Letter from Teller

No, sadly, not to me, but then again, I didn’t write him first. My friend Grant Baciocco posted this link on Twitter, and suggested creatives of all kinds read it. Brian Bushwood, a magician, had an email exchange with Teller of Penn & Teller fame back in 1995, and it molded him as a magician.

CC licensed image of Teller from Joanna8555 on Flickr

The entire post is worth reading. But what struck me were two paragraphs. They’re sequential, but I’ll address each separately.

It took me eight years (are you listening?) EIGHT YEARS to come up with a way of delivering the Miser’s Dream that had surprises and and (sic) ENDING.

Now, I don’t even know what the Miser’s Dream is, although I saw Penn & Teller at Duke a couple of years after this letter was written. But I’ve been thinking a lot about what I would tell 12-year-old me, whether I’d tell her that our first major press book would hit the shelves right before we turned 40. “Don’t worry kid! You just have to wait 28 years!”

I wonder if she’d quit if she knew it would take that long. (Of course, older me DID quit, which is one reason it’s taken this long, but that’s neither here nor there.) Maybe she’d work harder than I have. Who knows? But the deal is this stuff takes time, and no one wants to log the hours. They’re long and lonely and sad.

Love something besides magic, in the arts. Get inspired by a particular poet, film-maker, sculptor, composer. You will never be the first Brian Allen Brushwood of magic if you want to be Penn & Teller. But if you want to be, say, the Salvador Dali of magic, we’ll (sic) THERE’S an opening.

I get inspiration from video, from poetry, from music. The first story I was really proud of was written after my father pointed to a picture in a Time Life fantasy book and said, “Write me a story about that.”

(It had a prophesy song in it. A friend of mine said I should write raps. No, I’m not posting it here. Or anywhere.)

But the point he makes- that if you want to model yourself after Penn & Teller, or Neil Gaiman, or Scott Sigler, you will fail. If you want to be the FIRST (state your name here) then I bet there’s a slot open, waiting for you.

The Pink Tornado (aka Princess Scientist) and I are doing a project soon, and I’m trying to keep this in mind.

Read the whole letter exchange. It’s wonderful that Teller took the time to help this guy out, and gave such lovely advice. (And thanks to him for allowing his email to be posted, as Brian mentions he did it with Teller’s permission.)