The key is to make a scene. The presence of a crowd, even of three or four people, looking at the same thing is already something to look at. They say in psychology, if you point and look up at a point in the sky, someone else might involuntarily look that way. That's what I try to do. I want the first few people who watch to be my arrows, pointing in my direction: a person who doesn't really like being the center of attention. I sit at the back of buses and walk to the park without a nod to passing neighbors. I like to shoot basketball by myself over playing in pick-up games. My coffee and beer, I drink alone. I put on a hard hat of tolerance when it comes to the hour or so at gigs. I have to be the center of attention. So to do that, I make a scene. The key is to create gravity. I like thinking of my 360 crowds as asteroid belts, and I this strange, mystical world they are orbiting and looking in on. I like it when my crowds cave in, instead of my reaching out to pull them. My center of gravity- the core- is a small wooden stool I've been calling the Lotus. It holds my three poetry books like a make-shift bookshelf. I also have a pole next to me with a giant sign that says "watch". I stand in front of the Lotus with Hagakure- the name for my deck of cards- out in my open hands like a fishing pole. I would cap off this living backdrop with the Lightning Rod- the short sword I use in my final demonstration- which I conspicuously lay on the ground right in front of the Lotus like a free throw line. And thus completes my storefront for attention. Sometimes I fall into a lull. Despite the out-of-the-ordinariness of this scene, people would readily pass me without a second glance. Some would look away. After no more than 10 minutes, though, someone extroverted enough would be bold enough to approach. They approach me! I love how its reversed like that, because most magicians end up approaching their spectators.

I have no idea why I am writing about all this. I am not at work right now. I was just reading this book called "Pinball, 1973" by Haruki Murakami, and he has brought to light to me the uselessness of being good at something. I think I'm fairly good at making a scene; giving people something to look at, and do, like a pinball machine in the corner of abar, flashing its lights while waiting for someone to stop by and play.That's what I do: I am a pinball machine at gigs. 

This is great to know! This is humbling to take in.

-antidote

One way magic has served me is by making time warp and pass forward, kind of like a good drinking session, but without the hangover. A performance moves my mind into the crowd, and far away from things that sting and upset me. I come out of one 15-minute set feeling different, and far away from where I was before the set had just started. An entire gig does me this favor many fold, and at the day's end, I'm looking around with different, and better, eyes. I had fought with the girl I love this morning, and got irrationally mad. There was no good reason to my madness! But in the heat of that moment, it made sense, and I rode that madness into a turbulent phone conversation and text exchange. She went to sleep in tears (she lives on the other side of the world, so the timezone is different), and I rode into my gig in a funk. I got out of it after the gig. The gig saved me! A few hours of doing magic moved my mind away from what happened, and when I came back to it some hours later, I realized how fooled I was to believe in my madness and act on it. I called her when I got home that night, and gave fully into my apologies and intentions to take better care of her and not get irrationally mad. I got off the phone feeling ten-times more appreciative of what we have. Thank you, magic. You serve me like a samurai once again, and cut down the bad in me that I wish to leave behind.

-antidote