Something From Nothing - Stone Cold Magic Magazine

Something From Nothing
By Jeff Stone

As you may recall, the Pillars of Stone column is a very random column. Unlike the other columns in this newsletter, there is no specific author assigned to this column. In fact, you could be the author… If you’ve got an idea or a rant you want to share with the magic fraternity, shoot me an email. This might be what you need.

Meanwhile, while talking to my buddy Jay Sankey, he told me the following story. Here it is in his own words:

While in touring in Germany several years ago I noticed that the font size of the ’10’ on the 10 Deutsche Mark bill was the same size as the ‘100’ on 100 Deutsche Mark bill. Then I folded the 10, bringing the ‘0’ on one corner right against the ‘0’ on the opposite corner, making for a nice looking ‘100.’

A few minutes later I tried this effect on a friendly local: I gave her a 10 to examine, said I would magically change it into a 100, slowly folded the bill into a small packet, bringing the 0’s together, and then proudly showed it to my new German friend- ta da! Of course, she was unimpressed. On the off-beat + a casual shuttle pass, I switched the borrowed 10 for a pre-folded and palmed folded 100.

I waved the folded 100 around a bit, asked if she had ever seen a real magician before, etc, etc…then slowly unfolded the bill to reveal it had in fact changed into a 100.

This effect was sort of created on the fly as you can tell. By the way, he calls it “Zero.” I thought I’d share it with you for two reasons. First, it’s a cool trick which means that you get two free tricks this month, Zero by Jay, and Overtime by David Acer. Second, it illustrates a good concept.

Jay and I have spent a lot of time talking, phoning, and emailing each other about magic, magic theory, people, and just life in general. I’ve learned a ton from Jay, and hopefully he’s learned a bit from me. One of the things that we both feel passionate about is seeing magic in everything. Not just seeing the trick or how to create an effect out of this or that, but seeing the “magic” in life.

Often, seeing the magic in life requires you to see the magic trick or effect as in the above. Sure it’s one thing to come up the cool idea of Zero, but it’s an entirely different thing to take that and immediately use it as a wonderful tool to help someone else experience the magic of life.

Hopefully this brief article will inspire you to constantly be creative, but more importantly to constantly seek to astonish people and share real magic with them.

Magically,

Jeff Stone

Please “like” this article:

Steven Dickinson says:

July 2009 at 4:33 am

It all goes back to knowing your craft and know your tools and props you use. The other thing is a good eye for observation and a mind that thinks creatively and doesn’t just come up with one idea.

I heard this preacher talking about how people who were trained to write during Shakespeare’s day were taught to see how many hundreds of ways they could write on one thought. In other words, you want to write on “the red apple glistened in the sun.” How many ways can you say it with out repeating the same sentence?

From that huge list of ideas you could pull out what matches the style of writing you are looking for such as most creative, easiest to understand, has a certain rhythm or rhyme that you like.

I think sometimes we are far to easily pleased. We take the first one or two ideas and just run with them.

Thanks for another great article Jeff. You get me thinking.