I struggled with that when I was younger, but because videos were not readily available, I learned from books. I was fortunate enough to have magicians pushing me to build a library. Earl Ray Wilcox gave me plenty of recommendations for the library and I'm glad that he did. There are certain things that you can only learn from a book. I'm not saying that DVDs are bad, but in a book you stumble upon things that you'd never encounter on video.

Magicians must struggle in order to improve themselves. Learning how to learn from a book is a necessary struggle.

The fact is everybody learns easyer from a video and that's why there are so many magicians now doin the same thing like clones.

it's not because somebody learns better from a book, that they go to books, it's because the more devoted know the better material is in the books.

it's harder to learn from a book and so if you get material from there you got a head start on the other guys who only do videos [which is the majority].

anybody can learn magic from a video, that's why the magic shops prefer to sell them because even laymen can do it.

how much are you willing to put into our art?

Posted: Dec 6, 2007 2:03pm
O.k I read over my post and I think I sound like a jerk so let me put it a different way.

I remember when david blain did his first show and all the guys came into the magic shop where I worked and asked for the videos of the tricks he was doin and the majority of the videos weren't there, because they didn't exsist yet, but the books he got the tricks from were.

it wasn't till very later that some videos started comming out after the makers went and looked it all up and made videos.

there was a huge demand for the Swami Mantra book that year.

I remember there was even dispute that he was using trick photo or acters instead of practical methods and jon racherbaumer [scholar magician] assured us that they were all in the books....he had found them in his library.

Posted: Dec 6, 2007 2:06pm
And if a guy with as bad a spelling as me can learn from books anybody can!

Its a learning disorder, not a choice between books and videos. like in schook, I never did my homework but I aced every test, because there was less reading. same concept

If your interested in shoot ogawa's wand routine, you should contact him.

Thanks for this thread. Jimmy - Great videos. You have inspired me to do something more with my wand, rather than simply wave it. For thoughts on types of wands. I just made mine from a dowel rod and two bullet casings. It looks rustic, which fits my persona. I stained the wood and the bullet casings were old and teaked.

Check out Richard Forget's wand manipulation
http://www.showvisiontalent.com/cat/magic/forget.html

Pyromagician,

yeh I did the same thing in school,i'm dislexic, I can barely spell, I'm manic, and the words move around and blur on the pages when I read...seriously.

when I'm reading it is so difficult and so boring to me that I forget the page I just read.

theres a guy on this forum who is legally blind and slowly losing all his vision,but can still barely see and he still uses books.

I have tryed to get around this myself by using real life teachers instead and I found that the teachers were using books all of them.

infact it wasn't till 2 years ago that I began using computers internet any thing because of the reading.

but I realized that this is where a lot of information is.

Posted: Dec 7, 2007 1:38pm
Another problem I had was trying to figure out how to do the trick strickly by reading with no illustrations.....i assure you these are absolutely the best tricks in magic.

by the way if you've gottin this far reading all these posts maybe you should try buying books you read on the computer.

haha good point

I have the flip stick dvd on sale on my website. it's a great dvd.

SHOOT OGAWA's Wand DVD is now available on his web site!
It's all in English and 2 Discs set.
Great DVD!

http://www.holyshoot.com

Jimmy, I know this is like 15 years later (:-P), but I just found these videos and love them. I especially like the one with the hat. I'd really like to learn the reproduction from the hat. Is that one that you learned from Tarbell, too?