Confessions of a Conjuror

by Derren Brown

  There is a grammar to magic which, when followed attentively, ensures the illusion of an impossible event having occurred. The magician generally wishes the spectator to experience events as a straight line with no flaws or inconsistencies, from start to impossible finish. Usually this line is based around the rule-of-three formula:

  Where, for example:

  A = card selected and returned to the deck

  B = cards spread to show the selected card has disappeared

  C = chosen card appears in the spectator’s pocket

  In reality, the ABC line perceived is misleading: in fact, the spectator is paying attention to points B, D and F along the following line:

  Where, for example:

  A = card loaded into pocket of spectator some time before the trick

  B = card selected (duplicate forced from deck) and returned to the deck (but secured somehow)

  C = magician casually shuffles the deck and brings the chosen card to an accessible position, palming it as he asks (misdirects) the spectator if she can remember the identity of the card

  D = cards spread to show the selected card has disappeared (in fact still held in palm)

  E = while instructing the spectator to check her pockets, the magician casually mimes the action to demonstrate (in fact ditching the palmed card in his pocket)

  F = spectator finds card in her own pocket

  As long as the BDF line is the one remembered by the spectator as the only noteworthy sequence of action, and is therefore mistaken for an uninterrupted narrative (a false ABC), the illusion will be secured. The cause and effect have been misunderstood, due to a purposeful manipulation of attention, whereby the hidden ‘moves’ are carried out in a relaxed fashion and are always logically motivated (such as the way the card is ditched in the pocket at the end), in order that the audience does not register them as important and can easily forget them.

  Glancing up at the club where I am currently writing, I notice people (important) but not how many chairs are around the empty tables near me (unimportant); looking back at my work, I see the last few words I have written (important, in that I wish to add to them in a way that continues their sense and grammar without disruption) but do not see the rest of the written page (unimportant, at least until I come to review it), the contents of the Microsoft toolbar above it, or the precise arrangement of the letters on my keyboard below. We constantly edit and delete information, for we would be otherwise unable to function. If something is presented as unimportant, and we have no reason to question that status, it will slip by unnoticed, even if it contains the solution to an important riddle.

  I observed the same false ABC phenomenon when talking to a psychic healer who had carried out healing on a friend following a scalding of the friend’s arm at a party. She was proud of the fact that her intervention had been successful: the poor chap, after having had a boiler explode before him, would have otherwise needed hospital treatment. Her line of understanding ran thus:

  Whereas upon talking to other guests who had been at the party, a presumably more accurate line of events emerged:

  This suggested a less miraculous reason for the healing. B, though, in this fuller explanation, was only incidental to the healer, and did not feature along her line of understanding. Conversely, to the other guests at the party, the plot was equally as simple:

  One way of allowing actions to pass under the spectators’ radar is to perform them while physically relaxing, directly after an important revelation. Thus, as I now sat down to resume my position at the table and give my small audience a moment to respond to the appearance of the cards, I was, during this dip in attention, able to set up the next stage of the trick. I found the short card by riffling down the corner of the deck with my thumb, then allowed a further card to spring off the same thumb for each letter that spelt Benedict’s card, before casually cutting the deck there with one hand. As my thumb counted to the letters being spelt in my head, my other hand brushed away imaginary crumbs from the taut, crumbless tablecloth. I then pulled my seat forward with both hands (apparently: the counting hand merely dipped under the seat and appeared to pull it forward while my foot did the job on that side, and the momentary disappearance of the deck allowed for an unseen, one-handed cut to be performed at the side of the chair). I also smiled and looked at Joel, Benedict and Charlotte, each in turn, as I carried out these moves, to keep their eye-line away from my hands and level with mine.

  The One-Handed Cut

  I took each of their three cards and had them call ‘stop’ as I riffled openly down the side of the deck and placed them into the centre at their chosen points. Through a series of one-ahead mathematical ruses and calculations, the relative final placements of the cards in the deck could be engineered, despite the apparent randomness. A final, open cut of the deck at that short card brought all the cards into their required positions.

  Benedict’s card was the last to be inserted. Whereas the other two, enjoying the game, were happy to call ‘stop’, Benedict, resentful of his enforced participation, had raised his eyebrows nonchalantly and, looking at the back of his hand, mumbled a loath, almost inaudible, ‘There’ instead.

  I inserted his card at the reluctantly chosen point, and then, just as I was performing the final cut, and just as the bottom half, lifted a little into the air, was starting to be lowered on to the tabled top half, Charlotte looked at Benedict and said, ‘Hey. Stop being an arse.’

  The two halves slapped together and lay there, one on top of the other, a little misaligned.

  I removed my hands.

  I glanced up at Benedict, then looked back at the cards.

  Just as I was about to neaten the piles and bring the broken edges of the deck into a smooth, flush formation, I was halted by the sudden rising of Benedict from his sofa. He stood up, patted his trouser pockets, and picked up his mobile phone from the table. He murmured under his breath, something about having to call somebody, and in order to let him out I had to shift my chair a little to my right.

  ‘Oop,’ I said, lightly, as if entirely oblivious to the tension his sudden departure had left in the air.

  ‘Don’t worry about him,’ Charlotte said a moment later, and looked back at me, her eyes fixing on mine from behind her tortoiseshell frames, before glancing up to note his path to the front porch from where he was presumably going to make his call.

  Joel, across the table from her, looked at neither of us, but silently squared his cocktail napkin to be precisely parallel to and equidistant from both sides of his corner of the table, and then picked up his wineglass and set it neatly and exactly upon the napkin’s centre.

  My polite ‘Oop’ had been a message to Benedict and the group that the statement made by his abrupt leaving had gone unheard, as if I were dim enough not to sense his displeasure or respond to it. It was rather like the light obliviousness I had feigned some time before when talking to an opinionated drunk at a party. As is not uncommon, she was an ex-girlfriend of the host who had not made her peace with her former paramour and was only able to communicate to guests via barbed comments and bizarre left-field hostility. Real conversation was impossible, yet dialogue with her was uncomfortably sustained by the fact that no exit point was offered; instead I busied myself with not appearing at all offensive to one so unusually ready to be offended (an offence I might have committed by walking away). Conversely, I was suffering the pangs of normal social commitment, and feeling faintly obliged to respect the level of frank ingenuousness at which I was being addressed: a duty to remain in private conversation with the imposing confidante, while simultaneously being desperate to flee. My response was to appear blindly insensitive to any barbs or digs being made, to treat everything as a light joke, and to agree flaccidly with all comments without committal. My cheeks and mouth soon suffered a dull ache from sustaining the necessary smile, as did my arm from being crossed so long between us with its drink. The situation was worsened by the inebriated guest muttering everything
under her breath while frequently looking away to take in the room, and with an unevenness of timbre that made it very hard even to hear the acerbic non-sequiturs that comprised these dark glimpses of her toxic mental state.

  Thus I agreed banally with spiteful snippets I could barely hear, and did myself another in a series of injustices that constitute much of the average party experience. There is a sliding scale of insincerity that includes most conversations held at such gatherings. Even when we warm hugely to a fellow guest, this affection is more commonly a reflection of the easy flow of conversation and his warm enthusiasm for our interests than any sense of honest or truly open exchange.

  The party experience has become more pleasant since arriving as part of a couple. For many years I would find excuses to avoid such events, and where I did attend, I would sustain pleasant chatter for an hour or so before yielding to a kind of dissociated exhaustion that would find me sunk deep in a sofa, watching the guests chatter and laugh, with me feeling grossly incapable of normal human interaction. This rapid detachment was largely caused by being unable to talk for long about any subject other than my own interests: confusing likeability with being a ‘fascinating character’, I would try too hard to force the impression of the latter while undoubtedly failing grandly at the former. Also, without the accompaniment of a partner, there were only the harshly contrasting alternatives of sustained social engagement and detached observation of the group, and it did not take long in this removed mode before I started to feel that my attendance was a terrible mistake. I learnt quickly to leave once I had reached this point, rather than remain staring at the chatting guests in a heavy-hearted slump.

  The ‘Oop’, therefore, was delivered with the forced lightness we might assume when we are eager to show that we are not experiencing the embarrassment we might be presumed to feel.

  I live currently on the first floor of a small East London apartment building, whose floors are served, unsurprisingly, by a lift. I ride it down to the ground level if, when walking past the electronic display situated to the right of the doors, I see that the car is waiting on, or descending from, a floor no higher than the third; any higher and I consider it an indulgence to wait for the lift to arrive.* A common occurrence is for the lift to open and contain someone who, having pressed the ‘G’ button higher up on their own floor, and having watched the numerical display count down slowly from their number to ‘1’, has mistaken the first floor for their destination, and is intending to step out. At which point they tend to:

  1. Notice me, and in stepping forward make half a step to the side, with a view to circumnavigating the obstruction I present to their exit. I, expecting them to remain in the lift and continue their ride down to the ground floor, am stood quite close to the door, and do not make the expected, courteous gesture of stepping to one side in order to let them out. Thus, in the split-second before they realise their mistake, they experience surprise (at finding they have to sidestep me) and annoyance (at my immobility).

  2. Understand that they have arrived not on the ground floor, but have been stopped at the floor above (by my pressing the button and interrupting their private descent to the foyer). Therefore they step back into the car, sometimes muttering an apology, embarrassed at their clumsy and ill-judged attempt to exit the lift.

  3. Suffer for the remaining ride the double awkwardness of (a) sharing the confined space with someone unknown to them, and (b) that ‘someone’ having just seen them make an inelegant and faintly amusing error.

  There is an undeniable pleasure to be felt in this situation, which comes from a number of sources:

  1. I have become used to people making this mistake, and now often, a split-second before the door opens, wonder if someone will be in the lift (probability: 30%), and if so, whether they will make this mistake on this occasion (probability, given that there is someone in the lift: 70%).

  2. If they do, I enjoy their little dance. (Combined probability: 21%.)

  3. There is a power to be felt in knowing that they will be mentally reviewing the event as we descend together, slightly embarrassed with the whole thing. Particularly so, for some reason, if they are dressed in expensive designer clothes (probability: 50%): somehow the ease with which their efforts to attain elegance can be reduced to nothing before even leaving the building leave me smiling to myself on these rare occasions when all these events combine (probability: 10.5%) and we are lowered together for the remaining short distance to the lobby.†

  ‘Oop’ is also the interjection of choice for the brief and uncomfortable exchange at the lift door. It is said to ease the tension: delivered with a gentle smile, it acknowledges the mistake but without embarrassment or annoyance on my part. Yes, they have stepped out at the wrong floor, but it is an easy slip-up to make. Sometimes I extend it to the cheery ‘Oop, sorry – one more!’ as I step in to press the ‘G’ button myself. Very rarely, and normally when the passengers in question belong to the community of American women who live in the building, they reply with a self-deprecating chuckle, or ‘Oh, I always do that’, which, in openly accepting that the minor blunder was entirely their fault, removes any possibility of residual tension from the brief balance of the journey.

  The friendly way I try to step into the lift on these occasions reminds me of the way in which, upon walking away from people after they have made an amusing remark to end a conversation, I will often retain an artificially held smile on my face and allow them to see it by turning my head a little to render the raised cheeks and upturned mouth-corner visible in the quarter-profile. This came from my own tendency when younger to turn and watch people when they walked away from me to see if they were still smiling at a comment I had made, or whether the smile dropped from their face the second they presumed they had left my sight. I would be so delighted to see that a smile had lingered, and that I was genuinely being found witty rather than just politely tolerated, and I still find myself on occasion looking back at a person I have just walked away from to see if he or she has genuinely enjoyed some comment I have uttered. Thus, I do the same for others: a person on the street calls out a remark I have heard many times before, and I will laugh heartily as if I have just heard it for the first time; continuing on my route, I will retain a grin and turn a little to make its edges visible, in case it is normal for other people to glance back in the same hopeful way.

  ‘Oop’ (or, for that matter, ‘Oops’), when said as a reaction to someone else’s mistake (such as an ill-timed exit from a lift), also shows an empathy with the person: after all, the ‘Oop’ should really come from them. For us to offer it first is to diminish their embarrassment: if we are happy to share in it and accept some of the blame, then there is less reason for them to be concerned. It is interesting that we have learnt to offer this friendly little sound as a way of mitigating the awkward impact of these moments, and that it sounds natural for us to make the sound – which says, in essence, ‘Silly me!’ – when it is they, not we, who have been silly. In Germany they say ‘Hoppla!’, which sounds odder still: an ‘Oop’ slipping out at least feels so close to an ‘Oh’ to seem quite a normal little noise to make; this German word feels entirely contrived in comparison. When I lived in that country I took great pleasure in using it. I would step on to a bus and let it spring from my mouth in a flourish as I circumvented a native. The word leaps high and then somersaults on the tongue, finishing with arms wide open in a classic applause-cue. It is a verbal circus-call, used for making lions do tricks, yet can also be helpful when sidestepping elderly Bavarian ladies descending from public transport.

  I did not want the group before me to feel any discomfort on my account; hence the mumbled ‘Oop’communicated only ease and fellowship from my side. Neither did I feel any genuine discomfort. My only concern was how easily the trick could continue with one participant missing.

  Participant. The accepted word in magical literature describing the person taking part in a trick is a spectator. This is an interesting symptom
of much of what is wrong with magic, at least in my eyes. A spectator watches, passively. She may be described in the tomes of thaumaturgy as picking cards and handling objects when asked, but that label consistently casts her as one of a series of props designed to act according to the magician’s whims. As a spectator, she is detached, an accidental part of the process, a passer-by, and the magic seems designed with her involvement as a peripheral adjunct, an afterthought. This is at the heart of the non-magic of the tiresome type of conjuror, the pattering, prattling devotee of an eccentric and childish craft. He performs, ultimately, for himself. People pick cards on cue, but they are neither transported nor feel wonder; if they are impressed it is entirely for the benefit of the performer. They are disposable, a mere convenience when practice mirrors are unavailable. The magician speaks with rehearsed spiel but does not engage; he does not reach those in his audience because he has not learnt to care about them. His starting point for a new trick is a sleight that excites him in its ingenuity, and the finished trick barely moves beyond that point; he does not begin with a peculiar experience in mind for the participant.

  Participant. A participant is active, a part of the process, and a necessary component of the magical experience. This is how it should be. No magic happens unless the participant perceives it as magical, so she can never be a mere spectator. The entire escapade fails unless she is held in mind from the very conception of the trick, her thoughts and desires anticipated from the first stage, and the waters of her ongoing experience (her interest, her boredom, her delight, her scepticism) navigated at every move. She must be transported, entertained, and should experience the elements of childlike wonder and grown-up intellectual astonishment, as well as the mixture of belief and disbelief, that can combine to produce magic.