On being clumsy

Let’s define clumsy:

• gawky: lacking grace in movement or posture;
• awkward: not elegant or graceful in expression;
• bungling: showing lack of skill or aptitude;

Does this sound like the last magician you saw? Pete Rose will give you 4:1 odds that it does……

There’s a discussion on Fat City about purposely dumbing down a performance for layman, so they think you aren’t skillful. Unless you’re performing for Cafe regulars or your audience looks like this:

nobody thinks you are creating these miracles by magic!

I’ve often thought that most, if not all, of the look clumsy proponents have no choice. They’re skilless oafs, incapable of giving a competent performance, so they excuse it with this lame excuse. Hell fellers, Dick F. Cheney makes better excuses than that!

Thinks about it for a moment. When you present a magic trick, it can be explained by ANY audience in one of 4 ways:

1. Real magic
2. Some sort of inhuman force
3. Skill
4. Some sort of gimmick available at the local shop

Anyone with an IQ of 55 or greater will probably dismiss the first 2 as improbable. That leaves skill or mechanical trickery.

What impression do you want to leaves with your audience? I would think most would prefer the former. This is what elevates the art. Unfortunately most performances are the latter. Couple that with a clumsy performance, contrived or not – add a few stale jokes and you take magic down another undeserved notch.

If you insisted on the clumsy approach, call Curly and Moe and see if they want to do a Stooges revival or get a job with FEMA, but stay away from magic!

Take care………