what was missing in the trick for me and I'm not saying it's a bad trick and I think anything poor Alice puts his name to is brilliant but you've there was something about it that I kind of went the ridiculousness of the how magic it was the random word what felt a bit random to me and what you've done and I'm not just saying this to to flatter you at all I think it's an important point of the book is that you've gone right that how can I make that more meaning how can I adapt it because there will be people that will be fine with the original way it works because it suits them and you've gone through this process and you're sharing what what you've done to it and I think what you said there is key you didn't just do it for creativity you didn't just do it to go I need to change it because as you say you do the barrel routine you might be on script but you've got you you do that routine as is because it you felt that it didn't need changing and I always there's an obsession with originality which I do understand but I remember being at street performing in common garden and the there were some shows that were incredibly original original really original but absolutely appalling and I was in one of them me and my friend got together we did a double act and we said right let's do this it's really original but the original stuff was terrible so at some point you've got to kind of you know leave leave that to the people that thrive off that stuff and love it and but as a performer we do have to kind of get to a point of going change it if it needs changing but maybe if we've got something that we can just put our personality into and that's enough yeah we all have different gifts and different strengths and different weaknesses you know so some people can be original and their original stuff is great and some people excel at you know maybe routining tricks together into the form of a show and some people excel at doing comedy and I think when you're younger you also tend to think that everybody has the right idea except for you yeah yeah of course it's all easy yeah it's easy to be influenced because you watch um just name any of the masters you watch Darren Brown and you think you know what that's it that gets inside people's minds it makes them think there's something real going on that they don't understand and that they can't explain and then you see David Williamson and you say you know people just want to laugh they just want to have fun that's the thing that matters because he's hilarious and then you see you know someone else doing just close-up magic who's great with cards and you think that's what people like they don't want all this talking they want that visual eye candy thing this is what the world wants so it's easy to become influenced and to think each person has the right idea so I think it's good to uh realize what you're good at and not to say not to give up trying to do those other things too but I think it's worth um you know realizing what are you good at what do you excel at and bring that to the table because that's what you do you know that's there's something profound in there for me I think it's because I recognize that process and and the process of whatever you're seeing at that time being successful hooking into that and thinking maybe I should do that I went through that and I had to really struggle with that because every two minutes I was I mean I'm a little bit ADD anyway so every two minutes I want to do that I know I want to do that and at one point I was doing like a classic ball and cone routine I was doing the kind of flourishy stuff I was kind of like and and to be honest I'm still a bit I don't really know what you know what I am and never will but just about human at the moment I think um but there is there is a real difficulty with that and I'm sure a lot of people aren't like it but I can recognize that so much I mean it reminds me of a story when I was um God would have been about 2002 I did stand up in London for a bit and I was trying and and I kind of knew I could perform because I was already working the street and I thought okay I'll be all right and I was a huge fan of Bill Hicks the comedian and to me he was the pinnacle I saw him live um but you know many years before that and and he was just you know there was nobody there and I wrote I did an open mic spot and and uh went I was really nervous did the open mic spot and did really well because I didn't do any material because something happened in the audience and because I used to work the street I could improvise around it and this woman came up we had a great time I thought I'm great at this and then I did it again and invited friends which is a kiss of death and um and went right I'm gonna do my material and it it was the biggest humiliation I had all these friends kind of not one single tear nothing it was and it was that thing where you have to walk back to the table of your friends afterwards and they're going what do we say what do we say he's literally done you know and it was like well done you know that's about all you can get and and it was because I'd written the material as Bill Hicks I'd written it with his voice in my head right and it wasn't that it wasn't it wasn't his stuff but it had that same kind of semi kind of politicals and like this wasn't me you know I can't get away with the kind of that level of darkness and it was a real lesson and I still find myself every now and then if I'm coming up a routine I have to kind of stop myself and go is this your voice and I still don't know what you talk about flight time and I think that's one of the ways of doing it you know one of the ways is just do it again and again and you'll you go through a process of kind of relaxing into your who you are yeah but I think again you mentioned talking to Paul Harris and Paul Harris talking to you about the palm and would you have taken the palm out had he not said that so is there something about having people you're confident with mentors that that you trust I don't know whether you've got that when you show people do you work with directors have you got people that yeah I tend to I like to work in a bit of a vacuum I mean and then eventually I don't mind for people that I respect to see my show and to offer notes and thoughts on it but I think if you bring someone in too early and different people have different approaches my approach is to just kind of work on it by myself because I don't want somebody to talk me out of something you know and they can very easily do that so yeah but well you know this is my version of the invisible deck yeah but it's the invisible deck why are you doing that and then you start thinking yeah why am I doing it you might have had a great idea and you don't want to get discouraged too early on so once it's out there and it's up and running you can let someone see it and say you know I think this would be better if you did this and that and you could either take their advice or you could think about why are you doing it that way and I mean you mentioned about Bill Hicks and the being influenced by him if you want to do comedy right now you're going to instantly think of your favorite comedians and now you're going to compare yourself to the best in the world and that's kind of a hard place to be yeah because they're the best they've been doing it their whole lives and they've reached a certain level that they they should reach because of how good they are and now you're starting out and you want to be that person it's the same thing in magic you know and then you mentioned about having friends come to come to the show years ago I used to not want anybody I know to ever be in the audience people say I want to see a show and I'd say I don't want you to come and they wouldn't understand why well we're your friends we want to see it and you're right if you have that type of show where afterwards you have to kind of you know you're avoiding eye contact with people because you think if you can't see them they can't see you and it's a terrible feeling but keep the faith because I think if people do feel that way early on you will get to a point where you you can invite people because you're so confident and there's just no faking it you can practice a hundred times you can do all the steps but until you do the show thousands of times you won't have that inner confidence that genuine confidence and I'm sure you've watched videos of yourself doing a show and you can't even watch the video without cringing you're in your room by yourself watching your video and you're cringing at what you see but then as the years go by you know not the not that you sit there and admire yourself but you can kind of laugh at some of your moments and say yeah it's kind of worked yeah I like the way that went so I think people just have to like I said keep the faith when it's at that early point to developing something. Yeah there's a massive thing about faith I remember someone saying to me again about stand-up because there were people on the open mic circuit that were clearly not funny people they didn't have funny bones but because they just and they weren't ever going to be you know up there but they were getting away with it and they were doing sets and they were getting laughs and and you would see it and go they're not very good but actually you look at the audience and there's something working there and someone said to me that's just because they just didn't stop and if you don't stop doing it it is at some point going to work out in some way. Yeah yeah I agree with that yeah and then in Magic we have a similar thing with somebody who's great at marketing and somebody who's doing corporate shows and making great money and you see his show and you're like how is that possible because he's great at the other things that not all of us are great at so and the same way with you know developing an act I think the same for what you're saying about eventually it's going to work out if you put together a show with 10 tricks that have nothing to do with each other you just keep doing it eventually you're going to find segues and you're going to find ways of routining tricks together and changing the order almost without even trying you know trying but not trying and you just realize this trick would be better here or this trick I can do in the middle of the audience this trick I can do in conjunction with that other trick and with that same spectator so I don't have to call another person up on stage it's kind of the same. I love that you've got that I was reading it last night again and you've got that when you're talking about look you know you'll realize that sometimes it's okay to leave people in the audience so if you're doing a book test you haven't got to get them up on stage and I had a moment in my one-man show and it was kind of I'd rehearsed it a lot but there was just stuff I couldn't rehearse in it and I thought well I'm going to get three people up on stage and of course the reality was when I got there was not loads of room and I already had someone sitting and I had three people standing and I was doing fourth dimensional telepathy and it was just a mess I mean there was somebody there was clearly no room so I sent someone back says one in the audience two on stage kind of standing in front of each other blocking each other someone sitting down and the whole thing was just this massive shambles and I think but it was funny the feedback from the show you know I had a few people that weren't actually magicians that I kind of went right I want feedback on what bits and they were kind of taking a few notes people that I trust I had a theatrical director there and actually even though that was brought up in the moment it was so disastrous but for the audience it wasn't don't get me wrong right it's not going to be like that next time that's the learning for me because they don't know how good it can be and how but I think that to go through that and something can feel so messy to you but that is part of the process and we've got this lovely thing with magic even with all that mess at the end I got three words people got no clue and they were completely blown away absolutely and you know the thing to remember is that somebody told me a long time ago you're always doing better than you think you're doing because we're aware you're talking about the staging and the confusion and you're probably having hot flashes and you're doing this thing and you know you're you're hyper aware of it but the audience isn't aware of it the way we are and I mean they see it of course they're they're not oblivious to it but they're not as critical of ourselves as we can be I mean that's you mentioned fourth dimensional telepathy I love that routine I just love that whole routine everything about it I love the effect I love the method I love the fact that it uses office supplies which I can stock up on and then I love being able to get rid of them in the course of doing the trick I love everything about fourth dimensional telepathy but it did take a long time to figure out the staging yeah you know where do people stand even something that should be obvious that when the person comes they're going to stand to my right because I'm going to turn toward them and do that billet switch inside my pocket and I didn't realize that that would even be a problem until I tried it the other way I said let's see what it's like when I have the person on my left there might be a reason for that that I'm not aware of so I'm going to try it once and that's when I realized I'm doing that billet switch inside the pocket it's better if they don't see that pocket obviously but you know you just learn by doing it and that is you're right you can do that trick and it can be going badly as far as the staging goes but the effect is still there and so that's that is what saves us you're right I love the it always makes me think that routine a couple of things actually someone um and if you don't know what if you're watching this uh it's animons originally isn't it but Bob Castie kind of yeah um did a whole thing on it and that's where I learned it and it's um it's basically a free envelope you know prediction not prediction um well depends how you want to sell it I suppose but people write down either someone they went to school with a place or they draw a picture and then you you get the um duplication of all of them um it's someone said to me once it's like the cups and balls you you you learn it and you can do it and the more you do it the more you find those little ways of timings and and I like that idea of taking even a card trick and what could be a basic card trick and not just learning it so you can do it and that being it but but giving it that flight time and letting it evolve into something that becomes you it's I want to do the cups and balls it's a classic it's not my routine but it feels like my rhythms you know some people might might disagree because I basically copied him for about 10 years um but I think it's that's interesting and also it reminds me about that there's a kind of ceiling level of of effectiveness with magic so you take something like that that uses a couple of envelopes um bit of glue and some paper and I you do that and I do that routine I think it can't really get stronger you know that they're enjoying it they don't know how it's done and then you've got you know you can spend three four grand on on stuff and I don't give a I want that stuff because it's exciting it lets me do cool stuff but I do wonder sometimes but why am I getting it because that's the kind of ceiling it's like having a house in a road and you keep spending money on the house and you know it's only going to sell for a certain amount right so you could do whatever I wonder if we are sometimes well one is or the community is it's easy to get lost in the kind of this thing does that thing and forget kind of what what that process is like for the audience and what they're seeing yeah yeah I agree I remember um years ago I bought the Kyber Cobra remember from which was the snake basket where oh yeah yeah and the snake rises up out of the basket with the card in his mouth and now I do magic professionally but the guilt that I had over spending $1,500 on a card trick I cannot tell you the anxiety and the guilt and the fact I felt like this is not right and I did it one time and I had to get rid of I had to sell it not because of the guilt but because of the fact I'm thinking this is a $1,500 card trick and I could do a different card trick yeah you know that lasts five minutes if it was great I wouldn't mind I think I wouldn't mind now but I really did have a problem with the fact that I really felt guilty about it yeah I mean and that's as I said even doing magic professionally and this is for your business and going to create and generate more work for you but it was kind of tough at the time but you're right I mean here you have the Bob Cassidy routine that we're talking about with just simple envelopes and glue and paper and the impact is as strong as can be but I think it's okay to do both you know if I felt like there was a routine out there I mean there's a lot of electronic things now that are you know that kind of money and if they're great it's worth it yeah I totally agree and I'm I think it's more about because I've got myself caught up in that thing years ago of kind of going I really want that thing and nearly buying you know the lab coat product and don't it's stunning stuff you see people are going jolly doing stuff and you know you know it works you know it's brilliant but stopping for a second and going where's it going to fit and waiting until you know you want that you know for someone that reviews stuff I get sent a lot of stuff and I thought I'd be doing this and I'd have all this new stuff on my shelf I'm reviewing it all it's like it doesn't mean it's bad it just there's not a context I can see with it and you have to learn it and bring it up to performance speed anyway I mean that's the thing that with everything coming out in magic that you really do even now somewhere in the back of your mind you think if you buy that download you have that trick now you don't have it you have the information and you have the video of it but you did not put the work into learning that routine and bringing it up to performance level to be able to do it for an audience and and you and I'm going to go back to the book we're going to keep going back to book and um that process what I will say that all of it pretty much everything here doesn't require any kind of it's pretty much all stuff you can do with the odds I mean you have to you know with the ring flight you want a ring flight you know and you talk about the different ones but it's not going to put you know in the wallet and but it's it's all stuff that I would say you can most people are going to be able to do without breaking the bank yeah and and you talk through that process of it inspires books like this inspire that process they inspire that process and you can stick with this thing that I've got and really work it and and sometimes when I when I talked about mentors earlier I I find it hard to find mentors I have I'm working with Steve Reynolds at the moment on some card stuff but with performance I find it hard sometimes like you said I'm a little in a bit of a vacuum and I think books like this can give you that kind of mentorship um and the it's interesting and I really want to sort of hit this because I get people contacting me quite a lot saying I've been I got this that you said was good on the review show and I've been working with I can't get this to work why can't I get this to work and you realize they've been playing with it for like a day you know and I would say even with stuff like your wiki test you know which I do do you know wiki test of course yeah of course you do yeah um so if you don't know and you're watching wiki test is a one of the best magic apps there is um I performed it on stage uh the day I'd done it before Christmas uh no before first lockdown lifted I was doing zoom shows for the first time and that was my closer I got that thing wrong it was before last Christmas that's what I said before I think I got that thing wrong like four times in a row I got the thing and it was because it wasn't because I was doing the trick wrong it's because of the little bits of scripting I wasn't saying quite right so the person on zoom wouldn't understand the thing and I realized that you you've got an app and with apps there's that feeling of I've got the app now but I had to go for that same process and it was actually longer than quite a lot of sleight of hand processes going right actually if I say that there that's not going to be ambiguous and they're going to make sure and even the the week before I did my one-man show and I was ending with a version of wiki wiki test um I got it wrong in front of the last word just didn't get it great and that was a that was kind of mixing it with the stranger which is even worse because this whole process of phoning up a stranger and they're going to get the word and they just say a different word and it's like great oh man what did you do what did you so at the end of the show was your uh have a nice time yeah it's an ambitious card routine color card yes exactly I'll get something I know will work yeah I was lucky because it was with an audience in a little mini festival and they knew I was trying stuff out so it was fine so the lessons there were that I think that never sit on your laurels and kind of go I've got it now I've done it five times always go back to it and always refresh those little subtleties because I know what I did wrong I just wasn't concentrating so I was doing two things I wasn't concentrating on the one thing and I basically just forgot the word and just just you know what it was another one forgot the first letter absolutely it happens yeah I've you know I don't want to get you off track but that happened during uh fourth dimensional telepathy a couple of times when you look at that name when you're one ahead now and then you just forget the name now you have the person up there but that's even more of a problem because now you have to go back to it yeah yeah but the second piece is snuffling around so your uh person is uh what did you write there was it was it yep so twice that it happens in that routine oh man so you have to remember it sounds like a weird thing you know why would that be hard to remember the name because you're performing you're in front of the audience and you can easily forget these things I've done it I've done it loads of center bang that's it forgot it look at it saw it read it forgot it might as well just air it up for real yeah you'll get rid of it I know and it's hard to um but I think with mentalism there's a little bit of an out with that because it's kind of like oh he was I guess he wasn't able to tune in and then you always try to uh you know make it feel like you were closer like oh you thought of the well I got Robert that's close that's close and no it's not close but you just try to play it off and go on to the next thing oh man and I think there's also there's also we get and I'm really bad at this as well if I've learned a new trick I'm like it's got to be perfect and if I get it wrong it's like the worst thing if I get it wrong it's the worst thing and I'm going to be you know the humiliation of the whole town and and the village and if you're kind of you know if you kind of go oh that didn't work did it people kind of laugh and go all right fair enough you know it's that thing of we get so caught up you know we and I don't think I have a huge love and respect for magic I absolutely adore it and it's the same when I was a street performer it's the same when I did stand up and it's like we're just performers you know nobody dies it's it's you know we want to do an amazing job and you talk in your intro to the book you talk about actually if your intro is a reminder of how special a magic show is you know it's that thing of yes it used to be this big grand thing but even there's a there's a magic not in our context but a different kind of magic to a show that is a it's a big thing you know your people are sitting down and they can see see these miracles yes and there's something very majestic about even when you walk into maybe a hotel bar a ballroom or even somebody's living room you've kind of set up all of your equipment you told them how to set up the room everybody's around and it's just the way you want and now you're putting on a magic show I think that is such a grand thing yeah it's just a guy up there with your case doing some tricks and making people laugh you are putting on a magic show I mean I think that is a grand thing and it doesn't just have to be like it was in the old days when it really when we look back on it feels like a grand thing and even though you're doing maybe a one-person show but it is special and I think it is you know should be treated as special as it is I mean we've all dealt I was going to write a thing in the book towards the end talking about the death of the live show which is something I really notice more and more that people just don't put the care into having your show that you put into doing your show so you might get there and there's the you told them to have the tables close but the tables are all 30 feet away before the first row of tables and you told them they have to be closer and they say well usually they just keep it like that well it would be better though if we can move the tables closer well there's no one to move them well I'll move them is it okay if I do it well it's usually and all these little things I went to a place to do a show the other night it was going to be dinner and a show and the person at the front desk told me that the dinner was canceled but they're still doing the show and I said okay I said I hope you know we some people and he said did you have a lot of signups and I'm saying clearly you're confusing me for someone who works here I don't know what you're talking about signups like this is your thing to do so no but and I just wish that um I wish that people had the same reverence most people do if you're doing corporate things and you're getting paid a good amount of money people trust you they say you're the professional you've done this a million times you said we should close the bar so we're going to close the bar you said we shouldn't serve food during your show so we're not going to serve food during your show most of the time they do that but there are all these little things that happen along the way you told them to have a sound system and they don't have the right kind of sound system you told them you need a stool they don't have a stool like little things like that but obviously I didn't write about that in the book because I think it has kind of a negative feel to it so I didn't want to um I didn't want to end the book on a negative note but that is a real thing you know it is and I think you do kind of in a way you cover it in a roundabout way because even in the intro again like I said I don't sound like I've just read the intro ever yeah you're still on the intro yeah another thing you said in the intro the table of contents I noticed you had a quite a few things listed yeah let's talk about the first trick and and the intro because apparently there's stuff in the rest of it look I'll have you know I've got I've got things there they do only go halfway they go three quarters of the way because I haven't read the last um quarter of the book um I would admit but I've reread the first three quarters twice and that's what I've done and I'm pretty sure it's not gonna I've scanned it and I know you go into the details you go into almost go into more of those details so even though you're not saying this is the bad stuff that can happen you are talking about the things that you must put into place to avoid those things happening without explicitly mentioning them so again before the show yeah absolutely yeah and making sure that you're directive about that and and you know you create you paint this picture of you go to the show and you make sure this is happening you make sure that's right and you ensure and I think that if we're not careful especially when we're starting out we we're so worried about people feeling ill of us we're a bit nervous anyway we want them to like us no we don't want to be prima donnas but we need to kind of make sure that we are creating the conditions that are that are more favorable to to them having a great time in the end right yes that's what you're not being like you said you're not being a prima donna you're not being a diva all you're trying to do is the best show possible for their guests so um that's why I didn't want to talk in the book and like I was talking down to people saying people can be set up in a room in different ways but I kind of like you said mentioned it throughout the book so maybe in this situation you're doing a show for 30 people and they're all around the table but now let's imagine a bigger scenario now you have about 50 people and they're in rows of chairs now you have 60 or 70 people but they're at tables and because when you're younger you might say to somebody how many people are going to be at the show and they'll say 100 and you say okay 100 people but there's a difference between 100 people that are set up in rows of chairs theater style and 100 people that are at tables banquet style in that case the room is much bigger the sight lines are not as good so those things matter so I think you know you're right let's find out about them before the show starts before you even get there and then the other advantage is that now you're to a place where you've never been you don't know anyone who works there and you have somebody saying hi Steve we have the room set up for you and you've never met that person and he's calling you by your first name and he's setting up the room the way you want that's a great feeling yeah it is and I find you get them more actually the when the difficulty is when you start out and you're doing maybe some free stuff because you're getting a feel for it you don't get that respect it's kind of like when you're trying to be the person who's easy to get along with oh that's okay yeah sure okay it's okay it's fine no there is a level of that you know sometimes something can't be changed and you just kind of have to roll with it and you know I mean I was doing a show once and the person was keeping an eye on the volume of the music but the music kept turning down like the music would start and then he would turn it down so during the show I have to say okay let's bring the music back up and then I would do the next thing and the music came in and then he turned the volume down again and this is during the show now so I say okay bring the music up he brings it up and then he turns it down again so finally I say bring the music up and leave it up and you don't want to create this you know weirdness during the show that kind of breaks the yeah yeah feeling of a show now after the show is it worth me going to that guy and saying we went over this I told you no because it's done what are you going to do now you can't go back and change anything no so make the best of it in the moment I think that's a great point it's that idea of consequence you know you can you can kick up a fuss but if you're not going to be performing there again yes if you're doing if you're doing a 10 night run it's a different thing yes yeah yeah and it's working with what you got which again I want to sort of just tell people a little bit about I will do a full review of the book but I think it you know it's full of these you mentioned it then this idea of you starting at the beginning with name dropper you talk about that you've got these people here and then you magician versus gambler and the lazy man's card trick all these tricks that actually if you wanted to learn them from this book you could go and do a close-up but and even Chris Kenna's Sybil the trick you know you got an idea of Sybil and you which we will now call the flourish but it's based on this trick and then you've got a stage version of it I just wouldn't have thought of it like I said at the beginning it gives you that freedom of kind of looking at this stuff and go actually let's not write that off it could work on stage and I want people to know that there's great tricks to learn in here even if you've never done pub that you can take out the close-up and also that you can then if you're in a room with 20-30 people you don't have to go oh I've got to learn a whole new kind of parlour set absolutely yeah and I love it John I think it's such a thank you it's such a lovely book and it's um it's so well written I can't imagine how long it took to it because it because it is well written there's that doesn't there's no fluff in it um you know I'll just mention quickly as as the wind does the these kind of what do you call them you've got a name for these uh panel art yeah yeah which I love to I wanted that to look like the um the old school magic catalogs yeah because we've all seen them and those pictures inspired us to want to learn the tricks like you would see those tricks in the catalog and say I want to do that trick and so that's what I'm hoping with the book people kind of see that feel that way and now they don't have to like in the old days mail mail and send away for it you can learn the trick right then and there so that's why I'm hoping it just inspires the reader because I love what he did with those pictures yeah it's great yeah so so is there anything else you want to you want to communicate before we tie up John or I didn't think of anything in particular I'm glad to talk to you though you know and if this doesn't record we'll do it all over again don't don't I'm gonna find out in like two minutes I'm gonna press the button it says recording it's almost recording yeah so if it doesn't you you well just you know I'll owe you one I'll just you know I enjoy what you do on your YouTube channel and um you have a great conversational way about you and I really like what you're doing so I'm just glad to be a part of it and to get to know you so I thank you for being interested in the book yeah great and um and you certainly got to know me because we've talked for hours now that's right and we'll do it again and we'll do it again when when I send you the when I send you the message of shame later so um okay well I'm gonna say goodbye to you now don't go anywhere we'll say goodbye to the video um but thanks for watching everybody I will top and tail this but uh stage by stage the links will be below um from John Graham it's just a wonderful book again full review will be out soon uh but thank you so much John so there you go I'm not gonna bang on that was brilliant please comment below and I will take your questions into the uh sessions on Thursday evenings most Thursdays at 5 UK time I'll be reading your comments and answering a lot of them so do that and please use the links below if you haven't got the book get it it's great I'm not an affiliate I get nothing from this I just think good books need to be shared and this is certainly one of them John thank you so much so much for for being a wonderful guest sharing candidly your ideas and also for coming back again after I completely nosed up the first one so have a good one everybody like subscribe check out cardmagiccourse.com use links below take care bye