When mechanics become invisible

I remember a favorite phrase of my dad’s, “It’s not magic. It’s mechanics.”

He’d ask what it felt like watching a magician perform a really good trick. One that made you say, “Wow”, and left you scratching your head in amazement asking, “How?!”

The answer, of course, is that a trick like that feels like magic. That’s a magician’s job. Perform the mechanics of a trick so well that, to anyone watching, it feels like magic. We know it’s not magic, but it feels like it is.

Then my dad would say, “But imagine that magician at 9-years old, long before his face was on Vegas billboards promoting his show. Back when he was just Jimmy in Madison, Wisconsin playing with his first magician’s kit for Christmas.”

Imagine him opening the kit and trying all the tricks. They were childish tricks, but to him they felt like magic. So he called his parents into the living room. His older brother and sister, too. He made them all sit on the couch and watch his very first magic show.

Do you think it felt like magic to his family?

No chance. It may have been cute, but it was a long way from anything that felt magical. The cards fell out of his hands. He did things in the wrong order. The rabbit was easily visible in the hat.

Jimmy felt like a magician in his cape and hat. He spoke like one. But he did not yet perform like one. His siblings, if they were nice, played along. If not, well you know what siblings do.

So how does 9-year-old Jimmy from Madison become the next celebrity magician selling out shows in Vegas?

He studied. And he practiced. He learned. And he practiced. He performed. And he practiced.

He did not study, learn, and practice magic. He studied mechanics. How to position his body and move his hands. How to direct and misdirect attention. How to conceal and reveal. How to use psychology and read people. How to entertain an audience of willing participants and unwilling skeptics.

He studied the mechanics. And he practiced. He learned the mechanics. And he practiced. He performed the mechanics. And he practiced.

At some point, who knows when, he got so good at the mechanics that anyone who watched him perform could no longer see any of the mechanics.

All they saw, and all they felt, was magic.

Magic he created with the discipline of well-executed mechanics.

Event + Response = Outcome. Do the work.