Creative Genius
Creative Genius
By Jeff Stone
You ever listen to “Weird Al” Yankovic? Is the guy just crazy, or is he a creative Genius? I say it’s a little of the former and mostly the latter. I mean, come on, anyone who can turn Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise into Amish Paradise is a genius, is he not?
For the uninitiated, take a look at the first video below (Coolio). Then watch the next one (Weird Al). No, seriously, watch these two videos.
Now is Weird Al a copy cat; is he crazy, or is he a genius. I argue he’s a genius, so what’s the point? Well the point is that sometimes creativity starts with other people’s ideas.
Um, Jeff, this column is supposed to be about helping magicians.
Of course it is, and here’s the simple point. Most of you have effects in your repertoire that are not ones that you created, yet they are your own. It started as a Vernon trick or a Marlo or Sankey or insert-other-magician’s-name-here effect. You practiced it, performed, and perfected it . . . so much so that it has really evolved into your own. Michael Finney didn’t create “Card on Forehead,” but darn it; he perfected it. Again, if y0u haven’t seen it before, check out the performance below:
This month’s free trick, Dethroned, is somewhat an example of this. It started as a joke. A non-magician friend of mine broke his arm. He got tired of people asking him how he broke it so he started making up stories about how it happened. One time someone asked him what happened and he said, “I fell of the toilet.” I could not stop laughing. Then in my head I thought, “he you got dethroned.” Of course being a magician, my head went immediately from the word “throne” to Kings as in the four Kings in a deck of cards. Then I thought that it would really be funny to have a picture of a King falling off the toilet with a caption “Dethroned.”
Of course that ultimately lead to me wanting to create an effect called Dethroned. Of course it would have to use the Kings. I then converted an Ace effect idea I was working on into Dethroned by using Kings and coming up with a crazy story about 4 Kings being Dethroned. Once I shared the idea with Jason Montoya, he drew the incredible image for the effect, and his drawing and my effect inspired The Saga story. By the way, you can read that story in the August 2007 issue.
It all started with my friend’s broken arm. The key to creativity is an open mind. Jay Sankey, who is arguably one of the most creative Magician’s of our time, once told me that the ideas come from everywhere and that they are constantly surrounding us, and that he is just grateful when one lands in his head. They land in his head because he opens his mind.
Start getting the juices flowing by performing someone else’s effect and morphing it into your own. You don’t even have to start with magic. Start with a song. Do what Weird Al does; take another song and try to rewrite the lyrics to have the same tempo/rythm as the original. Many of the ideas I’ve created over the past several years (magic or not) started with a grain of a seed of an idea, but over time they morphed. I write down every single Idea that comes into my head. I’ve filled several journals. Most of the material released on my Gemstones DVD started as a very minute thought that I captured in my journal.
Brad Gordon wrote some awesome stuff about journals in the first three issues of the Pillars of Stone column. Take the time to read them:
Remember that this column is meant to be a place for me (and others) to ramble about anything that I feel is valuable to a magician. Being creative is one such topic, so hopefully, you’ve found some value in my rambling this month. One final thing, take the time to watch or re-watch the movie, Finding Forrester, if you want to be further inspired to become a Creative Genius; then watch my kids’ tribute to Weird Al, to numb your mind a little:
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