Hiatus

It is true that new publications often have a few hiatuses but it still does not look good when a new blog is not updated for an entire month; some people may even stop reading it regularly.

Although it is in the middle of the summer it is not a case of the beautiful weather distracting me from writing. Not saying that there have not been a few very beautiful days.

Neither is it the case that I have been travelling, for the first time in five years I missed the Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas. If it had been possible I would have been there with some of the best and most interesting people in the world.

I have been working on new material. I had a performance on the 23^rd this month and did an entire show with my own material, that is my own effects not only my own presentations. The new effects that had their world premier were Intuition, Synchronicity, and Silver Touch. Then I performed some older routines like Starter 1A, Daybreak, and My Rune – Your Rune as well. I also threw in some examples of the power of suggestion. In all a fairly good sized show I would say myself, although I still don’t have any dancers, the drawback with doing mentalism instead of stage illusions.

Developing new material takes a lot of time, coming up with the ideas in actually the easy part in my mind. And to be honest this performance was very much a test run of the material and I have ideas for a few changes.

The great thing with doing an entire show instead of only one or two effects is that it gave me a possibility to tie the routines together with a single theme. I got inspired watching Neil Tobin perform in the Excalibur Nightclub in Chicago. His Ghost story theme worked very well and the effects became a part of a story. Ghost stories do not suite my presentational style so I changed that, and since I only did my own effects there was no overlap there so it would probably be difficult to see where my inspiration came from without knowing it. Actually even knowing were the inspiration came from it is impossible to see it.

My theme for the show was “valfrihet” a fairly good translation as a title of a show would be “free will” although “freedom of choice” might be a more literal translation. The theme was the choices we make, how we make them and our illusions about our reasons to make certain choices. It might be presumptuous to believe that it had some educational value besides being an entertaining show but I strive to make people think. Preferably they should not think about the small illusions I perform but the great mysteries of the universe and the big illusions we live in.

A few days later on the 26^th I performed at the summer dinner at Västgöta nation. A larger audience but a shorter show. I only mention it as a part of my excuse that I have not updated this blog sooner.

Amazingly I had enough time to write a sermon for the service on Sunday morning the 27^th. Although I should perhaps not say how much time that was; because some actually seemed to appreciate what I said and they might as well rest in the belief that a lot of work went into writing the sermon.

All of this sounds, at least to me, like some really good excuses though I hope everyone who read this understand that you only got my word that any of it is true.