Chances are if you’ve scrolled through Timothy’s Facebook page over the last 16 days you might have wondered… Who are all these people posting sympathy messages and accolades, many coming from people that Tim had never even met? Yes… news travels very fast in our magic community. But not just the news when someone leaves us, news also travels fast when someone joins the magic community, especially when they have a fresh new approach like Tim did. So today I’d like to give you, his family and friends a little understanding of why Tim was so highly regarded by his fellow magicians all over the world.
Even though I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Tim grew up in Arlington, Virginia, I started hearing about Tim when he was still a teenager. A mutual friend Scotty York, who himself is one of the most creative sleight-of-hand magicians in the world was starting to mention this young teenage magician, he called “Timmy” who he said was “very clever and had some great ideas.”
It was a number of years later when I finally got to meet this kid named Timmy and Scotty was right he was very clever, and he did have great ideas, but what he also had was what we call… Chops, a set of highly skilled hands and a very light touch. At a young age Tim was already doing “The real work”, advanced sleight-of-hand magic that required hours of practice every single day to master.
Trade Show in Atlanta 1992
Tim Conover, Charles Greene, Paul Gertner
If you had the privilege of seeing Tim perform chances are you would have seen him do one of two routines. If you were a magician watching him at a magic convention you would have seen him perform The Ramsay Cylinder and Coins which is done with four silver dollars, a small leather cylinder, a piece of cork and a magic wand. Now to most audiences, it would appear to be a trick where four coins like these, disappeared one at a time and reappeared inside a little leather tube. But to magicians it was more than that. It was a very difficult ballet performed with four silver dollars as they moved between, in and out and around his fingers, secretly moving from one hand to the other, and just when you thought you knew where they were… he would open his hand and the coins were not there. It is trick that is so difficult to do that most magicians I know never even attempt it. They simply read the description of the method and shake their heads. And that was one of the first tricks Tim decided to learn. And he did not just learn it… he mastered it.
If you were not a magician and you saw Tim at one of the many corporate events he performed at you would have seen his trademark routine in which six one dollar bills magically changed to fives, then tens then twenties and finally into one hundred dollar bill, that he fanned out at his fingertips like this and invited you to examine. I once joked with him that if he counted all the times he did that one trick, over all the years he must have made a million dollars appear. And that trick did not just fool regular audiences, when he did it for the magicians, it fooled them too. I’m still not sure that I understand the method and exactly what he was doing.
I finally got to meet Tim a few years later while he was still in college. I remember he came to may house in Pittsburgh to visit, and he was trying to decide if he should go into magic professionally or use his college degree and get what he called “a real job.” I told him he had the ability to do magic professionally but he was a bit cautious and he decided to take a job with Mitel, a telecommunications company instead. Shortly after he was hired they discovered his unique magical skills and his boss added “Trade Show Magician” to his job description and Tim’s career as a trade show magician was off and running…while he had a full time job with benefits. This Timmy was no dummy.
Of course it didn’t take very long for other companies at the trade shows to see the big crowds at the Mitel exhibit and start asking about hiring him for their trade shows. So after 5 years working in the telecommunications business Tim became a professional trade show magician with a nice group of clients to fill his busy schedule.
Soon Tim decided that he wanted to stand out among the other magicians working trade shows and he turned his attention toward mentalism, a branch of magic that involves reading the minds of the audience. For Tim this meant reading every book ever written on the subject and analyzing every effect and method to find the very best ones. And this is one of the reasons that Tim was so respected by his fellow performers. In magic most performers fall into one of two categories. Some performers develop a strong performance style and they are great at entertaining an audience. And then there are others who work behind the scene, the magical engineers, those who think about, invent and create new magical effects. Usually those are two different people. Tim was part of a very exclusive group… that did both. He was an inventor and a performer all in one package. And he was very protective of his ideas, as he had a right to be. Because a new trick to Tim was not something that he bought at the magic shop but it was the result of months and sometimes years of trial and error to find the trick or method that was simply the best. And he invented some great tricks and he had some great methods. Every magician in this room would take out their credit card and be first in line if they could buy a book titled, “The Magic of Timothy Conover.” I only wish that Tim would have understood that.
Now when I suggest he would spend years working on one trick I’m not exaggerating. Tim’s obsessive nature when working on new magic was common knowledge among his magician friends. Minor things like sleep and food… became an afterthought. I had a friend who worked for me in my office and she booked Tim at trade shows and talked with him often on the phone. One Friday at work she told me Tim offered her his place to crash that night as she was driving through DC that weekend going to the beach. I remembered saying, “Did he mention he’s working on a new trick?” And she gave me a quizzical look. When she returned the following week I asked, “How was your visit with Tim?” She got this strange look on her face and said. “Paul, I couldn’t believe it. We stayed up till three in the morning. He had me watch that new coin trick over and over and over again… from every angle in the room. We never even stopped to eat.” I just laughed and said, “I did tell you he was working on a new trick.”
I could tell you many stories about his generosity and giving nature, but I’ll tell you one. Upon his death one of Tim’s clients wrote me to relate a story in which Tim purchased an airline ticket and flew into their city to do a special performance in the hospital at the bedside for their son who had been severely injured in an auto accident. When Tim was told the child would probably have memory issues as a result of his injuries Tim went home and taped the same tricks on video so the child could watch and remember them at a later date… as his memory returned. The special gift of the magic show on video arrived the next week along with a magic book signed by Tim.
So yes, Tim was a favorite in the magic world because of his skills as both a performer, a thinker and inventor, but there was one additional reason why Tim Conover’s death is hitting us magicians rather hard. You see when you become a magician you give up something. When you open that first magic book and read the secrets inside you lose part of yourself, you lose that childlike sense of wonder, because now… you know the secrets. You know how the tricks are done. And you can no longer be fooled by a magic trick or experience that same sense of amazement and wonder that you got the very first time. It’s the price we pay for the privilege of standing on the stage instead of sitting in the audience.
However… when magicians watched Tim, it was as if we had never read a book, or learned a secret. Because Tim Conover fooled us. He fooled magicians. And he fooled us often and he fooled us bad. Watching him made us feel like kids again. It was as if we were seeing magic for the very first time. And when Tim realized he fooled you, he got just as much enjoyment out of it as you did. You could actually see the little kid inside that grown man’s body as he jumped up into the air and shouted, “Yes!”
And I also believe that… is what attracted him to magic in the first place. The ability to create a sense of wonder and put a question in the mind of his audience. I remember talking with him about that one time, about what I call “The Question.” It’s the very first question that a magician hears when they perform their very first magic trick. It’s the first question that perhaps Shari or Michael may have asked when Tim pulled that first coin from behind their ear when they were just kids. Chances are they turned to him and said, “How did you do that?” And that is a very powerful question. “How did you do that?” And it was that question that sent Tim back into his room to practice, or to Al’s Magic Shop to see what was new, or to his teachers like Scotty York and Buddy Smith to learn another secret so that he could continue to hear that question again and again and again.
But it was also the questions that everyone in this room would ask him that kept him going. Because when people find out you’re a magician they have a lot of questions. Questions that many of you probably asked Tim at the end of his performance.
And he would hear those same questions again and again. Like when you asked…
Can you find a coin behind my ear? (He could)
Can you make a million bucks appear? (He would)
Do you practice everyday? (He did)
What’s your “real job” by the way?
Is the hand faster than the eye?
How did Houdini really die?
Can you float up in the air?
Can you make my wife or husband disappear?
You ask where did the rabbit go?
But… you don’t really want to know.
Because…(pause) somewhere deep inside in a place you try to hide lives a kid that’s only three that when watching Timothy… was the kid you used to be.
And we are all going to miss that big kid named Tim.