Tricks You'll Never Need to Know

There are tricks

You never need to know

A rabbit out of the hat?

You don’t need

To know that

Sawing a woman in half?

Dodgy these days

Nobody’s into it

Nobody’s into

You having some woman

Stand next to you

Making you look good

You make yourself look good

That’s a job for you now

A lesson we all should have learned

A long time ago

How to make ourselves look good

When everybody’s sitting out there

Trying to figure out

How we get two dozen doves

Out of an empty birdcage

That’s something you need to know

The other stuff?

It’s got no value anymore

Not when you can look it up

How to do it

How to pull it off

Selling it

Selling it

Is what you can’t teach

It’s what--

It’s what you can’t look up

Anybody can teach you

How to do tricks

But to be a performer?

That’s not something
You can look up

A twist of the wrist?
A sleight of hand?

A decoy?

Give me an afternoon
And you’ll have it all

I’ll give you

Everything I’ve got

But it’s just not worth much these days

Funny, when you take stock

And you realize

That a lifetime’s worth of tedious study

Amounts to an hour or two of knowledge

And that’s…

That’s it

Time takes away

So much of what

Makes you substantial

The beautiful age

The intelligent forget

The charming falter

And oddly enough

The things that stick with you

Are these little tricks

Things that hide in your memory

The memory in your muscles

And in your fingers

Straight out from the palms

So you can show an ace

And not even know

Where it came from

You get…

You get to a place

Where

One day

Someone shows you a trick

A new one

A simple one

And you watch

And you get it

You get…how it works

But when you go to do it

You can’t

You just can’t…

Make it happen

So you tell yourself

You don’t need to know it

That you know

Enough tricks

That you don’t need a woman standing next to you

That you don’t need anyone

That you can do it all yourself

And you make yourself

Believe it and that…

That becomes the greatest trick

Convincing yourself

That you still know how to fool people

Other than you