Spotlight: What can I get as a gift for someone who wants to get started in magic?
How might you answer this question from a well-meaning layperson? Let me offer a few plain vanilla answers first. Then we can move to a heartfelt one, which just might resonate with you, too.
In a prior column, we wrestled with the question of magicians protecting their secrets. A logical response, one I bet you have heard, is a layperson then asking the follow-up question: How can anyone become a magician if we aren’t willing to bring them in on the methods?
The old-fashioned, tongue-in-cheek-but-accurate answer was, “Look in the library, the secrets are hiding in plain sight.” These days, for better and for worse, online videos make the raw mechanics of our trade visible to everyone. But luckily, of course, this doesn’t make the casual viewer a magician.
You will have your own practical answer to how someone can first become involved in magic. It might be a magic kit. There are now some great ones on the market, locally and globally. It might start with a single magic trick.
In Shattering Illusions (drawn in part from his columns in Genii), Jamy Ian Swiss tells us that his father got him started by mystifying him with something as elegantly simple as the Color Vision Box. I have a supply of my own simple favorites in a little “gift closet” in my home, from which I can curate a selection for youthful enthusiasts of different ages. It might be a book; if the publishers wonder who is buying all those copies (a dozen at a time) of Scarne on Card Tricks, which helped get me started more than 60 years ago, well, that would be me. You’ll have your own approach. I would merely beseech you not to select something discouragingly hard; reaching for the moon can turn off the novice. I have many times heard stories from non-magicians that they gave up after literally being sold multiplying billiard balls at their first visit to a magic shop. They don’t need to start with the Stars of Magic, either.
But my own impassioned response doesn’t depend on the precise trick, or book, or magic dealer you suggest. Inspire the giver by noting how happy they would be if they could select a gift—any gift—for someone, youngster or otherwise, that would be prized and last them for the rest of their life. You know what is coming (I hope). I saw my first magic show, then got my first magic kit and visited my first magic shop, at age 8. My mother (who passed away only a few years later) would be astonished, and I know pleased, that more than 60 years later magic is still at the center of my world. In my case, I carry forward that interest by reading, studying, and writing about magic history, and being here with you, rather than performing. The magic history community is even smaller, and more closely knit, than our little world of magic overall. If I review my life, many of my very closest friends have been magicians. And (I checked, in writing this column), in the last 30 days I have been in direct touch, in person, by phone, or by email, with more than 200 magic friends around the world who share our enthusiasm and would gladly do a favor (or I for them) anytime. That is the gift that I received—not a plastic prop, not the understanding of how a trick worked, not even one of my treasured little books from magic’s past. You.
Anyone to whom you speak has the power to bring that same gift to the person they have in mind when they ask you that seemingly simple question: What should I give to someone interested in magic?