Montreal’s Spidey Makes It To Penn and Teller’s Fool Us

Spidey must have been around 17 years old when he first came to Perfect Magic. His striking feature was his passion for magic. His enthusiasm was contagious and refreshing. He had plans for himself. Did I think he would succeed? It doesn’t matter much what I thought. He thought he would succeed. That, I believe, has a great deal to do with his success as a magician today. He didn’t just sit back and wait to succeed. He worked at it. Spidey was here the other day and I asked him If he would write a post for my blog.  And he did. I was most impressed with it. I asked him 3 questions to base his post on. How old he was when he started, what was his first trick, and if he had any tips for young magicians starting out. Here is his reply.

“Hey Evelyn,

so here are the answers 🙂

My earliest experience with magic was as a very young child when my father would bring me small magic tricks from his trips to Las Vegas. Cups and Balls and D’lite were my first tricks although i had no idea how to do them correctly. Although magic was always a fun hobby of mine as a child i seriously got bit by the magic bug when I was a teenager and started reading a book on card tricks. My uncle also bought me some invisible thread for my high school graduation which added variety to my performances. One of my smartest decisions early on was to work at Perfect magic for a small commission. Money was not important to me, knowledge was! I would spend hours going through the books and gimmicks in order to learn everything I can.

My professional career began when family and friends asked me to go to their company events and perform table to table and i branched out by giving out business cards at those events. I then went to some booking agencies and party planners and impressed the right people and began getting bookings through those companies.

I have 3 pieces of advice for starting magicians:

1) Don’t make magic your only plan unless you have no choice. I have a bachelors in social psychology, my magic career began long before I finished my bachelors and I finished it none the less. Luckily by the time I graduated I had enough demand to live off magic but the point is, finish school, get that degree, keep that other job until magic can sustain you. Magic became my living because I was so busy with shows that it would have been impossible to keep another job or do anything else with my life and in my opinion that’s when you can quit all other things. Of course once you make that decision to go pro. Stay focused; cut all other things out completely so that it’s make or break.

2) Not knowing is perfectly fine! Not LEARNING is a problem! We don’t have all the answers even if we sometimes think we do. The only thing I know is that I know nothing. Every time I build a new trick or rework my show, I know for a fact that my starting point is definitely not the best version of this effect or presentation, never think you are done learning.  Always remember that your trick is good but it can always be better, if you stop trying to improve, you will never be the best. This applies to specific sleights, specific routines or even entire shows! Not one trick in my show is the same as it was last year or even last week! Keep working at it

3) Don’t spread yourself too thin. There’s a lot of great magic out there but stay focused. Work on strong practical magic that works well for you and your setting. Don’t just do a trick because you saw the guy on television do it and it looked good; do a trick because it means something to YOU and you genuinely enjoy sharing it with people, work on it until it is perfect, then on to the next. Bruce lee said ” I do not fear the man who practiced 10 000 kicks once, I fear the man who practiced one kick 10 000 times” practice makes perfect; now go on and be perfect! “

              **********************

Thanks for taking the time to do this, Spidey. I appreciate it as I’m sure my readers will.