Magicians and Musicians

During the mid-1700s, there lived a German physician with an interest in astronomy. His name was Franz Mesmer. Franz believed in the existence of a process of natural energy transfer occurring between all objects. He called this energy animal magnetism. People were totally in awe of his abilities, including his ability to heal the sick.

Mesmer was found out to be a fraud and his apparent ability to heal the sick was simply due to self-fulfilling prophecies. Today, as part of Mesmer’s legacy, whenever something captures our attention or we are in awe of an experience, we are said to be ‘mesmerised’.

Tonight I will also try to mesmerise you with my magic skills, fellow Toastmasters and guests.

To start, I would need a volunteer in the audience. Since I am acutely aware of the abject fear table topics can strike into even the most seasoned Toastmaster, I have already nominated a member. Mazwi has been kind enough to be my volunteer.

Now, I have studied deeply into the star signs and my crystal ball, which I have brought with me (takes out tennis ball). It is indeed a crystal ball as evidenced by the words ‘Wimbledon 2005) written on it. Therefore, I have a deep insight into Mazwi’s personality. To test my magic skills, I will read seven statements. Mazwi’s job is to write down the extent to which he agrees or disagrees with the statements, between 0 (totally disagree) and 100 (totally agree).

1. "You have a strong need for security and stability in your life."
2. "You often think about the future and what it holds for you."
3. "You have a creative side that you enjoy expressing in various ways."
4. You like to plan ahead, but you can also be spontaneous when the situation calls for it
5. You are sometimes overly critical of yourself
6. You are sometimes cautious in taking risks but will do so if you feel it is worth it
7. "You seek balance in your life, striving to manage your responsibilities and personal time effectively."

To what extent did Mazwi agree or disagree? Mazwi wrote down 100 for each statement.

I have to confess I don’t believe in star signs, and my crystal ball is, in fact, not a crystal ball. It even has Wimbledon 2005 written on it. Your brain is the magician which leaves out and fills in details without you even being aware of this filling-in trick. Your brain fills in the missing details just as Mazwi’s brain did, using the world’s most advanced Polyfilla. For those who don’t know, Polyfilla is the substance to covers cracks in walls so that it looks clear.

But just as our brains fill in missing details to conform to a read statement, our brains also leave out missing details. Bring to mind for yourself the instance of a midnight excursion to the refrigerator. You look for the cheese but cannot find it anywhere! Yet, the cheese is right in front of you. Your brain has left out details coming in from your eyes to leave out details which are right in front of you. It explains why, as some of you will be all too familiar, the Cremora is inside and not on top. It’s just in your blind spot.

To understand how our brains manage to act as great magicians, it is important to understand how magic works. A magic trick works in three stages: the Pledge, the Turn and the Prestige. The pledge and the turn is where the magician creates an expectation about what they are going to do next and all the while, behind the scenes, twists the expectation around outside your conscious awareness. In stage 3 –the Prestige– the magician reveals something totally unexpected. In Mazwi’s case, his brain created an expectation of what I was going to say, and twisted his past experience around surreptitiously to reveal the Prestige— something totally unexpected.

But there are many other types of magicians as well. writers are magicians too. Bring to mind for yourself your favourite adventure writer or whodunnit murder mystery writer. The writer doesn't tell you already on page two who committed the heinous crime and then proceeds to explain in exquisite detail how exactly they proceeded to plan to execute their plan. No, they create an expectation, leading you down various allies of expectation and then outside of your conscious awareness twisting events to only right at the end reveal who committed the crime.

Comedians like Trevor Noah are also magicians who create an expectation about a coherent story that he wants you to hear and outside of your conscious awareness twist events around in such a way to, right at the end, create something totally unexpected. In comedy, we call it the punchline.?

You, fellow Toastmaster, are also a magician. Daily, you use your basic skills in your occupation (which got you the job in the first place) to execute your tasks and responsibilities. But every day we are faced with challenges we do not know exactly how to execute. So what do we do? We improvise. By using your basic skills we can, outside of your conscious awareness to create something new and different than the sum of the parts. All outside of your conscious awareness. Executing your tasks flawlessly is like a magic trick where the magician creates some kind of expectation and then twisting in around to create something totally unexpected, new and different.

You know what’s also magic? Music. Just like your basic skills at work there are also basic skills in music. These are called chords and scales. Chords in music are two or more notes played at exactly the same time. I then proceeded to play a couple of chords in a sequence which I recorded with a loop pedal. Scales are a sequence of harmonious notes played sequentially.? I then proceeded to play the A minor scale.

The scales in music are like the basic skills in your work. Know how to play scales, and you can find your way around a fretboard no matter what comes up. Or even determine the type of emotion that you want to evoke and you can do that at will.

I then illustrated how the basic skills of chords and scales can be used to create new and different music that is more than the sum of its parts. I replayed the court progressions which I recorded on the loop pedal and then played the notes of the scale in any sequence at any time to produce something new and different than the sum of its parts.

Magic is an art, where the perceiver expects one thing while, out of sight, the magician changes the situation to dish up something totally unexpected. Writers, comedians and you, fellow Toastmasters and guests are all magicians.?

There is magic in everything. That’s how the end of this story begins.