SINGAPORE : Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be able to read someone else’s mind?
Well, it’s still not too late to try to pick up this skill because it is not a ‘power’ that one is born with, but a talent that can be taught to just about anyone.
“They can be taught to do this if they put years and years and years of work into it. I think of it like learning music – anyone can learn to play but not everyone is going to be the next Mozart,” said mind illusionist Tom DeVoe.
In Singapore as part of his year-long world tour, DeVoe started reading the thoughts of his teachers and classmates at a young age.
He told Primetime Morning that he started by observing people – their body language, how they talk, how they work – and getting to their mindsets.
“I would try to work out what my friends, my teachers were thinking and in the early days, it was kind of hit and miss, I would be wrong a lot of the time but then I sort of got better and worked on it over years,” said the 21-year-old lad from Wales.
“And when I was 11 or 12, I read some books on magic and then combined the techniques of magic that I was learning with the skills that I already had.”
Called mentalism, this performing art presents the illusion of psychic powers and is similar to stage magic but there’s “nothing supernatural” about it.
DeVoe uses a mixture of psychology, suggestion, and “some other more devious techniques from magic to misdirection”.
Using his radio show as an example, he said, “What I do on the radio sometimes is use suggestions, I’ll influence them by the way I speak, make them think of things that I want them to think of.”
Just don’t ask him to work with kids because “their minds are all over the place”.
“They can’t concentrate on one thing. You ask them to concentrate on something and then it goes through this hole and then they don’t remember what they were thinking of so they are terrible to work with,” he said.
But he doesn’t just read minds when he’s performing, it does have its advantages in everyday life too.
“I used to try to get my friends into bars and clubs when we were far too young to be in bars and clubs,” he said. “That was very hard and it didn’t always work.”
These days, his act is not limited to just mind-reading. One of his favourite tricks include spoon bending – with his mind.
“It’s all about perceptual manipulation, making you think that you are seeing things that you’re not,” he said.
“Back in the day, people would always accuse me of using plastic spoons and painting them silver