A Master Magician’s Guide to Peak Focus and Flow State | Patrick Martin's Pathway to Peak Performance

Have you ever been on stage when something did not go the way it was supposed to, and somehow something kicks in at the last moment if there is an emergency? The mind goes, “Okay,” and everything slows down. Your mind says, “You better do this right now or it is not going to be good.”

Magic is about transformation. That is one of the core ideas of magic: transforming one thing into another, or transforming a person to feel a little happier, or transforming our reality. How amazing is it to take a room that is at odds with itself and, through the power of magic, unify them?

After dinner, I then did a special show for them and used several of the senators and Michelle Obama. It was one of the highlights of my life.

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Jock Putney: Patrick Martin, welcome to The Pathway to Peak Performance. It is an honor to have you here, sir. I am so excited.

Patrick Martin: Oh, thank you, Jock. Wonderful to be here. Thank you for the invite.

Jock Putney: So lucky to get some time with you. I know how in demand you are. One of the things on this show is that every episode has a charity chosen by the guest, and all of the proceeds from the views go to that charity. So, which is it?

Patrick Martin: Center for Great Apes. It is in Wauchula, Florida, in central Florida. Patty Reagan started it many years ago, and she takes care of chimpanzees and orangutans that have either retired from entertainment or have been rescued from research labs and other situations. She gives them a safe, wonderful sanctuary to live out long lives. It would be great to support them.

I found out that primates also love magic. I did a little show for them, and it got their attention. Patty told me she had never seen them act that way before. They looked surprised by what I was doing, and their attention was focused for longer than she had ever seen.

Jock Putney: Wow. How cool is that to think that they were right there in it and experiencing it? We will definitely get the word out on that. That is fantastic. Tell us about this journey in magic.

Patrick Martin: I have loved magic for as long as I can remember. I remember when I was a kid watching a variety show and seeing somebody doing hand shadows. I must have been four or five. He was creating not only birds and animals, but human beings talking, and I was fascinated that hands could create an illusion of reality.

A few years later, I was learning how to read in school, I think in second grade. We finished the Dick and Jane series, and they took us to the school library and said, “Pick out a book for you to read so you can do a book report.” So I pulled out one called The First Book of Magic. I thought, “Magic? I am going to learn spells and things.”

As I went through the book, it had a lot of pictures, but I realized that you actually had to learn technique. So I learned a simple effect and showed it to my family, and it worked. I was shocked.

At the end of the week, we were supposed to turn in a book report, and I did not turn one in. My teacher, Mrs. Green, said, “Where is the book report?” I said, “Well, the book told me that magicians cannot reveal secrets, so I cannot turn in a book report.”

She said, “Okay, you have to show that you have actually read this book. So did you learn something?” So I did a very simple effect for them, and it got a huge reaction out of all my friends. I was fairly shy, so she told me, “Learn another one, and every time you learn a new effect, we will put you up in front of the class so you can share it with us.”

That really helped me not only get over shyness, but also made me fascinated with reading and learning more about what magic is. I read all the books in the library, and then went to the public library and read all of those. It forced me to read at a higher level.

Jock Putney: Wow, that is really interesting. You started in second grade.

Patrick Martin: Yeah. It felt really blessed to learn something that I truly had a passion for.

Jock Putney: What is so interesting about that is that most people never find their passion until later in life. You had it so early. You knew that was the thing for you.

Patrick Martin: Yeah. There was something about learning about magic and why it worked that really intrigued me. I am still intrigued by it.

Jock Putney: The effect that you have on the audience, I imagine the participants, or however you look at it, when they are just baffled by what you have done, must be a really interesting feeling.

Patrick Martin: Magic is also one of the only art forms that requires a witness to even exist. Most art forms, like painting, you create a painting and there is a painting. You sing a song and you are still singing a song. For magic, if I am practicing by myself, no magic is occurring. Magic only occurs when it is shared with someone else. Both of our minds then agree that there is a magic experience, and that is how we both enjoy the art of magic.

Jock Putney: It is so cool. So from second grade, it starts to progress?

Patrick Martin: That is right. I started reading more books and then started doing shows in my backyard with my brothers. They did puppet shows and also played music.

After I read all of the books in the public library, I went in with a list of books and asked, “Could you order a few more books on magic?” She said, “We do not really order special books for just one person, but there is a friend of the library who is going to be doing a show for the librarians after we close. If you get permission from your parents, you could stay and see the show.”

So I did. There was this elderly gentleman who did a really lovely magic show. At the end he said, “You know, the library has been really good to me. I would like to do something for it.” He went over to a long table covered with a cloth, pulled it away, and it was his own personal magic library. He was a magician who gave all of the books for one day in a private section reserved just for that event, and I happened to be there and realize it.

It became a private library for a while, and I would go to the library every day after school and just devour all of those books, copy them because I could not check anything out, and make notes. I was into art at the time, so I created a woodcut of an old wizard, rolled it up, and gave it to the librarian to give to this gentleman.

I got a card later from the library. She gave me the card, and it was from him. He said he would like to meet me. So my father drove me to his house, and I was lucky enough to spend some time with him. He was this interesting, catchy old guy. He used to have a cigar and a shot glass, and he said, “So you want to be a magician?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “That is a horrible idea. Magicians make no money. It is a tough life.” He was trying to see how dedicated I was, I guess.

When I told him, “It does not matter. This is what I am going to do. It is who I am,” he said, “Okay, stay right here.”

He went into his garage, got a paper sack, and inside there was a box that was unfinished and unpainted. He said, “Poogie Pooie the Magician. He died before finishing this. If he could figure it out, take it back to me.”

I brought it home and could not figure it out. I found an ad that gave it a name in an old magazine that was part of his library, and then found it in a book. It was a way to make a rabbit disappear. I did not have a rabbit, so I made one out of a paper towel, made some ears, and created a little routine.

It was an escape box for this rabbit. I had him tie a scarf around the fake rabbit, put it inside, and then put it on the table. I said, “He is going to start escaping.” Suddenly the box started jumping up and down. He said, “Never done that before.” Then it stopped. I picked up the box and shook it. I said, “Come out.”

Then it fell apart and the scarf flew out. The rabbit had vanished and landed in his lap. He picked it up and said, “Oh, that is right. It is a rabbit vanish.”

He went back into his garage, got another mysterious bag, put it in front of me, told me what it was, described it, but did not teach me how it worked. That forced me to go through his library, do research to try to figure out what the magic effect was, write a routine, and then present it to him. This lasted for a year. Every time, he would then give me the piece of apparatus and something else from his collection.

It forced me to learn how to do research, figure things out, and write a script.

Jock Putney: It is fascinating how this sort of progression feels like it was meant to be. Sometimes when you open yourself to the possibility, miracles do happen. If you have a request and you send it out there, and you are ready to receive it, these strange forces occur that open up doors and allow you to be a magician or to do anything you really want to do.

So you travel all over and provide shows for people. What is it like to be traveling and doing this as a profession at this stage? I am going to go back to the middle, to how we got here, but we are going to turn and jump ahead.

Patrick Martin: It is fun to be able to share something you really love doing with other people, especially magic. You can go anywhere in the world and perform something that is not possible, and people perk up. It pulls an emotion out of people, a sense of wonder that they have usually not experienced since they were children.

As adults, we are supposed to know how everything works. We are supposed to be responsible and make sure we understand how the world works. When a magician does an effect, it puts the audience into a state of suspense for a little while and allows them to wonder, “Wait a minute, maybe I am not in control of everything.” It is this wonderful release of the burden of reality.

Jock Putney: Wow, what a quote. A wonderful release of the burden of reality. We temporarily suspend, and we are in a different dimension in some ways, right?

Patrick Martin: Yeah. We think too much. Our minds are constantly jumping ahead, worrying about what the next thing is that we are supposed to do instead of just experiencing something.

I had the great honor of performing for the Gyuto monks, who are the Dalai Lama’s sacred choir. They are the ones who do the multi-octave chanting. They felt that magic was the way they described it. It was kind of like instant nirvana. It brought people to the edge of reality and then gently pushed them off. As you are falling down, you are just experiencing and enjoying the sensation of wonder.

Jock Putney: Some of those things, you just see this stuff and you say to yourself, how is that possible? How could that ever take place? I think that is the beauty of it, exactly what you were saying. You are not going to know. And the wonder of magic is that it stays with you. The performance lasts far longer than the actual show.

Patrick Martin: Yeah. The performance is still happening in your mind, and your mind is still reliving that experience and going through all the elements of what happened and how it was possible. It is an art form that really has staying power.

Jock Putney: The reactions you get from people must feel so satisfying, to see the wonder firsthand.

Patrick Martin: Yes. That is why magic should be done live. You should experience magic live. Magic on television is great, but to have the actual experience of someone performing what cannot be done in front of you, and you being a witness to that, has an impact that is so much stronger.

Jock Putney: That makes perfect sense. The notion of a 2D environment versus a 3D environment. You are there, it is happening, and you are part of it. You know there is no trick photography or anything else, no AI or something else adding to what the magician just did.

Patrick Martin: Exactly. Really phenomenal.

Jock Putney: And yet all these shows have been so successful along the way, right? There have been a number of television shows that have been super successful. People love magic.

Patrick Martin: They do. And I think particularly now we need magic. So many people are so attached to something else, like their cell phone or other activities that are happening outside of themselves, that being able to see a magician live and have that experience is really relieving. Being able to bring the wonder of the world, just experiencing something, is uplifting. It raises you to another level. Magic does elevate you, makes you feel better, and reminds you not to take everything so seriously.

Jock Putney: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. The notion of actually, just for a moment, having that suspension of reality and, as you said before, here you are.

Patrick Martin: Yeah, it is real though. It is really happening. It is happening in front of you.

So, I have a number of questions I want to ask you. I am going to jump back now to the old guy with the boxes in the garage and all the tricks. How long did you continue to work with him?

Patrick Martin: Barney Vogle. Unfortunately, he had cancer and was passing away, so I was able to spend a few years with him. He gave me his apparatus, but also his friendship. He then set me up to do another performance for the library, but now for the public. He also gave me the idea that you can perform for a lot of people and make them happy doing this.

I had done smaller shows, mostly close-up shows, and after I met him I was able to perform a bit more on stage. I found out something when I was going to a department store with my parents. We went to the Emporium Capwell, which was kind of like Macy’s, and they had a coffee section where they had a woman doing belly dancing to advertise Arabica coffee.

So I wondered, if they will hire her, I wonder if they will hire a magician to do something. I told them that I did coffee magic, which of course I did not. They said, “Oh, show us some.” I said, “Well, it is all at home. I will come back next week.”

So I went home and used some of the props Barney had given me, repurposed them, and created a series of coffee magic effects. It got an impact for them, and they hired me to go to all of the other department stores in their area. I did coffee magic. I was a teenager. I did not really drink that much coffee, but it was a fun way to realize that I could write scripts and things for different objects and products.

Jock Putney: This is a moment of expansion. You are starting to spread out and find new venues because there were no venues for you to perform except for small parties and homes and things.

And that is the person who was the head of promotions for them in San Francisco and introduced me to the head of promotions of Ghirardelli Square. At Ghirardelli Square, they had never allowed street performing before. But the Cattery was doing very well, which was their main competition by having a stage for street performers. So they decided to audition street performers and build a small stage in Ghirardelli Square.

I did mostly sleight-of-hand magic at that time, but somehow I won the audition and was among five other performers who were allowed to do their turn on that stage. They paid us a little bit, but most of it was passing the hat.

At that time my voice was not developed at all, and they would not allow a microphone. So within that summer I developed how to speak to a large crowd, how to work surrounded by a restaurant above me with a balcony looking down on me, and how to work with everyone else around me. It was the best way to learn how to play with an audience, how to create the experience of magic, and then how to pass the hats and get some cash.

Jock Putney: Difficult environments produce new results. Exciting, right? To get the result, and then people obviously loved it. So they were happy to put some money in that, and that helped you. And then from there, what happens? You are a teenager. You are really in this. What is the next step?

Patrick Martin: The next step was someone who saw me and invited me to a conference. That was my first corporate kind of gig, and it was for Apple Computers. I did some of those, and then I was approached by Steve Wozniak to perform at one of his parties. I found out that he likes magic, and so did Steve Jobs.

They were talking about a new computer they were going to be coming out with, so I came up with a way to introduce the Apple III. It was to make it magically appear in front of a crowd. We created four of these special magic boxes that looked like questionnaire boxes, and we had people write out questions about what kind of computer they would most like, how much memory, how fast it would be, and so on. They all put it inside this box. It had a slot on it.

I then opened up the box and pulled out the slips, started reading what type of computer they would like, and saying, “Oh, well, the Apple III has twice that speed and great memory.” Then the last slip of paper was, “We want the Apple to look like an IBM blue.” I said, “Wait a minute. Who wrote this?” Then we saw somebody sneaking out and I had security grab him and turn over his badge, and it was an IBM person instead of an Apple person. So we had him arrested.

I then set his thing on fire, dropped it inside the box, there was a little explosion, the sides fell off, and then there was the Apple III. It slowly turned around as little pin spots hit it, and then a voice of God said, “The Apple III now available,” and started giving it information.

That was a huge success, and then I realized that I work well with corporations and doing this type of thing. So I started developing a lot of material for Atari and many other companies, including IBM.

Jock Putney: So you start to do all these different types of corporate shows. Are they taking you around the country or around the world?

Patrick Martin: Internationally.

Jock Putney: Wow. What was the first international trip that you took to do magic?

Patrick Martin: Probably Japan. I went to Japan to perform at Fujikyu Highland, which was kind of like their version of Disneyland before they had Disneyland. They hired a bunch of international acts to do performances as their entertainment for that summer. It was in a big auditorium, about 2,000 or 3,000 people, and I was working with another magician and we were doing an illusion show.

While I was there, I was asked to give a lecture to other magicians. So we went to another town, and I was brought into a room where all these magicians were in their yukatas and sitting on the floor, and the stage was just a short stage.

I did this magic effect where I took a paper napkin, ripped out the center, gave it a twist so it looked like a little bow tie, and put it on my finger. Then I moved it and it slowly wiggled its little wings. I released it, and a butterfly, or a white moth, flew up and started flying around. Then it flew over all the other magicians.

You could see all the magicians watching it, and then it flew back toward me and landed on my shoulder. It had never happened before, but I think it was because I was the most lit thing in the room, so it came back and landed there. All the other magicians went, “Oh.”

Then I realized there was nothing I could do that was better than that, so I invited them all to the next room and did my lecture. That was a really wonderful memory.

Jock Putney: It is so intense when you are in the moment doing this and it has to come off. Do you get into a flow state? What does it feel like? Does the room change, or are you still in the actual performance? What is it like?

Patrick Martin: Doing magic, first of all, you are trying to get everyone’s focus. Focus of attention is the most important thing because you have to establish reality. If somebody looks away for a moment, they will think they missed something and then they become confused. As Dai Vernon, a well-known magician among magicians and kind of the dean of magicians, said, confusion is not magic.

So you have to make everything clear. That is the first thing while you are performing for an audience: focus everybody’s attention. You do that by being still yourself for a moment, just kind of gazing through the room and watching everyone’s eyes, and somehow that directs everyone. It stops them from talking to each other.

Then you start very softly, which draws attention in. Then you do something that gets their attention so they know this is worth paying attention to, and then you are open to what happens. You are very live to yourself. So it is kind of a flow state, because you are thinking ahead of what you have to do, but you are also with the audience and what they are experiencing, constantly checking back to make sure everybody’s eyes are where they should be.

As soon as someone is looking away or doing something else, you draw them back in and pull the attention back in. There is joy in it. You see it in people’s eyes, and there is an excitement. You know it is working. Then you just continue that and you are in the moment with them, also experiencing it. That is the ultimate feeling, when you are experiencing magic as the magician.

Jock Putney: You are raising the energy of the room. Everyone is a part of it. That is magical in and of itself, right? That is a good way to describe it. It is like you are taking people from where they were into this new state, and they are thrilled. They are having a great time. I have never been to a bad magic show.

Patrick Martin: Oh, good. Yeah.

Jock Putney: Yeah, I have always wondered. I guess I left out, right? That is wonderful.

Patrick Martin: Yeah. I have loved magic ever since I was a kid. I never thought I was smart enough to probably do magic.