Blake Vogt: This is “Inventing Magic,” Episode 3, officially with the one and only Jay Sankey.
Jay Sankey: Thank you. I know it’s exciting because I’m officially with the one and only Blake Vogt. I’m a bit of a magic hermit. I don’t really watch other magicians or hang out with other magicians, but I’ve been watching your stuff on social media for years, and when you reached out to me, I thought, “Oh, my God, what a privilege.”
BV: It’s a dream come true to get to just jam with you on something. On brand with you being very original and unique, what we are doing together is slightly differently from what I did in the first two episodes. You said that we should each pack up five to six small objects and mail them to each other, keeping duplicates for ourselves.
[Blake reaches into his envelope.]
Here we go! I won’t look. I’ll just reach in. Oh, sticks! These are duplicate sticks.
JS: I’m reaching in, and what do I have? Toilet paper rollers [tension springs]. Now I understand exactly what kind of show it’s going to be. Nicely done.
BV: The fact that there were two in the package was the deciding factor for me getting them.
[Jay reaches for next item.]
JS: I love mouse traps. Lots of emotion, a lot of sudden, inherent risk, inherent drama.
BV: The other reason why I liked this was a few projects ago, I was working with this amazing builder named Craig Dickens here in LA, and we got stuck on an illusion we were building, and it needed a very strong, forceful punch to be activated. And he built a mouse trap secretly into this device. The mouse trap was the method. So I thought, not only is it an interesting object, but it opens up the doors just to being a secret method.
JS: Because once you set it up, you have now, ultimately, potential energy, a lot of potential energy- with which to do all kinds of stuff, movements, or sounds.
BV: [Blake takes out another item.] Zip ties.
JS: [Jay takes out another item.] Last thing here. Zip ties. Same brain.
BV: I have one more thing in here. I have two birthday candles, blue birthday-cake candles. Awesome.
JS: Some items are almost so inherently imbued with emotion that part of me, a purist, thinks it’s kind of like producing a bunny at the end of my kid show. That something is a bit too easy about it. But then I say, “Shush, ego. It’s coming filled with emotion. Jump on that.” It’s a great thing. It’s not like you have to start with a handful of sand and get everyone to care about the meaningless dirt through your brilliance.
I was in the shower today, and I thought of two quasi-premises for two of the things I sent you.
We know the idea where someone selects a card, we take it back and then do a peek. They shuffle. Spread the cards face up on the table. We spot where the card is. Let’s say it’s about halfway through the spread. Now they light the candle. They hand it to us. And maybe we could move the candle over the spread asking them to say “stop.” [A timing force, so the candle is lowered and touches the selected card.] But instead of having them say “stop” with the candle, maybe there’s a wavering of the flame that indicates where we go down and there’s the card. It would be great if it was face down, of course, so maybe a pencil dot. Then you get the “wouldn’t it be crazy?” reveal, as opposed to straight down to the card. The premise is a wavering candle instead of a Stop [timing] Force on the table.
BV: I love that. I’m going to throw another one at you, which is just the idea that a rolled-up card is about the same height as the candle started.