Out Of The Ordinary

In the course of performing, especially performing magic, I hear all kinds of questions.  Usually, it’s along the lines of “how did you do that”, or “will you do that again”.  Surprisingly, the former of these questions doesn’t bother me in the slightest.  After all, there are a multitude of responses to both.  For example, when someone asks “how did you do that”, I can either take the easy tack and say “magic” (which personally I find lame), or I can do something a little cleverer and simply smile enigmatically.  When someone says “will you do that again”, I can either simply say “no”, and move on to another trick, or I can use my preferred response of “let me show you something different”, and move on to a completely different trick.  In the case of the former, the audience usually laughs it off, because they weren’t really expecting me to tell them anyway.  However,  in the case of both questions, there’s no offense meant, and none taken.          

 Sometimes, though, people will decide to throw politeness completely to the winds and ask “so what’s your real job”, or some variation thereof.  Recently I had someone say to me “you know, you might have to work for a living”.  Now, the funny part of that was that the person who said that to me is a freelance photographer.  We’ll get back to that in a minute.          

 Here’s the point of this: what I do IS A JOB.  No questions.  And a lot of times, it’s more work than many other jobs.  I think that most people tend to see performance as a part time thing, or as something that is just done on weekends for fun.  But, let’s examine the nuts and bolts.  I get paid for what I do.  That makes me a professional.  This is, quite simply, my profession.  And make no mistake, this is not a job just on weekends.  When people like me aren’t performing, we’re constantly going over the minutiae of the show, or rehearsing, or thinking about it.  New pieces, new scripts, new lines.  It’s there all the time.  With ordinary jobs, you go home at the end of the day and the job stays somewhere else.  I neither have nor want that luxury.  At the end of the day, I go home and go over the show again, in detail, thinking about everything that went right and everything that went wrong.          

 Now, back to the person who told me this.  Freelance photographer is just the same as what I do.  Therefore, no room to say things like this.  Both being a magician and being a freelance photographer are jobs that are subject to a lot of different factors.  Market, demand, economy, etc.  My point is, next time you say something like that to a magician, a juggler, a clown, any kind of performer, think what you’re really saying.  You’re saying “I think what you do isn’t as real as what I do”.  Most people say this as a joke.  They don’t consider that it’s not funny, it’s not cute, it’s offensive.  It belittles our chosen professions.  Instead, a better question might be “is that all you do”.  Or even better, don’t ask anything at all.  Just congratulate that person on having the courage to do something extremely difficult, and ask if they’ll show you a trick.  

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