YouSaid · the spoken record

Simon Coronel

lines on the record: 195
first: 2023-06-28
most recent: 2023-06-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Sure. So under Close Up Magic, they have general close up magic. They call it micro magic, which is just European for close-up magic, basically. Parlor magic, which is more medium scale, and then card magic as its own category as a specialist”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ryan, and then thank God it's over, and Shute and I had been joking for weeks about we were so tired. We were giving it everything we had. We're doing this once. This is also the only time I'm ever going to do this again. I'm never going to enter another magic competition after that at the time is what I'm thinking. I'm like, this is the shot, so I want to give it everything. I want to at least give it the chance to just bloom and to be whatever it's going to be. I don't want to think what if. I want to just give it a shot because this is either way, this is the end of this 10-year story arc for this routine, one way or the other. And so now Shoot and I like, oh my God, we're done. Thank God. Now we can actually join the party and celebrate and relax. And it's great. But the way this thing works is they do all the preliminaries. There's eight different categories, three subcategories of close up magic, five subcategories of magic. Would you mind just...”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I feel awkward about it. Like, it's that weird duality, it's lovely, like the recognition is beautiful. But also, I also feel very awkward about it at the same time. I'm a shy ass introvert. I mask very effectively and pretend not to be, but I'm shy and awkward in most situations. And this is definitely one of them. So I'm like, don't look at me. But also thanks. I really appreciate it. It's complicated. So finally, I'm like, all right, and I just go backstage. And then the moment happens, the riot happens. The friends like, come out and look at this. I'm like, oh my God. Crowd is gather around the person with the object in they're taking photos and examining it. And this, and there's a whole bunch of photos out there of people just looking like they're getting high.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Disqualified. And I think the theory is you're professional. You should be able to keep within a five minute range, get it together. And I still remember when everyone's standing up to applaud, my main thought is, wait, is this going to put me over time? Does this discount as my God, can I like, is this, I don't know, they're still applauding. But luckily there's a timer I can look at and we're only at like eight minutes 50. So I'm like, oh, okay, thank God. All right, we're fine. We're fine. We can accept the applause. It's great.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it goes okay, and the new bit goes fine, it goes really well. It's one of those rare beautiful moments where the thing goes as you planned. Usually things don't. It takes a lot of iterations to get through it. It just works. And it's just, oh, it's deeply satisfying. I do the thing. I give the person to the person. They go back. All the lines land, all the moments hit. And I go, you know, then blah, thank you. You know, good night. And it gets the whole room stands up to applaud. It gets a full standing ovation, which again, I did not expect. I was just trying to focus on, I just want to do the thing and not shit the bed. Just going to get through this with my janky ass half-written script and remember the line that Jared gave me and like just trying, I'm just completely focused on getting through it. Again, not knowing how it's going to be perceived. I've learned that I just don't know. It might be great. It might be terrible. And the main thing, they have very strict time limits. Minimum five minutes, maximum 10 minutes, a minute over, a second over under...”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everyone there is most people, there's a few narcissists and shitheads and everything, but mostly people are there worshiping at the altar of wonder. They want to feel the thing. They want to see people be able to do the thing. And I know that as well, and that also helps me. I'm going out there to a warm room. It's always warm. People want to be amazed. They want you to be good. And you just have to not screw it up. So I go out and I do the thing and it goes okay and I bring the person up and I do the thing. I'm going to create this moment that then is going to linger beyond the end of it.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The audience applauds supportively in that sort of nice, quiet applause to say they know how scary it is and how much bravery it takes to walk out on that stage. And it's like we see you, we got you. Even if we're hoping someone else wins, we want everyone to at least be able to do a great job. We want to see something amazing. And it's just, every damn time it makes me choke up slightly when I see that happen. My favorite damn thing about the whole thing. And”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Other stories. And one thing I love actually that's relevant at FISM, I've been there five times. I've competed three times, attended two times, and something that has happened every single time is a contestant will go out and begin their act and something will go wrong. They'll have a fumble or a clear issue or a lighting problem that they have proposed. And you've got this audience of up to 3,000 magicians from all over the world. And every time this happens, someone has kind of an awkward fumble moment.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, exactly. Yeah. And I am often that for other friends as well. And so we all take turns. Like, who's just on it and gets it and is there? When Dom went on, America's got talent. I was his special agent. I'm like, we're there. We're ready. Just going to deal with whatever's going to happen. And so he's there, and it's great, and it's calm. And then I do the stupid video joke because I've realized from experience going on stage at something like that is terrifying. And I've realized that it helps me to have something else to think about. And that's part of the reason why jokes like that are funny little side projects. There are a couple of other ones that”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“These grizzled veterans of this bizarre art form just going, yeah, what's this want to be? And we figure out sort of a line for it. I'm like, that's pretty good. Thanks. Thanks, man. We'll see if I remember it. In the moment, because I don't know. We don't know what's going to happen And then backstage, and again, a couple of friends, Dom and Shute, are there going, okay, we have this term being the special agent, which again is like the non-violent Jason Bourne, just the person who's capable, motivated, and just on top of whatever inevitably is going to go wrong. Something is.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's this one line. I kind of want to nail the ending line. I know what I'm going to open with, and I know a bunch of key phrases that are going to be good. And I'm confident I've got through this many times in rehearsal, and it's always a little bit different, but it's fine. There's this one bit at the end that it's a chance to give her the final line before the ending. I've never worked out what to say there. And Jared is just an amazing human being philosopher, writer, speaker. And we sort of have, we overlap a lot in some of our theories of magic. He's like sort of me, but more poetic and philosophical. So I hit him up and I'm like, hey, I'm trying to figure out this line. And we just sit down and the competition's going on. I'm the second last act of the whole day, of like the 15 competitors on the Friday. And we just sit down and there's this odd, ironic Zen-like calm because I've now done everything. Preparation's over. It's in that sort of calm before the storm. We've done everything we realistically could. And we just chat about this final line. And it's this beautiful, peaceful moment of just him and I.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But for this one, it's like I want to kind of have this nailed, and I failed to write this script. I keep trying. I've got friends who are like, come on, write your script. I'm like, I'm on it. I'm going to do it. Lock myself in the room for an hour. Can't do it. Brain just slips off the task. So on the day, I don't have a script. And I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to accept that. I wish I did. I didn't. It is what it is. And I hit up a friend, Jared, an amazing magician, who is also there just hanging out, performing.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Between those bullet points, or even how to articulate those bullet points in the moment. I know semantically the idea I want to get across and the words Discover what words come out of me in that moment. And for whatever reason for me, I found that's the best way to find the real stuff. Because in that moment, in the spotlight, it's more real. And I then record all the shows and go, ooh, oh, those words are good today. Ah, damn, what did I say? Oh, that's good shit. I'll say that again next time. And that's slowly how the script emerges most of the time. I don't necessarily think that's a good way to work, but it's the way I've got that I found.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And usually, my process for quote unquote scripting is I sort of work out roughly what I want the thing to be about, and I go to the literal or figurative open mic, and I think of it like sketching a line. You do a lot of like light sketches and gradually find the shape of the line until you thicken it and thicken it and find the actual, the bold line. And that's sort of usually how I work on material.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“While you're there. While I'm there, because I'm not good at scripting, not good at script writing. I've always found it very hard.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And those are in many ways the things that really matter in some ways about just being a human being and friendships and relationships and all those things. So I get there just double check the props. I've got backups of everything. And also I've spent the last few days trying to write a script.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Final preps and doing things like this joke of Dave under the table is also what's keeping me sane. Because that's something else fun and beautiful to focus on.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, game day, well, and also before Game Day, because you're so right, like exactly what you described as what's way better. And instead, I'm watching all the competitions with friends, and it's also a great celebration of magic and amazement. But what watching going, again, so much of how it goes is who's there? Is there someone way better than you? Who's turning up from all the, you know, who are the Belgians bringing? Who are the Italians bringing? Who's here from South Korea? What is the world going to deliver that might be amazing? And again, the goal isn't to win, but still, you can't help but kind of want to maybe imagine, no, but then you don't imagine that's setting yourself up for disappointment. You don't want to think about that. So Game Day, get up.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I send that to the group chat. And that was the thing I really wanted to do. Stuff like that. That's the actual beauty of it.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so, again, that was 10 years ago. And for this one, I've realized for six months I've got a bit that I want to do. I've got a joke I want to make in homage to these wonderful friends and these beautiful people who have helped along the way. And in this act, it doesn't use a table. It uses this tiny little side stand that's part of, that's one of the problems with the 2012 one. It was cumbersome. It was bulky. It was inefficient, inelegant. This one's very simple and clear and minimalist. And on this little side stand that I'm putting the very few props I have that I've always been a minimalist in my tastes. I make a little video 10 minutes before I go on stage for the world championships. And to me, that's what makes this funny. That's what makes this good, that it's there in the arena. And I record a little video of the table going, all right, guys, going on station 10 minutes, world championships, just pre-show check. I opened my little box. I'm like, yep.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, Dave and Dave's like, I got this. And that's, again, there's a group of friends there. Again, like Dave and Domin Viom and YC and Yao that many of us have done this for each other. What do you need? We're on it. Jason Bourne, a non-violent Jason Born kind of mentality. Like, what needs to be done? We'll get it done. I've hidden under the table for friends in various other bizarre situations to build shit, which is wonderful. It's like the behind the scenes. And so it became a running joke that Simon's magic is done by Dave being under the table. This is not the case. This is not how magic is done, but it became a running joke.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which was such a ridiculous thing to do as a method. But I'm like, we don't have time to come up with something better. We're just going the brute force thing.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's the competition. And then I'm up and it's terrifying and I'm ready. One of my favorite little Tangent about again a thousand stories we could tell because why is it actually worth doing anything? What do we do before we die? What makes you happy? What do you find fulfilling? One of the things back in 2012 that made that Performance I did so insane as a weird method is one of my best friends in Melbourne Dave helped out by, and this is massive spoiler, first time it's revealed, hiding under the table during the act. This is not a method. This is not something magicians do. This is ridiculous and absurd. This was a desperation move of just a brute force approach heinously inelegant and basically like constructing things during the act to make this thing possible.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Line above which not one person in the audience felt like they wasted their time or their money. And I'm willing to take risks down to that line. But not below it. If I go below that line, then I'll beat myself up. Then I have a karmic debt to repay to the world. But above that line, my conscience is clean, my karma is clear, and I'm willing to take risks to explore and experiment down to that line. And this is a bit different because the World Damn Championship's. So the minimum line's a bit higher. And so it's more I get it to the line where I'm like, I'm confident that this is going to be extremely likely to work to the highest level. You can never be certain, but I'm confident I've got this and it'll work. And at that point, I chill and get some sleep. And try and relax”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. The top is the best thing you've ever seen in your life. Again, oversimplification, but for the sake of argument, it's that George Box quote, all conceptual models are wrong, but some are useful. And this is wrong but useful. And I often think about we're trying to go upwards. We're trying to get high on the scale. You want it to be that show was really good. Some people think it was the best thing they've ever seen. Some people think it's really good. And there's an infinite number of lines you could draw on that graph. And the two that I think about the most is somewhere very high up is people in the audience are thinking that is one of the best things I've ever seen ever in my life across all categories of experience. Holy shit. That's always where I'm aiming at. I don't think I hit it. I think most people never hit it. Maybe I'll hit it one day before I die. That would be amazing. Maybe I won't. That's okay, but I'm aiming at that. I think about the Bruce Lee quote, the aim the punch two inches beyond the intended point of impact. Aiming at the line, I don't need to hit it to feel happy. But then way lower is the...”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. I definitely try to get sleep. Sleep is important. I don't really have a process. I just sort of feel it. And I get it to a point where I think it's good enough. I have a bit of a background in improv acting, which is one of the best things I ever studied in my life. And being okay with just kind of, again, the friends from Melbourne who are listening, shout out to Dom and Vium and everybody else know that I'm inevitably like hours before a show building something new to try in it. I think a lot about this idea of the two thresholds of imagine that you oversimplify how good is a performance into a single axis, which is ridiculously oversimplified. But say, you know, at the bottom is the worst thing you've ever seen.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, absolutely. And the knowledge and the preconceptions and the assumptions and just the ways people perceive reality around them absolutely is literally the medium with which the magician slash illusionist works. And the common misconception is the hands or the cards or the coins or the whatever. But no, I mean, those are the tools, but you are sculpting the perceptions of an observer into a beautiful, amazing shape. You need to be present to that. That is the sculpture that you are crafting. And the thing where I find that's different about things like what stories would be interesting is perception of physical reality is a much more universal consistent thing than people's creative preferences or personal preferences or wants or needs or desires or interests. That is hugely variable between people. And I think in any sort of, at least for me, the neurodivergencies are more about those things and more divergent. What I like, what I'm interested in, what I want to hear about, what I don't.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Walking in the theatrical sense, as in kind of walking through it physically, like going through the whole motions, because a lot of magic, again, the Vernon theory of naturalness is about... Looking like your body has no tension where there is actually a lot of tension or vice versa or faking tension where there is none. And you kind of need to, in the same way that a special effects designer is lying with their CGI, lying for the benefit of the audience, lying for to create something beautiful. You have to sort of lie with your whole body. In a really way that really takes a long time to kind of get intuitive and is one of the hardest things about learning magic at a high level.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“High praise. He's like, yeah, because normally be like, ah, but you know, this wouldn't work. So I'm like, oh shit. Okay. And then I ran it by Jordan as well. Later on, like, again, haven't slept. Might be a little manic. I'm learning Towda, you know, interact and filter properly. And he's like, yeah, I think maybe. And I'm like, all right. So then I spend the next day and a half because that's all I've got blocking through this new version. It's not a massive...”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like a younger Mr. Miyagi, like, I don't know And I go, okay, here's the idea. We all know everything about each other's acts at this point. I'm like, so this version, this version, I think if I do this and do this, and then that, and that gives us the best bit of this. But without the drawback of this, because this angle and this perceptual focal direction, this here, and there this, what do you think? Is this something? Has it got legs? And he looks at me and thinks and goes, I can't say no Which from him is”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's used to it. He's not surprised. The amount of weird shit we've seen each other doing for magic over the years. It's all so much stranger than fiction. He just looks at me as like, uh-huh. And I go, okay. So full disclosure. I haven't slept, so I might be a little manic. What do you think of this idea? And Shute is legendary for being a friendly, beautiful human, but very sort of blunt with his feedback and his opinion. He breaks a lot of people's spirits unintentionally because he's just the dream destroyer. Exactly. Very, very sort of.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep. All right. Thank you. Appreciate you. Please don't leave. So she turns up at 4 a.m. two days before and just punches me in the face with this idea. And I'm like, oh my God, hang on. And Shute is asleep in the, he's a pretty sound sleeper. We've traveled together a lot now for many gigs. And I realized, hang on, I think often you need to think with your body, I find. You need to sort of work through it and block through it. So I get up very quietly trying not to wake him up. And in the darkness, there's like dim light of the moon through slit in the window. I sort of work through this idea thinking, am I insane? Will this work? And I kind of think, I think this might have legs, but I don't know if I'm just sleep deprived and delusional. So I write down a bunch of notes on it for my future self in the morning to go like in case I forget. And then I don't get to sleep. I'm just lying there. My mind's racing. I'm like, I think, hang on, maybe is this kind of...”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Every damn time. That's when the muse turns up. I playfully anthropomorphize my muse. I think of her as I'm arguing with her, going, could you one time turn up three weeks out? And she's like, no. And I'm like, you know what? Terribly sorry. Appreciate you. Please don't stop turning up.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Two days before, yeah, and this always happens to me. It's a running joke with friends in Melbourne who know the Muse only visits 48 to 36 hours before the dead ride. 48 hours.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And shoots in a similar place. He's just entering because it's been a pandemic. We haven't been able to do this for so many years. He wants to be part of it. So it's the final day. Actually, it's not yet because two days before the final day, I'm lying awake, Shut and I are sharing a hotel room, and I have insomnia, which doesn't happen to me much. And I'm lying awake because adrenaline and time zone and just, it's not surprising. I'm lying awake staring at the ceiling going, god damn it, get to sleep. And then suddenly it's one of those moments where my eyes widen and I just suddenly see the matrix and I'm like, holy shit, I suddenly think I've seen a way to combine these two approaches and get the best bits of both.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And annoyingly, my friend Schute and I. So Shoot is a really good magician friend who was also competing in a different category. And we'd been training each other, really, like supporting each other on the journey and trying to do our thing. And we're both on the final day, which is annoying because what I want to do is rip off the band-aid early and then enjoy the festival. But instead, I have to make sure I get to sleep and make sure I stay healthy and so I can't go too hard because I spent like a year and a half working towards this. In a way, I spent 10 years working towards this. I don't care if I win. I'm just there to do the thing and to see if we can close this narrative arc because it'll be more engaging. Because the fact that it was exactly 10 years felt just too perfect to let that go. It's such a beautiful plot arc. I'm like, I want to see if this thing can fly. And if it can't, that's okay because at least I'll know. At least I tried the thing.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Putting in the reps, just grinding through the reps for weeks and months. And it gets down to the point where I've sort of got two approaches kind of figured out. There's two paths to making this thing work. And they each have different pros and cons. And I can't really decide between them. One is the slightly riskier one that looks better but has a different problem. Again, a classic engineering situation. You just have to decide between the trade-offs. And now it's just a few weeks away and I go, all right, we're going to pick one and focus on it. And I pick the safer one that is less amazing but more reliable. So we go to the competition and it's a six-day event and it's the competition but also shows and workshops and panel discussions and events and all kinds of cool. It's a whole big beautiful celebration. Yeah, exactly. And the competition is the main thing.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Give me the pain. I need to know. I want the painful truth of the beautiful lie. This is what we need right now. And usually you can see it on their faces, even if they're trying to hide. You can sort of see that their eyes flicker to where the thing happened. I'm like, damn it. All right. Well, lesson learned. Back the drawing board. Let's try it again tomorrow. And if it does work, they just, you see the wonder. And so it's great. We got it at that time. Now let's try and make sure that happens every time with an error margin.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But then, if they did see the thing, they'd be like, I mean, yeah, because I'm letting them know I want their feedback. And it's often hard to get people to give you that feedback because often they mistakenly think that being polite is better. is helpful. They don't hurt your feelings. I know it's the opposite. I hurt me. Punch me in the face. Let's go.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's a weird place because I don't know which one of those it's going to be. And if it works, they are going to see something astounding. And then they're going to see me go, was that any good? Which is such a jarring experience for them to see me just break reality and they go, was that any good? Did you see?”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The answer is sort of all of the above. There are so many different failure modes, which again is sort of the engineering mindset, the different ways it can fail. With this particular thing I was working on in this story, there was one particular thing I needed to accomplish secretly without anyone seeing. It was some mission impossible type shit. You know, your mission should you choose to accept it is, you know, the parameters should have been impossible. And I was trying to find a way to make this work. And I had a hunch, there might be a way. But it relied on sort of like nuanced body language-based misdirection and how human perception actually works and how to kind of slip that through the cracks in ways that were really hard to theorize. And you have to kind of feel it. And so I would prefix it knowing that there was a solid chance of it failing by going, hi, I'm testing on something new. If it works, it'll be amazing. If it doesn't work, it'll be hilarious. So win-win. Either way, hopefully you will get an entertaining experience. Set expectations.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, ah, no, I don't want anyone to see it sucking while it's in this crappy phase. And just went there night after night, just again and again. It was brutal and it was unpleasant, but slowly wove it together and started to find a way to get the improvements.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm like, this thing's great, great caterpillar. Oh my god, what a caterpillar. Damn. I had this hunch that I think this thing could fly. I think this thing might be able to grow wings, like maybe. And that meant it had to turn into sludge. And there's a lot of people who can relate to that creativity. And so for the next like eight months, I went to the magic castle because one of the best things about that place is it has these areas where magician members can go and do little impromptu shows for whichever public members are around. It's hard to find open mics. You need places to test stuff. You only get good by doing and experiencing. And that's hard to find for most variety arts. Magic concluded. And it's one of the reasons I live near the place. And I went there on quiet nights because to get the routine to this better place, I had to kind of break it and test out these things that you can only test them in front of people. You need observer's mind as where the magic happens. And it wasn't good and it was awkward and it was uncomfortable and I hated it. And I would wait till there were just like three people. Rather than gathering a big crowd to get good energy.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The Emperor with no clothes. I also am not a biologist. Was it an entomological biologist? This is one of the most amazing things I've learned about the natural world. You would think that the caterpillar maybe changes shape a bit than, you know, sprouts, wings, and now it's a butterfly. Turns out the caterpillar basically liquefies into primordial sludge, where small chunks of neural matter still in there. And then from that primordial soup, the butterfly then just basically grows into its full form, which is astounding, and it retains memories and experience through this process, and they've done scans of this to see that this is what happens, which is one of the most magical in the sense of seems impossible, turns to sludge and then reforms into a completely different organism. And I realized in the months I was working before the real championship that at the North American championships, I felt like I had, I'd won the prize for best caterpillar in show.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I go into full workshop rehearsal testing theory mode and I go to the North American Championships. Again, just to kind of see if this thing's got legs or not. I don't really know yet. I don't know what I've got or not. And I win the whole thing. I become the North American Close Up Magic Champion. And once again, I'm shocked. I'm completely surprised. I did not see this coming. And I go, oh, I guess it does have legs. Oh shit, okay. All right, we got something here. And then how much do you know about when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, what happens inside the chrysalis?”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was like, I think I can do this, but it's going to take months of work to even test it to find out. And the way the magic championships works is the year before they have regional continental qualifiers. They have the North American, the South American, the Asian, the European, the African, and the Oceanian mini-championships. The North American Championships was coming up in about six months. And I went, you know what? I need a deadline to make my brain hyper focus. I'll enter that. It'll be small. This was still during lockdown. It was post-vaccines, but still in lockdowns. It won't be very well attended. If I can't get this idea together and it shits the bed, it'll only shit the bed in front of a small, relatively small audience. And if it doesn't shit the bed, I'll know, all right, I've got something and I have a year to really work on to make it good. I went, great. You know, low stress, just high enough stress to do it. And so I spent the next six months in crunch mode going, okay, let's take a swing at this. Let's see if I can bring this thing to life. And I work like a maniac.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I thought, well, I could maybe get booked to do a show. There's all kinds of events. And then I remembered that 2012 routine, that kind of very janky version of a really beautiful idea that I'd loved and worked on. I went, you know, and I'd been thinking about that ever since in weak moments, I would sort of work on bits of a version of idea on how to fix it and improve it. And they go, no, no, I shouldn't be working on this. I should be working on my career. And then a year later, I'd be like, I think I have another idea on how to solve this problem. And I kept trying to find, and it kept not being solvable. It was one of these impossible problems. And then in that lockdown, hiding out in the Midwest in 2021, away from everything and all the insanity and the chaos. And I was like, I think I finally have the last piece of it. This is not quite the right analogy, but having the idea and actually actualizing it, executing it, as our buddy Derek Sivas says, ideas and execution is so different.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So quit magic full time. My great, it's now a hobby. Ah, glorious. I can just do the bits I'm excited by, impassionate by. And then the pandemic happened and all kinds of crazy stuff happened and it was a weird time for everybody. And during that time, the 2022 Magic Championships was coming up And I just went, great, this is awesome. I'm a hobbyist amateur magician now. I can just go and hang out. It doesn't matter. There's no stress. And then I realized that I know myself now. I'm going to enjoy it more if I'm, I'll always pick creating overconsuming if governor choice. It's more rewarding. Gotta get that, you know, that little garnish of trauma, right? Really feel it. It's like the spicy chili or the bit of coffee. Like, oh, you feel it. You know you're alive.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I started ended up in jigsaw puzzle design, separate story we'll get to, and left magic as a profession, which was really liberating because I love magic. I love it as an art. It's a horrible business to be in. Like most of the arts, the comedians know, the jugglers know, all the variety entertainers know, the actors know. Most of the musicians know it's rough. It's brutal. It's hard. And a lot of my weaknesses were very relevant. My strengths didn't play well. My weaknesses were very hindering and I found it really hard to build a career. And so when the prospect of getting into creative product design came up, work on a thing with a good team of people, put it into the world and have it scale passively in the background, not completely passively. It was amazing. And you don't have to turn up to be earning the money. And also being a magician is like being unemployed. Every gig is often a once-off. So you're constantly having to hustle and hustle for the next gig, and I'm not great at that.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We'll come to that. And I was trying to make a career. I was trying to find a way to make a living, which is often the opposite of art and creativity, sadly. Not always, but sometimes. And this idea of this like creating the impossible object in the act, I didn't see any commercial potential to it. It was so high touch, so much setup, played so small, and I'm like, I love this, but I need to shelve this and work on something else. But it nagged at me. It ate away at me. And putting effort into magic competitions, I wasn't seeing any career payoff to that at the time. So I went, you know what? I've got to focus on actual getting gigs, earning money, shelve the competitions and the creative projects. And for 10 years, that stayed that way until in 2019, again, still this is the short version. Highly abbreviated. Yeah, this is the incredibly abbreviated story.”
2023-06-28 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #679: Simon Coronel, World Champion of Magic — Quitting the Day Job, The Delights of the Magic Castle, Finding Glitches in Reality, Learning How to Use Your Own Brain, and Worshiping at the Altar of Wonder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT