Magic Impossibility Is No Excuse

good afternoon everyone

my name is joe turner and about 27

years ago i joined corporate america

fresh out of college and i had a career

as a management

consultant fortunately i escaped

and i basically ran away to join the

circus i became a performer

i do magic and entertainment mostly on

corporate

set in corporate settings and when

someone hears

that i’m a magician a common first

response is to

ask me to make something disappear

the check their taxes a difficult boss

a virus anything people want to have it

disappear that’s what they equate with

magicians

but when something disappears where does

it go

let’s say maybe it ends up

in here all those things that disappear

the socks and the laundry the last drink

and the cooler

what if they end up in this portal let

me show you with

this rubber ball if i drop the ball

right into the hole it doesn’t take long

for it to disappear and like the last

drink in the cooler if i rummage around

enough

i might be able to find it

let’s try it again in case you think

that i was holding on to it somewhere

no in fact if i reach inside you can see

there’s nothing back there until i pull

it

through the portal now a lot of people

think that it disappears as soon as it

goes through the portal but it doesn’t

actually disappear until i let go of it

and once i let go who knows where it

goes

but with some luck i can find it and

that my friends

is a little magic with a wait a second

i think there might be something else in

here i think it is

that last drink from

the cooler now

that experience where things disappear

like rubber balls and appear like

champagne bottles

that’s all a function of theatrical

special effects

and while we know that physics doesn’t

actually allow it to be done

we can see that theater that magic

allows us to experience it anyway

and for me that’s the whole point of

magic is that something doesn’t have to

be

possible in order to be experienced

and think about that experience the

physical responses of surprise delight

pleasure

eyes open neck tingling maybe laughter

or a gasp all of these are very real

responses

and yet they were generated by something

that is fundamentally

unreal that experience that emotion

that mystery that deserves to be sensed

and explored and appreciated before it’s

taken apart

that would be like looking for music in

the piano strings and hammers

it’s not there and what i think is

really important for all of us

is that the seed of greatness has to be

massaged and given the warmth

of possibility and magic gives that

to us what’s more astounding than that

is the way that amazing experiences can

affect our memories

and our emotions and consequently the

way we make decisions

we automatically remember events in our

lives

information that we encounter

experiences we remember the ones that

stand out from the background and that

break the pattern

things that are outside our normal

expectations which by definition

magic certainly is so

using a magical experience as a channel

for an idea or a message is really an

extraordinary advantage

in every sense of the word consider the

following

i’ll hearken back to a time when i

wanted to

find the music in the piano myself

i remember seeing someone take a small

cardboard box i wondered

what could possibly be inside this

nondescript thing well i quickly found

out

was just more boxes more cardboard boxes

nothing special about them in fact

we’ve seen these all before and i

remember watching a man

take these matchboxes and he lined them

up so that the edges were

almost perfectly square he put one box

inside

and just as he put the other one

something amazing happened

now i was a physics major and that

bothered me

i thought to myself well maybe he was so

meticulous in lining up the edges

that he’s created a seal and somehow

the air pressure inside there is what’s

causing it to move

so when he broke the seal and held them

in a different configuration it really

threw me for a loop i thought about

how the they were clearly separate

and as he pushed in on one

something happened to the other i

watched this for a long time

as he pushed and the one on the right

went down and the one on the left went

up

then the left went down and the right

went up

back and forth whenever something

happened to one

there was some reaction by the other

and i thought to myself as i watched

this happening before my eyes

that it was clearly impossible but yet

it was also very meaningful because

these things were connected in a way

that i couldn’t see

or hope to understand and yet

somehow they have to live together

inside the same little box

and that is a mystery that is

deserving of being considered don’t you

think because even though it may

seem impossible

that’s no excuse my name is joe turner

it’s a pleasure to share some magic with

you today thank you

you