The Regenerative Power of Amazement

"Magic" evokes amazement and astonishment. The above picture shows me amazing a couple of women at the Ithaca Farmers Market in Ithaca, NY. I love being able to give people the gift of this kind of laughter and amazement!

I believe one's life degenerates into an uncreative, dull necessity without amazement. The ability to be astonished, or amazed, allows us new glimpses into the ordinary, and opens doors to the extraordinary. This stimulus of astonishment keeps life fresh, interesting and vital in a society weighed down with practical necessity and routine.

It's HEALTHY to be amazed! People who are deprived of access to that experience, or shut it off within themselves, are likely to tire, become depressed, rigid, and lifeless. Amazement is a sign of vital life.

Take a moment to think back over your day today. Was there anything "magical" about it, or romantic? Did you look at some ordinary thing in a startling new way that gave you a smile or turned your head? Did anything extraordinary put you in a state of wonder today? Or was your day humdrum, routine, predictable and boring? We were not born to be 100% practical – we need some magic in our lives!

When you are in the grip of astonishment it is impossible to be tired. A tired life is a life drained of magic. It’s also impossible to be depressed. One thing I’ve noticed over the years of performing close-up magic for people: the moment of amazement is almost always accompanied by smiles and laughter.

People often ask me whether I know how other magicians do their tricks. Well, I know some, and there are a lot I don't know. Sometimes I don't know because of simple ignorance, but often (especially when it comes to large scale illusions) it's because I don't want to know. Why? Because I like being amazed just as much as I like amazing other people, and if I know I'm not going to be doing a particular trick myself, I will often times forego learning the secret in order not spoil that childlike sense of amazement that other magicians can evoke in me.

I’m blessed to have fallen in love with magic as a child. It has kept me young. I hope you have found the magic in your life, too, and that it continues to amaze and inspire you.

Wealth

Well, I'm sitting here in a hotel in Rutherford, New Jersey, the skyline of NYC visible 13 miles away. I have two shows tomorrow in New Jersey, both school assembly programs, presenting "Magic With A Message" -- the message is about bullying.

This is the trip I took last week when I got my schedule all screwed up and got a week ahead of myself. Today I made the drive again -- although not before double-checking on the date!

A very nice hotel maintenance staffer spent about 15 minutes trying to get my little DVD player hooked up to the room television. Finally succeeded when he came back with some new cables. Turns out my cable didn't have a long enough pin on the tip.

Good chance I won't be watching anything anyway. I have so much work I want and need to do (including writing this little blog post). And when I am alone in hotels I value the time spiritually, as a chance to go within, meditate, and connect with my true priorities. It's so easy to get caught up in the daily patterns and demands, as we all know. Being on the road is a great opportunity to step out of all that for a while, evaluate, think, and pray.

Tears came to my eyes on the trip here (an almost four hour drive), as I thought about how wealthy I am. Why is it that "wealth" is always immediately understood financially? Wealth means having an abundance, an excess, of what is highly valuable to you. I have close friendships that go back 40 years, a beautiful wife, and a wonderful 6 year old son. I have deer and wild turkeys right outside my livingroom picture window. A fabulous cat named Sushi. I am virtually surrounded with goodness.

I don't have financial wealth, and, frankly, I just can't get that excited about it, and have never been motivated to achieve it. My passions are for things that money can't buy. Do I want more money. Sure! But I never want to forget that right now, at this very moment, I am exceedingly more wealthy than Howard Hughes and so many other money-chasers in this world.

Amazing Mistakes

As a magician, I love to be amazed. Sometimes mistakes can be as amazing as successes. I amazed myself last week when I drove 200 miles on Tuesday for a gig on Wednesday morning. After 4 1/2 hours of driving I arrived at the hotel to check in, only to be informed that my reservation was for next week. I was flabbergasted! In disbelief I pulled out my contract and, sure enough, the gig was for the following Wednesday.

What made this even more amazing was that I had made the hotel reservation only the day before, and I made it for the correct date. I had also called the client and confirmed the gig a few days earlier. Nonetheless, I still drove 200 miles to a gig that wasn't until the following week!

I turned right around and drove 200 miles back to Ithaca. Crazy. At least I had my iPod with lots of interesting radio shows downloaded, so I wasn't bored on the trip. But it literally amazed me that my circuits could have gotten crossed like that. I must have been really revved to do that gig!

On the drive back home I was laughing with a friend about the experience. He was commenting, tongue in cheek, on how conscientious I had been to drive 4 1/2 hours as a dry run just to make sure I wouldn't get lost the following week when it was time to do it for real. How utterly professional of me to go so far out of my way as to make a 400 mile roundtrip just to measure the amount of time it would take me to get to the gig so I wouldn't be late the following week!

And, he added, how crazy!

My flub-up was a real life mistake, but when magicians make mistakes during their show it is particularly funny, because the magician is pretending to wield magical powers. The magician is supposed to be able to do incredible things almost effortlessly. So when a magician screws up, you can bet the audience is going to laugh!

Next time maybe I'll share a few hilarious magician mistakes that I've made and that I've heard about from others.

Heluva Good Cheese Magic

As you might expect from a company with a name like “Heluva Good Cheese,” my audience Saturday night had a hell-of-a-good sense of humor. I did some strolling magic from table to table before dinner, and then an after-dinner show of mentalism. It was a nice holiday party, and the only strange thing was that only about a quarter of the employees showed up to take advantage of the free meal and entertainment. The company is doing well despite the country’s tough economic times, possibly because they value their workforce enough to acknowledge them.

If you want to create magic in someone’s life, acknowledge them for something. My wife Sally Ramirez and I just celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary on December 4, which was a time to acknowledge a decade spent in each other's presence. Those are the obvious acknowledgements, of course, but if you’re like me there’s probably someone who deserves your acknowledgement right now, but you have been neglecting to give it. Wouldn't we be smart to go do that right away?

Cheers.

Mission Impossible

Well, those folks at Warren Real Estate in Ithaca know how to have a good time, and it's great to see people who work together also have fun together. We had a blast and they loved the magic.

Some of the comments they made that stuck with me:

"Hey Kate, you have to see this! This isn't just 'pull a coin out of your ear' stuff... this is incredible!"

"Are you a vampire?"

"Hey, could you make our commissions increase?" (Sorry, I don't do requests.)

After one trick a guy said, "I know that how one was done! That's a mathematical card trick."

He made this comment after I let someone shuffle the deck, and then I dealt cards to the table while spelling the name of whatever Ace he wanted. I spelled A..C..E...o..f...C..L..U..B..S.. and put down one card for each letter. When I turned over the next card, it was indeed the Ace of Clubs.
I asked him how it could be mathematical if the deck was shuffled, and he started into a long and complicated explanation.

"Well," I said, "I'll tell you what. The deck is still in a randomly shuffled state, so why don't you name another ace?"

He named the Ace of Diamonds and I magically found the Ace of Diamonds in a completely different way. I did the same thing with the remaining two aces, finding each one in the shuffled deck as he named them.

"So much for mathematics!"

He wasn't offended by being proved wrong, and I think that's partly because he was a nice guy, and partly because of the way I present magic. For me it's not about proving that I'm a superior being with the power to fool people. I'm not trying to get one-up on you, I'm trying to create an experience of wonder and astonishment for you. I'm trying to put you into another world for just a few seconds, a world in which you get to experience all normal rules and laws being cancelled, a world in which you get to experience the impossible.

Someone actually said that last night: "That's impossible!"

"That's my job," I replied. "Mission Impossible."

Spilling Wine on Michelle Pfeiffer

Tonight I'll be doing close-up "mingling magic" for the staff at Warren Real Estate. Amazingly, the owner of the company has my name: James Warren! When we first moved to Ithaca three years ago I kept seeing signs in front of buildings and homes all around town about "James Warren." I thought, wow, they really go out of their way here to welcome newcomers!

Well, they're not quite so extravagant as all that, but Ithaca is certainly the friendliest of towns, and I'm excited to be able to perform for some locals tonight since so much of my time is spent performing in other cities and states. And it's always so much fun to do "mingling magic," the sleight-of-hand magic that happens right in front of your face, which makes it that much more amazing. And I love the personal interaction with the people.

It's also fun because it is so spontaneous, and anything can happen: like the time I spilled wine on Michelle Pfeiffer's dress. Yep, you read that right -- Michelle Pfeiffer. It happened at a high-end restaurant in downtown Los Angeles where I was performing. Michelle and Robert Redford were filming a movie nearby and she came in for dinner with 8 or 9 crew members.

I did a trick that involved a card magically changing into another card, and I placed the card face down on the table so no one could see its identity. The moment I turned away someone reached out to grab the card. I didn't want it exposed prematurely to spoil the surprise, so I lunged for their arm -- and in the process knocked over Michelle's wine glass.

As the liquid spilled over the edge of the table onto her dress her entire entourage at the table became deathly silent. I held my breath as Michelle looked down at her dress. Then she looked up at the crew, shrugged, and said, "It's wardrobe."

Everyone broke into laughter at the wardrobe mistress' expense, and I could rush to the trick's climax in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. Michelle Pfeiffer is a doll.

Stage shows are by-and-large rote matters; but mingling magic always yields anecdotes worth remembering!