The Sneaky Secret To Unlimited Creativity

You are in luck, I say to the girl standing next to me. We’re down at the NJ shore and I am pointing to two airplanes in the sky.

I “cover” both planes up and say: Pick one of them

I am going to make the plane she selects disappear.

She points to my right hand, and I open my fist and “rub” the place in the sky. I move my hand away and the plane is gone. 

She gasps audibly. 

Where did it go?

I shake my head sheepishly as if to say, “I dunno.”

“You know,” I say, “physics tells us that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. In other words, a plane can’t just disappear. It has to go somewhere.”

I look up to the roof of the house we’re at. Her eyes follow mine. She sees what I see, but isn’t quite sure what to make of it.

“Is that a suitcase?” she thinks out loud.

I squint my eyes.

Looks like a few suitcases. Sure enough, there is a big one front and center but there are two smaller suitcases off to the side further down the sloped roof. 

It’s only then that we hear it. It’s a bit of a ruckus coming from the street. 

An older couple is wandering down the street asking a person walking their dog if they have seen their carry-ons.

A woman dressed like a stewardess is bouncing a cart with half-spilled drinks in it down the street.

Behind her is a man in a pilot’s uniform, looking angry and raising his fist in the air. 

Across the street, the tail of an airplane sticks out of the grass, like one of those giant skeleton hands they sell around Halloween. 

Ok stop right there. Because first I want to thank you for taking that trip down imagination lane with me. 

The first part where the airplane disappears, that actually happened. Many times. 

The part after, with the suitcases and the couple looking for luggage, the stewardess pushing her cart and the wandering pilot, those are all brainchild of one of the most creative magician’s on the planet. 

I was working on a book called Method Impossible a long time ago, and I was talking to Paul about the airplane vanish. 

Without missing a beat, he immediately came up with the idea of having some “leftover” crew and luggage strewn about to show the after effects of disappearing a plane. 

Brilliant. Over the years, I’ve thought about that idea and smiled at random times.

It’s a reminder to me that you can never push an idea too far. That your favorite ideas, you can keep pushing them, experimenting with them, refining and re-creating. 

I’ve seen Paul do this numerous times. His singular super-power is to continue to think about an idea years beyond what a normal mortal might put into it. 

I think I once heard Penn say something like this when he was doing the underwater special with Teller. My vague recollection is he was revealing how a card reveal was done (they hid 52 different cards under the water) and basically said magic is thinking about something for far longer than anyone would ever give you credit for doing. 

That always stuck with me. In a lot of ways, that is all creativity is. To immerse yourself in something so fully, for so long, that you live with the thing and become a part of it. 

Ah, before you fully merge into your couch, here is a side note (actually worthy of it’s own book) – instead of thinking about the typical model of creativity where you have a the loose, playful side going at it, then the editor side comes in and cuts it up, curates the best parts, etc…..what if you thought of it in terms of fully absorbing into the thing so you’re not separate from it….and then when it’s time, separating yourself from the thing to assess if and where it needs to be updated, rewritten, changed, etc. 

Not creative brain vs. editor brain, but a more holistic path forward. 

You’re in it, vs. you’re a slightly more objective outsider giving feedback.

That couldn’t work could it?

I spill the greens on other things like this in my guide to magic and life….click here to find out more.