12 Questions with Magician Jamy Ian Swiss
August 7, 2004
Well guys and gals of Penguintown, the wait is over. Mr. Jamy Ian Swiss has submitted his answers to me and I am more than thrilled to present the latest installment in the '12 Questions' series. This is the longest and most informative and for me, enjoyable interview to date.
and now, without further ado, Mr. Jamy Ian Swiss
How long have you been a professional Magician?
23 years. Slightly longer than I was an amateur magician.
What was your first paying gig?
A corporate Christmas party, here in Manhattan, for an architectural firm, if my memory serves me correctly. I was 29 years old and it was the first paid magic show of my life. I never did kid shows or anything like that while I was growing up, although I did perform a great deal of close-up magic socially throughout my life. And I even did that first big school show when I was all of about 11 years old.
Did you have a Mentor as you were learning the art, or all you all self taught?
How about all of the above? Or perhaps, none of the above? I did not have a single mentor per se, but I did have many guides, many influences, many teachers. It is remarkable to me today that young magicians seem much more interested in talking to one another than to people who might have more knowledge and experience than they do. And that people seem to seek input indiscriminately over the Internet, rather than making careful selections to qualify and narrow one’s sources of guidance. Perhaps it may be useful to offer a different kind of model, in an accounting of my own experience.
My first magic teacher was my father. He was not a magician, but a friend of his was an amateur magician who performed the Color Vision Box for him, and when my father asked where he could get one, the guy sent him to Lou Tannen’s. There, my father purchased one and was shown the trick by Lou Tannen. My dad then came home, performed the trick for me, and then taught it to me. I was seven years old. This is how I learned magic, one trick at a time, for the next several years. I recount this story in detail in my book, Shattering Illusions, in a piece entitled “Real Secrets,” which is also the basis for a performance piece in my theater show.
So first my father taught me, with Lou Tannen’s help. Eventually I began to go to Tannen’s and Lou became my first sleight-of-hand instructor, over the counter. He taught me sponge balls, dice stacking, and the Don Alan Chop Cup routine. And, as I recount in “Real Secrets,” he taught me great respect for magic. He also introduced me to important books, including The Tarbell Course in Magic, The Royal Road to Card Magic by Hugard and Braue, and Close-up Card Magic by Harry Lorayne. Since Tannen’s was a publisher in those years, they would have some shelves of misprinted or otherwise damaged books that Lou would sell to kids like me at a discount. It was a great opportunity – and a great thrill the first time Lou invited me behind the counter and into the hallowed halls of the back room to have a look. There are still some missing pages in my Tarbell volumes that I’ve never had the chance to read!
Also at Tannen’s, in my early and mid-adolescence, I met Earl Johnson, better known in these parts as “Presto.” Presto is a great magician who did everything in his career from sideshows to kid shows to comedy magic and night clubs. He was also a terrific sleight-of-hand man, particularly with cigarettes and close-up with coins. Presto has had a profound impact on several generations of New York magicians, and I was lucky enough to be one of those under his influence. He taught me to classic palm coins in both my hands; taught me the Han Ping Chien move in the air over a spectator’s hands, which he may well have been the first to do in that manner; and he taught me the “palm-to-palm switch” he invented and which is now a standard coin sleight, described in Kaufman’s Coinmagic and also in David Roth’s Expert Coin Magic. He’s a beloved figure in the New York magic scene, and I’m pleased to say that although he’s retired now, he has appeared on the stage at Monday Night Magic, where we also gave him an award some years ago. I also did a piece about him in my one-man show, The Honest Liar, in the New York International Fringe Festival, and it was a great thrill to be able to invite Presto to the show and to introduce him to the audience during the performance.
Later, in my 20s, I met two contemporaries who would also come to have profound influences on me. I first saw Peter Samelson perform at the Tannen’s Jubilee in 1976. He did ten minutes of close-up magic that rocked my basic assumptions about magic. I chased him around for about a year – he wasn’t fond of hanging out with magicians – until eventually we got together and then developed a friendship that has lasted to this day. I learned a great deal about theater from Peter, and about how to think about magic theatrically and ask the right questions about one’s relationship to one’s material and to the audience, among other things. Peter was the first magician who I ever saw talk about real life in his magic – about relationships, for example. Essentially, he’s a dramatist. When we first became friends I was a part owner of a private telephone company providing business telephone systems in New York City, but after work, several evenings a week, I would spend time with Peter, first as a technical magic advisor of sorts, then as a writer, and eventually as a director. He was the first full-time professional I ever knew “up close and personal” who was also a contemporary. He showed me by example that it could be done. That paved the way for me making the career change for myself when I was 29. I also edited and wrote the introduction to his book, Theatrical Close-up, which now has something of a cult following and is difficult to find today. That’s the first thing I ever published in the magic world.
I also met Geoff Latta in my mid/late 20s, and Geoff became a great technical influence on me. When I decided to change careers I took a year off and did very little else other than practice. That year I sort of broke away from most of my social relationships, isolating myself in the practice room for countless hours, but Geoff was the exception. I spent a great deal of time with him, and it was with his guidance that I became something of a technician. I had always been well-read and a passable performer for an amateur, but my technical skills were pretty minimal, more oriented toward coins and general objects than cards. Geoff is one of the finest sleight-of-hand men I’ve ever known or seen – quite likely actually the best I’ve known as someone who is equally proficient with both cards and coins, and also equally inventive with both in terms of sleights and tricks. He is also a true master of the Classic Pass, and an important and influential one at that. Derek Dingle was the “pass master” whose abilities and developments with the shift had a profound impact on everyone in the New York Scene. Derek in turn, as he says in his book, had learned from Howard Schwartzman and Ken Krenzel. These two guys were doing the shift expertly when few others were doing so, at least in the east, and the move was generally out of fashion. They both made breakthroughs that Derek in turn put to use, and further combined with other developments like the Taylor and Elias Riffle and Jiggle Pass actions, as described in Epilogue. Well, Geoff was the guy who then took it to the next step. Whereas Derek’s Stroboscopic Riffle Pass was a snappy high-tension shift, Geoff developed a Riffle Pass that looked slow, and that also incorporate a little cocking of the wrist action as additional cover. He invented the effect of a protruding card travelling up the pack, for which Ray Kosby later created an entirely different method in his “Raise Rise.” More than a few magicians went out and put the elements of Geoff’s Riffle Pass work to use. Some gave credit, some didn’t. Many use these elements today and still don’t know they’re using portions of Geoff Latta’s innovations. Geoff remains something of an underground legend, although he has finally shown himself above ground at a couple of lecture appearances recently.
Moving on to other influences, very early in my professional career I discovered the book Secrets and Mysteries for the Close-up Entertainer by Eugene Burger, which significantly altered and impacted many of my ideas about the professional performance of close-up magic. I met Eugene soon after that – in 1983 – and he has not only had a deep impact on me as an artist, but we have been close friends ever since. He is an inestimable presence in my life and art.
And then in 1985 I met Penn & Teller. I first saw them in 1978 as Asparagus Valley Cultural Society, but when I attended the Off-Broadway Penn & Teller show in 1985 it was a staggering experience for me. Artistically speaking it was an unprecedented experience for me – I’d never seen anything like it, and it was all I could think about for weeks. Although we kept meeting each other in various ways, it probably wasn’t until almost two years later that Penn and I began to become friends, when we encountered each other at a national skeptics conference, and discovered we shared that interest among others. Penn & Teller have been significant artistic influences on me in many ways, not just regarding magic, and I count them among my closest friends. We’ve also worked together in many ways, including on their book, How to Play in Traffic, and I served as a writer and magic designer for their FX series, Penn & Teller’s Sin City Spectacular, in 1998.
It was also in 1985 that I was hired by Bob Sheets to be the Magic Bartender at the Inn of Magic in the Maryland suburbs of Washington D.C., where I performed five nights a week for close to two years. I learned a great deal there about bar magic, and the “Heba Haba” Al Andrucci tradition which Bob carries the torch for. That opportunity was in many ways my “big break” in my magic career.
And then in about 1988, on my first trip to Japan, I met John and Pam Thompson. Although I’d seen Johnny perform many times, going back to my teens, we had never met, but we spent most of the next ten days intensely together, as we were travelling and performing through Japan. That began a profoundly important artistic and personal relationship for me. John and Pam are really like a second family to me, they are cherished people in my life. And although I had already been a professional performer for some seven years or so, had been involved in magic for almost thirty years, and was by then well into my 30s, nevertheless I think it’s now fair to say that in many ways John became the mentor I never had. Integral with that fact is that I was very much a committed Vernon student throughout my life; I am a product of the Dai Vernon’s school of thinking. Vernon and Erdnase are integral to my conjuring bloodline, if you will. And although I did have the privilege of getting to know Vernon personally late in his life, that influence had to a great extent already been crystallized years before, long before I ever met him. But since John comes out of that tradition – out of the Vernon/Miller/Erdnase school – and was deeply influenced firsthand by Charlie Miller and by Vernon, he further expanded my thinking and knowledge and understanding of those ideas and principles that I had been studying all my life.
And so you see, only now, after explaining the broadest highlights of my evolution as a magician, can I at last answer your question about a mentor – and the most likely candidate to fit that particular bill is John Thompson. He’s among the finest, most knowledgeable and expert magicians I have ever known, and his generosity, as an artist and a person, is boundless. I have learned countless lessons from him, and I love him dearly.
What is your favorite genre of Magic? Cards?, Coins?, Rope?, Sponge Balls?
Well, as far as props go, I’d have to say card magic. It really is my overriding passion. For many years I would have said close-up card magic, but today I have finally found ways to use cards effectively on stage in a manner that suits me on some very deep artistic and intellectual levels, so now it’s really card magic in both close-up and platform or stage. That said, however, I always have coins with me when I’m doing close-up, and I still enjoy the general sleight-of-hand magic I do, especially the Cups and Balls.
How many days out of the year do you travel?
I’m not really sure. In approximately the past year I’ve been to Las Vegas, Atlanta, Charleston, Toledo, Cincinnati, Oklahoma City, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, Greensboro, Boca Raton, San Diego, Toronto ... and those are just the places I remember! I don’t travel nearly as much as some of the acts I know. I probably average a road trip a month, but that means that I might not be going anywhere much in the summer months, and then there are some months when I’m travelling portions of three out of four weeks.
What do you consider the one defining moment in your life that made you realize that Magic was your future, or what was your inspiration to learn Magic and become a Magician?
Well, those are two different moments, if there are in fact moments I could actually identify. I’ve recounted how I first became interested in magic, and I was bitten hard and fast – magic stayed with me throughout my life, albeit that it ebbed and flowed from time to time. In my mid-teens I drifted a bit because my first income was playing guitar in a band – that’s my first job in show business. But by the time I was 17, and still playing music professionally, I was also back into magic with a friend I’d made in school who shared both my guitar and my magic interests, and I often attended the Tannen’s Jubilee with him, which I had attended earlier in my adolescence with my dad. So there was never a break of much more than a year or two, and probably never a complete break.
As to going pro, as I’ve said, a lot of that idea came from my experience of working with Peter Samelson. And when I gave up my phone business and it was time to choose another career – my third, actually – my then-wife said that if I didn’t try magic then, I would always wonder about it the rest of my life. I was old enough to make a long-term commitment, but young enough that I could still afford to screw up and make another change. So she made it possible for me to take a year off and basically prepare myself to make the leap, and it’s certainly been an interesting life since. My motivation at the time can be described fairly simply, I think. I had no thought whatsoever of becoming known in the magic world, or of achieving any other kind of public fame. I had been reasonably successful in two fields of endeavor, but I wanted to see if I could make a living at something I truly cared deeply about. Not something I believed to be more important than any other job in the world – just more important to me.
What do you consider to be the proudest moment of your career?
That is a tough question. There’s no way I can choose a single moment, because they’re constantly changing. When I first began performing at the Inn of Magic was probably one of them – I’m sure it felt that way to me at the time, it was thrilling. Another would be when I did my first run at the Magic Castle in 1987, and found my work met favor with Dai Vernon, Charlie Miller, and Albert Goshman. For me, Goshman’s words were possibly the most validating anyone has ever spoken to me. More recently, I think it was doing my one-man theater show a couple of years ago, The Honest Liar, in which I tackled some artistic ideas that I had thought about for a long time and finally braved putting out on the stage.
Those are all performance-related events. But as a writer, I’m also pleased with my ten years of book reviews for Genii magazine and the feedback I receive from so many readers and colleagues. I’m proud of my book, Shattering Illusions, of the shock of seeing it reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, of having the chance to dedicate the book to my father. I’m still pleased with an odd little chapter I co-wrote with Edward Tufte in one of his books on information design, Visual Explanations. And I’m very proud of the work I did on Penn &Teller’s Sin City Spectacular. Although I had to stop performing for a year, I’ve never worked harder, more satisfyingly, or more enjoyably than I did that year.
And I also take great satisfaction from my various efforts as a teacher of magic. I have had many private students over the years, some of whom have gone on to become professionals, and virtually all of whom have provided fun and enlightening and challenging experiences. I feel gladdened when I see these people perform or hear of their continuing interest and progress in magic. And another aspect of that is Card Clinic. I began this project in 2002 to see if I could provide something more meaningful than the typical magic lecture or workshop experience. Bringing Roberto Giobbi in as my colleague, I created a three-day intensive seminar that has been extremely well received. It’s not always that profitable financially, but the experience and the feedback have been so rewarding that I feel I have to continue because it’s an opportunity to give something back to magic and to positively influence the progress and future of the art. Many of those who have attended a Clinic describe the experience in life-changing terms, and I do find that very gratifying.
To date I’ve done three Card Clinics with Roberto Giobbi; one Close-up Clinic with David Ben; and I’m now planning the next event, Stack Clinic, with Michael Close, to take place this October in Las Vegas. After that I will probably stop moving the Clinics around so much, and attendees will come to the Northeast to attend. Although I have moved the Clinics around regionally – West Coast, Mid-West, etc. – at least half the registrants have always come from other parts of the country as well as from overseas. However, this seems to have created the mistaken impression for some that eventually I would get to everybody’s neighborhood, but that’s just not possible with two events a year. So the plan now is to do Stack Clinic in Las Vegas this fall; then the next Card Clinic with Giobbi next spring, in 2005, perhaps in Washington, D.C.; and then maybe another Close-up Clinic with David Ben in New York City in the fall of 2005. That will bring us to 2006 and we’ll see if I will continue it beyond that, which would probably mean permanently bringing it back to it’s birthplace of New York City. All the latest information is at
www.card-clinic.com and you can sign up for the mail list by downloading the prospectus.
Finally, I also draw some satisfaction from the longevity of Monday Night Magic (
www.mondaynightmagic.com). As New York City’s longest-running Off-Broadway magic show, we are now entering our 8th consecutive year of weekly shows, and that’s no small achievement. When I’m in town I’m always there in some capacity, be it as M.C., or headlining, or doing close-up, or backstage in the role of a managing producer, and at the end of the night I always stand in the lobby and bid our patrons farewell as they’re exiting. Partly this is an extension of good will, of course, but also there’s a genuine pleasure in seeing the expressions on those faces, and knowing that I’ve been part of this ongoing effort to keep live magic present in New York City and bring it to audiences. I’m grateful to all the magicians who have helped us to do that over these many years, and to my producing partners: Michael Chaut, Peter Samelson, Todd Robbins, and Frank Brents.
Where do you feel the Art of Magic is heading in the near future?
More video! More flourishes! Shorter tricks! More magic on television!
Little of which is of any interest to me, except perhaps for the last item, since I do perform for TV and also write and develop magic for television, most recently as Head Writer and co-director for Marco Tempest’s Virtual Magician (
www.virtualmagician.com), which is now airing in more than 40 countries throughout Europe and the Far East.
But even then, the current emphasis on a particular kind of magic for television is temporary. Whether it lasts five years or ten years doesn’t really matter much. But there will always be a place for classically good conjuring, while there will only be a brief window in time for magic done as practical jokes or special effects for television. This is just a version of reality TV, but eventually the pendulum will swing away from reality television and it will take this kind of magic with it. And while it also seems to be the time for mentalism in the guise of influence and psychology and body language and other such deceptive and disingenuous claims, that fad may also pass when mind-reading becomes trivial and clowns are doing book tests at kid shows.
But beautiful conjuring is, and always will be, timeless. You can’t do an hour or more of close-up magic for a substantial audience – as Juan Tamariz does routinely, for example, as Ricky Jay has done – with 30-second special effects or stunts. You need more. You need to become a conjuror. I have had young close-up magicians audition or occasionally perform at Monday Night Magic, and they do pretty and novel little magic tricks, but they have no clue as to how to create the sense of a “show” – and that’s a sense that can be created even in a 15-minute program. You need to have a sense of theater, of how to create a beginning, a middle, and an end, of how to build to a climax, of how to create a sense of audience cohesion and audience reaction – there’s so much more to creating the theatrical experience of magic than just doing cute or even startling tricks. Few have ever excelled at this, and few ever will, but those who do will always have a place.
Do you think the proliferation of instructional videos and DVDs and the Internet has helped or hurt the Art?
Both. I’ve written about this at length elsewhere, in the pages of Genii and in my book. My readers and colleagues know I am not a fan of video instruction. Certainly video has some benefits to offer – albeit limited ones – especially the ability to communicate the proper timing of a sleight or maneuver. In that role, video is useful as a supporting tool to the literature of conjuring, as Michael Close has used it in his new e-book, for example, Closely Guarded Secrets. Or as in Daryl’s Encyclopedia of Card Sleights video set, which is a useful reference so you can see how a particular sleight should look. Also, video can expose you to a variety of performance styles, and it’s wonderful that we can now build an archive of magic’s performers.
But the benefits pretty much end there, and the downsides are significant. I believe that books make for education and video makes for imitation. It’s inevitable. It’s very difficult to learn something from a distinctive performer without unconsciously adopting that performer’s style. This extends to many elements that comprise that style, from physical movement to vocal inflection. It’s very, very difficult to avoid that. The same thing can even happen with mentors and students, but a good teacher will help students to avoid those imitative pitfalls. The video teacher won’t.
The book calls upon the student to fill in the spaces – with himself. The book is interactive, calling on the student to think, to work out solutions to problems, to figure out what needs to be done. The video is passive – you sit on the couch and watch and watch and watch, never being called upon to actually do anything. You only get from the book what you invest in it – it’s an interactive process. The video just lets you collect secrets, perhaps so that at the next magic meeting you can nod your head knowingly – “Oh, I know that one.” But you don’t know anything! Knowing is not the same as doing. Life, and art, are for doing, not merely observing.
And let us be clear about this, despite frequent claims to the contrary: video is a terrible teaching tool. The concentration of signal to noise is incredibly diluted compared with print media. In the hours I have to sit through video to see perhaps ten effects explained, I can work my way through many times that quantity in reading a book, and I will actually know much more about that material from the book than from the video. There is precious little theory and psychology explained in video, because there’s nothing visual. Instead we waste time with audience testimonials, selling you a video you already own, or the discomfort of watching over-the-top and unnatural audience reactions – also intended to sell us on something we already own. It’s as if every page of the book was filled with exclamation points and self-congratulation – when in fact this is found in only the worst kind of writing.
It’s been demonstrated that in a half hour of local television news, we get a fraction of the first page content of the New York Times. A fraction! That says something about the relative dilution of information imparted by video versus print.
And the resolution of that video screen is also awful when compared with the printed page. Just take a look at a sequence of expert illustrations by Ton Onosaka or Earl Oakes or Richard Kaufman, and then compare that with some complex sleight depicted on video. There’s no comparison! The video image is all noise and precious little signal. It’s filled with irrelevant information, and the important information is reduced to some small portion of the screen where you’re lucky if you can actually see the critically important details necessary for the execution of advanced sleight of hand. The expert illustration however eliminates all that noise, and just shows you what you really need to know – which finger goes exactly where, for example. The ability to rewind or slow-mo a lousy image of a lousy demonstration is not my idea of an effective teaching tool.
What I see as a result of the video revolution is a number of clear trends. I see young magicians who learn a lot of sleights – really a LOT – very early in the game. However, many seem to know very little about conjuring – little about what it takes to really create a magical experience rather than just a quick special effect. Conjuring theory cannot be taught from the video screen, it exists almost entirely in books. It’s all in the details, in the “why” and not the “how.” This is impossible to extract from video. Video shows you what to do; books teach you how to think. And books are self-selecting: if you’re not ready for a particular book due to your level of knowledge and experience, for example, that will become apparent in your ability to glean value from it, to extract its mysteries. If not, you may have to return at a later time, when you will better be able to appreciate its benefits. These are benefits inherent in the process or reading; they’re features, not bugs.
The literature of magic is often beautiful and inspiring, in ways no video can ever began to match. It’s like comparing great works of literature with a vocational training manual. And there is so much material in those wonderful books, that the process of extracting it is what helps to make one a better and more original magician. The very process of searching out and building repertoire is a usefully eccentric and creative act – an artistic act. And of course it helps to differentiate you from other artists. By confining oneself to the latest video or the latest retail best-seller, everyone ends up with the same repertoire; or else they end up with a cookie-cutter repertoire by dint of the cynicism of “what works” as a motivator. All of these are distorted versions of the artistic process. They are anti-art.
I also see an ever-growing lack of respect for the art, and one of the things I was fortunate to be able to learn in the tradition of magic in which I grew up was a fundamental respect – for the art, for its tradition, for its accomplished practitioners. You had no inherent right to a secret, you had to earn it. When you have to earn something, when it requires an effort, you attach more value to what you receive. Nothing easily gained is worth having, and so the secrets of magic have been devalued. Going to Lou Tannen’s, you would never see a secret openly exposed across the counter. Only the purchaser received the secret, and even if it was a little pocket trick in a roomful of professionals, you were taken aside by Lou and he would quietly divulge the secret to you. There is much more to magic than just secrets, of course, and in fact there is too much emphasis placed by magic organizations and amateur magicians on the so-called problem of exposure. But nevertheless, this kind of process and tradition creates a sense of value and importance which we have substantially lost. As Eugene Burger has written, this is what happens when an art form devolves into a craft and then further into a hobby which “everyone must do.”
Now, there were always two magics: the casual hobbyist and the committed artist. Choose whatever labels you like; there are no perfect labels for this, because for example, “amateur” and “professional” doesn’t work either. Some of the greatest magicians in history have been amateurs and some of the worst have been professionals, because the pursuit of excellence has nothing to do with money. As Tommy Wonder says, money and fame aren’t goals; money and fame are things you may receive for achieving other actual goals.
Nevertheless, there have always been two magics, call them what you will. In the old days before the Information Age, the weekend dilettante had a Red Snapper, whereas the insider had a TT! Nowadays, due to the cheap and ready access to secrets, there is “churn” in the marketplace, and hobbyists come into the game, collect the secrets of 400 years of conjuring within a short time and a shelf-full of videos, and then drop out when the novelty wears off and they realize that knowing isn’t doing, and watching videotape doesn’t make you a magician. The thing is, no matter how small these two groups were, there were always more of the casual hobbyists than there were of the cognoscenti, because magic is frankly quite difficult and challenging. There are no shortcuts, and to really achieve something takes time and great dedication.
Well, there are still two magics, but due to the revolution in information technology, the larger group – the hobbyist group – has exploded in size, relatively speaking. There is a vast population of amateur magicians with various degrees of knowledge and accomplishment. It’s virtually impossible to intelligently estimate now, because this group may be buying all the latest tricks from Internet discounters, but they’re not reading many books or even buying the magic magazines. Instead they rely on online chat, talking to one another endlessly without really getting much of anywhere. The majority are really magic fans, not magicians. And this group is enormous, relatively speaking, and there are no doubt many, many different levels of accomplishment within it, but at a certain point you realize, it’s really all one group. All one group that doesn’t know or care much about what the art of magic really is. And meanwhile, the other group – the cognoscenti, if you will – is keeping more and more to itself, turning inward, keeping secrets, far from the madding crowd, as it were. It’s not one group, of course, there are many circles within, but the point is, these are the groups that are not talking, not lecturing, not appearing at conventions, not babbling on the Internet. There are countless thousands of the first group, contributing to a deafening roar of Internet chatter. But the best books in magic are only printing runs of perhaps 2000 copies – and the core of influential thinkers is an even smaller subgroup of that set.
I’m not talking about elitism here, nor am I endorsing it. But what I think this speaks to is a stratifying of the culture of magic. There are different streams that are separating more and more, and have less and less to do with one another. In some cases they even have less and less awareness that the other strata even exist. Eugene Burger says that the house of magic has many rooms, but many of magic’s enthusiasts are locking themselves into their own rooms and barely even bumping into anyone else in the hallway. So much magic that I see today consists of quick visuals that are more like special effects than experiences of magic. The art of routining – as exemplified for example in Michael Close’s Workers books – is dying. But what is this quick special effect style magic good for? And its sister pursuit, the extreme flourish juggling? Well, it’s very good for selling stuff or sending material around on the Internet, I’ll say that. Every time I get a link to someone’s fabulous classic pass on the Internet I have to laugh, because the transmission speed essentially acts like removing frames from the video, and if you take a single frame out of any mediocre pass it can suddenly look great, so the whole exercise becomes pointless. Internet surfers are driven to sites to look at material that they really can’t judge because they don’t know the literature or the history. I just saw a link in which one self-proclaimed guru added a riffle of the outer end of the deck to the Vernon “Topping the Deck” top palm as if that was an improvement. So let me get this straight: you attract more attention to the deck with this gesture, then do what was already the single most perfect move in magic, except you’ve eliminated the original justifying cover, which was a natural squaring action. To quote Vernon’s original description: “The whole action should not deviate one iota from the natural action of squaring up the deck …” Yet the Internet oohs and aahs over this stuff, because the audience doesn’t know any better.
The role of the mentor and teacher is something that has also been damaged by this insularity. Even though video can show you timing, or expose you to a variety of performers, it’s not actually anywhere near a substitute for learning from the tradition and culture of magic, because it separates you from the culture. I had to go to the magic shop to see the moves, to lectures and conventions to see the performers. I had to engage in the culture and tradition, become a part of it. And I had to learn to ask.
Those were priceless lessons that I treasure to this day. The video contributes to the delusion that you can sit at home and have it all for $29.95. No thought could be more misguided. If all you’re doing is talking to people at the same level as you are, you’ll never progress. This is what magic clubs often do, and the result is institutionalized mediocrity. But I’ve worked with performers from Penn & Teller to Lance Burton to Jeff McBride, and when we ask one another for an opinion, we don’t want to be coddled or lied to. John Thompson works as a consultant with virtually every top magic act in Las Vegas, and they pay him for his expert genuine opinion, not a hail-fellow-well-met pat on the back. The way to improve in this world – the way to learn anything – is to seek out someone with more knowledge, experience, and taste than you have. I once saw an online discussion about teachers in magic, and I was amazed to see people arguing against the need for teachers. If you set out to learn to play an instrument, you wouldn’t just buy a videotape, you’d seek out a teacher. Why magicians think differently about this is remarkable to me, and a testament to the mediocrity of so much magic. Magicians, whether they’ve been in magic for a year, or spent 20 years in a magic club and still can’t do anything besides Color Monte and Professor’s Nightmare, seem loathe to ever admit that anyone could possibly teach them anything. And of course the result shows in the quality of their work. That same online thread actually had someone insist that Dai Vernon didn’t have teachers, therefore (I suppose), neither do we. Well, first of all, I doubt there are many Dai Vernons amongst us, for one thing. But for another – of course he had teachers! He sought out countless guides and influences along the course of his development as an artist. Nate Leipzig, for example, was a generation older than Vernon. And Vernon actively engaged with the top rank of his contemporaries, who pushed one another toward greater heights, as all artists do, in any art form – as Picasso and Mondrian did, as the Beach Boys and the Beatles did. Or, for that matter, can you imagine someone taking up baseball and insisting that he has no need of teachers, he can learn it all from video? And that’s not even an art form, it’s a sport, albeit a beautiful one at that.
This delusion of self-containment is also demolishing the retail magic world. The magic shop used to be a place that contributed to the culture and tradition of magic, even though it also made money. Now magicians only buy by price, and discounting is standard operating procedure. There is no value put on the priceless wisdom and guidance of, for example, a Denny Haney from Denny’s Magic in Baltimore, who contributes to the culture of magic by offering his own invaluable advice and experience, and also by providing quality lectures and other events and benefits. Thus the traditional neighborhood magic shop is heading toward extinction, and that will mean an even greater loss to magic, because magic always thrives best when there is a vibrant magic shop in a particular area, and where there is no magic shop, magic suffers and dies in many ways. But magicians get the magic shops they deserve, and they seem to be deserving of less and less.
So there may be many rooms in magic, but the inhabitants seem to be talking to one another less and less. The conventions from the big organizations seem to be in dire straits, with numbers dropping rapidly, because the organizations are dominated by old-timers who don’t even know who the young guys are and don’t book them. The book readers are off in the library on their own. The video kids don’t read books. The Internet rants and raves, generating much heat and little light. The one thing I like in this is the growth of specialty conferences, like the Buffalo Get-Together, Toronto’s 31North, and the like. That bodes well because it encourages those with real passion – passion that’s focused on the art, instead of on online flame wars or club politics.
If you were asked to perform one and only one Card effect what would it be and why?
Well, I have to answer that it depends on the conditions. There’s a good chance that it might be a think-of-a-card effect., because it breaks down many of the audience’s preconceptions about what might constitute a card trick when you can crawl into their heads without them even touching a card. So I can at least narrow it down to a list of color changes, think-a-card, Ambitious Card, Card Under Glass, simply finding a named card, or finding a signed card in an impossible location – these are the most likely candidates on the short list. But in fact the circumstances – the conditions, the spectator, etc. – would actually determine which one I would decide on at the moment.
What do you feel is the most important piece of knowledge you could pass on to up and coming Magicians?
There is no magic in a magician’s practice mirror. And magicians too cannot see magic – as Whit Hayden once said to me. Magic isn’t really a tangible thing, it’s an experience, and it’s fragile. It only “happens” in a spectator’s mind. Everything else is a distraction that pales by comparison. Magic for magicians is a distraction. Magic talk on the Internet is a distraction. Magic contests are a distraction. Magic organizations are a distraction. The latest advertisement, the latest trick – all distractions. Methods for their own sake are a distraction.
Knowing methods does not make you a magician. It may make you a magic fan. Only being able to create the experience of magic for a layman is what really makes you a magician. You cannot cross over into the world of magic until you put everything else aside and behind you – including your own desires and needs – and focus on bringing an experience to the audience. This is magic. Nothing else.
But then – what do you give of yourself to that experience? If magic is an art, that says it is a means of self-expression. What are you expressing through your art – other than your insistence upon being the center of attention, your desperate desire for applause and attention? What are you giving of yourself to make this experience of magic a human experience? These are difficult questions, and the answers go far beyond the mere learning of a magic trick, or finding out “what works,” or perhaps even making a living.
And finally, can we expect any more Jamy Ian Swiss products to hit the Magic community anytime soon?
My first ever video release, Jamy Ian Swiss: Live in London, is just now being released, and there is a special introductory offer available at my website.
My book, Shattering Illusions, is now in its second printing and is available also from the website, along with several different sets of lecture notes.
The Card Clinics continue, with the next Clinic marking the debut of Stack Clinic, with Michael Close, dedicated to the memorized deck, and scheduled to be held in Las Vegas the weekend of October 22nd. You can find out more at
www.stackclinic.com or
www.closeupclinic.com.
And finally, please subscribe to the thinking magician’s magic magazine, Genii, at
www.geniimagazine.com!
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a good loooooong interview, just the way i like them, and the quality kind of interview i was expecting from Jamy. 
