Summer Solstice

“All people dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind, wake in the morning to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people, for they dream their dreams with open eyes, and make them come true.”
–T.E. Lawrence (AKA Lawrence of Arabia)

Greetings Friends and Magi…

Summer Solstice is upon us, a time of enchantment and metamorphosis, a time of long sun-drenched days and short, balmy nights, perfect for magic! William Shakespeare, writing of Solstice night in A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream, said, “Whatever is
dreamed on this night, will come to pass.” As magicians, many of us find our inspiration from our dreams. These next few nights are especially good ones for dreaming in new ideas. Before retiring for the night, place a notebook, a pen, and a small flashlight in easy arm’s reach from your bed. Before going to sleep, tell yourself, “I will remember my dreams. I will remember my dreams. I will remember my dreams.” As soon as you wake up, even if it’s in the middle of the night, jot down a few notes or keywords about whatever you remember from your dreams— a phrase, a feeling, or a small snip of a dream can give you a good place to start from. If, on waking, you remember nothing about your dreams, don’t worry, just write down a few sentences about what you might have dreamt, if you could remember….

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” –Eleanor Roosevelt, American First Lady

Here in the waking world, Jeff is looking forward to being up at Lake Tahoe this weekend. He is doing a video shoot with Max Maven and Paul Potassy, and is excited about working with Louis and the gang at L&L Publishing to help them put together something wonderful. In a few weeks, we’ll be traveling to Sweden for the FISM Convention, where Jeff and I will be performing, lecturing and teaching a 5 hour seminar. If you’re planning to be at FISM, be sure to say hi! When we return from FISM, we’ll be getting ready for our Extended Master
Class here in Las Vegas, and we look forward to seeing some of you here!

Make the dream of your life a sweet and magical one, and remember that we are the dreamers, the dream and the dreaming….

Abbi McBride

Museletter from Eugene Burger

This month, Jeff’s magic teacher and the Dean of the Magic and Mystery School writes to us about his dreams and magical formulas for life and magic.

A Muse letter from Eugene Burger:

“The first step in following our dreams is waking up.”

Hello everyone, this is Eugene Burger. The words I have quoted above came to me in Amsterdam this past spring when Jeff McBride and I were conducting our Master Class. We all have dreams, but to make them a reality we really do need to wake up and put them in practice.

Although I live in Chicago, I spend a considerable time of the year in Las Vegas where I have my own room in Jeff’s House of Mystery.

The first thing I do each day is come downstairs and have coffee with Jeff and Abbi and we share our dreams from the night before. Jeff keeps extensive dreams journals as does Abbi and it’s fascinating to see how sometimes the images and symbols in dreams find their place in our performances, shows, and even our teaching workshops. Do you keep a dream journal? Do you pay attention to your dreams? If you never have, you might find it a surprisingly rewarding experience.

I love visiting Las Vegas. Not only because I have many magic friends here, but because I love teaching magic with Jeff and Tobias. In fact, we are in the middle of a Master Class as I write these words. Last night, we took the class to see the Lance Burton show and Lance kindly invited the entire class back to his dressing room after the show for a pizza party, where he answered many questions from the students.

Speaking of dreams, Lance shared the story behind the creation of his world famous Double Levitation. On stage, he tells the audience the inspiration for the effect began in a dream, in fact it did. Lance told our students that each night before he went to sleep, he would visualize the Floating Lady illusion to the Pink Floyd song “Comfortably Numb”. After years of this creative visualization technique, he brought his dream into reality. Dreams do come true and they take a lot of work and thought and patience. That’s what it takes to become one of the great magicians of our age.

Today, we saw the Mac King Show and Mac also met with the class and parents and families between his shows. He shared some delightful stories of things that had gone wrong during his career. When these “terrible” things happened to Mac during his performances, they weren’t funny at all, but time and distance has turned the lead of tragedy into the gold of humor. As Jeff would say, “Tragedy plus time equals comedy.” This is a formula for creativity.

Have you ever had an embarrassing thing happen to you during one of your magical performances? I suspect you have. All of us have and we can either beat ourselves up and become very negative about these “horrible” situations or we can learn from them – and grow. As Channing Pollock once said to me, “Eugene, you can judge a magician by how well they cover their mistakes”. I’ve always remembered this because he didn’t say we could judge a magician by their successes or by their “perfection.” Channing was much more realistic. He wisely understood that we all make mistakes and that part of the art of magic is learning to deal with them creatively. This reminds me of something Gurdjieff said: We can’t always change what happens to us, but we can change how we respond.

It really is wonderful that Lance, Mac, and the late, great Channing Pollock have supported Jeff and my teaching by passing on their wisdom to our students.

Well it’s getting late now, and I really should go to bed so I’m alert for tomorrow’s class. Perhaps I’ll have a new dream of magic.

Good night and sweet dreams.

–Eugene