Scott Silven: Wonder and the Art of Mystery

Episode 3 features world-renowned illusionist, mentalist, and performance artist Scott Silven, who recently returned to Midland Center for the Arts for a special residency. In this conversation with Matt, Scott shares the story behind At the Illusionist’s Table, how his love of mystery and storytelling shaped his work, and why creating real connection with an audience matters more than simply “doing a trick.” He also reflects on the role of creative limits, the power of wonder, and what’s awakening his creativity right now.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Awakening Creativity, a podcast produced by Midland Center for the Arts. I'm your host, Matt Travis, and today we're joined by Scott Silvan. Scott talks to us about his creative process, his performance at the Illusionist table, as well as his brand new work, The Lost Things. We have a wonderful conversation and look forward to sharing it with you. Hey everybody, this is Awakening Creativity. I'm your host, Matt Travis, and I am so excited to be joined today by Scott Sylvan. Scott, welcome to the show. Hey Matt, it's so good to be with you. Thank you. So, Scott, uh, I had the pleasure of uh being at the Illusionist table last night. And one thing that's really interesting to me is how to describe what it is exactly. Is it a show? Is it an experience? Is it a dinner table? Is it a dinner party? Is it some combination of that? And how do you describe it?

SPEAKER_00 0:55

I think that's what I like about all of my work, in particular at the illusionist table. It sort of crosses categories. So there's a little bit of an immersive quality to it, a little bit of an interactive quality to it. In many ways, it's a dinner party. Um, and I like that sort of gray area, that sense of light and shade that the audience doesn't quite know what they're coming into. Um, and afterwards, you experienced it last night. It's almost difficult to experience afterwards as well. So uh I like to keep that uh keep that mystery a little bit alive with the experience. But that's the focus with all my work is sort of interactive, immersive uh quality to it.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

Sure. Well, thank you. Before we get too far down the road, yeah. So our audiences might be familiar with you as you're now doing a two-week residency here at the center. Yeah. But um, one thing I love to ask folks that come on the show is um we represent so many different things, so many different intersections of life. And one of the strangest things you ever have to do is introduce someone formally. So, how do you like to be introduced and how do you want our audiences to know you?

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Well, I'm an illusionist and a theater maker. Um the branch of illusion I specialize in is called mentalism.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

So sometimes people call me a mentalist. I'm very happy to be called that, but it's a strange word. People aren't quite sure what that means. But equally, when you hear the word illusionist, you sort of think David Copperfield or people in boxes. So um I think that's why I often go by the moniker, it's illusionist, uh uh mentalist and performance artist. It sort of covers all bases. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

So just for the uh choral conductor arts administrators in the group, can you just tell us a little bit about like differentiating between illusionists, mentalists, and and and uh you know performance artists? Like, how do you define those?

SPEAKER_00 2:31

So illusionist is really uh the creation of the illusions themselves. So you're really you're working in the mystery arts. So you're you're working with lots of different techniques when you're developing a show. Um and some of those are traditional magic techniques. The mentalist part of it is really what I do in the show, it's how I utilize those illusions. So mentalism, in essence, is using people's thoughts and memories and experiences and crafting illusions from those things. Um, where more traditional magicians they all use coins or or physical props. My work doesn't really involve any of that. The performance aspect from it comes. Hopefully, when you see my shows, it won't feel like other magic performances. It's a little bit more theatrical, a little bit more narrative-based. Um, I really play with theatrical conventions in a way that a lot of uh my other colleagues don't do. So that's hopefully my north star when I develop my work.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

Okay. And so, what does the training path look like, you know, to be uh an illusionist, uh mentalist, and some fascinating fusion of all of those that you represent?

SPEAKER_00 3:31

I wish it was an easy path. Um I never really set out to define it in any way. Um I had this sort of you can probably hear from my accent, I I grew up in Scotland, um, in the lowlands of Scotland. And Scotland really, it's a place where myth and mystery is a big part of its identity. We're also a nation of storytellers as well. So I grew up surrounded by that, being four or five years old, growing up near the woods in Scotland. And my granddad taught me a really simple trick when I was like five years old, where um he made me sign my name in a playing card and he put his hand flat on top of it, it vanished. He pointed to the mantelpiece, the card was in the mantelpiece. And Matt, I was instantly hooked. Um and he told me the secret, it was a really pathetic and disappointing secret. But I thought there's something so interesting about that about taking an everyday item and creating something impossible from it. So that was the the catalyst for me that moment in time. And from there, I began to study sort of traditional magic. So that started with car tricks and that sort of stuff, but also growing up in those landscapes of Scotland, with it being a place of myth and mystery, I began to sort of study the stories of the landscape and uh and really get into the storytelling more theatrical aspect at that point. When I was 13, I studied hypnosis. Okay. Um, and once again, it wasn't uh a conscious decision or or a path I set myself on. I w I was literally reading a newspaper and I saw an advertisement in the back where there was a guy who was doing a hypnosis course in Milan in Italy. And I knew if I asked my mom to do this, she wouldn't allow it. So I like saved up my pocket money over like six months. And the good thing about like growing up in Scotland is like you're very close to all the different places in Europe. So I told her I was going on a school trip for five days, and I got a bus from Glasgow to London, London to Paris, Paris to Milan, and like came back five days later with these strange hypnotic talents. Um, which looking at it now, it wasn't until I started doing things like this. I think I was doing the Today Show in New York when I first moved there, and I told this story, and my mum was watching it, having never heard that story called me afterwards. So I did that when I was 13, and really coming back from that, that's when I moved into the more psychological aspects of magic and uh creating illusions based around those things, and that's when I discovered mentalism, and really that was my focus from then. What I found from mentalism is for me at least, it's the most powerful form of magic because it's not about me showing you a knee-trick, it's about asking you to share something personal about yourself and us sort of going in that journey together. So I knew at that point in my teenage years, okay, there's a really potent thing here that I feel is wasted in what we think uh traditional magic is, like the person doing the birthday party or the bar mitzvah or something like that. Um, so that's when I sort of fell into theater at school and and realizing you could create your own work. Um, and then there was a great course at Edinburgh University, which was um euphemistically titled Contemporary Performance, which sort of covered everything. Yeah, exactly, everything you know as a theater guy yourself. So that was like playwriting, acting, directing, stagecraft. And I don't want to say it's Jack of Altray's master of numb, but it was sort of a four-year degree in which in which you got these core set of skills. Um, and I I was so lucky in that experience because I grew up in Edinburgh, that's where the world's biggest arts festival is every year, the Edinburgh Fringe. I've I've I've been there, it's unbelievable. It's crazy, isn't it? Unbelievable. So uh for those that don't know, your listeners that don't know, there's three and a half thousand shows that attend every year. Um and Edinburgh is a really small city in Scotland, is Scotland's capital city, but there's about 300,000 people in the capital city, and there's half a million people that come just during those three weeks in the summer to the Edinburgh Fringe. So having that on my doorstep every year while I was uh while I was studying was amazing because you were open to all different types of work. And what was most amazing were you were seeing artists not just in their infancy but working with compromise. They weren't always working in amazing theatrical spaces, they had to be in the back room of a pub or working with a budget of um$200. And um seeing ways the artists created work based on that was was so fascinating for me. And uh and then in graduating and having witnessed the Edinburgh Festival for so many years, I then thought I'm gonna take a show to the Edinburgh Festival. And that show Matt was at the illusionist table. And the way that that show came about was entirely based on compromise. I was a struggling artist, I just graduated, and I was walking on Queen Street in Edinburgh, it's this old Georgian street in Edinburgh, and I saw this beautiful townhouse that was called the Scotch Malt Whiskey Society. There was a little brass frame on the outside, and I knocked on the door and I explained who I was and I'd love to do a show, and I threw in, I'll I'll do something with whiskey. And they said, We'd love to work with you, but we only have a room upstairs in the attic, and it's got a giant oak table that we can't remove from this room. And I thought, okay, I'll do a short round of table with whiskey. And then that year I was same with my first agent, and um I've been working ever since.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

Yeah. So were there other elements, you know, as this show is designed to be a celebration of creativity, you know, talking about that first experience at the fringe. Yeah. You know, what were some other ways that uh you creatively problem solved and kind of got yourself ready to go in this very atypical situation? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Um, there was a lot of problem solving. I think uh the the really helpful thing was me and my my uh friends who were all students graduated at the same time. So everyone was super eager for work at that moment in time. So it was pulling in um someone who could help me with the playwriting aspect of it, someone who could help me with the stage management aspect of it, um, and really working through that. The the challenge, the really challenging thing about the space was it, you know, it wasn't even a black box. You're you're in a in a an attic uh three floors up um in this tiny Italian house and just getting audience members up there and and having the experience. So the first iteration of the show, I thought I'll sit at the table with the audience and dine with them during those experiences. But then I started doing the show two or three times a night in Edinburgh. So I was sitting down for a three-course meal with whiskey, champagne, and wise, which is an interesting experience for all of us as the show went on. So when we transferred the show to New York, at that point, um you know, when you do off-Broadway, uh, anyone who's done off-Broadway or worked in New York, you know the brutality of the culture there. Every producer wants you doing 16 shows a week. So I was doing 16 shows a week. Um, so I realized at that point, okay, I'm gonna leave the room during uh the dining sessions. And the most amazing thing is it was to the benefit of the show because now it was like an Agatha Christie mystery. When I'm in the room, I'm like you know, the headmaster in the room. Everyone's in their best behavior. When I leave, you're reaching across the table and going, Did you see that? Did you see that you did? Were you part of the experience? Um, and that that really, really helped me from that point there. So interestingly, now that's a show I've been doing maybe eight, nine years. I change it up every couple of years, but it it's it's always evolving and shifting. I think it'll always be part of my repertoire.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about um the Fringe Festival, which if if you haven't been as Scott mentioned, I mean, they literally turn anything that can be a black box theater in the city. Any room, some smaller than the one that we're currently in. The back of a taxi cab or a bus, genuinely anywhere it's all. If you have more than five people in there, it might be a black box theater and they have all kinds of wonderful performances in various stages of development. Sure. But for you, you mentioned that that was kind of a seminal influence for you being native to the area. What did it mean to come back and be a part of that wonderful history of creation and generation of new and exciting work?

SPEAKER_00 11:24

For me, it was uh, you know, when I was experiencing it at the moment in time, I didn't realize how special it was. Sure. Um, because you're a student, you've graduated, you're you're not entirely sure what's going on, and um you're not entirely sure what you want to do with your life. I knew I knew this is what I wanted to do, but nothing like this really existed. Sure. You know, as I said, that idea of a magician, you've got very um strict paths you can go down, much like comedy, where it's like you have a residency in Vegas, or you I don't want to do any of those things. So having uh that experience at the festival, it just opened my eyes to that new world. The most beautiful thing was last year when I got invited back to do the international festival. So it was, as you say, this beautiful full circle moment where I started at the fringe with three and a half thousand shows, and then apparently I was the first magic act ever to take part in the international festival. So it was a little bit of controversy to that before audiences saw the show and then hopefully they realized okay, it's a little more theatrical. Um it was beautiful. The strange thing was though, being back last year to be part of the international festival, it felt I don't know, I had a sense of anxiety and returning to Edinburgh again. It just sort of like all that stresses of being a student and a struggling artist, like sure it came back to me. Um so I can't say I had an entirely wonderful time. It's sort of it, yeah. It just felt a little um a little unsettling to be back in those old haunts and those and those spaces again. But all in all, it was a wonderful experience in the end. But I was happy to go back to New York afterwards, I have to say. Yeah, that's great.

SPEAKER_02 13:00

So um having experienced the show, um, it's very clear that building connection both with you and other members of the audience is is really critical. And I think like what does that mean now? And does that feel different than it did when you when you first started the work?

SPEAKER_00 13:16

It's a really good question. Um you know, it's always been the North Star in my work and my other show, The Lost Things, which I'm sure we'll speak about as well. Like connection is is always one of my core principles when I begin begin creating a work. I think it's one of the most potent aspects, both of theater making, but certainly mentalism as well. Because you're asking something so personal of the audience. Um initially, in the creation of the show, it was purely based on that limitation of sitting around a table. I thought, goodness, how awkward it must be to be at a dinner party with 24 strangers and you don't know anyone. And now I I think part of the reason the show has had such longevity and success is because of the times we're living in. I think there is nothing more powerful than bringing together 24 people every night in a community who don't know one another and asking them to share something personal about themselves around the table. Um, and that does sound slightly terrifying and slightly scary, but I I think that's the the joy of the theatrical aspect of it. It's couched in the illusion of it being a dinner party. Um, but we ask them some pretty potent questions in the show as well. So it's been uh a really interesting experience for me as the shows went on now and it's it's it's ninth year. And I I feel now I'm doing the show more than ever. Like presenters are looking to book it now more than ever as well. Because it just it challenges the community a little bit, it pushes them out of their comfort zone and their boundaries a little bit as well. Um and uh allows people to realize that the conversation and nuance is really important. Things don't have to be black and white. Sure. We don't have to sit at either ends of the table and and shout at one another. We can have a conversation over a glass of whiskey and and see what we can find.

SPEAKER_02 15:00

So, what do you do technically in that kind of like first set, we'll say, to to try to break down the walls and sort of the strangeness of being sat with 20 people that maybe you don't know to try to build that connection right out of the gate.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Yeah, so you as you experience the show, the show's uh sort of separated into four performance acts. Um, and then there's three dining sections in between and a couple of whiskey tastings in there as well. So the first part of the show is actually uh it starts very light where I do this sort of a little psychological game with an audience member, and I ask everyone to go around the table and share their name and who they're who they're with that evening to make it seem this isn't about me sitting at the head of the table, this is about us having this experience together. But the most important part of that opening section of the show is I share a really defining story from my past when I when I was six years old and got into doing what I do today. Because very often when we see what we call magic acts, you see a person standing on stage doing these insanely incredible things, but you have no sense of who that person is. They sort of play the superhero character, which I think is I I treat it a little bit like junk food, you know. It it's it's fun in the moment, but you don't think about it afterwards. So the the hope is when you leave the show, you think about oh, who Scott was was a person, and oh, that thing that he shared tied to the thing in my life. Um so that first 25 minutes is me sharing that story. As you probably experienced, the story's the story sort of seeps in without you realizing. Right and then and then there's little vignettes of that that story for the rest of the show. For me, sharing that vulnerable aspect at the top of the evening, I think it allows the audience to know that they're in a safe space, that I'm not gonna ridicule them or make a fool out of them or or put them in an uncomfortable situation as so often happens in in magic shows. Yep. Um, or any immersive theater show for that matter. Um, and it allows them just to loosen up a little bit as well. And then immediately after the appetizer, we serve them the first whiskey. That really helps as much as well.

SPEAKER_02 16:57

This really does. Yeah. So yeah, it's very funny you mentioned that because my wife was like, Will he talk to me? Will he talk to me? Is there a chance he might talk to me or might have to do something? In that case, I'm I'm not in, but uh, you know, her loss on that one. So what uh what how how much of um the illusionist that you're portraying here, how much of that is Scott Sylvan and how much of that is a character?

SPEAKER_00 17:20

Well, what's interesting about Table um as a show is I didn't realize it when I was creating it, but I realize it now with my new show I've created The Lost Things. I am I created that show through uh the version of the person I was as my six-year-old self. So it's a very idealistic portrayal of my childhood in Scotland and the sort of mythology that we in North America think what Scotland is. Sure. So we have rolling hilltops and we have whiskey and we lean into that a little bit. Um and I think that's what's so interesting about you booking uh both shows for this one at Midland. That we we have table and then we have The Lost Things. The Lost Things um came from a place when I'm a little older, um, and my life is going through an experience where I lost something really important to me. So it's a much more uh vulnerable portrayal uh of myself in that show. So I'm hoping the audiences get to see uh both experiences. They both see table and then and then they see lost things. Um so having said that, I think that's been part of the success of at the illusionist table is uh there is so many people in in North America that have a Celtic connection, whether they're Scottish or Irish or a love of whiskey. Sure. Um and it allows them to sort of step into an immersive theatrical experience that they otherwise wouldn't do. Yep, you know, much like your wife. Um, and you should tell her I am exactly like her. As soon as I see uh a theater experience advertise as immersive or interactive, stressful, stressful. I either choose not to go, or honestly, Matt, I am the person in the back with my head down, like not what it's like.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

That's deeply relatable to public speak quite a bit, but the idea of like being a volunteer for something is horribly stressful.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

So horrible, and I'm I'm super sensitive to that. So uh for me being at the the both the first experience I I created and and and was super successful, um, I was a little more I I don't want to say I played it safer, but I I certainly added touchstones in there for the audience that knew that they were they were in a format that wasn't going to disturb them too much. You know, we're sitting around a table together, we're having food, we're drinking great wine and whiskey. Um, and then that allows me to to push them in in more interesting directions a little later.

SPEAKER_02 19:43

Yeah. So when you designed at the illusionist table, did you design it with a goal of facilitating audience connection and then work towards that? Or uh, you know, was it a series of stories and then that this connection that you ended up facilitating, was that a byproduct of the process itself?

SPEAKER_00 19:59

No, really, that that was my my core tenet from the start was was the audience connection aspect of it. Once again, coming back to the idea of what I do with mentalism, I I knew that that would be the the thread of the experience um running through it. And also it's it's a situation where you're forced to look someone in the eyes, which you you ordinarily don't get in theater. Sure. You're sitting in a black box and you're staring at the person at the front. Very rarely in the show are you, you know, are you looking directly at me? You're either looking past 12 other people or or people across from you. So uh it was very much from the from the the audience connection standpoint, and that format of of having a dinner party uh just I don't know, just gave itself to the experience so much. Initially, I just started it as a as a uh a whiskey tasting aspect, but I found that a lot of people don't know a lot about whiskey, but they want to know about whiskey. Um so I found that two-thirds of the show was me uh playing a character of being a whiskey expert, which I am in no way awful. Now I am a whiskey expert just by having done the show 1500 times. But um, at the time I thought, okay, this is the least interesting part about the show. Um so the first iteration of it at the festival, I think we did it for 21 performances. After that, I reformatted it and added in the meal aspects of it and the the sensory aspect of it much more.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

So, you know, you talked about how this is set from the perspective of uh, you know, your your six-year-old self and how that kind of creativity was awakened within you at that at that point. You know, was there a specific moment where you realized that um you had creativity within yourself? And was there somebody that um kind of saw it in you and cultivated that?

SPEAKER_00 21:37

I um I'm sure this doesn't shock you. Was a little bit of a strange kid going. I liked isolation, I like silence. Um I'm sure it was part of the landscapes that I grew up in. Um but I was someone who, for better or worse, always leaned into mystery. Like I always wanted to be exploring unknown paths. And and and and going in those places. Um so at five years old, when my granddad showed me that that magic trick, I was like, oh my goodness, this is the the first time I've had something that makes me feel like I can share something with someone or have something to offer. Um and having that as as a as a something to hold on to as a maybe a protective shield was a really, really powerful thing. And then he took me to uh a magic shop in Glasgow and Scotland called Tam Shepherd's, which I I find out much later is actually one of the world's oldest magic shops. Very sadly, it just closed last year after several hundred years in existence. And it turns out my granddad's grandfather went there and took him there when he when he was a little boy as well. So I went into that store, and it's like an old Victorian store where there's an old wooden cabinet, sort of alley when you walk in. And it's all these sort of esoteric materials behind glass boxes, and you're only allowed to look at the first cabinet when you go in for maybe the first two or three years, and then you're allowed to look at the other cabinets. And there's a very old guy in there who at that point in time looked about 90 years old, but he, you know, he lived for another 30 years, uh, a man called Roy Walton, who really took me under his wing. And it turned out that Roy Walton was an amazing, incredible magic creator who, when you hear of David Blaine and David Copperfield, and uh he was the guy that was creating the card illusions for these guys, and he created some of these illusions, some of these effects in the 1930s, the 1940s that magicians are still using to this day. Um, and he was married uh to a woman called Jean Davenport, and her family had a huge history of of magic as well, the Davenport's brothers in London, um, and a history of spiritualism and and and Victorian magic. So I suddenly my world opened up in meeting these two people, and and they showed me the the history of magic. And up until I moved to Edinburgh, sometimes I would skip school. Actually, often I would skip school, but every weekend I would take the train into Glasgow and I would sit there every afternoon with Roy and he would teach me some stuff. And sometimes it would be card tricks, and then uh other times it would be more psychological aspects of magic or performance. Um, and it was this amazing, amazing experience that made me realize that magic in many ways is a meritocracy, that you have to prove yourself a little bit and then doors will be open to you. Um because now with the with the rise of AI and YouTube videos, I think a lot of people like to think that every magic illusion is sort of skeptical, yeah. Fake or equally exposed, that you can you can Google a lot of it. And that is partly true for a lot of mechanical stage illusions and things like that. Um, but a lot of the more psychological aspects, it's sort of hidden behind many layers. So um it it was incredible to have that experience. Um so those those were the two touchstones was meeting Roy Walton and then doing that hypnosis course.

SPEAKER_02 24:59

Cool. So this will probably make for uh bad listening, but uh you'll have to check the video version. But I hear Scott has something we might be able to do on the uh Yeah, we could we could try something.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

Okay, it probably will work uh for your listening audience as well. It's not a particularly visual thing. Um before we do this, I want you to confirm a couple of things though. Um we haven't set anything up.

SPEAKER_02 25:23

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

I haven't spoken to you to think about anything in particular.

SPEAKER_02 25:26

No, I texted Alex just before this and was like, it's got still cool to do the thing. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

I haven't asked you to write anything down. I haven't asked you to share anything with Alex. This is off the top of my own.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

I will I will put this piece of paper over here even.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

Um so it's a very simple thing. Um and it it uses uh a pack of cards, but it's not a card trick. Okay. Um it's actually this is, as I said, the symbol of the very first magic trick I saw from my granddad where he made a card vanish when I signed my name on it. What I'd like you to do is go back to a moment in time in your childhood. And I would like you to think, if you can, of a moment where your world shifted or changed, or someone said something to you that felt really important. And I know when you go back to that moment in time, there's probably lots of things flying through your head right now, a million different uh directions. But I want you to imagine right now that as you sit there and you witness that thing or hear that thing or a part of it, you can see a calendar in the wall and you can see a day and a month. And that day and month might be real and might not be real, and might just be something that feels right to you. All that I ask is that you don't choose your birthday because that's something that I might be able to guess. Okay, but it could be a random day in a month.

SPEAKER_02 26:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

Um you have something in mind. I do, yeah. Okay. Can I ask, did you change your mind a few times before you settled on that day and month? But you're happy with that day in the month. I'm happy to have your head right now. So share with us, what's that day in the month? Uh May the 8th. May the 8th. Yeah. Um I'm gonna ask you in a moment why that's important to you. Do you know about a pack of playing cards is actually a symbol for a year? There is 52 weeks. No that there is four suits, four months. If you added up all the numbers, they total 365. So you said the 8th of May. Of May. Okay. If you want to hold out your hands for me, I'm gonna go through the the cards here. And uh you're gonna see there is two cards that are face down. Maybe maybe your audience can see this as well as I go along. And there is just two cards face down there, yeah. You can confirm that right now. I'm confirming that, yeah. What I'm gonna ask you to do is just to take those two cards and put them face down in your hand, like so.

SPEAKER_01 27:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Those two cards that you have right now. You chose the 8th of May, yeah. I wrote something on these two cards that are face down. Uh I wrote the 8th of May.

SPEAKER_02 28:08

Wow. Uh I mean, I'm not that is the outcome I anticipated somehow, but I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

More interestingly, why is the 8th of May important for you?

SPEAKER_02 28:17

Well, I mean, the memory that I was thinking of was actually the first time I performed at the center uh as a as an eight-year-old, and I it was in the spring. So may I mean it's kind of made up, to be honest. Yeah, but that's just roughly the window that I you trusted your instincts and trusted your intuition.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

I'm sure it's wrong. Someone will factor it. Do it again if it's wrong. Don't worry about it. Um hopefully that gives you a sense of uh of kind of what I do in in a very short space of time.

SPEAKER_02 28:42

That's great. Wow, yeah. Uh Impress is always uh cool. Thanks, man. Yeah. So um actually uh this transitions nicely. So as a part of our show, it's a tradition that we um we give our guests a gift uh that's kind of connected with them, and then we uh we we we have them uh on our set. So this was from our last guest, Carol from Sweet Money and the Rock. And then we have uh we had a Jasmine that was uh uh Ariel Jacobs was jasmine on Broadway. And notice there's a watch over there who might be uh connected to that's beautiful. Someone showed us so uh with that in mind, you know, time is an important element of your show, and I think you know perhaps it's symbolic of that um connection that you facilitate. So uh Alex, our producer, went out and and oh my goodness for you today. And oh beforehand, conveniently you said uh I wish I would have said that uh I knew that you uh misplaced.

SPEAKER_00 29:34

Uh but uh there you go. This is a gorgeous watch.

SPEAKER_02 29:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

Oh my goodness, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 29:40

Yeah, no worries. We're we're so glad to do it.

SPEAKER_00 29:41

I can keep this? Yeah, it's for you. Yeah, take it. Even off camera? Even off camera.

SPEAKER_02 29:45

Oh my goodness. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

That's incredibly kind. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much, my friend. Of course. Oh, I'll always think of you every time I work. Yeah. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 29:55

And so one last, one last kind of soft tossy question, but what uh what's awakening your creativity right now, on or off the stage?

SPEAKER_00 30:02

Uh well, off the stage is actually limitation. Um I I think you know, working within creative uh limits, whether that's uh financial or or time, has been really eye-opening for me. It's allowed me to sort of uh focus my uh creative mind a little a little bit more. And especially now being on tour, I'm I'm on the road like 220, 230 days a year. It's a lot of days. So it's a lot of days. Um it's carving out that time in between to really hyper focus on something. So it's both that terms of limitation, but then equally being super aware of my surroundings. What's really helpful for me is I'm constantly in a period of change. Um, I find when I'm someone who's really restless. So when I'm I'm back in New York and sitting at home, that's my least creative period. It's when I come to places like this, like the beauty of Midland, seeing the landscapes here, meeting people I haven't met before, it sparks something in me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:58

That's great. Well, Scott, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for being in Midland, and we'll we'll have to figure out it next time, sometime soon. I hope so. Thank you so much, Matt. It was so great to have Scott on the show today. I keep thinking about that conversation about connection and how important it is. You know, one thing that we believe in the arts is that we have the ability to connect folks, regardless of their background, regardless of their slate slate of beliefs. Um, and Scott masterfully makes that a part of his work and a part of his creative process, which is something that I think is absolutely worth celebrating. And remember, whether you see it in yourself or not, you don't have to be an illusionist like Scott. You could be an everyday human, a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher, or whatever. You are a creative person as well. You utilize creativity, and we think that's important, and we want to celebrate that. So keep that in mind as you go about your days these this week. I'd like to thank uh Alex uh who produced our show, Alex Woody from Midland Center for the Arts. I'd like to thank Josh from JC Media. And in the meantime, be good to one another, be well, and we'll see you soon.