I had a moment recently that in many ways was one of these so called life changing events. Well, that said, it was more one of those moments that brought me to a realisation about my life purpose and my passion.
To set the scene, last weekend I was at Regent's College in London. A friend of mine, John P. Morgan, who I know through the London Hynosis Meets runs a company called The Magnetic Man and asked me if I'd like to go along to his first big seminar. John's passion in life is to help people connect with each other, and in particular to help men connect with women; it's a sort of antidote to the PUA approach to meeting women. I'm really glad I went actually, partly because the seminar itself was inspirational, but also because of something else that happened.
When we stopped for lunch, and we all made our way down the the cafeteria, John suggested to us all that we might take the opportunity to just practice talking to as many people as possible.
This was an amazing exercise. It might sound silly, but because I'd been chatting to some of the other participants about card tricks before the seminar began I wasn't going to be the guy who has said he's a bit of a card magician and a hypnotist and then have to say after lunch that I hadn't gone up and talked to any strangers.
I munched my way through a plate of chicken with pasta in carbonara sauce as I listened to the conversation of the other guys from the seminar I had sat with. They they were talking about PUA boot camps and training afternoons they'd been to; basically workshops to help guys approach women.
Great, I thought, if I listen to any more of this it's going to be far more difficult than it needs to be.
I spotted a likely looking group of people standing in the ever lengthening lunch queue, grabbed a pack of cards, stood up and wandered over.
"Hi guys, I can see you're queuing for dinner, sorry to interrupt but I'd like to show you a magic trick."
They were actually friendly enough, and quite intrigued, as indeed most people are when you wave something fantastical like magic or hypnosis under their nose. I ran through several of my usual basic tricks, thanked them for being a good audience and moved on up the ever lengthening queue stopping another couple of times to perform more tricks. It was a great place to find people who really didn't mind being entertained.
It was as I reached the beginning of the queue that I spotted three young women sitting down at a little round table. Right, I thought, time to try something a bit more intimidating.
"Excuse me," I said, wandering over, "I only have a minute or two but I'd really like to show you a few magic tricks"
They were quite pretty, but a bit young; I'd guess at 18-20 years old. They nodded their interest so I grabbed a nearby chair and, planting it so I'd be sitting with the char back between my legs, settled down to begin my routine.
I started with my favourite opening trick, which is topsy turvy cards. It's quite spectacular really, making half of the deck appear to magically flip over inside the deck. The girls were intrigued by this so I singled out one of them and moved on to another good trick, the poker player's picnic. This is an awesome self-worker of a trick in which the person you're performing to cuts the deck into four piles to discover that all of the top cards are aces. It's always fun to accuse them of having cheated unconsciously and say that you'll never play poker with them.
From the point of view of a magician this is all mechanical. The real magic happened for me with with my next and final trick called Design for Laughter. In this trick the magician appears to have gone horribly wrong but continues unaware of his mistake. I love this trick because it is a wonderful source of drama. This was something I was able to enhance further by using something I'd learned the week before on a creative writing class I've been taking. You see, something that fascinates me is the relationship between hypnosis, magic and story telling. As I see it, a magic trick is in essence a story, albeit a short one, and the same principles apply. Likewise all the best stories have a hypnotic effect on the people they are told to.
So, with this in mind when I performed this trick I incorporated a principle I have recently learned about story writing, which is that one has to build up tension, but do so in stages. I started the trick with a "hey, this should work" attitude, and escalated things over the course of the trick to the point where my entire reputation as a magician was riding on what happened next.
This was when I experienced one of the most profound moments. I was looking into the eyes of the girl I was performing the trick to, right at the moment when the tension peaked, and I saw her eyes widen. I have always found women's eyes to be beautiful and incredibly expressive but this time it was even more so. This time I could tell, I could feel from her, that she was going through a strong emotional experience. The amazing thing wasn't just that though, I was leading her through a strong emotional experience.
Nothing stronger than when I revealed her card showing I was right after all and I got screams of "Oh my god!"
This is why I love performing magic, I love being able to give those kinds of experiences. Not just that though, it's why I love writing, doing hypnosis, telling stories, dancing. It's why I love sex.
About a year ago I decided that I needed to define my raison d'être; I need to know what my purpose in this world is. The shortest version I could come up with was "To create and to share". It might sound like a cheesy corporate slogan, but I think it's true to say that the best moments of my life, the times when I have felt most fulfilled, have been when I have been true to the ideals of that statement.
I cannot wait to see where else it can take me.
