Is it a trick? A puzzle?

Many people see it that way; the challenge of figuring it out and catching the Magician. Some even want to see me fail. Mostly I believe people want to see me succeed because they want the experience. 

But what is that experience? 

Movies and theater are magical; novels, paintings, music, all magical. Although they have the ability to transport us to another place you can also see the craft in them. You know your favorite actor did not really die in the movie. She is crafting an illusion. You know that Superman doesn’t really fly. It’s CGI. It’s crafted to feel like these things happened. 

That crafting helps you get lost in the journey and in that moment you’re on the ride and it doesn’t really matter that someone might be stealing your car at that moment.

For magic to work, the “secret” must not only be kept hidden -- it must not even be suspected. Because the moment you even suspect a sneaky move…POP! The bubble bursts and there’s no magical experience. No mystery. You are thrown out of the experience and you’ll never reach your destination.

This is a challenge I accept.

I remember doing magic when I was young. We would visit family for Sunday dinners or a holiday and I always brought something along to perform. I did that a lot.

Eventually I started doing children’s parties and while that was enjoyable and there was a lot to learn, it really wasn’t where my heart was. I was always interested in doing close-up magic.

I was fascinated with sleight-of-hand and I knew my audience was going to be in the corporate world and events with adult audiences. So I started to think more about that.

What I kept bumping into was how to make the leap from doing children’s parties to the corporate market. But the question was bigger than “how do I do more corporate events?” The question was really “who do I need to be to get those gigs?” 

That’s where I lived for a time and it was okay. But now I find the question has changed again. 

Now it’s about BEING A MAGICIAN. “Who do I need to be so that an experience of wonder just seems to happen around me?”

And that’s much bigger than doing tricks. 

I was born and raised in the small community of Malba, which was nestled in the shadow of the Whitestone Bridge, in Queens, NY. My parents had businesses in Astoria, where I also lived for the last 10 years of my time in NYC.

To get to “work” we travelled via the Whitestone Expressway to the Grand Central Parkway which took us right past Shea Stadium. (It will always be “Shea” to me!) Shea was my part of culture and right in my backyard and the view never got old.

When The Rolling Stones announced their Steel Wheels Tour would bring them to Shea, it was a no brainer. We had great seats and it was…well, it was The Stones, man! What else is there to say?

“I wanted to play drums because I fell in love with the glitter and the lights, but it wasn’t about adulation. It was being up there playing.”

— Charlie Watts

I always looked at successful people as having some untouchable quality or they have some immense talent — I’m not fond of that word, but for now it’ll work — that few others possess that makes them. They are “other than” me.

In his book, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, Steven Pressfield says: “The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.”

Yes, I do work at my business. But I’m a Magician and my job is to play. Success comes or it doesn’t.

Charlies explains it far more eloquently here.

Thanks, Charlie.

The world of Magic is filled with larger than life personalities, impossible miracles, and legendary stories that border on myth.

This recent article in the New York Times tries to capture all that with the story of one man and his Holy Grail.

David Berglas is famous in our little world for many things but nothing comes close to the legend that’s been created around a trick known as Any Card at Any Number. To be more specific, The Berglas Effect.

It goes like this. You’re asked to name a playing card in a standard deck of cards. Another person is asked for a number from 1 to 52. You’re then asked to pick up a deck of cards sitting on the table — untouched by the performer — and count down to the number named. The card you asked for is found exactly at the number named. Fucking miracle.

Most magic tricks go from Point A to Point B to Point C and eventually reach an astonishing climax. It happens the same way every time, so essentially the performer needs to follow the steps.

But not The Berglas Effect. It’s almost impossible to teach or explain because, depending on the method used, it’s never the same twice. It requires spontaneity, an open mind, and a set made of brass.

It’s rarely seen because it’s hard to do but I’m not necessarily speaking about technique. There are many versions of the trick. Have you noticed new video banners on the redesigned website? The final moments of those two card tricks you see there is a version of ACANN. There’s also a different version in my virtual show.

The challenge is creating the space so the power of the effect can exist.

It would be so easy to post the entire video of those performances but that would be a disservice. You’d miss out on that feeling in the center of your body when the bottom falls out. Who am I to deprive you of that?

No. Better if you ask about it when next we meet.

“My chief task has been to conquer fear. The public sees only the thrill of the accomplished trick; they have no conception of the tortuous preliminary self-training that was necessary to conquer fear.”

— Harry Houdini (March 24, 1874 - October 31, 1926)

This has been tucked away in my notes since September 2018. Dusted it off, made some edits and is now posted here for our edification.

To set the scene, I was performing at my residency last night for about eight people. We were gathered on couches and ottomans around a low, glass table. Throughout the evening, guests drift in and out of the performances, but this one lasted about 30 minutes.

Close-up magic is quite intimate and casual and, if done “right,” the audience and performer really get to know each other.

This particular audience was a gathering of eight friends. I was sitting on the couch next to Mario, who was from El Salvador, and his wife who was from Germany. They lived in Hanover but visit San Francisco every 4 year to see family.

“The Magician is an initiate of secret and hidden knowledge of all kinds.
And this is the important point. All knowledge that takes special training to acquire is the province of the Magician energy.”

— King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette

As often happens after a performance in this particular venue, guests will often ask questions:

“How did you get into magic?”

“Do you have a teacher?”

“Did you go to school for it?”

One woman commented that “you must have been born with it?”

Mario said he could never do anything like what he experienced.

When I asked what he did for a living he replied that he was a chef but “it's nothing like what you do.”

"Yes, it is, Mario. It's exactly like what I do."

One of the first and most memorable gigs I had came soon after we moved to the west coast in 2012.

The venue was a “maker space” in the Mission District of San Francisco. It was my first time in that part of town and had no idea what to expect. As I parked the car and walked around the corner to find the graffiti filled front door, I thought “well, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into.”

The place was filled with tables, shelves, and workspaces of electronic gear. It looked like the laboratory of a mad scientist except it felt like there was some method to it all.

At the time, I was temping to support my family and rebuild things here in The New Frontier, using skills I developed while studying and working as an actor in New York City. But I was also taking any magic gig I could get my hands on.

This particular evening was a short performance before dessert for a group of about 20 gathered to celebrate a friend who was changing jobs. For years the guest-of-honor had worked as an editor for gay porn films and now he was starting a new gig at a company that made straight porn.

And man, did they roast him. They even had a custom cake made that looked like…er, on second thought.

As it turned out, it was a fun group to entertain and we had a blast. Yeah, I’ve been wrong about these things before.

Anyway, as I stood in the back of the house waiting for an introduction, my eyes drifted around the room taking in the audience, the set up of the performance area, the decor, etc. Eventually I noticed something scrawled on the wall.

If you weren’t standing right next to it you would have missed it. I snapped a picture and it was my cell phone wallpaper for over a year.

Recently, I was having a conversation with a friend. He’s a semi-pro with a solid “day job” who does magic on the side and regularly produces his own one-man show, which has quite a following.

We were on the phone some time in May talking about what we were going to work on while shut down and sheltered-in-place. He had a plan based on the fact that, as things began to open up, people would be interested in hosting smaller, more intimate events and he asked what I thought about his idea.

“Does doing that or anything else you’ve done in magic make you happy?” I asked.

I don’t think it’s about “the marketing plan” at all. That’s a necessary evil to get your work seen. The question that needs to be answered is “does it bring you joy?”

Everything else lines up around that.

Actual size. Almost.

At times, the “problems” in my business or personal life seem so immense. There would be no way to surmount them or even know what steps to take first and move forward.

It’s just me, you see.

I still building the habit of consistently using a to do list to stay organized, balance family/home life and business, and still find ways to stay creative in magic and express oneself. I struggle with it. Something about the chaos of (for lack of a better word) “the artist’s” mind?

It seems logical that when you’re passionate about something you should devour everything you can about it. That might mean reading a lot of magic books, periodicals, and visiting websites. Keeping abreast of the latest new magic product and following people on social media.

But there’s something to be said of leaving the space and looking beyond your tiny world.

Back in NYC, one of my senpai (seniors) once told me that I’d never get good at aikido because I had too many other interests. “You’re into magic, you’re working as an actor, and practicing aikido? You’ll never progress quickly. You have to focus.”

At that precise moment, Sensei joined the conversation and commented, “too much aikido makes a dull person.”

The dojo is where you might “train” yourself but it’s outside of that space where you learn. It’s in the real world where we test the principles and apply them to life. You do your best to see how it all works then come back to the lab, do more research, make course corrections, adjust, and get better at what you do. Then you go and test again.

I also found it laughable that senpai didn’t even consider that any of the other arts or self-imposed courses of study I was interested in didn’t inform and expand on any of the others.

How many artists — painters, musicians, actors, writers, film makers, <fill-in-the-blank> — are solely practicing their art and have nothing else, I wonder?

Right now the competition are all doing the same thing and striving to be first.

What if you were to be the only?

There’s a ton on information out there right now about what you “should be doing” during this time.

Take care of your self. Work on that project. Don’t waste a good pandemic. Did you know there are dozens of new Facebook groups in the magic community where everyone has the answer and we already experts on virtual magic?

Easy. Easy.

Opening up and listening, I still hear the same message: slow down.

Yes, being forced to isolated — with my wife and kids, who are all safe and well — can be useful if done right. But check in with yourself and absorb it all for a moment. It’s exhausting, isn’t it?

We each have our own set of unique circumstances and to try and live up to any expectations right now, whether your own or society’s, is not only impossible but also really stupid.

One thing that had to change were my 2020 goals. I’ve given up on everything I wanted to accomplish by the end of the year. There are now only daily and weekly goals.

Yesterday, I called Sensei and he relayed his impressions. He does that.

The message is clear and unwavering. Work on “inner/finer.” Take care of yourself and everything around your falls into place. Change yourself and the situation changes. It’s universal.

There’s nothing new here. That message appears in my notes countless time since I met him in 1996. It’s a basic.

You can’t control or change anything out there. Even in the martial arts, you can’t really control an attacker. You can only control and change yourself. Do that and things around you naturally line up and fall into place.

There is only one project I’ve formally taken on.

I always resisted making content for public consumption. So, I made a decision to put out one piece of magic every week to about 200 people on my mailing list. After the first couple of episodes, it dwindled down to every two weeks and now it’s about every 2-3 weeks.

There was a moment when I got upset about backsliding on the timing. I’d look at what my peers were doing and came down hard on myself for being lazy and unprofessional.

Easy. Easy.

They have nothing to do with you. Allow yourself to change and the world around you changes.

David Ben - Photo credit Paul Alexander

David Ben is the Artistic Director of Magicana, an arts organization dedication to the exploration and advancement of magic as a performing art.

And he’s always up to interesting things…

Magicians and Fake News

Here’s an interesting opinion about Magicians and Fake News contributed to The Global and Mail.

“This is more challenging in the digital age, when people prefer answers immediately – even if they are based on false memories and narratives – rather than embark on a journey to the realization that perhaps there are some things better left unexplained.”

— David Ben, Artistic Director, Magicana

Illusions: The Art of Magic

Adolph Friedländer, Comedians de Mephisto Co. Allied with Le Roy-Talma-Bosco, 1905.

David has also guest curated Illusions: The Art of Magic, which runs from February 22nd - May 18, 2020 at the Art Gallery of Ontario. The exhibition includes some amazing experiences, including live talks, performances, films, and other events.

Magicana

David’s organization, Magicana is a fantastic resource to explore — whether you’re magician or not.

Enjoy.