Magicians Who Protect Their Ideas...

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Today's post is an unfinished opinion about unexecuted ideas. It has a divisive title, but treat it like food for thought.

Magicians & Gods

I saw Paul Kieve at Blackpool Magic Convention. He's the wise mind behind the magic of Mathilda: The Musical and the real magic in the Harry Potter films. That's right — Harry Potter had real magic in it. Daniel Radcliffe even wrote the foreword to Kieve's book.

It was nice to see Paul at the convention. He'd been on my mind a lot recently; he'd said something in passing nine years ago that stuck with me. This passing comment was on my mind again over the past several weeks.

I met Paul when I was working with Dynamo in 2015. The project was a big magic illusion like nothing done before. Kieve was overflowing with mindful insights about magic, with a deep love for its history and art form.

At lunch one day, we mentioned someone in the industry who had referred to themselves as a magic creator. I can't remember who the person was, and it was only something we might have seen on their bio.

Back then, the industry was in this weird transition from calling everyone an artist to relabelling people as creators. Companies like theory11 had not long before made artists like Calen Morelli, Dan White, and Blake Vogt into rock stars. There was a sudden shift as more and more young magicians dreamed of becoming artists instead or as well as performing magicians.

But then, and I'm not sure why, people started calling artists creators.

Magicians who released tricks were labelled creators.

This term probably got used before then, but I noticed a shift in language around this time. It certainly feels unusual to call someone releasing a trick with a company an artist today. We'd likely call them creators.

Side note: the sad truth is that many companies nowadays hide behind creators, putting out work that does not merit a release knowing they can let all of that fall upon the creator. Would any of these companies release some of the terrible products they do if it was under their brand name alone?

Anyway.

Paul Kieve, during that work lunch nine years ago. While reviewing illusion plans, he said casually:

There are two types of people who call themselves creators: magicians and Gods.

He says he can't remember saying it now (I asked him at Blackpool). But he sure did; it's the sort of mindful quote he'll sometimes say. Plus, I've thought back to it a lot. For nearly a decade, that one line has put me in my place when I start to fool myself into believing that I'm the creator of anything.

Nowadays, it's not just magicians and Gods who call themselves creators — it's TikTokers, too. I'm not sure I want to fall into that category, either.

My freelance career is mainly in the telly world, in writers' rooms, and on zoom calls coming up with ideas. This week, I worked as a "creative consultant" for projects in Canada, New Zealand, and London. I adore it.

Do the people involved in such creative pursuits call themselves creators?

No.

Most call themselves creatives.

The spelling makes quite the difference.

Part 2. Keep Coming Up

If you've read my magic book titled Only Ideas, you'll know I couldn't give a flying toss about protecting ideas.

Unexecuted ideas are worthless.

Get over it.

Throw them all away.

The fact you came up with an idea proves anyone else could.

I say that last line a lot.

I need to.

Why? Because I'm a creative.

I cannot be creative if I protect my ideas.

It's that simple in my mind.

So what do I do if I see someone else come up with the same idea?

I try my best to get excited.

One of my first big telly jobs was on The Next Great Magician on ITV. The show was executive produced by Derren Brown and Andrew O'Connor.

AOC and his production company were behind almost all of the Derren Brown specials and live shows, plus long-running sitcoms like Peep Show and Fresh Meat, reality shows like The Real Hustle, and gameshows like The Cube.

When I was twenty-one, in what was likely a defining moment, O’Connor and I were talking about private schools. I'd gone to a state school in the UK. During our random chat, I had the idea for a TV show that swapped two kids from private and state schools for a week. It would make for great 6'oclock weekday telly.

Andrew got excited, and we quickly searched to see if the show had been made before. It had. I felt my heart sink a little, and the wind starts to drop from my creative sails.

But then I told O'Connor, and he bounced up, saying,

Brilliant! That means it's a good idea. Keep coming up with more.

What makes a great creative consultant?

• Someone who can give all their creative energy to their client.

• Someone who is okay with providing an idea that doesn't get used.

• Someone who does not keep the best ideas for themselves?

• Someone who can throw up a hundred ideas a day.

• Someone who adores the process of being creative.

Over the years, I've realised that the less protective I am of my ideas, and the less I believe I have any ownership of them, the more creative I become.

I'd even repeat the mantra:

People who protect their ideas don't have many.

I can't afford to be slowed down; I must keep going and being creative.

And look — I'm not really a true and true magic consultant.

I'm not even a magician.

If you want someone who can tell you how to light a levitation based on how it was taught in a book from the early 90s, I'm not your guy. But I know a handful of brilliant, excellent humans who know everything there is to know about magic.

I have a good memory, but it's mostly tied to the tricks I saw as a teen when I watched out for magic tricks.

I adore stories, and I love being creative.

It's so fulfilling and freeing.

It's not for everyone, and I'm not trying to change your mind.

Heck, if you're not working as a creative, this might even be a mantra to avoid.

I bet to many I sound as mad as one of those stock traders in The Wolf Of Wall Street banging on about how you must believe money is worth less to earn more of it — throwing hundred dollar bills off the side of a yacht to prove such a point.

But being creative is my coping method for a life on earth.

And if you want to be more creative, give yourself the freedom to be so.

Remember:

Ideas are easy; anyone could come up with them, including you.

Part 3. For The Love Of Music

You should watch this TED talk by Mark Ronson about how sampling transformed music. I did, back in 2014. I watched it a bunch of times.

Isn't it wonderful how some industries are full of artists fighting for the right to sample and remix each other's work?

Believe it or not, Ronson's TED talk was on my mind in January.

At The Session Convention just outside London, I saw Ondrej Psenicka's lecture about a card trick I wasn't paying much attention to because I was far more intrigued by another aspect of his talk.

He talked about The Conjuring Archive — an online crediting resource for magicians. He spoke of the power of crediting and how important it was for a magician to know the history of every move they practice and how you owe it to the art and the community.

I wanted to be annoyed with Ondrej Psenicka.

Crediting? I don't need to know the history of methods and presentations.

Knowing the history will tie me down.

It'll take away my freedom.

I won't be able to freely develop new ideas if I'm worried about whether an idea has been done before. It would be so restricting and, at the very least, slow me down.

But then Ondrej kept talking.

God dammit it's so hard to be annoyed with Ondrej Psenicka.

I started to realise he was talking about credits and history in a way I had not often been privy to before. You see, he was excited about it. He spoke of how wonderful it can be to track the small changes and additions each magician has made to specific sleights over the years.

For most of my time in magic, it was the people obsessed with crediting who were also obsessed with ownership.

This was always an oxymoron to me.

The fact that the magicians who obsessed over crediting were also the first to assert ownership and tell others they were not allowed to release their variation always amused me.

Especially when half the time it always felt like the idea wasn’t anything extraordinary.

Oddly enough, I remember Rick Lax telling me as a teen that he filmed all of his magic ideas and published them as unlisted videos on YouTube as dated proof he had had the idea. I’m not sure if he told me what he believed this accomplished.

Anyway.

That glint of excitement in Ondrej's eyes reminded me of O'Connor.

It reminded me of Kieve’s appreciation for what came before us, too.

Ondrej was genuinely excited about finding out that moves he'd come up with had been published in the past. He was even more excited by the prospect of someone else adding something more astonishing to it in the future.

It had me thinking, and it had me frustrated at the idea of a magic lecture actually altering my mindset. Maybe there’s a middle ground. Perhaps it doesn’t need to be so clean cut. Maybe I can disassociate magic crediting with the angry magicians. Maybe I could care a little for it all after all.

Ondrej had found a way to love magic’s history without restricting its future.

I might head in his direction.