The End of the World
I don't know. It's been a while I guess. They got all kinds of serious shit going on this month. Motherfuckers be dying, shit be exploding...
Tornado watch in Kenner, right by me last week. We got tropical storm force gusts, rain coming in my windows where the sealant had cracked, plants on the windowsill got the first real rain they ever drank. Wetness kinda seeps into the houses here, so even though I got this fancy ass climate control, it's still humid as Mexican Joe's ass crack.
This is when cards bloat, swollen with the steamy vapor. Set the engines to warp nine, it's going to be a sticky ride. Your fancy new deck of custom-designed gritty-graphique pasteboards twist up into a diagonal corner-to-corner taco shape. While some shy away to more arid temperaments, I embrace the taco, full-heartedly. The parabolic shape seems to invoke some Thalean-Euclidian card-god. Not only are faro shuffles more exciting to execute, but thanks to clump factor, instant (and unexpected) 14-card turnovers are just that much easier. Want the secret to unfathomable amazing self-working card sleights? It's the click bend. Chew on that shit. Rule one of the click bend: don't touch the cards; they're sensitive, easy to sway from convex to concave. Trust them to do their job. Breaks will hold themselves. Side-stolen selections will self-extricate, and basically do everything, up to putting themselves into your wallet. A deck's lifespan has elasticity; it is organic to behold, the cards cells in the living, breathing talon. This weird object lives its life and is retired in the practitioner's hands. He is an active participant in the object's demise. Maybe I'm crazy, but I've never found any pack of cards, even of the same exact brand, to feel and handle identically. They are all products of their environment. If I had to, I could probably group these characteristics in to some sort of legible taxonomy, but the use of such, seems to me at this point, limited in its reach. Why cards? Marlo had it right (as usual). Because they're fucking cheap (though perhaps he said it more eloquently). They're something that everyone has. They're toys, for playing games with. Magic, if anything, is not a study of wonderment and astonishment. These are aspects of what the study of this area reveals. Really, magic is a tool for mapping the processes of the mind. It reveals human limitation and indicates that there is far more that we don't know, than what we do know. How, as flesh-and-blood organisms, subject to the usual forces of gravity, motion and constancy, can we reckon a sub-atomic universe that plays by different rules altogether? Magic helps us link the two seemingly disparate worlds of known and unknown. Like 2-dimensional creatures trying to reconcile a three-dimensional world, visions of the impossible allow us to navigate the landscape of the unknown. It is therefore very important that magic present a broader picture of the true state of things, than simply as mystifying entertainment. A deck of cards is the closest thing to a holdable computer that the world has had since the abacus. It has several discrete features that can be quantified, separated, and re-composited. People probably didn't know it at first, but the proliferation of such a simple object has opened computational doors that would even impress Alan Turing. Arrangement, permutation, mutation, orientation--all are inherent qualities of a deck of cards. Information can be coded and decoded, a given set of inputs will provide specific outputs. Or at least that is how things appear. When under the right influence, the concreteness of the card pack belies a certain malleability. The deck, like the proverbial river, remains the same, whilst ever-changing. It is, in its true form, an unbroken chain of position and value, onto which we place the bounds of our three dimensions. But a deck extends forwards and backward in time as a record of all possible positions it has ever and will ever be shuffled into. The practitioner's ability to move seamlessly between different positions (especially without seeming to have done so) is the key to his apparent control over the physical object that is the pack. There are two ways (as far as I can tell) to navigate between these different positions. The first is through the physical manipulation of the apparatus, which produces physical data for the audience to interpret and internalize. If the use of sleights is analogous to drawing a straight line between the two positions, then subtlety is like bending space-time and traveling through a wormhole. Arguably more direct, subtleties uses preconceived or situationally implied data to supersede interpretation and go directly to internalization. The challenge that then arises is in figuring out how to combine these two methods of navigation in a way that is both convincing and direct. Individual cards have a limited quantity of physical states, but in combination with one-another, produce endless possibilities of states, and therefore can produce as much implied data. If one assumes that the gap between any two possible possible positions can be bridged, then anything one can imagine (computationally) with a deck of cards is possible. Which is a pretty exciting prospect. Now, as a reward for reading through all that, here is a packet trick that doesn't exemplify any of the qualities I discussed above. Don't tell anybody it's here, though. It's the crappiest packet trick I've ever come up with. Thought as luck would have it, Steve Reynolds figured out how to make it an actual coherent effect. And then I figured out how to do it in the hands, with no duplicates. Basically, it would look really good on vimeo or something, but I would never perform this.* I call it, the incredible sinking ace trick. It has lots of sleights, so if you're into that kind of thing... Also, I'm going to write it like it's out of Erdnase. Because fuck you. Hereforthwith, I shall endeavor to describe a feat of conjuring during which, one at a time, the premier ace of spades mystically sinks down, like a lead haddock, one-at-a-time, through three other cards, each descent more visibly striking than the last. Primarily, the order of the packet of cards from the top down shall be as henceforth: the two of spades, the ace of spades, the three of spades, any stranger card, and finally the four of spades. This arrangement may be arrived at while the cards are removed from the deck, with no suspicion being aroused. Hold this packet of five-posing-as-four cards face down in the palm-up left hand in the manner commonly known as mechanic's grip. And now I'm officially tired of writing this way. Perform a simple spread, five cards as four, with the top two cards (the two followed with an ace below) going into the right hand, the three cards (the three, followed by the x-card and the four, held together as one) in the left hand. Turn the right hand palm down flashing the face of the two and the ace. Using the left-hand cards, tap the ace and the two, audibly counting, "ace, two..." Turn the right hand palm up, bring the backs into view, simultaneously, turning the left hand palm down to show the three and four. Tap the three and then the four with the face down right hand cards and again audibly count, "three, and four." Square up the cards in to the left hand (in the same order as before) taking the opportunity to get a break beneath the top two cards (the two and the ace). do a double lift to show the apparent single ace of spades (taking advantage of Marlo's Buffaloed principle) and at the same time, spread the three left hand cards, to subconsciously underscore the number of cards and relative positions. Flip the double card face down on to the left hand cards and square up. Make a magical gesture (not that gesture) and pull the top card vertically, keeping it flat, and being sure to make use of all that glorious three dimensional space. Use the left fingers to flip the ace of spade face up on the left hand packet. At the same time as the ace is revealed, secure a pinky break below the three, directly beneath the ace. Only afterwards, flash the face down two in the right hand and drop it back onto the face up ace, side-jogged to the right. Pick up all the cards above the break and use the left fingers to slip the three aligned underneath the two, under the cover of turning the ace face down on to the left hand cards. As an afterthought, turn the ace back face up and say something novel like, "actually, we'll keep the ace face up this time." Drop the face down two (with the three hidden underneath) onto the face up ace and perform your gesture (as wildly as possible). immediately perform a simple spread (with the last two cards held as one) to show the ace has sunk again. A miracle worthy of Odin himself. At this point, you can show all sides of the spread and the positions of the cards. Everything is copacetic**. For the final phase, the objective is the get the four (currently on bottom) to directly above the ace. This can be accomplished several ways, each one more unnatural than the last. The easiest way is probably to use biddle grip to hold spread cards from above, horizontally aligned (still in proper position from the simple spread) while the left hand fingers slide the four beneath the spread to in line with the three. The hands then separate briefly, the ace and x-card beneath it going to the left, the two and three with the four hidden underneath to the right. This separation is covered by emphasizing that the ace will pass through the four before the participant's very eves. The spread is reassembled in the left hand, but in position for a unique application of Guy Hollingworth's hot chicken optical alignment. Briefly, the lowermost card of the spread rests in the thumb crotch, the index finger at the top (keeping the cards aligned), the thumb tip contacting the backs of the two and the three. Underneath the packet, the second and third fingers contact the four beneath the three and both rest against the right edge of the face up ace. Under the cover of a waving motion from the left wrist, the thumb pushes to the right, spreading the cards, while the left second and third fingers simultaneously pull to the left, squaring the ace above the x-card beneath it. For all appearances, it is though the ace of spades has permeated the the four. As this happens, slowly move the left hand downward as the right hand grips the two, three, and four at the inner right corner and tilts back to show their faces. If you're not too much of a pussy, cop the x-card hidden beneath the ace, drop everything else into the participant's hands, curl into a fetal position, and sob silently to yourself because there is no participant. It's just you alone in your room with your webcam. Do not follow this up with a kicker. The cards do not all turn blank at the end. The ace doesn't appear back on top. The trick is over. So all in all, it's a pretty middle-of-the-road effect. The weakest point is definitely at the end, though. After the ace has penetrated the three in such an orgasmic fashion, it really reeks of foul play that the right hand needs to come over to re-asjust the cards before the final penetration. One presentational ploy to cover this would be to treat the spread condition as an afterthought. The spread is closed as if to repeat the effect as in the second phase, but is then re-spread to emphasize fairness. Ideally, however, one would want to reach the position for the hot chicken alignment immediately after spreading to show the descent of the ace through the three. The actual position, in that case, might be represented by [2*3*A*X4] (symbols representing the top-down position of the cards as from the performer's perspective, "*" represents spread condition) and the audience's interpretation would be [2*3*A*4]. The position the magician needs to arrive at is [2*34*A*X] (the three and four posing as one card) from which he can switch the audience's interpretation from [2*3*A*4] to [2*3*4*A]. So we need to get from [2*3*A*X4] to [2*34*A*X]. Now, before I go any further, I should state that this is purely theoretical. Obviously, the most straightforward way would be to use a duplicate four of spades so that even though you'd still have to do that awkward readjustment, you can cleanly show the bottom card just before doing the optical alignment, again, just to re-emphasize the condition. But then you can't really do it with a borrowed deck. In origami one is not allowed to make cuts, use multiple pieces of paper, or adhesive of any kind. I want a spectator-less, in-the-hands, gaff-less, dupe-less piece of photo booth perfection with fewer moves than phases that allows for the visible passage of one card through another as the third and final phase. You see, every trick I ever work on owes me a debit. One hundred Nazi scalps. And I want my scalps. The problem with this problem is, of course, its very strict parameters. Mechanically, there is no way to accomplish this that I have found without sacrificing the visible integrity of a previous phase. I've tried color monte alignments, holding out. The pieces just aren't there to put the thing together, which in my mind is a good indicator of the validity of the problem--it does seem inherently impossible. So the only option is to look for a subtlety, or ambiguity--try to find some lapse in the spectator's interpretation of things, where we can fold the space-time of the effect. We know what the participant needs to think to get that the effect has taken place. So then the question posed seems to ask if its possible to reverse-engineer the participant's conclusion-reaching faculties to imply conditions that place the performer a step or multiple steps ahead. The extra card is needed, because it helps to simulate a false condition. Is there, then, some way we might be able to doubly-rely on this same ruse in an earlier position? These really are open questions. I don't know. I've been at it for a while. Ultimately I envision some formal method of drawing parallels between different states of a deck of cards. Perhaps some mutation of symbolic logic, with its own grammar, derivations, and proofs, or perhaps something more akin to Feynman's diagrams. For the past 500 or so years, card men have been blindly shooting lasers into the vast ether, occasionally striking some invisible target. The very nature of the practice undermines proliferation of ideas and progress--a paradoxical stunting of progress in this field. There have been few paradigm shifts over the course of card magic's history, but I expect that a new one may be upon us. On an unrelated note: I shit you not, we just had marble-sized hail coming down outside. Which will happen first? We will develop a formal symbolic system of notation for card magic that will allow us to draw parallels we could ever have envisioned, or will global warming cause rising ocean levels to flood New Orleans and destroy the Action Palm forever? * Or any other trick, for that matter. **Thanks Jon.