Kvlt Kiddie Syndrome and You

I've decided to revisit an old thorn in my side for this topic. But first, that title is probably a bit strange to you, especially the weird spelling of the first word. So before we get started, here's some background.

As some of you know, I love metal. But I have a slight love/hate relationship with a particular sub-genre known as black metal. The style is characterized by lo-fi productions, tremolo picked riffs, blast beat drumming, and phlegmy inhuman vocals. The genre got its initial inspirations in what is sometimes dubbed the first wave of black metal. Bands such as Mercyful Fate and Venom laid the groundwork for a preoccupation with the supernatural, while groups like Celtic Frost and Bathory pushed metal music into a more extreme direction that had never been explored before. Most of these bands would not qualify as black metal today, but were simply an influence on the formation of the genre.

The second wave came from Norway and defined the black metal sound. This was largely the effort of bands such as Immortal, Mayhem and Burzum. What united these bands beyond their sound was a strong anti-mainstream ethos. In addition to recording music that was borderline unlistenable, they dressed themselves in freaky costumes replete with spikes, weapons and ghoulish face paint (commonly referred to as corpsepaint). Their on-stage antics were gory, violent and depraved. The off-stage history of Norway's black metal scene is also littered with crimes including but not limited to church burnings and murder. Word of advice, do not do a Google image search for "dawn of the black hearts." Just trust me on this one.

Anyway, the scene has changed considerably since the early 90's marked the end of the second wave with most of the bands involved splitting up or going through a carousel of line-up changes. But the anti-mainstream attitude persists. Dimmu Borgir are currently the most commercially successful black metal band on earth, and for the most part the black metal community has disowned them.

A few years back, a number of black metal bands sent emails to the wiki Encyclopedia Metallum: the Metal Archives. The site maintains a profile of every metal band on earth listing current line-ups, labels, discographies and other information. These black metal groups however wanted their profiles removed. They said that being on the internet was too mainstream and hurt their credibility in the scene. Predictably the site owners laughed at them, denied the request and called them "kvlt kiddies." The word "kvlt" comes from an inside joke among metalheads, saying that black metal fans won't listen to anything that they can't describe as kvlt, nekro, or tr00. I have yet to meet anyone who uses those words unironically, but there you go.

And finally we come to the punchline of kvlt kiddie syndrome, my own little nickname for the tendency in people, artistic types in particular, to reject everything mainstream as bad and everything underground or unknown as good. Kvlt kiddies don't want to share their table with anyone. In part I think it has to do with the availability of information these days. Just about anything can be found with a simple Google search, for better or worse. Without going into details, let's just say that in the process of researching old B-movies I stumbled across a a sub-genre of pornography that makes it very difficult for me to look at Halloween costumes the same way anymore. Anyway, this availability of information means that any hoarded, inaccessible information becomes more valuable via the scarcity concept. You did read "Influence" didn't you?

Magic kvlt kiddies oppose anything that would make magic more commercially visible, especially the retailers of magic. They most often accompany these protests with doomsday prophecies of what catastrophes will befall us if magic goes mainstream. That one is more unique to magic than most other art forms, actually. It still comes from the selfish desire to not want to have to share your table with anyone else. If you know anyone who is or yourself have ever been part of a fandom of any kind, you see similar behavior in those who decry casual followers of the subject matter as not being "true fans" or some other such nonsense.

This is a problem because in order to preserve objectivity you need to continually rotate in new blood and expose yourself to opinions outside of the "scene." Black metal is having a bit of a slump because of the kvlt kiddie attitude. It's hard to rotate new ideas in and a lot of new bands are just rip-offs of those who came before. It's worth remembering that success and recognition are not a bad thing. Immortal didn't sell out by signing to Nuclear Blast records instead of staying on a tiny label based out of small town in Norway that only had two other bands on the roster. They're still making the same music, they just now have a better budget to work with.

There are a lot of things wrong with the mainstream art and entertainment industry. But if you've ever heard the soundtrack to Juno, then you know that the indie scene isn't much better. It's important not to get caught up in the idea that the two are mutually exclusive. Once you do, you get stuck in a rut and miss the good ideas and opportunities that you should be taking advantage of.

Remember, it is possible to pass kvlt kiddie syndrome to others. But there is treatment available.

Sorcerer Shopping Guide Part II

Just a short one today. Only two links. And they aren't especially magical, but there is a point to it.

Great American Days

Wallbounce

If you haven't clicked on those links as you're reading this, go do so now. I'll wait.

Done? Good. If you did click those links, you're probably wondering why on earth I sent you to those sites. What do outrageous adventure packages have to do with being a magician? A lot actually. You're a performer creating an experience for an audience. You can't create an experience if you haven't already had one yourself.

The best thing you can do for your magic is to go out and do interesting things. Make some memories. Have an adventure! I'm not so naive as to believe that what happens to a person is what builds character. It's how you feel about it.

So let me ask you: How do you think you'd feel about experiencing a vintage monoplane tour over the English countryside? How would you feel about scuba diving with sharks? Or visiting an authentic ghost town in the Rockies? If all that seems a bit too rich for you, how about a harbor tour of a historic US city? Or ballroom dancing lessons? Or sushi lessons?

The two links above offer all those things. It just depends on where you live. If nothing there is convenient for you, do a Google search on your town and see what sort of interesting experiences there are to be found. Make yourself a better performer by becoming a more interesting person in general. Let a more interesting life be your gift to yourself.

Sorcerer Shopping Guide Part I

With the holidays coming up, I thought I'd provide you, my readers, with some new venues to find some props, books, and other sundries to get your creativity going. So break out the wishlist and prepare to find a wealth of new items to completely blow your paycheck (or a relative's paycheck) on. It's what this time of year is all about, right?

Our first featured store in the series is ThinkGeek.com. I'd like to highlight a couple of their products and how they might help you.

Bucky Balls
These little guys are rare earth magnets formed into a series of 216 little balls about 5mm in diameter. Magnets have been part of magical methodology for ages. What's interesting about these little guys is their size. They have a good magnetic pull to them, and the tininess makes it very easy to conceal them without suspicion in or on a number of objects. Experiment with a set of these and see where your mind goes from there.

Colored Flame Tea Candles
There are a lot of possibilities here. I have several ideas myself, but I'm sure you can think of more.

Hollow Spy Coins
Given the sort of coin gimmicks already on the market, these seem like a natural next choice. I'm planning to get one of these myself and experiment with flash paper and billets first.

Squishy Shot Glass Set
If you know a routine for producing a full shot glass, this can be integrated with some sponge balls as well if you're performing for an over-21 crowd. That's just off the top of my head though. Being collapsible and portable makes it easy to hide, so there are plenty of other possibilities for the clever magician.

Micro-Spy Remote
Those of you who read The Dresden Files and certain other pieces of genre fiction may recall a tendency for technology to screw up in the presence of magic. I saw this and thought, "Why not?"

DIY Library Kit
I honestly have no idea what I want to do this yet, but I want to do something. Maybe one of you can think of a good routine.

The Zombie Survival Guide
I swear, one day I will make a book test out of this.

Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things
Sneakier Uses for Everyday Things
Sneakiest Uses for Everyday Things
Do I really need to explain this one to you? Technically these are mostly DIY science projects, but a clever magician knows how to use technology to his advantage.

Xtensor
No, it's not particularly magical, but it does look like a good way to keep your hands in good shape if you're into doing knuckle-busting sleight of hand.


There's the first installment in our little holiday guide. There's more coming down the pipeline though, so don't ask your relatives to spend everything in one place.

Mental Magic vs Mentalism

Today's topic comes as a request from Shawn Mullins who asked to hear my thoughts on the difference between mental magic and mentalism.  That's a complex question, and is still argued to this day but here are my thoughts.

At its simplest, the differences are in primary in presentation and semantics.  I don't mean semantics in arguing over whether something is stealing or borrowing or whatever.  I mean the semantic definitions of a genre.  As an example, horror as a genre has a syntactic and semantic definition.  The syntactic would be it's thesis.  For horror, the definition I tend to agree with is, "Normalcy is challenged by the monster."  That is the point of all good horror movies and stories where the monster is anything that confounds our reality while also representing something that we have repressed.  The semantic definition however is made of the sensual trappings.  Full moons, fog, ancient castles, haunted houses, bones, wolves howling in the distance, a sense of dread, isolation, etc.

Mental magic still contains many of the sensual trappings of conventional magic and is typically used to introduce some variation into an act.  Mentalism on the other hand tends to have a lot less glitz and glam and a good act focuses on doing one thing (i.e. mind reading).  Mentalism works best when it stands on its own, rather than being used to supplement magic.

A typical magic act with a splash of mental magic might have a mind reading effect with cards at the end.  A key card location perhaps.  It's used as a bit of spice to create a bridge or finale.  Nothing wrong with that.  In fact, it can be very effective.

But mentalism is seldom so diverse.  You don't try to sweeten a Q&A act with metal bending.  You do one thing, and you do it well.  On top of that, it's typically very implicit.  There are exceptions of course, but for the most part mentalism tends to be a very implicit experience.  This is part of the appeal however.  It gets under your skin in a very unique way.

To sum up, mental magic has more of the material trappings of a conventional magic act and is typically used as a way to enhance and vary up an act while mentalism is implicit and subtle and tends to focus on the presentation of a single concept standing on its own.

Review: Self-Working Mental Magic by Karl Fulves

Today we're going to do the first official review for the blog.  I thought a good place to start would be to bridge the gap between magic and mentalism with a good starter guide to mental magic.  And what better place to start than Karl Fulves' "Self-Working Mental Magic?"  The advantage to this material is the ease of learning, the elegance of the methods, and the flexibility.

One of the reasons I find this such a good place to start is because it demonstrates and explains common, practical principles vitally important to mentalism such as pencil dots and one-way cards.  It's an effective way to cement these principles in the mind.  It provides a nice bridge from sleight heavy mechanics to more minimalist methods that require heavy presentation to work.

I'm going to be honest, I don't often use the number effects since they don't mesh with my style particularly well.  However, the book tests are a lot of fun, and you can also find three complete psychometry routines, including Anneman's original Pseudo Psychometry, which remains one of the best to this day.  No matter your style, you'll find good material. 

It's worth noting that there is a section of effects using confederates, what some would call (perhaps erroneously) stooges.  There's a major stigma to using stooges in modern magic, but let's be realistic.  The audience doesn't care about the method, and most of them have no desire to know.  Reading these effects should open your mind to the possibilities.  Like any method, it's not something you want to be overly reliant on, but it is an effective tool.  Remember, you're a liar.  If you have a problem with lying to achieve an effect, you might be in the wrong hobby/line of work.

Though the book describes its content as "67 Foolproof Mind-Reading Tricks" it goes beyond mind reading and also covers predictions, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, and haunted magic.  Some of the card effects such as Remote Viewing are highly effective uses of basic sleights that can be presented a number of different ways depending on your personal preference.  Since I prefer mind reading and clairvoyance, I tend to go that route myself, but if you wanted to use a prediction or mind control presentation, that's entirely doable as well.

The Instant ESP chapter will provide plenty of impromptu effects for the budding mentalist, though you only need two or three to build a decent pocket show.  Highlights throughout the book include Remote Viewing, Mind Power, Pseudo Psychometry, and Think of a Word.  Include some of these in your act and you have a solid start.

Pay particular attention to the principles used as I said before.  This book is effectively providing you a primer course leading up to Anneman's Practical Mental Effects or Corinda's 13 Steps to Mentalism.  For those just getting started in mentalism it makes for an effective stepping stone as it's lower price makes it a more comfortable investment and the amount of content is enough to keep you busy without overwhelming the beginner.

This is my number one recommendation for the magician looking to expand his knowledge into mentalism.  On that note, I thought I'd point out that below here there's an Amazon dot com link.  I'm an affiliate now.  Hooray for me.  Now you can do yourself a favor by getting this thoroughly righteous book and do me a favor by putting gas in my car.  Everybody wins!