I can analyze how I do things, but the actual doing it - when the synapses just start firing - I can't explain.
— Apollo Robbins
One time, I had a guy, when I was performing at Caesar's Palace, and during the course of the show, I offered him an anniversary gift for him and his wife, and it was her watch wrapped in a little package.
Many times, illusions or magic sets are designed as an exposition for the audience to watch, but the the style I do with the pickpocketing is directly interactive.
I wouldn't be able to do the things I do if I hadn't been around and seen the stuff my brothers did.
If I need to steal from a difficult spot, I like to use a 'bottom-up' attention strategy to direct the focus.
Too often, we take our construct of reality as an absolute, and what I'm trying to point out for most people is it's important for us to know what we don't know.
When I was around 13 or 14, and I was in a private school, I had a Frisbee that had the name Apollo on it. And I'd walk around with it. People would say, 'Hey, there's that Apollo kid.' That's where the name generated from.
At the zoo, people would gather around the railway to see the snakes being fed, and my brothers would walk around the group, taking from purses or bags or using a razor to cut pockets and take wallets.
A lot of magic is designed to appeal to people visually, but what I'm trying to affect is their minds, their moods, their perceptions.
If you don't attend to something, you can't be aware of it. But ironically, you can attend to something without being aware of it.
When we think of misdirection, we think of something as looking off to the side when, actually, the things right in front of us are often the hardest to see: the things that you look at every day that you're blinded to.
Usually I'll tell someone, for example, like their watch. If they have a watch on, I might say, 'In three minutes, I'd like to be wearing your watch. Do I have your permission?' Once they say yes, I play a little game with them as I'm interacting with them, and I steal their watch.
I think that's kind of my forte is that I tell people beforehand that I'm going to steal from them. And a lot of people think that that makes them safe, and hopefully I wake them up a little bit.
There are two kinds of magic. If you think of it like martial arts, there's sparring, where you are doing it with a partner, and the other is kata, where you're doing an exposition for the audience.
I was doing all these hand exercises, trying to move things like other kids, catch things like other kids, and change my reflexes, and I guess I just didn't stop. That's why if somebody says to me, 'Can I learn this?' I will say, 'Probably, if you can get the psychology right.'
We always think of misdirection as, 'Look over here while I do this over here!' And that's not what it is. You can be looking straight at it, and if you're not thinking about it, you won't process it. I find that fascinating.
I was at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, and I was performing at a show there. Jimmy Carter was going to be coming through with his Secret Service detail. The manager pulled me aside, and they didn't want me to shake Jimmy Carter's hand because they were afraid it would make the news if I stole from him.
I've taken a tenacious bulldog approach to learning new skills throughout my life.
Usually, when people watch magic, there are two levels: the people who walk away accepting that there are things they don't know, and the other group, who wants to know, 'How did it work? How did that happen?' They want to unravel the puzzle.
Normally, when I'm not performing or stealing, I second-guess myself; I have doubts.
If you could control somebody's attention, what would you do with it?
Think about it this way - if you have five senses, and they're all feeding into one place, kind of like a bottleneck, then now your mind has to make decisions of what is important and what is going to be above the radar and what's going to be below the radar.
In the same way that a film director would use a film lens to blur out a certain item or use a spotlight, I use certain movements that draw the eye instinctually.
When I became a teen, I ran into a friend at a magic shop who took me under his wing. I started reading up on magical theory and immediately blended that with what my brothers had shown me.
The mechanisms inside me tick like a criminal. My mind works like theirs, and criminals can smell it when they're around me - but I choose not to use it in a bad way. I just choose to do good things.
When you look at all this massive data that comes in from our senses, and it all has to come in through this central point, it's really interesting that we can identify the filter that our mind is using to select what it thinks is relevant and what it's going to forget.
Our absolutes should always be hypothesis. They should never be confirmed as fact because everything that we construct through our perceptions, through our memories, is so corruptible. The skills that I have can really display that.
I had physical disabilities as a kid. I had fine gross motor problems, so I didn't have natural dexterity in my hands. I also wore corrective braces on my legs, like in 'Forrest Gump.'
When I shake someone's hand, I apply the lightest pressure on their wrist with my index and middle fingers and lead them across my body to my left. The cross-body lead is actually a move from salsa dancing. I'm finding out what kind of a partner they're going to be, and I know that if they follow my lead, I can do whatever I want with them.
I'm a jazz performer - I have to improvise with what I'm given.
Attention is what steers your perceptions; it's what controls your reality. It's the gateway to the mind.
