If you’re lucky, you remember the first time you saw real magic. I mean the kind of magic that twisted your brain in knots to the point you’d cry, were it not for the fact you were smiling so hard. For me, it was like the first precipitous drop on the Zephyr at the Ponchartrain Beach amusement park on New Orleans’s lake front.

That’s what real magic feels like; the bottom of reality just disappears.

Fast-forward to a life after your third reading of Tarbell and Mark Wilson’s Course, several magic conventions, countless books and DVDs, and if you’re lucky, you can still get something that vaguely resembles that feeling. For most, though, it’s as rare as hen’s teeth. That’s the life of a magician in the know.

(As an aside, this phenomemon is why we have so much magic aimed specifically at other magicians, to fool magicians. And many are fooled into thinking that if it fooled them, it’ll fool lay audiences. But lay audiences aren’t fools. Back to Tarbell…)

We, as magicians, often come to a place where we feel almost smug in our vast knowledge of magic methods and workings of tricks. After all, we live in a technologically advanced culture; in a time when information is transmitted from one place to another literally in the blink of an eye. For pity’s sake, we can order a book from Amazon.com and have the thing delivered to us within a day.

So, while many of us were busy staring at our navels, along comes a fellow who gets a major network television special. His presentation — if you will call it that — was nearly roundly criticized by the magic community. Many lay people thought he was possessed by the devil. Many in the magic community thought he was the devil (though for a different reason.). “Look, look” became the punchline to a joke.

If you can get yourself past the technicalities that were necessary to produce a one hour television special and just observe what went on, you are faced with the fact that he managed to elicit wild responses using what many have unfairly called “slum magic” tricks — which is to say, tricks known to beginners in magic.

And yet, he managed to create a sensation that could have led to him starting his own religion.

How can that be?

After getting an earful from the magicians I personally knew, and those with whom I occasionally traded notes via the Internet, I spoke with normal people (those who are not magicians.) To a person, they believed they saw real magic. To a person.

While in Las Vegas a few weeks ago at the MAGIC Live! convention, I was on my way to talk to Michael Close, and ran into David Blaine (well, it was more of a shove, but that’s a post for another day.) To be honest, I’m not sure whether or not the grunts and guttural mumbles are real or just part of the act.

But in the end, what do audiences think of him? At the end of your own routines, what do your audiences think of you? Better yet, what do they believe?