FOREWORD By Ian Rowland It is one thing to have a business card saying you are a magician. It is quite another thing to do something with your business card that proves it beyond all doubt. Welcome to Conjunction: the most magical thing in the world you can do with your business card. Magicians have been linking things in impossible ways since forever and a day. However, very few "this linked-to that" effects have the power of Conjunction, or can be said to shine with anything like the same brightness. The effect is as astonishing as anything in the close-up repertoire. The method is, if anything, even more astonishing still, in terms of its ingenuity and the effort that must have gone into its development. Joshua Quinn has clearly pursued this "holy grail" of linkage effects for many moons, fuelled only by his own fierce intellectual fire and a stubborn refusal to accept that anything in this life is truly impossible.

The result is a wonderful n

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ew principle that will no doubt leave countless audiences seriously in doubt of their senses. It will also delight those of us in the dark, deceptive arts with a fondness for effects so deceptive they border on mental cruelty. After all, it is clearly insane to suppose that a single, unfaked business card can be torn into two inter-linked squares. Or that this can be done in real-time, while the audience watch, with nothing to hide or steal away. Or that the resulting linked squares of card can bc given away to bc studied and examined (and they will be!), since there is nothing to find. That's the good thing about Joshua: he keeps having these insane ideas and then finds a way to make them into practical pieces of delightful magic. Conjunction represents a significant leap forward in the art and science of "impossible" linkage. It is 100% practical, albeit some diligent study will be required by those wishing to master this particular miracle. It should also become one of the most performed, and most talked-about pieces of modern close-up magic (given how often we tend to hand out business cards). Quite simply, magic doesn't get more impossible than this. EFFECT Before handing out your business card to someone with whom you'd like to leave a strong impression, you give the card a series of folds and tears, in the process transfiguring it into an impossible object: two unbroken paper rings which end up linked through one another. So what's the difference between this and the profusion of other effects that have cards linking together? Simple: You do it for real. The rings are given away in their genuinely linked state, from which they can't be unlinked without ripping them. They can be examined indefinitely with no danger of anyone finding any seams, joins or tears, because there aren't any. Furthermore, no glue, tape, or adhesive of any kind is used. Only one card is involved, with no gaffs, gimmicks or extra pieces, and nothing to ring in, ditch or switch. And naturally, if you're smart, the rings will still have your name and contact information on them, intact, at the end. METHOD In essence, the description is the method: You do it for real. No kidding. This is one of those rare occasions in magic when you're actually doing exactly what you say you're doing, and therefore have (almost) nothing to hide. So, how do you genuinely tear two interlinked rings from a single business card when any lopologist, origami expert, or high school geometry teacher will tell you that such a thing is physically impossible, and has been known to be so for centuries? First I'll show you the basics of creating the link via a process that requires no circumvention of natural laws, but just a slightly different way of looking at things (which has evidently eluded centuries' worth of topologists, origami experts, and high school geometry teachers). Then I'll discuss how to make the final product look deceptive. Finally, I'll teach you what I've found to be the most effective handling, which will allow you do the whole thing in front of an audience without giving them any clue how you did il. First off, let me address a small point of terminology. Throughout the text I refer to the linked pieces you'll be left with as "rings" even though they're not ring-shaped at all; they're rectangles with rectangular holes in them. "Frames" would probably have been a more accurate term, The result is a wonderful new principle that will no doubt leave countless audiences seriously in doubt of their senses. It will also delight those of us in the dark, deceptive arts with a fondness for effects so deceptive they border on mental cruelty. After all, it is clearly insane to suppose that a single, unfaked business card can be torn into two inter-linked squares. Or that this can be done in real-time, while the audience watch, with nothing to hide or steal away. Or that the resulting linked squares of card can bc given away to bc studied and examined (and they will be!), since there is nothing to find. That's the good thing about Joshua: he keeps having these insane ideas and then finds a way to make them into practical pieces of delightful magic. Conjunction represents a significant but 1 just didn't like it as well. I mention this only so you won't read through the whole thing expecting to get to the point where you tear the

pieces into circle shapes, only to be disappointed with their rectangularity in the end. 2 All right then, lo start with you'll need: • Some business cards • A pen or pencil • A razor knife • A cutting surface Don't worry, when you do this in real life you won't need anything but a business card, but for now you'll need thing to say, and getting comfortable saying it while making the link. The first part I can't give you much help with; your spiel will depend entirely on things like your persona and your audience and your performing conditions and what you want to convey. I'm not including mine here because it wouldn't fit anyone but me. But the one thing I can tell you is to be sure to impress upon your audience the fact that tearing a piece of paper into two solid, linked rings is impossible. Without having that established in advance, people won't quite know what to make of the result, and it will take a few minutes of contemplation for them to decide whether they should be amazed or not. As for the second part, I have some more concrete tips. Obviously, you'll need to practice making the link while delivering your spiel out loud. But before you start doing 39 that, you may find it helpful to practice looking away from your hands as much as possible while making the link. (Those of you who have worked on a center tear will be in familiar territory here.) Don't close your eyes, because you'll never want to do that in real life; instead, practice looking up away from your hands, at the spot where a spectator's eyes would be if there were one there. Being able to look someone in the eye rather than constantly staring at your hands will go a long way toward keeping people engaged all by itself. Once you can do that, speaking at the same time will come easier. Also, get in the habit of holding your hands up toward your face rather than down in front of your chest. That way when you do have to look at your hands, you'll have less distance to travel and you'll seem proportionately less disconnected. DESIGN MATTERS When it comes to where you can and can't have printing on the card, this picture of the reassembled demo card pretty much tells the story: The peeled parts will end up blank, and the discarded parts will be, well, discarded. So plan the placement of the crucial information accordingly. Here's one basic but effective design... 40 ...which ends up looking like this: The title line ends up being discarded, but if people don't remember the basic gist of what you do by the time you give them something like this, then you're doing something very wrong. Of course your design can be a good deal more elaborate than this, provided you bear in mind which parts will be peeled off and you plan the placement of your text and graphics accordingly. 41 Also note that it's okay to have graphic elements that end up getting peeled off completely, provided they won't be obviously missed and call attention to the method through their absence. The only problem is if you have something that gets only partway peeled, thus giving away what you did: That's bad. Don't do that. MATERIAL CONCERNS If you're going to get custom cards to use for this effect, there are basically two ways to go about it: have them printed, or do it yourself. If you decide to have them printed, all you have to do is find a printer that has suitable paper, and give them your design and your credit card number. But if possible. I would recommend going to several different printers and getting samples of their paper to try out before choosing one. This is because not all card stock paper is created equal. For one thing, some is easier to peel than others. For another, sometimes the inside looks slightly different than the outside, making the peeled sections more apparent. So it will be worth your while to find the best kind that's readily available to you. If you want to make them yourself, besides a desktop printer, you'll also probably want to make one other investment: an odd but extremely handy piece of office equipment known as a "business card cutter.'" It's basically a plastic, loaf-of-bread-sized thingamabob that lakes an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper and cuts it into ten business cards. You feed a piece of paper into it, turn the handle, and it comes out the other end sliced into two long

strips. Then you turn those strips 90 degrees, feed them into a different slot, turn the handle again, and they come out the other end sliced into business cards. I love the thing because I'm constantly fiddling with different card designs and types of paper, and it lets me try them out without ordering a thousand at a time. If you too like to tinker with such things, you may well find it to be a worthwhile investment. For me it's been an absolute godsend. I found mine on eBay for about sixty dollars, and since then there have always been a few up for auction at any given time. A search for the phrase "business card cutter'" or "business card slitter" will turn them up. There are also electric ones available that don't require you to turn a handle, but they're considerably more 4? expensive, and for me the added cost wasn't worth the minimal added convenience. Of course both options have their advantages and disadvantages. Having cards printed professionally is more convenient, and the print quality may be better than what you can get at home (though inkjets have come a long way). On the other hand, doing them yourself allows for more experimentation and doesn't stick you with a whole bunch of cards that you then have to either use or waste. And now for something that many people have told me I'm a fool for tipping: the Rolls Royce of card stock paper and how to get it. Numerous friends have opined that rather than revealing the origin of this stuff, I should just buy a bunch of it wholesale and then sell it to Conjunction users at a reprehensible markup. And while the idea is not without a certain appeal, the bottom line is that dealing with receiving, storing, and shipping large quantities of heavy paper is not my idea of a good time. Hence, my hedonistic laziness is your gain. I mentioned earlier that having a visual pattern in the paper is more helpful than having physically textured paper, and that's true - but it's even better to have both. The best is a combination of a good visual pattern and what's known in the paper biz as a "felt" texture, which consists of small, random bumps and ridges not unlike, well, felt. It's the closest thing you can get to the actual texture of paper that's been peeled apart. It's not identical, but when combined with the visual pattern, the difference really is unnoticeable. There are a number of brands out there that fit the bill, but as of this writing the best ones available are: • Sundance Felt paper, made by the Fox River division of the Gilbert Paper Company, in the Navajo White or Maize colors. • Via Felt paper, made by Mohawk Paper, in the Flax or Jute colors. Out of the hundreds of papers I tried, these two in the colors I've listed are the cream of the crop. They hide the work well, they practically peel themselves, and they make great looking cards. The samples you got with this booklet are made from one of those. IMPORTANT: Whatever kind you get, you'll have to specify the weight you want it in (which, in paper biz terms, means how thick it the paper is). The weight you want is "80- pound cover." Note that both parts of that phrase - the "80-pound" part and the "cover" part - are important. You don't want 80-pound text, which is regular writing paper, and you don't want 65-pound cover, which is flimsier, tougher-to-work-with card stock. Now that you know what to get, the tricky part is finding it. The only place I've found that carries both brands, and will sell them in quantities from individual sheets to cartons, is a company called Glodan, reachable on the web at wvvw.glodan.com. You can also order Sundance paper direct from the manufacturer at: www.gilbertpaper.com/fox/papers/sundance/buy 43 I also had some luck with The Paper Mill Store (.com), who didn't stock any of the ones I wanted but offered to order it for a good price, provided I bought a carton (500 sheets). There. Now don't say 1 never gave you nothin'. IF YOU'D RATHER FIGHT THAN SWITCH 1 realize that many of you reading this will not want to have new cards made up for this effect, either because you're attached to the design of your current card, and/or because designing a new one to meet the requirements of the effect seems like too much trouble. And that's fine. I'm not hurt. No, really. I mean, I only put three years of sweat and toil into developing this

effect, tenderly nurturing it from its promising but problematic conceptual infancy, onward through a long, clumsy, awkward adolescence fraught with impractical handlings, elaborate preparations, imperfect method concealment, and draconian design requirements, before finally seeing it through to its maturation into the elegant piece of mystery so lovingly presented to you here. So there's absolutely no reason for me to be upset if people get this far only to decide not to use it because they can't be bothered to spend a pleasant evening's work making up a new business card. Really, it's no problem at all. I'll just be in the corner wailing and gnashing my teeth. But seriously, there arc a number of options that don't require changing your current card, for those of you who are unwaveringly intent on riding roughshod over the creative efforts of one of your fellow [Stop it. - ed.] Right, sorry. Basically, if the piece of paper you use for the effect is not your business card at all, but rather a completely separate card that you utilize to demonstrate something interesting and impossible, then a whole world of choices opens up to you. The easiest and most obvious one is to use a blank card. Why blank? Well, maybe something about a blank piece of paper representing infinite possibilities, and/or impossibilities, and even the gray areas where the two intersect... but that will be for you to work out. Or the card could bear a pre-printed message that tics in with your presentation - something like, "I am impossible," "I can't exist," '"Impossible is only a word," etc. Another option is to start with a blank card but write something on it that lends itself to the circumstances. If you're performing for a couple, a nice idea is to have them write their names in the appropriate spots, and end with them ''joined together." Or if you're working a corporate event or trade show. I"m sure you can come up with some word or phrase that would be beneficial to make ''intrinsically linked" to the company or product you're representing. (Ah, I can smell the corporate cheese already: "Some people will tell you it's impossible to make 100% customer satisfaction an integral part of a company's identity, but here at SchmuckTech, we do the impossible..." I confess I look forward to my effect being used for such purposes with the same anticipation with which one looks forward to one's daughter becoming a whore.) Yet another possibility is to have a diagram of two linked rings printed on the card, and use that picture as a starting point for discussion. I hope the above provides enough alternative ideas that those of you who were expecting to use your current card can now be persuaded to put down the pitchforks and torches. 44 WHAT'S YOUR FUNCTION? I'll be the first to admit that as effects go. Conjunction is an odd bird. It doesn't fit within any of the standard categories of magic plots - vanishes, appearances, transformations, transpositions, penetrations, levitations, etc. When I've described the effect to magicians, many of them have said, "Oh, so you mean it's a one-card link." Well... no. Though the similarity is obvious, there's a subtle but important difference. In a one-card link, the rings start out separate and then link together, so the impossible act is the passing of solid objects through one another - a standard and easily defined plot. That never happens with Conjunction, as the rings are linked from the moment they come into existence. So the impossible act becomes the very creation of an object that should be uncreatable - not exactly a soundbyte-friendly premise. So, you may ask yourself, what's it good for then? As with many things in our field, the answer is, "whatever you choose to make of it." With the right framing it can be a fine piece to use as an effect within a close-up performance, be it formal or impromptu or anywhere in between. Personally I tend to use it more as a thought- and conversation-provoking promotional and marketing tool - a way to make myself and my business card more memorable and more likely to be talked about after I'm gone. I've found it's an effective thing to do for someone whom you're trying to convince to hire you, as it leaves them with a tangible piece of impossibility that serves as a constant,

hard-to-ignore reminder of you. And in a field where the word "puzzle" has become one of the most derogatory terms in the lexicon, it can make for a fine one in the best sense of the word; not something to be solved and defeated, but something with which to challenge people to think about what is and isn't possible. Truth be told, it's also a great way to win free drinks from engineers and topologists. Note also that this doesn't have to be performed as an Effect with a capital E, with all attention focused on it. In a casual environment you can just grab a card and start fiddling with it, without calling attention to what you're doing until the appropriate time. It's worth pointing out that when I perform, I do so as a mentalist, with no "straight" magic included; I deal solely with abilities of the mind, and I don't ever make things vanish, appear, transpose, levitate, or jump to the top of the deck. But I do use Conjunction, because although it has nothing to do with what we think of as the standard mentalism feats (demonstrations of telepathy, precognition, telekinesis, etc.), it is a fine example of the power of the human mind to overcome accepted limitations and accomplish things that are considered impossible. And it helps that unlike most premises and justifications in mentalism, that happens to be an accurate characterization rather than a line of unmitigated bullshit. Similar ground has been explored by such mentalists