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Wednesday, 25 November 2009

Making Magic

By Brian McGovern aka Hijinx the Magician

Doing magic is all I ever wanted to do since I was a kid. I remember being mystified and astonished by a magician when I was just a little boy growing up in Brooklyn, New York. I knew I wanted to be a magician. I pictured myself traveling around the world floating, sawing and vanishing beautiful ladies, producing tigers and looking spiffy in black tie and tails.

I started out working at a magic shop and the owner booked me to do a show at a birthday party. Besides being terrified, I had no act. The shop’s owner sold me the tricks to perform. That first show wasn’t exactly profitable, but it was a start.

Then life happened. I got married, had kids and got a job. I kept performing on the side but kept dreaming of the day when I could be a full time pro.

Now that my kids are grown, I’ve given up the nine to five in order to follow that dream. I had no idea what I was in for. Nowadays, I’m running all over New York City and Long Island doing magic at every imaginable spot.

Birthday parties for kids, for adults and even teenagers. Teens are a tough audience but once you win them over, they’re more enthusiastic than any other crowd. They really react.

From parties on yachts for millionaires to birthday parties in small Bronx apartments, I see it all. I’m invited into people’s homes to entertain the people they love with the art form I love.

Sleight of hand and illusion are things of beauty. Like a painter who only creates the illusion of a woman with paint and canvas, a magician creates illusions with our senses. When I perform magic and I hear a gasp of disbelief, I’m happy. Not that I tricked somebody, but that I gave them the gift of wonder.

“We are perishing for lack of wonder, not for want of wonders,” is a quote from G. K. Chesterton I really enjoy. I see the art of magic not as tricks but as a source of astonishment.

Sure, we use “tricks,” but not like a liar or a con-man. Just like a movie producer uses “tricks” to make us believe a man can fly, it is a means to an end.

Maybe I’m getting too old for this? I wonder that sometimes as I haul my bag of tricks to the car for another crazy day of hocus-pocus. But when I see that look of wonder in the faces of my audiences, suddenly I feel that sense of wonder too and I’m transported back to that day I saw my first magic trick, and I feel like a kid again.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

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