Posted on December 25, 2008
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Richard Kaufman, the Chief Genii at Genii Magazine, is good for any number of outstanding quotes going back decades. Here’s one that’s mere hours old:
It doesn’t matter how much you think about magic, or practice, in isolation: nothing makes you a performer but working for real people on a regular basis.
–Richard Kaufman
The commercial side of mystery entertainment (that is, the side which offers for sale tricks, books, DVDs and the sort to teach others) relies on the fact that, for many purchasers, it’s quite enough to just be able to imagine being able to do this stuff for others without actually doing this stuff for others. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Just don’t confuse that with being a performer. A performer performs.
It’s been a long two days. I’m not much for celebrating Christmas, but that’s a post for another blog at another time. I will say this is a time that naturally causes me to think about people I hold very dear to me. In this strange little world, that includes two people I haven’t spent nearly enough time with lately — two real world performers I call my friends — Jim Sisti and Richard Osterlind. Among the other things you may have done today, I hope you’ve spent some time thinking about people like that in your life.
Posted on December 21, 2008
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UPDATE: Welcome friends of Sam Bacchiocchi. I see many of you Googled Sam’s passing and found your way here. Before you read my brief note about Sam, please take a moment to read this entire note to honor the life of a friend who passed away this morning battling the same type of disease.
This morning’s email brought sad news.
At 4:21 this morning. Larry White passed away.
I’m ill equipped to write of the many accomplishments of Larry — there are others who can do so better and more accurately than I could possibly. What I can do is mention three gifts I received from him.
Years ago, in one of the private email discussion lists to which I subscribe, I described an idea using a certain office supply product that had a wonderful property. Larry wrote and asked at what store he might find this, and I replied that if he’d send me his mailing address, I’d send him a lifetime’s supply. He asked for my mailing address, saying he had something he wanted to sent to me.
A few days later, after our mutual care packages passed one another in the U.S. Postal system, I received a little box. Inside was a kind note and two tricks of his. The note mentioned these were never offered for sale and that he only gave them as personal gifts.
The third gift I received from Larry is the gift of his time and kindness. He cared about people and he cared about the effect magic (and magick) should have on people and his considerable contributions bare that out. Among the many avenues he used to spread this particular version of the good news were the tricks he released, and the columns he contributed to magic’s “house organs” as well as the magazine he and David Goodsell started, ORACLE Magic Magazine.
But my favorite would have to be the email discussion group I mentioned earlier. In it, among the hundreds of notes he posted, he often took the role of “Headmaster” of the fictional “Shadowland High” and we were his students. A familiar opening would include something along the lines of “Hats off, shoes on the floor, gum out, Thinking caps on.” (Later he used, “Cell phones off, I-Pods out and eyes open.”) What followed was always interesting and funny and pulled from the vast science knowledge he stored in his cranium.
He shared a lot, and I learned a lot. Over the years we traded emails and I’m better for knowing him, even as little as I did.
Among the people he left behind is his sweet wife Doris, to whom he was married 48 years.
When it’s my time to go I wish I could have it said of me what it is I can say of Larry White: he was a good man and I will miss him.
Today’s email was not kind. In another note, I received news that, shortly after midnight early Saturday morning, Dr. Samuele Bacchiocchi passed away. As in the case of Larry, I’m ill equipped to write on this man’s important and interesting life. Despite whatever your religious (or irreligious) position may be, Sam’s life is worth a peek at his Biblical Perspectives web site. At the time of his passing, Sam was surrounded by his wife — with whom he would have celebrated today 47 years of marriage — and three children and, for what it may be worth to those of you to whom religion is important, they together read 2 Timothy 4:6-8. Sam was a good man, and I’ll miss him.
Posted on December 20, 2008
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Escamoteurettes came into the world on October 1, 2004. Weblogging was fairly young and magic blogging was downright embryonic. I began writing this thing because it was easier than than finding an old priest and a young priest.
“The power of Max compells you. The power of Max compells you…”
(Sorry. That was borderline inappropriate. Just save me a seat if you get there before me.)
Over the last few days I read the archives start to finish. Wow. This blog would fill a book. (Not that it should, just that it could.) I covered so much ground — and all from my little, insignificant point of view. That I had any readers at all was miraculous to me. That the stats still show a healthy level of activity, especially considering the anemic post count over the last year or so, is truly ponderous. Appreciated, for sure, but ponderous.
And that leads me to this minor update.
Over the last year I’ve received a heartwarming number of emails asking about the blog and why there aren’t new posts. (I also continue to receive an alarming number of emails that, to be frank, have begun to trouble me. My mental state is in pretty good shape, I don’t need pain killers or drugs to help me sleep, I don’t need to refinance my home or any more credit cards, and my Special Purpose is in pretty good shape. But those emails still offer to help.)
Simply put, I’ve said most of what I can and want to say on a multitude of topics and, in some cases, said it more than once. Any arrogance I may have hosted in my mind surely didn’t spill over into my opinion of what I write; I’ve never thought the quality of what I write should even be measured against most of magic’s literarati. My keyboard simply takes dictation from my thoughts — as troubling a concept as that may be. The silly cat fights that occasionally erupt in our strange little world hold less interest to me that they ever did, so I hardly see the value in pretending I am magic’s Perez Hilton. (“Not that there’s anything wrong with that…”) It comes down to having something to say.
To demonstrate what I just wrote, I’ll repeat what I wrote in March 2005:
I’ve got something to say, boys,
I’ve got something to say.
Just as soon as I can find a way, boys,
I’ve got something to say.
That’s David Allan Coe. It seems to me that to consider writing, one should have something to say. I’ve been relatively quiet for any number of reasons, but that’s the best one of the bunch. And, as soon as I find something to say, I’ll get to it again.
Maybe I should (re)visit some the 173 odd drafts I have stored here at Casa Escamoteurettes that have never seen the light of day.
Hmmmm.
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