Today's random rambling (2)

Posted Thursday, 31 July 2008

It's interesting. What's interesting? Well, stop asking silly questions and I'll tell you (what? Who said that?).
Back in secondary school, I was really into the occult... maybe you remember that numerology post I did a while back -- that knowledge comes from my days in secondary. Study Hall was actually Advanced Divination class -- to me, at least. I had this great, thick book about divination and soothsaying. Actually, I still have it -- I'll refer to it occasionally for palmistry or tasseography.
Anyway, to make complete the Spiny McSpleen Shroud of Mystery, I also liked to do magic. Not "magick", but sleight-of-hand. I knew all kinds of stuff -- I could link paperclips with a dollar-bill, I could make rubber bands jump about between my fingers, I could break pencils with bits of paper, stuff like that. I was the David Copperfield of Hastings High School (someone called me "Houdini" once, though in error -- Houdini was not so much an illusionist as an escape artist).
Well, in my geometry class one day (I had been doing magic all over the school by then), I entered the room and sat down. Almost immediately thereafter, I was swarmed by people (if three people is considered a "swarm") and was requested to do a magic trick. The interesting thing was, all three of the people looked like the archetypal hispanic gangbangers whom one is likely to see on a street corner in a densely-populated area -- white t-shirts with designs airbrushed on, baggy trousers, and gold necklaces with the haloed cross on.
Anyway, I performed all of the tricks for which I was equipped at the moment (the jumping rubber bands, the linking paperclips, and the disappearing coin). I was quite surprised to see the reactions from my audience after every trick -- they were wholly enraptured in my performance!
After that, I gained quite a new perspective on magic. Whether they admit to it or not, everyone likes magic. Regardless of age, ethnicity, or warring street faction, people just like to have everything they've ever known about physics turned completely upside-down by a well-executed illusion.
The only people who don't like magic are other magicians. They already know how the trick is done, so there is no mystique in it.
I've since let my sleights sort of fall by the wayside, in favour of my other creative endeavours.
I might start the magic stuff back up again, though. I've learnt that people like to have actual paranormal stuff intermixed with the illusion. As I know numerology like the back of my hand, I'll do a numerological reading of an audience member in between tricks.
Now, if only I could memorise everything and work the numbers out in my head, I could appear to be psychic...