Performing to Gary Vee!
Five days after my 21st birthday, my friends and I traveled to one of the biggest sneaker conventions, SneakerCon. Being hosted in New York City, Sneaker Con united many sneaker fanatics from around the country. Both a fanatic and influencer in the space, YeezyBusta (@YeezyBusta on social media), was one of the prominent figures who attended SneakerCon. Being childhood friends with him, he invited me and the rest of our friend group to come to the convention.
Javits Center SneakerCon December 2017. YeezyBusta Photographed in the middle.
Before the convention started, we were spending a few days taking in the sights of New York City. One of the highlights of these days was a meeting that Yeezy Busta had with a Gary Vaynerchuk in his New York City office. The rest of the friends and I sat quietly in the back while the meeting was going on. All of us were silent as Gary spoke with great conviction regarding his advice on pursuing a career in social media. While he was talking, the idea came to me of doing a magic trick for him. Though he has been habituated to various talents approaching and performing for him, I wanted to put my skills to the test and see if I could create an experience unlike any that he has had with other magicians in the past. Coming up with this mission during the meeting, I slipped in the far back corner behind all of my friends, and started warming up my hands by shuffling my cards. The meeting ended and I sprang into action!
I asked Gary if he wanted to see a trick and he then proceeded to go on a five minute rant about how I am the first magician to come up to him since his discovery of the inner workings of the art of magic. He claimed that because so many magicians have come up to him to do magic, he has caught onto the art form and stated that nothing could fool him anymore. As he was talking, my pulse began to increase and my mind was racing, constantly vacillating between what type of trick would be the most effective. After combing through my entire mental repertoire of magic, I landed on a something that I thought would be novel to Gary.
After coming up with a routine and performing it for him, he was impressed by my skill but claimed that he knew what was going on. He attempted to expose the ending of the trick by revealing there were four aces on the chair. But when he turned them all over, they changed! He was bewildered and perplexed and was more than happy to have been.
Moments such as these can be both stressful and immensely educational for an entertainer. I like to think when I perform, I have two brains: one focused on doing the actual trick, and another focused on casually interacting with the external environment in order to maintain a sense of normalcy. Both these brains work side-by-side in order to turn a high-stress situation into yielding a positive result. The experience I’ve amassed over the last 10 years has trained both brains to work in sync, thus allowing successful outcomes to rather high-pressure encounters.
Take a look for yourself! I’ve attached the video of the who encounter below:
Video of Tammer Q. amazing Gary Vee with magic.
