THE ART OF ASTONISHMENT PIECES OF STRANGE TO UNLEASH THE ON ADDITIONAL Writine By Eric MEADTHE AZT OF ASTONSUMENT BOOK | ILLUSTRATIONS BY TONY DUNN ADDITIONAL WRITING BY ERIC MEAD. LAYOUT AND BOOK DESIGN BY TONY DUNN: PHOTOGRAPHY FOR DUST JACKET BY ANDRE HAGEN PRE-LLUSTRATION PHOTOGRAPHY FOR NEW MATERIAL BY ANDRE HAGEN. EDITED BY ANDRE HAGENDEDICATED TO EVERYONE. INCLLIDING. The acrobatic squirrel at the Janetville Ping-Pong Palace and the great babe that runs the joint Big Sis who lives life as if no one were looking which is a fine thing indeed Sainted Mother of the above two daughters plus one strange son. Getting it right two out of three times is still very, very good My fearless Father and my other two sisterettes and the Spanish teacher who says he knows me. Uncle Sterling and Aunt Virginia and the Martian Magic set Harry Eng: For the care and feeding of infinite creatity and the assembly of Intimate Secrets (on your pool table and the road trip to Sequoia which I've almost recovered from. Celeste and Sonny and blackened com silk and that stupid blue ball George...Trust me, the smoker will be a piece of cake. Looy..for buying a bum a sandwich and the time we nailed Grippo with a one-way deck and the structure of elegance but mostly for everything else.CONTENTS (B00K Astonishment was here to stay Editor's Note Artist’s Note PHoot-inmouth-Note What does “Additional Writing by Eric Mead” mean? PH. on Astonishment NEW STUFF Buck Naked Unshuffling Rebecca Light and Heavy Dime Backlash Improv Nightshades Apple Lip Balm (Kechter/Liwag/Mead/PH.) FIRST PIECE (1973) PH. Vanishing Deck THE MAGIC OF PAUL WARRIS (1976) My Dinner with PH. (Looy) Ilusion : Color Stunner Flip Flop Plop Bayberry Bag Swindle Think of a Card Deep Thought (Cosby) (1996) Silver and Aces (revised) Giant Killer Coin Rip-Off Reverse Flash-Fold PAIOST SEVER PA Fe} > La La’s Lu Lu aka The Phantom aka Cue Cards Ete. (revised) ‘The Dehydrated Deck The Bizarre Twist The Curly-Cue Move (Holt) Solid Deception xii xii " 23 29 31 36 37 4 95 99 101 105 107 Free Flight. Tap-Dancing Aces and Whack Your Pack (See “Magical Arts Journal” Book 3.)SUPER MAGIC (1977) Ultimate Ripoff Ultimate Rip-off: Dancing with the Last Piece (1996) Double Monte Earth Shoes (Looy) Grasshopper (revised) Open Revelation (revised) Three Way Display Machine-Gun Aces (Blencoe/Eng) Pain (Eng) ReSet Re-Set Options Torn & Restored Coin Las Vegas Split Flash Control Ace Trap HiHo Silver Vacuum Cleaner Cards, Invisible Palm Aces (See “Magical Arts Journal” Book 3.) LAS VEGAS CLOSE-UP (1978) Care and Feeding of PH(Martinez) Stapled (PH./Looy) Over Exposure Absorption ‘Aerodynamic Dollar (O'Lenick) Las Vegas Leaper Leap of Faith (Malone) (1996) New Twisted Collectors (Wagner/Ackerman) Gambler vs Mentalist vs Magician Looy's False Count Siiver Slide Cros Twist Cardician’s Blendo Invisible Rising Card Paper Chase (PH./Cros) Korem’s Card on Tie PerpetualMotion Coin Myth Interlaced Vanish Interlaced Space (1996) UnCanny (Steinmeyer/Looy/PH.) 13 19 121 123 125 127 131 133 135 137 145 147 153 165 187 168 165 167 m 75 181 185 187 189MSC. PILCLS OF PAUL (1985) Ait (1988) nnn Classic Eleven Card Trick (1986) Cheap Juggler (1986) ASTONISHING FRIENDS Creation (Martin) Griffin Under Glass Silver Mirage (Blencoe} Within Your Reach (McCandless) Grippo’s Wish. Orange (Re-peeled by Neale) GREGORY WILSON ‘Who the Heok is Gregory Wilson? Wilson on PH License to Thrill (Wilson) 411 (Wilson) Shell-Shock (Wilson) Vanish 5000 (SteiN) «mmm Molotov Cocktail (Wilson) ReCap (Wilson) Minch on PH. Tunnel Vision House Guest Master Index CONVERSATIONS FIOM THE EDGE. 231 233 2H 2a7 251 253 255 287 vow 281 287 269 an 27 281 «285 "289 297 303 305 307‘Small Paul practicing The Art of Sei ‘Asconishment It only took him forty more years to figure out how he did it ‘The Harris family proudly shows off the ‘new suit that Mom knitted for Paul out of discarded closeup pads.found myself hanging around a wondrous little mountain town in Colorado..pondering the }wisdom of focusing my work on the moment of astonishment So just to make sure | wasn't missing something, when a book store lady asked what ! was up to and | said that | was writing a book on magic tricks, She said, Oh..something fun for the kids. | said no, not really..it's Close-up illusions...artistic sleightot-hand stuff. And she said oh, that's nice, | bought a postcard that looks a lot like the cover of this book. So then | wandered down the street and struck up a conversation with a guy at the hat shop. He liked my postcard so | gave it to him. Then he tells me about two cowboys at a bar in Estes who were looking for @ date and one cowboy says, “Il flip you for the one with the teeth.” | laughed, until the guy told me it wasn't @ joke. The hat guy eventually asked me ‘what | was up to. I said that | was writing a book on magic. He seemed a bit concerned “You mean like in witchcraft and goat sacrifices?” | said no, not really, it's Close-up magic, elegant sleightothand compositions. He said “oh, like the three shell game.” | said, “yeah, sort of. but mostly things with cards.” He told me that he knew a card trick and you know how that goes. So | bought a cowboy hat and walked over to the fudge shop | sampled some peanut butter fudge. One thing led to another and the fudge girl asked what | was up to. | decided to spill the beans, | said that | was working on @ book about the moment of astonishment. A reverent glow came over her face. “Astonishment..| love astonishment! How can you do a book on that?” | didn’t know what to say. so | gave her my cowboy hat. She didn't know what to say so she gave me a box of fudge. | had one piece, then gave the rest of the fudge to the bookstore lady. She was already sick of fudge. so she gave it back to me. | told the bookstore lady that when my magic trick book is finished fm going to get to work on a book about the moment of astonishment. She became very stil then said, "now that's really fascinating..that’s one that Ill want to read myself, Perhaps you could give our local book club a little talk on the...how do you say it..the moment of astonishment.” | started to laugh, then realized she wasn't joking. She gave me her home phone number. | couldn't help but to notice that she had most of her teeth All doubts were dissolved. Astonishment was here to stay.EDITOR'S NOTE. Obviously, this set of books covers a huge amount of material written over a wide span of time. We have tried to maintain the flavor of Paul's writing as it evolved over the years, while keeping @ cohesiveness to the overall project. Thus. you may notice changes in style, even changes in grammar. ARTISTS NOTE. Astonishment artist and designer Tony Dunn has included a sprinkling of the cartoon stylings drawn by Dwight Dunaway (the original artist of Super Magic, Las Vegas Close-up and the Close-up Fantasy series) along with a few pieces from Sandra Kort (original artist of Closeup Kinda Guy). Tony Dunn is responsible for all of the new illustrations and design pieces. xiPLT -IN-MOUTLINOTE. lose to fifty effects have been cut from the previously-published material because either more elegant versions have evolved or because the original effect was genetically mediocre. How | ever had the nerve to publish some of that stuff is a source of constant inspiration to me. A select few of these dubious pieces have been included to promote the art of discernment and because they make me smile, Introductions and essays have been shortened, altered or deleted at my whim. The focus has been on clarity and value and creating the illusion that | always know what I'm doing. This illusion quickly fades when you compare my past and present comments on astonishment vs entertainment. You can either wrestle with the contradictions, ignore them and hope they go away, or assume that this time | really know what I'm talking about, which has historically proven to be a bad bet. xii\V hen you focus your entire life energy on a creative concept for weeks, months, or even years to the exclusion of everything else, your entire world view is compressed into this single point of energy where nothing else exists. When the problem is solved the point pops into nothingness and you vanish along with it to experience a moment of self-astonishmont ‘Sooner or later you reappear, focus on a new concept, and eventually you have a book and a bunch of little popped points all over the floor. © Happy day..Welcome to Book One.THE AZT OF ASTONSUMENT BOOK |Paul Haris The Art of Astonishment ADDITIONAL. WRITING BY ERIC MEAD \WUAT DOES “ADDITIONAL. WRITING BY ERIC MEAD" MEAN Everyone say hello to Eric This is what he looks like on a good day. * \V hen I realized the absurd amount of work | was in for on this project. | knew | would need some serious creative and emotional support. So | turned to my good buddy Eric Mead to help with “a few things.” I've known Eric since he was a pre-astonisher, trying to get a loan to buy his first used close-up mat, then over the years watched him grow into a world-class contender. He's spent the last six years working at the Tower in Aspen where Eric draws an ever-growing fan club of astonishment junkies who come to {gasp at his improvisational performances that tap dance on the edge of the unspeakable. Id talk more about this but since it's unspeakable it would be kind of pointless The “few things’ | wanted Eric to help out with mush- roomed into a heroic year-long collaborative effort HERES WHAT ERIC DID, ‘+ Spent an intensive three months locked in a room with me to workshop all of my new concepts. Many of these went through radical transformations due to Eric’s collaborative ener- Qy and ideas. His major contributions are listed with specific effects, but his energy and insight had an impact on all of the new material + Wrote the first draft of all the basic what-fingers-go-where stuff, | rewrote or edited most of these to fit my own obscure sense of style, but many were left pretty much intact as described by Eric. * Took the suicidal job of audience testing the more dangerous creations...many of which went down in flames with Eric screaming at the controls just before the big fire-ball. His sac- rifice insured that every single surviving piece was made of the right stuff. * Engaged in about a thousand hours of phone discussions as we continued to stumble over the outer edges of astonishment..and helped me give the finger to the demons of doubt. Everyone say thank you to Eric..and to his old friend and new bride Shawn for supporting the journey..and to their potential new baby, who with these parents will have a good shot at a lifetime of sustained astonishment.Paul Harris The Art af Astonishment ASTONISHMENT IS OUR. NATURAL STATE OF MIND “if you take any activity. any art, any discipline, any skill. take it and push it as far as it has ‘ever been pushed before, push it into the wildest edge of edges, then you force it into the realm of real magic.” -Tom Robbins ASTONISUMENT 1S QU NATURAL STATE OF MIND. What? The magic arena is a place of infinite possibilities and there's room to play whatever game you want. But just for a moment let's play the game of pushing the art into the wildest edge of edges. All right. Here we go. Think back to your first magical encounter. The seed experience that first excited you then compelled you to do magic yourself. Someone did a trick for you that made you gasp. For me it was when my uncle Paul smashed a newspaper-covered glass through a table top. A moment of ecstatic bliss where every thought was pulled from my face leaving nothing more than empty space. My first instinct was not to hear @ joke or be entertained or to be told a story or to make small talk but to experience that moment again and again. And it's natural to think if you could learn to do magic yourself, then...well, you could have this experience all the time. But then about three seconds later you realize that it’s fun to know secrets and to do things for people that they can't figure out. And suddenly you're out of the astonishment game and into the ego game and with hard work and some good jokes and maybe even into the money game. So now you're a long way from home and from that first virgin gasp that motivated the jour- ney. And now you're performing some of your high-entertainmentvalue effects and despite yourself a profound moment of astonishment is unleashed. It doesn’t happen every time but when the moon is right and the conditions are just so..there it is, a moment of total white- light astonishment. And you look at those astonished faces and maybe you're not sure what to say, or you feel a little guilty, or a bit uncomfortable because it’s stopped the flow of your show or changed your easy relationship with the audience. Something powerful has hap- pened. But everyone knows it’s just a trick and you're “just a magician” so there's this dys- functional relationship going on and no one’s sure what to do with this strange experience including yourself But in general you're pretty happy because on some level you recognize this as a big win until someone says, “I wish the children were here to see this.” And for a moment you feel your whole game fall apart. Doing magic for children can be glorious. But the frequently voiced opinion that the experience of astonishment is a childish thing makes you wonder about what's really going on.Paul Havris The Art of Astonishment If you listen carefully you'll also hear things like "that made me feel like a child again” or ” you made me feel like a little kid at the circus.” And if you think about this, you'll see that what these astonished adults are really trying to say, even though they're not consciously aware of it, is that for a brief moment, they experienced a clear, primal state of mind that they associate with a chila’s state of mind. Somehow the adult experience of astonishment trig- gered some feeling of what it felt like to be a child. I'm going to say this again because it's so much fun using the italics button: The experi- ence of astonishment is the experience of a clear, primal state of mind that they associate with a child's state of mind. It’s the same experience that seduced you into performing magic in the first place. And if you follow these footprints it takes you right up to the crumbling edge of everything we think we are..and just beyond to a state of mind we experienced naturally as small children but that society devalued then made taboo as we became adults. Here's basically how it works, give or take a few metaphors. You come into the world a blank slate. No ideas about who you are or what anything is. You're just being. And it all feels great..because there are no options, or opinions or judg- ments, There is no right or wrong. Everything is everything. That's what you see in a baby's eyes. Pure child's mind. Then, very quickly, we learn stuff. The names of ten thousand things, who we are, what we're supposed to be, what's good and bad according to the current rules of the game. And you organize all of this information into little boxes. And when any new information comes along you file it in the appropriate box. Right now you might be filing these very thoughts into your whack-o ideas box. | under- stand. You're just doing your job. You've been trained to do this since birth. You have thus cre- ated your world-view. There's no particular reality to any of this. But it's in your head and you know the territory and it's where all of your thoughts do their thinking. But we quickly forget what was there in the first place because these thousands of little thought-boxes are stacked up so tight that the original clear space of child's mind is completely covered up. It’s not gone. It's just blocked by this wall of over-stuffed boxes. And then along comes a focused piece of strange in the form of a magical effect. Let's say this book vanishes from your hands. “Poot” no book. Your trained mind races into action and tries to put the piece of strange into one of its rational boxes. But no box will hold it. At that moment of trying to box the unboxable your world-view breaks up. The boxes are gone. And what's left? Simply what was always there. Your natural state of mind. That's the moment of astonishment. The sudden experience of going from boxes to no boxes. /f you can keep the fear-response from arising you have the experience of going from a cluttered adult mind to the original clear space. Gee, it almost makes you feel like a kid again. For most people the moment lasts under ten seconds. Then because we crave the secuti- ty of our missing world-view, we quickly build a new box. The “itwentup-hissleeve” box or the “itwas-alldone-with-mirrors” box” or even the “F’don'tknow-what-happened-but-know-it- was-a-trick” box. And that's all it takes. One thought, one guess, even a wrong one, and the boxes all come back, natural mind gets covered up. and the moment of astonishment is over. Astonishment is not an emotion that's created. It's an existing state that's revealed.