Office Depot Mentalism
13 August, 2024
Disclaimer! I admit, I might be totally wrong here. This is just my opinion.
There seems to be this thought amongst many mentalist that your "props" should look as inconspicious as possible. That they should fade away in the background, to not be even noticeable. This leads to what I call "Office Depot Mentalism".
What it means? This means that the mentalist comes armed to their show with the cheapest office supplies that they could find from the aisles of a store that sells things to people working in cubicles. People whose job it is to present the quarterly figures of different items in stock at the warehouse.
These people are not mind readers. They are office workers. They are not the kind of people who are supposed to influence other people's choices and predict their actions. In other words, those people are not mentalists.
If I was a layperson, and heard that person with such talent was to come to entertain us after dinner in an important event. My mind would be racing, 'what does he look like?', 'what will he do?', 'how will he read our minds?'.
I don't know what laypeople envision in their heads, but I'm quite sure that they are somewhat underwhelmed when to them it looks like that the mind reader has lost their luggage, and had to visit Office Depot with ten minutes to spare.
The mentalist handing out Bic-pens, ripping up pages from a cheap yellow legal pad and writing their predictions on a mini version of an office white board, doesn't really scream that this is a "once in a lifetime" event.
For me, mind reading should look and feel grand, it should feel special, and your instruments should reflect that.
You are a frigging mind reader. The last thing the audience should be thinking is that 'I bet that the guy is covering for the real mind reader'.
To conclude this rant, think about this, the people watching, are there trying to forget about the office supplies waiting for them come Monday morning.
- Max Arcanie