Three Ohio University students started the Ohio University Magician’s Association.
Jacob Williamson called his speciality card trick, “the brain wave.” His goal: to pick a card from the deck that has the same suit of the volunteer’s card.
Williamson perfects card tricks with his involvement in the Ohio University Magician’s Association, a club formed in the fall during OU’s annual Fright Night event at Ping Center.
At Fright Night, a magician nicknamed Zoot Suit performed. After the show, Jacob Williamson, Adam Lucas and Tony Yao got the idea to start a magicians club of their own.
“I said to Tony, ‘Hey I know someone who is starting up a magic club, did you want to join?’ He was ecstatic, and that’s how we got our third member,” Lucas, a freshman studying computer science and games and animation, said.
Williamson, president of the club and a junior studying astrophysics and mathematics, said he was surprised that there wasn’t an organization dedicated to magic here at OU.
“There’s a lot more people who do magic here," he said. "I’ve seen them."
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Although the club is not yet an official student organization, the group still has managed to have successful meetings to get more students involved. One student showed up to the first meeting, but since then, the group has grown 7 members.
Williamson said his interest in magic began at age 6, when he got a magic kit for his birthday.
“I eventually put (magic) to the side after a while, but my brother got back into it and … (I) stole (magic books from my brother) and started reading them again,” he said.
Williamson became a member of the local magic chapters in Cleveland and Columbus, where he would attend shows and pick up more books and tutorials from magic shops.
Lucas said he tried to learn as much from Williamson as possible.
“I met him before the (Fall Semester) started,” Lucas said. “For Christmas I got some stuff on my own, and I tried to learn that way and pursue that individually.”
When it comes to learning tricks, messing up and making mistakes is part of the process, Lucas and Williamson said.
“There’s always a few (moments) where you say, ‘Aw I screwed it up and that sucks’,” Williamson said. “Usually if somebody catches something, they are nice about it and don’t yell it out when you do. I’ve had a few people do that but thankfully there have been a few people that have been standing next to them like, ‘I didn’t see anything.’ ”
For Williamson, messing up is a part of what makes you a good magician.
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“The times you mess up is what makes it interesting because it makes you think on your feet,” Williamson said. “When you’re not the one doing it, you’re pretty much enjoying it. There’s a lot more analysis, which is what makes us enjoy it.”
For the three, the most embarrassing part of the job is when they are trying to “impress girls.”
“I was doing tricks for one girl, then she brought her friend. Then her friend brought more friends,” Yao said. “I was full of confidence (at the end of the trick), and then I asked if it was her card. She said 'no,' and I realized I messed up the trick in front of 20 people … and it was really embarrassing.”
Yao said learning magic to impress girls wasn’t his first intention, but it’s a fun reason to keep learning tricks.
Members want people to know when they join the club that, to them, magic is something different.
“Yeah we think more abstractly then, like, the regular people,” Yao said. “Since we know some of the basic forms or slight of hands tricks, the magic part for us is we might know how (the magician) did it.”
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