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The arts often come down to telling a story, and we’re not just talking about literature. A painting can tell a story, sometimes better than a thousand words can. Charlie Parker once told some fellow jazz musicians why he liked country music: “Listen to the stories,” he said. And then there are magicians. They’re also story-tellers. But magicians often rely on the spoken word. And when the magician’s first language isn’t the same as the audience’s – well, that’s a story, too. It’s told here by The World’s Alex Gallafent.
Asi Wind
Meanwhile, Israeli magician Asi Wind has created an interactive trick for us. Listen to the tape and then use the link below to send Asi your magic number:
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Click here to email Asi Wind, mentioning PRI’s The World and your result
“It had not a photo but a fairly crude picture of David Copperfield on the cover with the large words in yellow saying ‘You too can vanish the Statue of Liberty’ which seemed like a great promise. And of course it turned out that what you were actually going to make disappear was a drawing of the Statue of Liberty on a business card.”
Prakash Puru
No matter. Puru, who was born and raised in Singapore, was on his way. He pestered his dad to take him to magic shops..
“…there was Charlie Chu’s shop; Charlie Chu was the name of the fellow who ran it..”
..and Charlie Chu bamboozled him with other tricks, better tricks.
“My dad, who never laughs, broke out laughing. giggling really. I so I thought to myself–well, seems like a good gig.”
Asi Wind’s origin story has a similar ring. He went to a magic shop near his home in Israel – initially to buy pranks, like exploding cigarettes.
“Pow! and you’re, like, aarrgghh – ha ha…”
But the guy in that store, showed him some magic too – and how it worked.
“That’s.. aw.. I thought it was real. And now, oh! It’s a trick.”
The guy persuaded Asi to buy a card trick. And Asi Wind went home, practiced, and tried it out on his dad.
“And I remember he was so fooled.. he was ‘do it again, show me again!’ And now I’ve learned something new: how to experience magic through other people.”
Asi began to look for lessons beyond the local magic shop. One English magician in particular captured his imagination. That was Paul Daniels.
Here’s Daniels in 1991 about to crush someone inside a Spanish Inquisition-style mechanical chamber.
“So there we have what is basically a very dangerous illusion. It has a translucent front to prevent spillage..”
“Every Friday night on Israeli tv, the only channel we had — and I was hooked.”
The body to be crushed belongs to Paul Daniels’ assistant: his wife, Debbie.
“Now you turn the handle in a clockwise direction, here we go, let’s try turning it forward..”
Watching the likes of Paul Daniels, both Asi Wind and Prakash Puru realised that the tricks themselves are stories. — special kinds of stories that create space for people to believe what they know is impossible — like when Asi Wind made a signed dollar bill disappear in front of my eyes..
“Right now even though you’re holding mics and I never touched you, your bill is folded very small and it’s underneath your watch.” “No way! There it is..”
“For those few moments they get to experience what it would be like if things could float, if someone could read your mind, if spoons could bend by themselves.”
“It’s primitive, it’s simple, it’s not as magnificent as a heart transplant.. no one goes ‘wow, he put a heart in his stomach and it works, he’s breathing, he’s alive!’ Magic in order to make it convincing is the ability to suggest a miracle that you make your audience build in their own minds.”
It’s partly about the hands, the stuff you don’t notice. But it’s also about the words: the patter. A magician’s patter is kind of the top-level story in a trick. It’s the story that makes you think you know what’s happening moment to moment. Because Asi Wind started out in Israel, before moving to the U-S, his patter was in Hebrew.
“My freedom as a verbal performer in Hebrew was one of my biggest traits, I felt fluent, I can improvise easily and I can communicate any idea to an audience. And I knew that once I made the move, I’m going to lose all of that.”
Asi Wind had to make it work in English.
“There is no way to translate one language to another and get the exact same thought across. It’s always a substitution.”
Prakash Puru can substitue English for French. It’s his second language. And he says it changes things.
“I can’t go into the details but certain moments change as to when I control your card and how I move it around. It’s nerve-wracking to perform in a second language because simple questions can be misconstrued.”
Nervewracking, huh? I’m not so sure.
Indeed, Prakash Puru later tells me it’s useful if someone thinks his French is only so-so. They think that, they might try and help him out–leave some extra room to exploit. Not that he needs it.
“Zut alors! C’est votre carte, oui? Parfait…”
For The World, I’m Alex Gallafent, in New York.
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