Inside Magic

Singapore's
The Electric New Paper
brings us a story that can serve as an object lesson.

One of the cardinal rules in our biz: watch your
angles.  You can practice a trick for
days in front of your bathroom mirror. 
You can even fool yourself.  But
unless you account for audience members sitting to the side or behind, you may
be the only one who sees the trick as you intended.

Magician Wang Qimo is called "The David Copperfield of
China." 

In keeping with his prestigious title, Mr. Qimo wanted to
make an airplane disappear.  We're
guessing he practiced it a few times before he performed for beach-goers in Lianyungang, Jiangsu
Province.

He set up a platform 100 meters off-shore equipped with
rather large curtains.

On shore (we think) Mr. Qimo showed a passenger plane from
which two flight attendants strolled. Curtains were raised in front of the
plane and then immediately fell to show the plane vanished. 

The curtains on the platform now fell to reveal a plane.

Impressive, no?

Well, actually not so impressive.  The media reported "the second plane is
actually a giant inflatable, and that some in the audience have seen parts of
the plane sticking out of the red curtain earlier."

We doubt Mr. Copperfield would have used this method to
vanish anything but regardless, we're sure he would checked his angles and
obtained secrecy agreements as required.

Continue reading Vanish of Airplane – Almost

This morning's Toronto Globe & Mail features Patrick
Watson's glowing review of The Anatomy of
Keys by Steven Price. 

The new work
is inspired by the life and career of Harry Houdini but is different from many
of the other literary efforts similarly inspired. 

"And now a young B.C. poet, Steven
Price, has imaginatively recounted that life in a gripping volume that travels
through a mind stricken by his parents' deaths to the point where the idea of
escape becomes the driving image: the pilgrimage, the grail. It is a psyche
that is always a part of a body, and a body always part of its own ending."

Mr. Price's work helps to introduce or reintroduce both
Houdini and poetry to a new generation.

"When I bring to a dinner party some
treasures from one of my recently discovered poets, I am often met with,
"Oh yes I used to like poetry when I was a kid, haven't read any since
school," and so forth.

. . .

"Well, now I'm going to start
bringing The Anatomy of Keys, and probably extra copies to give away."

Mr. Price's background as both poet and educator combines
with his love for the bigger-than-life Houdini to produce a "long
poem" that achieves "what all artists dream of: the virtual
disappearance from our awareness of the subtle technical intricacies that are
unfolding there."

Mr. Price's talent shines in his choice of language, metre
and rhyme, writes Mr. Watson.  The result
is "a poetic adroitness here so knowing that it often hits you only
afterward how deliciously chosen each syllable has been."

Our poetry knowledge and sophistication would be sufficient
to fill to the brim an average sized Vernet thumbtip.  We're stuck in the wonderful world of the
limerick and the two Robert Frost poems we were forced to memorize between
beatings and verbal shaming at "boarding school" — but what we do in
our time is our business, we suppose.

This review causes us to think there is a reason to again
try poetry. 

A snippet from the epic related to the Substitution Trunk: 

How she'd stub or shamble into trunks

ladders, chests, awkward before a crowd

yet glide with the careful verity of monks

when alone, when her wasp-slender waist flowed

with the relied-upon and regular-as-rust

assurance some goodness must come next.

Only because we trust you with our deepest secrets, we'll
tell you this passage made us feel, well, "funny."  Not "funny" like someone belched at
a funeral, or "funny" like the "Headmaster" at our
"boarding school."   

"Funny" in the sense we were excited, happy,
intrigued, vulnerable, motivated, anxious, guilt-ridden. Like the first time we
found the encyclopedia had entries related human biology. 

We have often thought about Bess and her petite features –
including a "wasp-slender waist" — yet with the strength,
flexibility, and force of a gymnast.  She
was always, for us, a magical Cathy Rigby or Olga
Korbut. 

Poetry has a way of conveying a message greater than the
written words through which it is conveyed. 
Houdini was both in life and death bigger than the man himself.  We look forward to reading the entire book.

Please check out the publisher's page for more information
about this book and its upcoming promotion here.

Continue reading Bigger than Words: Anatomy of Keys and Houdini