About mentalism I know not a lot. In all such matters I have always deferred to the opinions of my lifelong friend Max Maven, who, alas, has been gone for several years. I have a small urn with a portion of his ashes on my desk and have been waiting for the slightest tremble or turn to no avail. These days I engage a much more recent friend, the tremendously talented Luke Jermay, to determine if an item is worth publishing. But this month there is no need to consult anyone because the contributor is Jared Kopf, whose reputation precedes him. There are few styles of magic of which he is not a master.
Do I have any thoughts on mentalism in general? Almost certainly none that are original, however there is still an important point to make. Yes, people are amazed when a selected card, lost in the deck, appears in your wallet, or when coins fly from one hand to the other, or a cut piece of rope is restored. But no matter how great the sense of magic generated by these small miracles, they do not compare to seeming to read a person’s mind. Tricks are tricks, but even the most magical are not psychologically disruptive. But if you “read someone’s mind,” and they believe what you’ve done is real (you’d be surprised how many do), you can make a spectator question their sense of the world and the way it works. So the performance of mentalism can be, at its core, a serious business. People don’t know what to make of it… can it be real? The very fact that they ask this question, and they should at every performance if you know what you’re doing, is why mentalists make more money than magicians.
This month you are being given a tool seemingly to read the thoughts of four people. Use it wisely, kindly, and for their entertainment.