Time to Go to the Food Court

CC Coach Alexander Slemmer and I had a talk recently about something that changes a magician’s situation for good. Not “motivation.” Not a better practice plan. The thing we kept coming back to was much simpler: how to get out of your own head. As it happens, Alex and I both took the same approach when we were younger, and it worked so well it basically changed our relationship to performing forever.

For a lot of you, it’s time to go…to the food court.

And before you ask — yes, I mean that literally.

There’s a stretch in every passionate magician’s life where you can keep refining and still not feel comfortable performing. You polish sleights, clean up timing, rehearse transitions until they look natural in the mirror — and then, the moment you’re in front of another person, the moment you’re in front of another person, the fear shows up again.

This happened to me for years. I remember feeling like I just wasn’t ready yet. If I just practiced a little more, made things a little cleaner, more “natural,” the nerves would quiet down on their own.
They didn’t.

What Alex and I both noticed — and what we hear constantly from serious CC members — is that the pressure doesn’t come from a lack of knowledge. It comes from the way the challenge of performing grows in your imagination during any long break from sharing your magic. Early on, when you don’t have much performance experience yet, it feels like fear of performing. Later, when you’ve performed plenty, the same feeling can come back whenever it’s been awhile since you performed. It isn’t about total experience. It’s about how recent your experience is.

Here’s the pattern: We rehearse more because we don’t want to feel that pressure. We study more because we think clarity will fix it. Meanwhile the gap between us and our experience of actually DOING magic grows, and the challenge of doing magic keeps getting bigger. “Show us something” starts carrying more meaning than it should. A real invitation starts feeling like a test, the fun of doing magic becomes something else entirely.

So what do you do?

You break the pattern the simplest way possible: you perform for people who don’t know you, in situations that don’t carry any history, expectation, or identity pressure.

I’ve always liked the airplane gate for this — you’re a stranger, they’re stuck, it’s casual. But Alex had the best answer. He used to go to the local mall and do magic for people in the food court. They’re sitting there tired of shopping, killing time, drinking a soda, waiting for someone, wrangling kids. And the key detail is this: nobody is there for you. You’re just another person at a table. And you’re doing magic.

In these situations, choose simple effects — not the routine you hope will define you, not the piece you’re “building toward” — just something clean, direct and easy. The first few performances back always feel a little tentative. That’s normal. You can feel the adrenaline in your body; it shows up in your hands. But if you just do that same trick 3 to 5 times, something shifts. The idea of ‘doing it’ shrinks back down to size. It stops feeling like a referendum, and starts feeling like magic again.

For some of you, this will feel like hitting a new plateau. It’s the first time you’ve felt that “I’m making this a bigger deal than it should be” pressure building up. For others, you already know this cycle, and you’ve felt it come back when your performance life isn’t recent. Either way, the good news is the same: you can break the cycle in no time if you’re willing to try something that feels almost too simple.

Here’s the prescription I’d actually give you. Four sessions over two weeks. No more than an hour at a time. Each session, do a single effect for three different people or groups. Keep it simple enough that you can succeed.

And if you discover — as you probably will — that something needs adjusting, make the adjustment in the direction that makes your simple objective easier, not harder. A more reliable force. A shorter routine. An easier handling. The point is to stop letting “perfect” bully you out of “done.”

And one more thing: This is about doing magic for strangers, so don’t start with your family. Even if they’re supportive. Even if they love you. The people who knew you before you were “a magician” can carry more history than you need while you’re breaking this pattern. Pick strangers. Pick places where you’re nobody. Give yourself the gift of a clean slate.

You can practice your way into being capable. But you can’t practice your way into feeling safe. Feeling safe comes from contact — from doing it recently enough that the moment can’t inflate into a story.

After a few sessions of this, you walk away differently. Not because you “conquered fear,” but because you got a few small wins under your belt and the pressure released. You’re not a magician trying to become ready. You’re a magician who just did magic. And once you’ve done magic recently, you stop feeling like someone who practices magic and start feeling like someone who does it. And that’s all the difference in the world.

If you’ve been circling for a while — refining, adjusting, waiting for the internal signal that it’s time — take this as the signal. Go to the food court. Break the pattern. Get a few honest wins. Then you can come home, and build your magic from a place that’s lighter, clearer, and much more rewarding.