“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Welcome to April’s “Mysteries of the Mind” monthly newsletter!
“If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships: the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together in the same world at peace.“ – Franklin D. Roosevelt
This newsletter is packed with more immediately useful information and powerful tools than any newsletter I have ever sent out. This may be one that you want to bookmark to visit a few times.
MASTER MIND:
If you missed any of my MASTER MIND series on LIES, PERSUASION, and MEMORY skills that played around the country on ABC, all of the links are now posted and available! Each quick segment is two to four minutes long, and they are all available here:
Last month was Women’s History Month, and I was part of an amazing podcast series celebrating women in history whom we have never heard of but need to know about! The podcast is called “What’s Her Name?”. They started their March edition by focusing on the life of the great magician Adelaide Herrmann! I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed the research and interview.
Adelaide Herrmann’s stage act was the most popular in the world in the early 20th century – she was more famous than Houdini! – but she has since been almost entirely forgotten, even by the magic community itself. Learn why her name has been virtually lost to history (it’s not what you think!) and discover the story of this remarkable, courageous, innovative pioneer with a 50-year career in the world of magic. Read
If you love that, you will also enjoy special bonus audio from the interview discussing the progress and problems of women magicians in the magical community today! Listen Here
MAGIC AND GEEKS:
How many of you love Geek & Sundry? It’s the YouTube channel that was started by actress Felicia Day. They now have a big line-up of shows, and I received special permission to film an episode of their show LORE-MASTERS at the Magic Castle: Discovering Magic with Paul W. Draper! Don’t miss the results of Ryan Green’s clandestine trip to the Academy of Magical Arts’s Magic Castle.
Watch Here (You may have to sign up for a 30 day free trial to watch this)
FINE ART:
Artist Jim McGee has been commissioned by my hometown arts council in Holladay, Utah to make ten different five-foot-tall murals of people from this sweet little area. Each of their images will be accompanied by stories from their lives as they relate to the town. My story begins with discovering section 793.8 at the local library! I will share more photos of his art in future newsletters as he sends me updates of his work.
Here is a blog that showcases some of his other murals created for a local Catholic church. See Showcase
FINALLY…
When it is time for your group to gather and celebrate, remember that I am available for corporate banquets, trade shows, morning energizer meetings, and events. I’m never too busy for your referrals.
“Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important, in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not.” -Nathaniel Hawthorn
Cosi fan tutte
Cosi fan tutte is now playing at the New York Metropolitan Opera! “A winning cast comes together for Phelim McDermott’s clever vision of Mozart’s comedy about the sexes, set in a carnival-esque environment inspired by 1950s Coney Island. Manipulating the action are the Don Alfonso of Christopher Maltman and the Despina of Tony Award – winner Kelli O’Hara, with Amanda Majeski, Serena Malfi, Ben Bliss, and Adam Plachetka as the pairs of young lovers who test each other’s faithfulness. David Robertson conducts.”
I was a casting consultant on this production thanks to Arthur Lazalde, who is currently the understudy for the Strongman and Tall Man. A few of my talented freak show friends were also cast in this beautiful production.
Great African Americans Magicians
Since college, I have been fascinated by the story of the first American-born magician, Richard Potter. There is a small town named after him in New Hampshire that I recently visited. He is hailed by historians as the newborn nation’s first true celebrity (two hundred years ago!), yet few remember him today. Remarkably, he was also the son of a slave and was still able to draw huge audiences to see his magic and ventriloquism shows in both the North and the South even before the Civil War! I first learned about him in a great book called Magical Heroes: The Lives and Legends of Great African Americans Magicians, but I was delighted to find and purchase a new book about his life during my trip!
Thank you to Andrew Pinard for taking me to the gravesite and regaling me with stories and performances of magic from the turn of the last century!
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.” -Kurt Vonnegut
Welcome to October’s “Mysteries of the Mind” monthly newsletter!
“Be so good they can’t ignore you.“ – Steve Martin
Some of the best advice I’ve ever been given by an acting coach:
“Be careful when you choose the character you are going to play. Make sure to choose someone you like, because you are going to be him a lot.” – Timothy Cummings
This newsletter is going to be about making choices concerning who and what you want to be.
We will talk about Halloween costumes gone wrong, the key to booking gigs and the tools you’ll need when you get there, and a little bit about my becoming the presenter I am today!
My Journey
It all began nine years ago on my 30th birthday, Halloween. My character on stage is essentially a heightened version of me. He dresses better, is a little more high-energy, and has more jokes per minute, but is basically a larger-than-life version of who I am on an average, happy day. I started with the design of the set I wanted to perform on – a mix of my classroom at UNLV and my living room. Then, I decided on the clothes I wanted to wear: a three-piece suit! And then I sat (and sat) in that space and in that suit and imagined what I would say if I were given the chance to sit and speak with all of you. Since I began my full-time professional career as a speaker and mentalist following the stock market crash of 2008, my shows, keynotes, and performances have adapted and become more refined. It will be exciting to see what new surprises and opportunities appear in the next year. Hopefully, I’ll have a chance to perform somewhere near you! Let me know if you have any suggestions or leads!
Your Journey
Magicians, speakers, and executives often ask me about how to become successful, and from time to time, they hire me for week-long intensive workshops to help them on their journeys. Enjoy a quick insight into some of the key thoughts I often share here on this topic.
If you are looking to move up in an organization or be hired by a buyer, remember that:
Decision makers need to know you exist It isn’t their job to find you: it is your job to find them and reach out.
They need to know how you fulfill their needs You need to determine their needs and build presentations that will help them succeed.
They need to know that they can afford you Know your market and build a pricing structure with options that they can afford.
And once I am hired and have the opportunity to be in front of a group to present or lead, it is vital that I have the greatest possible chances for success.
It is my job to make sure that when the time comes to speak, I have prepared the client and the venue to make sure that I am:
The tallest thing in the room (stage or platform)
The loudest thing in the room (microphone and speakers)
The brightest thing in the room (lighting)
Close to the audience (in proximity or on screens)
Introduced by a respected person from the group I will be addressing.
Halloween Night:
As some of you know, I am passionate about and Inclusion Center for Community and Justice (ICCJ) and serve as a member of the center’s board of directors. We recently held our annual Humanitarian Social to raise money for education and leadership opportunities to support our diverse community. This led me to consider some of the troubling costumes that I often see – and even some that I wore in my youth before I learned and grew enough to think better of it. NPR’s Code Switch offers a great, helpful response to the concerns of the mother of a young girl who wants to dress up as a Voodoo doll for Halloween. It also links to some powerful articles about other questionable costumes and inappropriately themed parties:
On Halloween, Insensitivity Goes Beyond Kimonos And Black Face Read Here
Please feel free to email me any time, and let’s set up a Skype call if you want to talk person-to-person about what we can do in our own lives to create more opportunities for ourselves and others to grow.
When it is time for your group to gather and celebrate, remember that I am available for corporate banquets, trade shows, morning energizer meetings, and events. I’m never too busy for your referrals.
“Whenever I’m caught between two evils, I take the one I never tried.” -Mae West
Student Orientation
The University of Utah hired me for 14 shows this year as part of their student orientation.
This video was shot at my final performance of the season.
University Demo:Watch Here Shot by: Joshua LeVitre Edited by: Chris Oberle
Salt Lake Comic Con had me interview more celebrities last month! Soon, I will be adding the wonderful Jewel Staite from Firefly to my demo (you can find the full interview online) but until then, enjoy some highlights from a few of my favorite celebrity interviews:
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” -Maya Angelou
Welcome to July’s “Mysteries of the Mind” monthly newsletter!
“Be so good they can’t ignore you.“ – Steve Martin
From castles in London to the Magic Castle in Hollywood, it has been a summer of whirlwind performances!
I’ve performed 14 shows at the University of Utah, 13 shows at the Castle, and my next stop includes 9 shows at a county fair in Butte, Montana.
Thank you for allowing me to travel around the world sharing magic with you. I recently read through every name on this newsletter mailing list, and it is truly thanks to each of you individually – all your help and support – that my rewarding, unconventional life is possible.
One of my favorite hobbies traveling around the U.S. is to listen to different dialects and try to guess where people are from. (It’s even more fun driving between villages in the UK!)
This quiz from the New York Times is based on research by the Harvard Dialect Survey – see if they can figure out where you are from in just twenty-five questions from the words you choose to use! Take Quiz Here
We must each choose every day to be kind and to find ways to reach out to one another. Through my work as an anthropologist, leadership trainer, and entertainer, it has been my life’s goal to bring people together for shared experiences and to build new communities from disparate groups of individuals. I am fascinated by the ways in which we group ourselves, who we choose to associate with, and who we perceive as the “Other.”
In a famous series of experiments conducted in the 1970s, social psychologist Henri Tajfel asked how little it would take to persuade one group of individuals to discriminate against another. The answer was almost nothing. Having assigned boys to two groups based largely on random criteria, he asked them to play a game. Each boy had to decide how many pennies to give to members of his own group and how many to give to members of the other group. Tajfel found that the boys were more generous toward members of their own group, even though the groups had been defined almost arbitrarily: Read: Social Identity Theory Read: Intergroup Discrimination
If this sort of study interests you, you may be interested in my workshops or my Keynote address offerings.
Or you may be interested in helping the Inclusion Center for Community and Justice, a 501c3 charity for whom I serve as an executive board member.
I will also be the Emcee for their Humanitarian Social on September 14th of this year: Read More Here
Please feel free to email me any time, and let’s set up a Skype call if you want to talk person-to-person about what we can do in our own lives to create more opportunities for ourselves and others to grow.
When it is time for your group to gather and celebrate, remember that I am available for corporate banquets, trade shows, morning energizer meetings, and events. I’m never too busy for your referrals.
The Society of American Magicians placed me on the cover of their magazine! I’m so proud to grace the cover of MAGIC * UNITY * MIGHT 100 years after Houdini became President of this, the oldest fraternal magic organization in the world!
The Society of American Magicians placed me on the cover of their magazine! I’m so proud to grace the cover of MAGIC * UNITY * MIGHT 100 years after Houdini became President of this, the oldest fraternal magic organization in the world!
Thank you to past National President David Goodsell for writing a thought-provoking article, and to editor Michael Close for keeping this beautiful magazine alive. (The cover shot was taken by Dave Tada at The Magic Castle)
“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” -Warren Buffett
Welcome to March’s “Mysteries of the Mind” monthly newsletter!
“Pursuing your passions makes you more interesting, and interesting people are enchanting“ – Guy Kawasaki
It’s been an incredible 2 months since my last newsletter and there is so much I’d like to share. 12 states and 22 cities of adventures.
This month, The Society of American Magicians has placed me on the cover of their magazine! So proud to grace the cover of MAGIC * UNITY * MIGHT 100 years after Houdini became President of this, the oldest fraternal magic organization in the world! Thank you to Past National President David Goodsell for writing a thought provoking article and to editor Michael Close for keeping this beautiful magazine alive.
The cover shot was taken by Dave Tada at the The Magic Castle
Here I am just a few days ago at the grave of Harry Houdini in New York. Feeling emotional (and perhaps rambling a bit.)
He was President of the The Society of American Magicians starting in 1917. In March of 2017, 100 years later, I am on the cover.
My first national TV show was “Houdini: Unlocking the Mystery” on HISTORY. They hired me as the expert on Houdini and his work delving into Spiritualism and the afterlife.
Two years ago I was the medium for the annual official Houdini Séance that has gone on since 1926 trying to fulfill his promise to come back from the grave, and escape death.
And so visiting his final resting place on this snow covered day was oddly emotional for me. I experienced a lot of empathy and reflection. Enjoy. And visit if you can.
Did you catch the photos from my very special Valentine’s Day dinner with and performing for Dick Van Dyke, Paul Reubens, Erika Larsen, Arlene Silver and their friends and family at The Magic Castle in Hollywood. Thank you to the lovely Lisa Land and the talented Scott Land for organizing it. Such a joy to share the “stage” with Steve Valentine who graces the cover of Genii magazine this month. (We are the two cover boys). What a once in a lifetime opportunity to hear DVD talk about his childhood magic show that he performed for $3 and hear stories of some of the background behind Pee-Wee’s Big Adventures over the fine food served up at the Castle before we all headed into the Palace to cheer for the Magical Marionettes of Team Land. A night I will never forget.
“I will prepare and someday my chance will come.” – Abraham Lincoln
Some people asked me for a shorter and more corporate demo Reel without my contact info. Bruce Gold made over 100 edits to my last demo and came up with this 2 minute version.
When it is time for your group to gather, and celebrate, remember that I am available for corporate banquets, trade shows, morning energizer meetings, and events. I’m never too busy for your referrals.
“A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.” -Francis Bacon
New York, New York
The childhood home of Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling in Binghamton, New York. Thank you Scott Hitchcock for telling me to visit Lupo’s S&S Charpit for a Speedy. Thank you Joseph Daniels for telling me to visit the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation sites!
Riding on the Staten Island Ferry past the Statue of Liberty National Monument on Presidents Day a few days ago. Luckily she hasn’t been sold off for scrap, she hasn’t been deported back to France, and the pedestal still reads “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Welcoming refugees to our shore.
Garret Wang from Star Trek Voyager (Ensign Kim) and Veronica Taylor the voice of Pokemon’s Ash Ketchum live on stage with me as I divine who drew which pig at GalaxyFest in Colorado Springs. (They are the two at the end… Aardvark and Miss Piggy drawings)
A few seconds from my show last month at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Vegas performing for an IEEE event with 700 international experts in micro mechanical engineering. Here I am making fun of lawyers and people from Montana.
“I wasn’t campaigning for a role in a Hollywood television series, it was a fluke. So, you’ve got to have a measure of good luck, you really have, being in the right place at the right time.“ – Patrick Stewart
Success is about continuous improvement, perseverance, doing what we can to be in right places all the time, and then when luck strikes having the high level of skill and attitude required to capture the opportunity.
Recently, I performed for J.J. Abrams and his team at Bad Robot for their Holiday Party at a stunning private club called SoHo House at the top of a tower on Sunset Blvd in West Hollywood. When I went to the event, I didn’t know who I was hired to be performing for. I assumed just another corporate party for a law firm or financial institution. Until I walked in the door and heard JJ Abrams giving awards to his top team members! (Talk about the luck of being hired to be in the right place at the right time… And then being grateful that I had prepared enough to have the skill level to be asked to stay.).
J. J. Abrams watched me perform two sets and then he took me aside and we chatted about his charity work, passion for making the world a better place, and his love of performance magic. He wanted to know where he could find out more about the kinds of things that I do and when I’ll be back performing at the Magic Castle (He is a member, and I’ll be back January 19-22). What a joy to perform for someone who is making film magic at his level. What an honor to be doing what I love for wonderful people.
Here is a quote from him about my performance:
“Paul Draper was great at our party, seriously really wonderful. I want to dig through the magical literature to find out how he accomplishes the things he does. I look forward to seeing another one of his shows soon. “ – J.J. Abrams
If you haven’t had a chance to watch it yet, here is a new demo video for 2017 (a few days early). Try and catch all the celebrity cameos. I’d love to come and perform at one of your events.
Paul Draper 2017: Mentalism, Mystery, Music & Storytelling Watch Here
Also, email me and let’s set up a Skype call if you want to talk person to person about what we can do in our own lives to create more luck.
In some ways, I was born lucky. I’ve had one of the greatest grandmothers anyone could ever wish for. No one has done more to center me and teach me about art, perseverance, hard work, and making our own luck every day than my grandma. She taught me to find my giggles even in the darkest of times.
My dear friend Nathan Meier recently presented me with this lovely oil painting that he painted of my grandma Grace Ruth Block. Thank you Nate. It is a beautiful gift that I will treasure forever.
When it is time for your group to gather and play, remember that I am available for corporate banquets, trade shows, morning energizer meetings, and events. I’m never too busy for your referrals.
Christmas isn’t Christmas without The Grinch. So, to get everyone in the holiday spirit, I found a Karaoke track and gave it a try. Recorded with my iPhone in 1 take at 3am. Enjoy. (Some friends have listened to this and have said they didn’t recognize my voice).
I was recently interviewed on a podcast for theaters, event producers, and performers who create ticketed events. They asked me about working in theaters around the country. Give it a listen if you are interested in performing in performing arts centers:
