Steven Blair`s blog of magic & life

Hey people of the interwebs its Steven back again with yet another blog post. This one is going to be the last 12 months of my life summed up in less than 1000 words I know bit of a challenge but here goes.

This year has been full of lots of ups and downs due to some health issues and personal matters I have had well that’s enough of the sad stuff now on to the good stuff. So I will start off by explaining my non magic related life and then I will move to the magic side.

First thing that I did was I went to see one of my favourite musicals for the 4th time “We Will Rock You” really enjoyed it and if you haven’t seen it I recommend you go and see it. In June I celebrated my 17th birthday. Well I don’t feel any older but it was a good birthday.
In July I went to the Bulgarian town of Slunchev Bryag for a family holiday it was great I met some nice people and had a fantastic time. While I was there I had the chance to travel to the Turkish city of Istanbul really lovely city and had a great time and would certainly do it again. That’s the important events of the past 12 months that are not magic related.( for photos visit my Facbook)

So magic wise it’s been a great year had the chance to perform at some events and they were good fun although I had to stop because of my health issues but I have been slowly starting to do some more. Well at the start of the year I attended a day of card magic called “Paul Gordon’s card capers” this was a great day learned so much about performing magic and loads of new tricks that I still do.( A review of the day can be found by clicking here) .

In February not much magic wise happened apart from I had the chance to see Peter McLanachan AKA The Cardman perform his lecture “A Force Much Greater Than Luck” this was a really good lecture based on just card magic but some of the stuff was really fantastic and I still to this day perform one of the tricks he explained in the lecture all the time.

Nothing really happened for the next few months up until May this was a great month for magic because I had the chance to go to the Scottish Association of Magical Societies (S.A.M.S) convention which this year was held in the Scottish city of Dundee. This was a really good weekend got to spend time with some magician friends and even had the chance to see some lectures, competitions and shows. The first lecture of the weekend was Terry Herbert this lecture was based on kid’s stage magic. Although I don’t do magic aimed at kids I still enjoyed this lecture and I learned some stuff which is a bonus. The second lecture of the weekend was by a Scottish magician called Paul Nardini and this lecture was on comedy stage magic which is something that I really love Paul taught all kinds of magic from booktests to tricks that were more arts and crafts I really enjoyed this lecture and I hope I can catch the full lecture sometime soon because it was cut short due to the competitions over running. The last lecture was by Eddie Dawes and it was called “The Dream Merchants” and this was about old magic catalogues I never watched the whole lecture because I had some other things to do. This was a great weekend and if you ever get the chance to go to a S.A.M.S convention I would go. Next year’s convention will be held in my hometown of Kilmarnock hope to see you all there.

Then not much happened over the summer months apart from performing some magic in Bulgaria to bar staff in a few pubs thats about it.

The next thing was I had the chance to see my friend Michael Neto perform his Lecture “ structuring a Close up Competition Act” this was a great lecture in which Michael spoke about how you make a magic act he then performed one of his winning magic acts and taught all the material he had performed this was a really good lecture because the main focus of the lecture was not tricks it was theory and I liked that also he taught mostly coin magic tricks and as you all should know coin magic is my favourite magic. If you ever get the chance to see Michael perform this lecture recommend you do.

As well as catching a lot of lectures in person I also managed to catch some online. The first online lecture this year I managed to catch was a lecture by Themagicsession.com and it was a lecture that Chris Mayhew performed this was a good lecture had some nice stuff (magicians if you missed it. You can find it on the on-demand section of their website along with lots of other free lectures, product reviews and articles.).

I then was able to catch the Essential Magic Conference (EMC). This is the world’s only online magic conference and it was great. It had performances, lectures and talks by some of the biggest “names” in magic. Recommend you all try and catch next years.

The next lecture was another themagicsession.com lecture and it was by my friend Jamie Daws and in this lecture he taught tricks with cards, business cards and he even spoke about his creativity process yet again available in the on-demand section on the site.

The last online lecture of this year was a lecture by yet again themagicsession.com and it was a lecture by the awesome Caleb Wiles this was the best online lecture of the year (close to the best lecture over all closely behind Peter McLanachan and Michael Neto.) in this lecture he taught loads of great magic and he also explained a lot about how he thought up the tricks which was really interesting. Really recommend you watch this lecture it’s also available in the on-demand section of the site.

Well there you go that’s my past 12 months summed up in just over 1000 words.With the year being almost over I have set myself some goals and aims for 2012 and I really hope I can stick to these. They are:-
1. Join the gym
2. Eat more healthier
3. Spend more time with friends (magic/non magic related) and family
4. Do more magic gigs
5. Pass my college course
There are some more but they are the main ones.

Anyways that’s it from me for this year feel free to contact me on any of the ways below and have a Happy New year.