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Archive for March 12th, 2009

Listening to the day…

2009-03-12Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada

Blessed are those moments when the skies open up and inspiration strikes…

When I started this blog back at the beginning of January I wasn’t sure if I’d run out of things to say or really be able to figure out how to say it. Being somewhat obsessive/compulsive I set up a structure for myself with hints at what subject matter I should touch on for each day of the week and it’s certainly helped me keep the ideas and the content flowing…

I’ve been on ships a fair bit since the beginning of the year and because connecting to the internet is typically slow and a bit spendy on ships I tried to get all of my ducks in a row and sometimes upload a weeks worth of posts when I had a decent internet connection at one of the ports we were visiting.

Since I got back and this week in particular I’ve been waking up and deciding what I wanted to write about based upon the mood that struck me when I sat down at the keyboard. On some levels it feels a bit more organic to write the post of the day on the day, with the mood of the day being very much a part of the workflow… Imposing a topic for the day a few days out has worked for me and has certainly allowed me to keep the content flowing, but there’s something to be said for going with the whim of what strikes on the day itself…

And now for a complete left turn topic-wise, or perhaps just going with the whim that’s just struck…

Went out for lunch with my friends David Duchemin and Shawn Farquhar yesterday. David went from being a comedy/juggler/magician to being a full time photographer a couple of years ago and Shawn is probably one of the best (if not THE best) magicians in Canada. I had two topics of conversation that I wanted to touch on over lunch. The first being the mechanics of a standing ovation and the second being the concept of creating celebrity

The first topic, the standing ovation, was something I wanted to pry out of Shawn’s brain as he’s crafted a show where the standing ovation at the end of the show is almost automatic. Now to be honest, I’ve never really cared about all that much about getting a Standing-O, but when you’re working on ships and reports are being written back to head office about how each act went over, having the cruise director say – ‘Dave got a standing ovation’ certainly looks very good in a report and can ensure long term employment.

Shawn had some interesting ideas to share about how he primes an audience during the course of his show, plants the seed, so that if the audience liked the show they want to give him a standing ovation… I’m going to need to work on some ideas of how I can do this in a way that stays in character with the persona I present to the audience on stage, but it was great to sit down and chat with someone who’s built the structure of his show to encourage a certain response and get my brain thinking about how I could craft things for my own show…

The second topic, creating or building celebrity, was something that I wanted to offer in exchange… Shawn’s won a ton of prestigious magic awards and has had a huge influence in the magic community and although he’s well knowing in the world of magic, he hasn’t tapped into celebrity much beyond the world of magic. When asked if this was something that he wanted, his answer was a resounding – YES. I was really pleased that David Duchemin was at this lunch actually because I’ve been really impressed over the years with his ability to build celebrity for himself and then beyond building the celebrity, figuring out ways to cash in on the celebrity status that he has created for himself…

I had to run before we’d gotten too far into the concept of building celebrity but the three of us agreed to hook up again in a couple of weeks to dive into this a bit more…

The conversation is still reverberating in my brain and inspiring me to look at my own show as well as look at how what I know can help others with what they do. Not sure where it’ll lead at this point, but it feels good to have stirred up the pot a bit.

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