To flourish or not to flourish...

...that is the question. Whether it is nobler in the mind to show the five faces of Sybil or to take arms against a sea of flashy flourishes and by opposing, end them.

The question above (usually in simpler form) gets argued on a lot of message boards. The problem with those discussions, like so many, is that people go in with preconceived answers and they don't want discussion so much as validation. What many in these discussions don't take into account is that we are all in different places and are all trying to say different things. Magic is, after all, simply a vehicle for communication.

"So how does this help me, O Wise One? Should I flourish or not?" Depends on what you want to say. You can say, "I'm really cool and can handle a deck of cards (or whatever) incredibly well." Or you can say, "The universe is a stranger place than you can ever know." Now this is not a value judgment. There are times when the first statement is more reasonable than the second. If you and some friends are standing around bragging about your various talents and you say, "The universe is a stranger place than you can ever know," then at best you will get some funny looks.

I consider flourishes to be spices - best if used sparingly. I like cayenne pepper, but a little goes a long way, and then only on certain things. No cayenne on my lemon custard, thank you.

A related issue is that flourishes are not magic, at least as I define it. Magic, by my definition, has to look impossible. It has to seem there is no way to accomplish what just happened. Flourishes can kill that twice: first, they are inherently not impossible in and of themselves (and I'll come back to that in a minute), and second, if you can do a seven-packet running cut, well then hey, it's no surprise the selected card ended up in your wallet.

I've heard flourish artists argue that flourishes do seem impossible, based on the fact that they've heard people say, "Man, that's impossible! There's no way you can do that!" The problem with that is if that's the criteria you then have to include jugglers, acrobats, gymnasts, knife throwers and yoga masters under the umbrella "magicians." People use the word 'impossible' as a superlative to mean 'very difficult.' A little analysis will show a clear difference between a billiard ball roll-up flourish and the sudden appearance of another billiard ball. A spectator might say, "Impossible!," to both, but one clearly has the appearance of defying natural law, and the other clearly does not.

So should you use flourishes? The more important question is, what do you want to say? Figure out what you want to say and the best way to say it, and the question of flourishes will answer itself.

Want a flourish link? Here ya go.