Polish, Purchase and Purge - Stone Cold Magic Magazine

Thank you Eugene Burger for the inspiration of this article. Not too long ago Eugene Burger lectured at our little clublette here in Salt Lake City. The lecture was amazing. Great magic, great advice, and amazing words of wisdom . . . duh . . . it was Eugene Burger. During the lecture he made the comment that at some point you have to decide if you’re going to “purchase or polish.” It’s beautiful and poetic and just what some of you (including me) needed to hear. What he meant, of course, is that you can keep on buying new effects and learning new tricks . . . or you can polish and perfect the ones that you already know. I have around 400 magic DVDs, and about 30 or so magic books, and some-number-that’s-higher-than-I-can-count-to of single item tricks. Add all that up, and it’s tens of thousands of tricks. I’ll never be able to learn them all let alone master them all. So what do I do? Do I continue purchasing, or do I start polishing.

I say it’s a process. Sometimes it requires a little bit of both.

Root:

Let’s remember our roots. This month’s root: Master Your Craft. To some degree, this relates with this month’s issue of No Stone Left Unturned. It’s about quality vs. quantity. In order to master your craft, you have to fine tune continuously. How does purchase vs. polish come into play? My take is that you’ll need to do both rather than settling for one over the other. There may come a time when you can finally “arrive” and no longer have to purchase, but for the most part, I think it’s a constant battle. Also, keep in mind that “purchase” in this case can be meant literally as in actually buying a new trick, but it also represents adding new tricks to your repertoire rather than polishing ones that you already do.

Here’s how I see it: as you begin to polish, you’ll discover that you no longer like certain effects being in your repertoire. At that stage of the polish, you’ll need to purge and “purchase.” Sometimes there comes a point where you’ve tried to polish an effect for years, then one day you just come to terms with the fact that just like Beavis said, “You can’t polish a turd.” You have to purge. Don’t be afraid of it. If you have the courage, ask my good friend Diamond Jim Davis about his love/hate relationship with the Drill Bit O’ Death. Do so, however, at your own risk.

As you grow in the art, you further begin to understand what’s “you” and what’s “poo.” Sorry about all the crappy metaphors. As you learn more about yourself as a performer, purge or polish. As you purge . . . you’ll begin to purchase and polish again.

Branch:

Let’s build our branches. Your challenge for the next 30 days is to practice the art of Polish, Purchase and Purge. Look at your repertoire. Decide which effects you like, and work on polishing them. Improve the script, the posture, the presentation, the patter, etc. Work on creating focus moments in the performance. As you go through your effects, be open-minded to the possibility that it may be time to put away the strolling liver production . . . it’s just not you . . . you’re more of a kidney guy. So purge it, and either decide to have one less routine in your repertoire, or decide to purchase . . . thus the cycle begins again. The cycle, of course, that will keep your magic repertoire streamlined and much more “you” than “poo.”

Now go study the classics, and go discover your true magical self.

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