Part 8 – Astonishment and an interactive experiment.

Indulge me to digress for a second. A simple experiment of clasping your hands together with your thumbs crossed over, will for 75% of people determine whether they are creative or logical people. The right-hand is linked to the right side of the brain and the left hand vice versa. Now, it is believed that the right hand side of the brain controls our creative powers and the left side, our logic and reasoning powers. If your thumb on top is the left hand – this would suggest you are more creative person than logical person and vice versa. Try it with your friends. It is certainly not a science in it’s itself but is always an intriguing anecdote to chuck into to discuss at a funeral to lighten the mood (ok so not a funeral – but a social setting) This ‘two hemispheres’ model of the brain is somewhat simplistic but nonetheless, as a baby, child or infant this right side of the brain works overtime. Absorbing all external stimuli like a sponge. As a result this right side of the brain tended to be dominant and active for long periods of time. As a result, child love to lose themselves into stories of fantasy and adventure and conjure up a world of imagination in their own heads. (Some go on to be compulsive liars). Children can transform as a white bed sheet into a ghost, Santa grotto over the back of the sofa (with added hole-punch paper bits as fake snow) or a world of other costumes and inventions. They do this, so effortlessly and buy into the reality of the situation they have made in their own heads. Their friends can do that too. Let’s be soldiers. It’s easy. They imaginations are frighteningly active and the reason they are come in covered in mud, leave the house in absurd outfits and at fancy dress parties act like they actually are ‘Superman’, ‘Spiderman’ or ‘Harry Potter’. If you have been to a children’s birthday party – you will know exactly know what I mean. If you can think back to your own childhood, you will too. However, we have to think back to this time, because when we look at children we think “Aaaah bless – he’s having fun” or “God I wish he’d grow out of this” or “I’m going to step in if he still keeps pretending he is Darth Vader, for the 4^th week in a row”.  It is now, that the right side of our brain because less active, less dominant and that creative dominance and activity of the right side of our brain diminishes and the left side full of reasoned logic takes the dominant seat. That bed sheet becomes ‘something that goes on the bed’ and the hole punch bits of paper become ‘”something that dad has to bloody hoover up!!” Magic takes us back to this state where the right side of the mind is dominant. If you perform magic where everything is in sync and your participant’s mind is open, you may, just may, take them back to this infantile state of astonishment where magic is real. The more open they are too it, the way you have framed the effect as well as a number of other factors will extend this period of astonishment and elevate you above ‘the magic man’ to someone has taken 5 minutes from them but in that 5 minutes have given them something back which has been more special, more intimate, more astonishing, and more beautiful then they will experience, over any 5 minutes, in that week, year or rest of their life.