Doing Some Magic

Uncovering New Ways To Connect

One of my favorite hobbies I had as a kid, thanks to Mark Wilson, Marshall Brodein and Doug Henning, was magic. I loved being baffled. I loved seeing someone making the impossible possible. My life changed when I got my first TV Magic Set, allowing me to do my own miraculous tricks, right in my own bedroom. This gave me an actual reason to have an audience, rather than my normal, “Hey everyone, look at me being crazy!”

The problem I had (and still have to this day) is that I never wanted to practice a trick to perfection. I wanted to learn the mechanics of the trick as fast as possible so I could amaze my big sister. Just as much now as then, I simply wanted to be amazing and have someone else acknowledge it. The result of this rush-to-perform is a half-cocked delivery that reveals the secret to the trick before you’re even done, and no one is impressed, or very eager to see your next trick.

I’m the same way with music and writing. When I write a song, I can’t wait to sing it for someone, regardless of how much I haven’t practiced it. Or when I write an essay that I love, I can’t wait to share it…way before I’ve had a chance to edit it the necessary two, three, or twenty times.

Ultimately, what I am driven by is my desire to connect with another person—to inspire, encourage, challenge, or entertain.

Sometimes I get so eager to connect, before I’m prepared.

When I write, I work to create things that mean something to me, things that I want to share. To not have an audience would be similar to cooking a great meal and not having anyone show up to eat it. Some would argue that my task, then, is to simply enjoy the meal by myself, savoring each bite, celebrating my own advanced culinary skills.

That doesn’t cut it for me.

I want to have a group of people sit around a big table, passing dishes around, laughing, conversing, enjoy each other. The meal is simply a conduit to connection.

I like how Madeleine L’Engle describes it in Walking On Water: “There is no evading the fact that the artist yearns for ‘success,’ because that means that there has been a communication of the vision: that all the struggle has not been invalid.”

This doesn’t give me permission to throw a party, toss a bunch of random ingredients into a pot of hot water, and call it a feast.

I need to create a meal that people will enjoy, set the table, and get out of the way. I can’t control if people enjoy the food. But I sure hope they will enjoy each other.

That’s magic.

I’m learning that the most effective connection occurs within the context of excellence. People will listen to what you have to say if you speak with confidence and intelligence. More people will want to listen to your song if it surprises with an intriguing verse that resolves into a grand chorus, and then leads into the emotional uplift of the bridge.

My quest for excellence, creativity, and authenticity is asking a lot of me. And I want to keep getting better and better at it, so that true connection can occur—a connection that will offer an emotional uplift to carry someone through their day.