So what, I thought? It was really quite a simple move. When standing in the magic shop, among a group of thirty teenage magicians, their fathers, and the Director of the Society of Young Magicians, there are only two ways to categorize the miniature miracles going on in the hands of these wizards. Either they are performing a trick (making a coin vanish, finding someone's selected card in a pocket) or they are performing a move (secretly moving a coin from his palm to his fingertips, unknowingly transferring a card from the center of the deck to the top). In this case, sleight-of-hand and effect directly overlapped. My friend waved his hand over the deck, and the Queen of Hearts visually changed into the Ace of Spades, accompanied by the immediate spreading of his fingers.
[...] From the audience's perspective, magic as an art can be the most fragile. In this art, the illusion is it. Not understanding the illusions is where our emotions take us over. The experience is replenishing, and leaves us wanting more. I could certainly never see just one magic trick. Part of the fun is figuring out the secret, until the secret is revealed. Then the art disappears. There are only mechanics. Our emotions then are less about letting the art take us in, as they are about criticism. [...]
[...] This disconnect, presents a larger flaw if magic is to be called an art- form. The aesthetic deceptions in magic are made up of our secrets, our methods, and our technique. However, the techniques and secrets are not a part of our souls. We do not express ourselves and our life's experiences through the actual illusions that take place; our own selves only come out through our performances and our presentations of the tricks we do. Magicians continue to work hard bridging the connection between our deceptions and our selves. [...]
[...] The magic reveals itself as I watch it. The secrets are the trick, not vice versa. Therein lies the art's fallibility, if it even is an art. It certainly has its artistic elements. As Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin once said, prestidigitator is not a juggler; he is an actor playing the role of a magician.” There might be art in that. Acting is the imitation of life, where characters, situations, stories, locations, truths, are recreated by living humans. The problem is, where is the truth in magic? [...]
[...] Psychics, as they still do, thrive on hoping we are not aware of their secrets. These mediums hope we do not attribute their work with an art-form because their acceptance in society and their profits are based on demonstrating supernatural abilities. Houdini knew this, and that is why he never lied about his magic. He was a performer of illusion, and he said so. Houdini knew the art should not be in the lie, but in the show of the lie. [...]
[...] found tricks magical. I would see a trick in a magic shop, or watch an illusionist on television, and I experienced new sparks of life from within me. That was the great magic. Eyes that smiled. Eyes that widened with hope and awe. The magic where I was left in a state of silent shock; I'd become frozen the instant I experienced the wonder. This was the magic where I required a gasp of breathe, where I was worked beyond my body's normal functions. [...]
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