Tea/No Tea.

[tablesaw]

I've got a theory about magic.

(When I say "magic", here, I mean stage magic, of a sort that encompasses everything from David Copperfield to your nephew trying out his first card trick. Illusion, prestidigitation, legedermain, sleight of hand, mentalism, etc. I exclude, here, any sort of actual preternatural power, such as might be described fictitiously in fantasy books or as might be woven into religious beliefs, including my own.)

First, let's take a simple piece of magic: the card trick. I believe that you, gentle reader, have, at some point, either seen, performed or otherwise taken part in a card trick. You've probably done all three. You know the drill. It starts with a deck of cards, which, under most circumstances, are "perfectly ordinary." There is often some shuffling involved at this point. The cards are displayed in some fashion, and a card is chosen. It may be selected mentally or physically. It may be held apart from the deck or kept inside it. It may be shown to the entire audience known only to the selector. But in any case, the performer of the card trick does is not told or shown what card it is.

Stuff happens. Cards are shuffled again, dealt into piles, placed into boxes, sealed into envelopes, passed around the room, stepped on, spit on, cut, torn, skewered, flipped, burned, thrown . . . general craziness occurs. All of this, leads up to the end of the trick, where the selected card is revealed, in an astounding fashion.

But before that happens, usually right before, comes The Question. It often comes a few times before that. You've heard it, and you probably know what Question I'm talking about. It comes in various mutations, but all are, essentially, "There's no way for me to know what card you've chosen, right?"

I've heard that Question so many times I couldn't attempt an estimate. And yet, nobody has ever answered, "Of course there is!" I find this odd. As I mentioned before, we've seen card tricks, we've done card tricks, and we know that the point of card tricks is to reveal the card selected. Very often, the audience member is in a position where he or she has paid to see a magic show. In short, the person answering, "No, there is no way for you to know what card I've picked," does so with the knowledge that, within sixty seconds, that same unknowable card is going to jump out of the deck and spit cider in his eye.

* * * * *

I've always been fascinated by magic, but I've always been very, very bad at it. For the longest time, I couldn't understand why. I read the books, I bought the kits, I watched David Copperfield every time he came on television, but it never worked the same way for me the way it did for magicians. Oh, sure, the same stuff happened, the balls went from cup to cup, the nails (plastic, of course) pierced currency without leaving a mark, but it never had the same effect.

I remember one magic trick that involved knotting a string around one's fingers so that they could cut off circulation if one pulled on the string. But instead, when the string is pulled, the string zips off without leaving a mark. I don't remember it anymore, but I used to practice it all the time. Well, "practice" isn't really the right word, I don't think; I was performing it for myself. Of course, "performing" isn't really the right word either because I already knew how the trick was done, since I was doing it. But I just loved how it was done.

My favorite card trick ever is one of such horrible simplicity (it uses half a deck of cards plus one joker, so you might be able to get a sense of its mathematic basis), that it probably wouldn't be of interest if performed. But I love the way it works, and I love the way that the process of the trick predicts the answer itself, like a card-guessing machine.

And all of this comes back to The Question, and my theory. I've never been able to convince someone that something is impossible and that it is possible at the same time. I can do one or the other, but I can't do both. What I didn't understand as a kid is that magic is not in the trick, it's in just about everything else. The trick is just a trick, like turning your eyelids inside out or touching your tongue with your nose. What makes magic magic is what makes someone answer "no" to The Question; what makes it magic is the ironic buildup that convinces someone that a trick is impossible while showing that it's about to be done.

When I watch a magic show, now, I do so on two levels. There's the level of the trick, which still appeals to me. I like seeing how things work, how one set of maneuvers can conspire to appear to be something completely different. And there's the level of the magic, which is harder to pin down. Sometimes, the magic isn't there at all, except by convention. It's like watching an action movie, sometimes, where the trick is the special effects and the magic is the story and acting. Lots of acting movies pin their story and performance on the willingness of their audience, by convention, to believe what's going on so that they can see the effects. So, too, some magicians rely on tricks to provide the magic. (Ever wise, my sister pointed out to me that David Blaine has this problem, which he works around by "doing all of his tricks for drunk people.") But when a performer works at it, I can feel the wonderful sensation of my mind being pulled in opposite directions as I follow the possible, on the one lobe, and the impossible on the other.

And that's simply magical.

* * * * *

I've been thinking about this for a while, but I present it here, finally, as prelude and prologue to my thoughts on the Penn & Teller show, which I hope to write up tomorrow.

FriNYTX: 19:30. Pretty good, except for 23A.