Things You Should Never Argue About: Magicians and Illusionists

There is an Asian man on the television, and from his palms he keeps producing cards. "What is this?" My dad has repeated several times throughout the video. "Son of a b-! Where did he get all of those cards?" What my dad fails to notice, just like all those who deny magic is fake, is that this certain magician had continued to place one hand behind him whilst distracting the audience with the other, full of cards, and he would swap the positions of his hands depending on when he ran out of cards in order to refill his sleeves. But my father does not see that. What he does see is the magician pulling enthusiastic faces.

Amongst all of my father's profanities and exclaims in surprise, I was left befuddled not by the magic tricks but by how reactive my father was to the visual lies being performed, and I learnt one thing: that I should never attempt to tell my father to act any different, because it will result in having the obvious turned into lies. Magic apparently exists, and illusions are not illusions, they are real. A white man can turn into an African American man by entering a 'microwave'. Dozens of girls can appear behind a curtain on a bed when the curtain is pulled down. A man can swallow a sharp sword without damaging his oesophagus. A pigeon can spawn from a cloth. So can another pigeon. And another. And another. And a rabbit, too, in fact make it three dozens of rabbits and three dozens of pigeons, because magic is real, right? Magic can allow anything to happen. In fact, magicians should now play shows for free because they do not need an income, they can simply wave their wands and grow money off trees, or even carry a cloth around instead of a wallet, and pull out hundreds of thousands of dollars from their cloth and pay for whatever they wish for. They better hope their cloth does not charge interest.

All it takes is hours of practise, and days of learning exciting faces so that the viewer is distracted by them enough to not notice tricky little hand movements, hand movements which involve slipping a card out from here, pulling up the invisible-faced card from there. And magicians on television are even worse. I am willing to bet off my life earnings to the fact that almost every single performance on television is totally staged, and all reactions are paid for. When the audience's reactions are not filmed longer than the actual trick, and when the camera is solely on the magician or illusionist in the duration of the entire performance, only then will I possibly believe the trick is real. I might not, though, unless of course the magician or illusionist is surrounded by over fifteen goPro cameras. I will then go on to upload the footage, and watch the trick performed through each perspective, over and over, and only when I am proved to that the trick was entirely real, will I believe so.

That is too much to ask for, though. One should simply never question or argue against a trick. It is only what its name amounts it to, a trick, a trick to all of the senses, so tricky that it is totally believable. But I do not believe it. I am aware that if I continue saying this, when I am pick-pocketed by a magician one day I will cry in misery that I really do believe what he just did - can I please ahve my wallet back now? I suppose then, in that case, I would have been paid with what I originally own when I give into  believing that the pick-pocket is quite magical. In which case he would be talented, very talented. However they all are talented, with that said. All magic tricks are, are repeated skills learned and practised. That is to say that everything that is learned and practised also becomes a trick to he who learns and practises it. We are all magicians of some sort, performing our daily tricks. Authors writing, artists painting and drawing and sculpting, hikers hiking, hustlers hustling, you get my drift.

People like my father will always be fooled. It is a proven thing. Think of all the people you know who believe in magic tricks, then think of their level of success compared to those who do not believe in them. For one thing, you are supporting their tricks by watching them perform. If you are a magician and you are reading this, please do not look for me. I will copy Houdini and run far, far away.