ITALY LECTURE

Impossible Objects

CONCEIT and INSTANTIATION

A THOUGHT
The result of intellectual
activity.

A CONCEIT
A thought that holds the passion
of a belief.

A LECTURE
The presentation of a conceit
to another person through
terminology and display.

AN INSTANTIATION
The presentation of a conceit
to another person by example,
or expression.

So, as to for instance, a good

Sunday:

Its time to go to church is a

thought.
Jesus is the son of god. is a
conceit.
The church sermon is a lecture
built upon the conceit.

The Easter pageant or a movie

like "The Greatest Story Ever
Told" is an instantiation of
that same conceit.
Through the course our history
we have decided, as a culture,
that while we are curious, even
intrigued by the conceits of
others, we prefer to have them
presented to us as
instantiations, rather than as
lectures.
A director will often tell an
actor: Dont say it, play it.
Wed rather be entertained
than instructed.
For the sake of argument, lets
call everyone who attempts to
make a living without getting a
real job as an artist. That
would include painters and
sculptors, novelists and
playwrights, musicians, actors,
directors, and among many
others, jugglers, ventriloquists
and magicians. I would leave out
dancers and circus performers
because they end every job
either sweating, injured,
crippled, or all of the above.

Now we look at the first group,

the artists, writers, musicians
and all. Each of them draws upon
an aspect of themselves, and
they attempt to present that
aspect to others in some winning
fashion. They instantiate their
conceit.

Now some of these types deal

with the notion abstractly;
Picasso was less concerned with
being understood than with
expressing a passion.
James Joyce wanted not to
construct a narrative as much as
to leave an impression.
Even music, presented without
lyrics, as by a simple
instrumental or full-blown
symphony, will give 100 people
100 different ideas as to the
creators conceit.
Although here we are beginning
to approach some consensus.
Listen to Appalachian Spring
and you get the idea you should
dance.
You hear Pomp and
Circumstance, and youre pretty
sure someone should be
graduating from something.
Once we get to the performing
arts, where we are as magicians,
we find ourselves expressing a
conceit that is more commonly
agreed upon, for the most part.
Think about it.
The crowd leaving David Mamets
Glen Garry, Glen Ross, can hit
a bar and disagree about his
study of the eternal tragedy of
men defining themselves through
the ultimately exposed
limitations of their chosen
profession.
The crowd leaving Houdinis show
would be sipping beers and
agreeing that being able to get
out of things is pretty cool.
It's easy. The conceits we
instantiate as magicians are
often quite thin. Where did the
birds go? Where did the tiger
come from? or How much do you
have to pay a girl to do that?
We do occasionally delve into
deeper conceits, like Human
thought might be transmitted,
or Gravity isnt a law, just an
agreement, but for the most
part the notions behind our
exercises are so light-weight,
that we tend to forget they
exist. We perform like an
amnesiac at a Morse Code key. We
forget were sending a message.

Heres another thing: As

magicians, our creative process
is most often ass-backwards. We
see a trick, or read one, or buy
a prop that looks cool. We begin
with the instantiation.
Now we have to come up with a
conceit.
We have to discover a reason to
believe in this thing we're
doing.
Most importantly - In fact, THIS
IS CRITICAL - we must understand
that our audience assumes that
we have a conceit.
And if we haven't invented one,
trust me, they will do that job
for us.
That is true of every art, but
as magicians we run a special
risk - In the absence of an
expressed conceit, our audience
will often assume that our
message is:
I know something you dont
know. And I can do things you
cant do.
That's a kind of the
psychological equivalent of
"cocking a snoot".
HARRY DEMONSTRATES THE GESTURE.
The act of fooling people can
literally suggest that you see
your audience as fools.
And that suggestion can prove
unappealing in many ways
To an audience fellow whos at a
nightclub with a date, it can
feel downright emasculating.
At best, demonstrating superior
skill is an exclusivating thing
to do. It sets us apart from our
audience. It isolates us.
Trust me, we are better off when
we present ourselves in a more
considered way.
My childhood, back when I was
learning to want to do magic,
was anything but stable. Every
three months or so Id find
myself in a new city, often with
a new set of parents, always in
need of a new set of friends.
I used magic to make positive
connections with my peers,
mainly because I wanted to fit
in. I wanted to be liked the way
real people are liked.
Later, as a street performer,
while I was in search of money
and girls, I never forgot that
first of all I wanted to be one
of them - by them I mean one of
anyone else.
To this day I'd bet even money
that many of us who chose this
odd path began with, and still
own, much of that same concern.
Dai Vernon used to say When the
ball vanishes, look amazed.
That is to say, give your
audience some direction in how
they should feel and react.
As far as you can, join your
audience in the experience.
Maybe the contemporary magic
performer who best accomplishes
this goal is Michael Carbonaro,
who has a television show, The
Carbanaro Effect, that seems to
run 24 hours a day on the A&E
channel in the U.S. Michael is
impossibly adorable, and so cute
you just want to pop him one.

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