Blake Vogt Welcome to Inventing Magic, Episode 8. This is the episode with Rune Klan. Thank you so much for doing this.
Rune Klan This is a great pleasure. I’m looking forward to it.
BV I told you right before the call, we’ll stick to an hour, I’m going to start a one-hour timer now. We can start anywhere.
RK Lately, I have always started with a theme. There’s a reason for me to come up with a magic trick. There’s a point in a story, or in a topic where I sort of need to show something. That’s the way I’ve been doing it lately. I would also just fall in love with an object. And that might be more interesting for this.
BV Do you find yourself performing magic, most often on stage? Do you do much conversationally? When you’re around people, or just formally?
RK Three years ago, I was at a party, and for some reason I was sort of pushed to do something and I was absolutely horrible. So, a week later, I called my friend who has this restaurant, and I said, “Can I just come every Thursday and just walk the tables?” I haven’t been able to do it for a while. He said, “Sure, come over.” And I just took five Thursdays because I was so bad.
BV That’s amazing. Was that awesome?
RK Yeah, it was fun. I think close-up for me at least, has been education. That has been the groundwork and then I can transform that to something bigger. Close-up for me is like the groundwork, the basics, the things I need.
BV You have a great foundation, and you’ve got massive chops, so I’m sure that comes into play on stage as a nice thing that you can use.
RK I really love the manipulation of balls and things like that. They fit my hands quite well. It’s always a bit of a task to make that something you can talk to, like talking to that, that’s fun for me.
BV You’re in your office right now. Any objects near you, or within reach?
RK I’ve been really into cups.
BV This is going to seem set up. Every time I have gone on the ship and grabbed a drink, I have kept the cup, because I have been obsessed with cups lately. [Holds up a large stack of paper cups.]
RK Should we do a cup thing? To be honest, I’ve been thinking a lot about cups. I have a lot of different cups. There’s not a lot of places where you can admit, “I’ve been thinking a lot about cups.” I have tried out a lot of different versions, but I haven’t hit it yet. I have one moment that I adore. Should we try this? What do you say that I show you the thing that I have been trying out, then we can work from there. I need 30 seconds to set something up.
BV I’ll get more cups.
RK I can’t do everything for you, because I don’t want to pour water over my computer, but you’ll see the thing that I’m in love with, which is just a gag, but I really like it. But let me just walk you through what I’ve been playing with… it’s the most impromptu Foo Can in the world. [Shows parts of the routine.]
BV Oh my God.
RK Then I started thinking, so I built this one as well that has one side. Unfortunately, this is not the good one, but that’s where my head went. What do you call that?
BV An inner wall, right?
RK And I can put slush powder down here and then pour the water. The problem is slush powder doesn’t like water in a tight space….
My biggest dream is—maybe I could dream bigger—but a big dream in this is spitting out water from my mouth. I understand that some [venues] wouldn’t think that was in good taste. I don’t know.
BV It’d be all on you if you did it.
RK It is so hard to get water in your mouth.
BV I wonder, with the chaos, if you got enough cups involved, I feel like this would be motivated [demonstrates tilting back cup while holding it in mouth].
RK You’re right.
BV If you were able to have an inner wall back here or something. And then you motivated the drinking action by showing the bottom.
RK Do you remember Hiro Sakai, the Japanese magician? This was maybe ‘94 or ‘95. He did a trick that so many people do. He brings a person up on stage and has two cups, they both do this [spins around with a cup on his head] and then they drink it. And being a magician in the ‘90s, I was young, and there was nothing that drew me to it, because it was just slush powder. I had to have many coins palmed to feel I was worth anything. But it was just so simple. I think there’s a reason that so many magicians do that trick, because it’s playful and it works. It’s very clear. And the different versions I’ve tried for this trick have all been centered around the fact that this gag [a cup with a hole] is really fun to do. It’s like, when you do, “Here, pick a card, was it the Four of Hearts? I’ll be honest, they’re all Four of Hearts.” That moment is a very nice moment to be in, because you give them a little bit of a secret, and this is the same thing.
BV An interesting premise is the idea that you bring out three cups, you put them down on the table, you pour water in one and you say, “Try to follow it.” And you say, “Where do you think it is?” But at some point you say, “No, it’s definitely not there [showing hole in the bottom of the cup].” Saving the hole in the bottom for the end, or they all have holes in the bottom, and then you spit water out….
What about the premise of a Chop Cup, as in, “I’m going to put the ball in the cup, shake it up. You must guess if the ball is in my pocket, in my hand, or under the cup.” But what if it was a cup and water?
RK You could even say, “I’m going to take the water, put that in my pocket [openly pouring water into fist]. Now, is it there or is it still in the pocket?”
BV That’s so funny.
RK If you’re a person who didn’t really know that you can’t hold water. There’s something really stupid about that. That’s funny.
BV Thinking about magic cliché things, but with water as the ball, if it was a bottle of water, and you kept having to go to the bottle of water, and by the end, the bottle was empty, and you crumpled it, threw it or something. It would be a crazy, cool ending if somehow the bottle then ended up filled somehow. Full circle.
RK How to fill up a bottle? There was a wine glass you could buy. You had something like this [a bulb with a tube attached] and it could fill up the glass halfway, but you could let go and it went back.
BV That’s so cool…. If you didn’t have slush powder, they just assume that the water is still in here, right? And if this was another upside-down shot glass or whatnot….
RK Keep going.
BV That was such an interesting visual, just watching you dump water into your hand. It looks so ridiculous. And now you take this [tosses empty fist] and it’s full.
RK And you can do it again with the other one!
BV And then you don’t need slush powder.
RK Let me just walk through again. OK, do we have a problem with this and this? No, we do not. This one goes into this one. No slush powder.
BV No.
RK I haven’t had a single version throughout the many attempts without slush powder. And I hate slush powder. Great.