Magic Is Dead, page 15
As I watched other older magicians speak about the craft, and compared their ideas to those of Xavior and his peers, it was glaringly obvious to me how the two generations differed, clashed even. Those from the old guard still view magic as an insular passion with set rules and boundaries, as if the art already hit its peak with the likes of Dai Vernon and that new heights can never be reached. From what I could tell, older magicians refused to take their gaze away from past heroes; they didn’t want to admit that the younger generation had developed better ideas than those that came before them. In a way, the young guns have decided to ignore all the old peaks and have chosen instead to look for different mountains.
While annual meet-ups and group lectures like the Buffalo gathering are staples on magic’s yearly calendar for aspiring young magicians, some members of the52 have carved out a new line of work: headlining lecture tours stationed all over the world where they’re the only teacher in the classroom. Some magicians are so sought after for closed sessions that they make their entire living just from touring the globe and sharing their knowledge.
Alex Pandrea (the Seven of Spades, one of the earliest members of the52), a thirty-year-old bearded and sharp-faced New Yorker, has given lectures in more than 130 cities around the world on sleight-of-hand maneuvers and the inner workings of his exclusive routines. Pandrea grew up in Forest Hills, Queens, not far from Xavior. His parents divorced when he was young, and his mother and grandmother split parenting duties. His grandmother would also babysit neighborhood kids after school, and one kid’s father was a professional clown. When he’d pick up his son, he’d do some simple tricks for Pandrea, and volunteered to perform at his seventh birthday party. At age eleven, Pandrea started going to August Moon, a now-defunct magic shop in Queens, taking lessons from one of the shopkeepers. When he began learning more advanced material, his mother took him to Tannen’s Magic in Manhattan, the oldest shop in the city, where he met Magick Balay. Magick, who had a long ponytail and wore a leather jacket, made magic cool for the young Pandrea. He’d take him to gigs and show him how to perform for real people, including good-looking women.
“I thought, Wow! I can use magic to pick up girls!” Pandrea told me once, laughing. “I never thought I was cool when I was younger, so I figured I could stand out if I showed people tricks. I was always super skinny and had braces, and girls never really liked me. I was never part of the popular clique.” His mother and grandmother always supported his love for magic. “My grandmother would react the best out of anybody,” Pandrea said. “She’d scream, run away, the whole thing.” But then she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and wouldn’t remember that her grandson had already shown her the same tricks. Pandrea practiced on her constantly; him refining his moves, her laughing at the wonder of the moment, not knowing that she had seen it all before.
In college, Pandrea saw that the magic industry was growing rapidly. There were a lot of young entrepreneurs opening their own online stores, so he decided to open his own shop, too. He took out a $15,000 loan from his father, who was a wealthy dentist, taught himself how to build a website and film and edit videos, and, in March 2011, launched the Blue Crown. “I wrote myself a check for one million dollars when I started, to be cashed on December 20, 2012,” Pandrea said, adding that he would look at the check every day as encouragement. When the date on the check came around, he looked at his finances; he had cleared $1 million in sales in just eighteen months. He framed the check and kept it above his desk as a reminder of what hard work can accomplish.
But in 2014, Pandrea—who had been married during this time, and whose wife was part of the business—got divorced, and he lost his fortune; he had to liquidate the company’s earnings to pay his wife a settlement. But he didn’t give up; he relaunched Blue Crown alongside NOC, his namesake card brand, and also began lecturing around the world. “I’m a gypsy. To this day, I have no physical home, no apartment. I live out of a suitcase,” he told me with a nonchalant shrug. “But it’s funny. What started as something selfish—learning magic so I wouldn’t have to be the nerdy kid anymore—has turned into me inventing new magic and giving my perspective to others.”
I first met Pandrea in Blackpool. Ramsay and I were wandering around the dealers’ room, checking out some of the magic for sale, when he pointed to the far end of the room.
“Oh, shit, dude,” he said. “You have to meet Pandrea.”
“Who is that?” I asked, craning my neck to see where he was pointing. I saw a guy, probably in his late twenties, standing behind a table, a deck of cards in his hands. It looked like he was performing to a large crowd of people.
“He’s a close friend,” Ramsay said. “He knows Laura and Madison and everyone else, too.”
“Is he . . . good?” I asked.
“Dude,” Ramsay said, rolling his eyes at me. “He’s one of the best. Don’t worry, he’ll do something for you.”
We walked over. Pandrea had a dealer table and was selling effects from Blue Crown, as well as his NOC playing cards. We waited for him to finish and for the crowd to move on.
“Pandrea!” Ramsay shouted, raising his arms in the air. They embraced in a hug. “This is Ian,” he said, introducing me. “This is his first convention—he’s never really seen magic before. You should show him something.”
“Yeah?” Pandrea responded, rubbing the scruff on his chin, clearly tickled that he had access to fresh meat. I was still so green back then—enthralled by every illusion performed for me. I was desperate for someone, anyone, to fry my brain.
Pandrea picked up his deck off the table and fanned it in front of me.
“I just want to do something simple, but I want you to make all the decisions,” he said, “so pick a card.”
I reached in and chose the ace of hearts.
“You like that one?” he asked.
“Yeah, sure,” I said.
“Great, now put your card back into the deck, and take the deck and give it a good shuffle for me.” I grabbed the cards, shuffled, and gave the deck back.
“So, what we are going to do is split the cards into piles,” he said, placing them into two different stacks. “Now, choose one.” I pointed to the one on the right. He picked up the pile I chose and began to shuffle. He split those cards into four small stacks and had me pick a pile again. I pointed to the one farthest to the right.
“Do you want to change your mind?” he said.
“You know what,” I said, “I do.” I was trying to psyche him out, to throw him off his game. I pointed to a different pile. He picked it up and discarded the rest. We repeated the exercise until one card remained. A crowd had formed, watching and waiting for the big reveal.
“There are a lot of people here, so I’ll give you a choice,” he said. “You can flip the card over and see if we narrowed it down to your card and show everyone if it’s right or wrong, or you can peek and keep it only for yourself.” He looked at me and waited for my response.
“I’ll just look myself,” I said, a guy in the crowd groaning audibly at my decision. I bent down, shielded the card from the other spectators, and peeked at its corner. It was the ace of hearts. Pandrea and I looked at each other. I tried not to smile, but his eyes told me that he knew what I had seen—he knew it was my card. I walked away from the table in silence. I didn’t tell anyone the card that I saw.
Ramsay came up behind me and tossed his arm around my shoulder. “See? I told you I’d show you the real deal when it came to magic.” He threw his eyebrows up, cocked his head, and laughed. Pandrea and I saw each other a few more times that weekend in Blackpool* and kept in touch after the trip was over. A few months later, he shot me a DM on Instagram: Would I want to tag along during his next lecture circuit—in Spain?
“Are you kidding? Yes!” I wrote back. I had already become familiar with how the industry worked, and I was eager to see this facet of the business, touring the world and lecturing to other magicians, firsthand. The trip was set. First stop: Barcelona.
Pandrea sauntered through the hotel lobby clad in a black tuxedo jacket, waxed jeans, and suede Chelsea boots. His girlfriend, Kristina, petite and blond, wrapped in a tight black dress, walked behind him. On a fourteen-city, eighteen-event jaunt, they had driven north to Barcelona from Madrid earlier that day. I myself had just landed in the city and was staying in an Airbnb down the street. Although he sells custom decks and effects through his online store, Pandrea makes a good chunk of his income from these lecture tours: at least $50,000 per trip, sometimes reaching closer to six figures.
Spain loves magic, with a specific style of performance that lends itself more to narrative storytelling mixed with illusion rather than stand-alone tricks that have no connecting threads. After leaving the hotel, we visited a private museum of magical memorabilia in the city center. The small building housed a slew of books, props, and other artifacts dating back to the eighteenth century, including a room devoted entirely to cards, with an archive of 1,400 decks. At the end of the venue stood a small stage that hosts private performances.
That night’s event was not a lecture hosted by a local magic club, or a private performance. It wasn’t even in the museum itself, but rather a private dinner at the upscale restaurant Aire. A dozen local magicians, ranging in age, had offered to combine a lecture by the esteemed young American with a fine-dining meal. They positioned Pandrea, Kristina, and me at the head of the table. I realized after we sat down that the entire restaurant had been rented out for us. The chef came out and introduced himself and explained the details of the meal. We had an eight-course dinner of authentic Catalan cuisine: some sort of cold fish that reminded me of ceviche, grilled calamari served with bread smeared in tomato sauce and topped with serrano ham, bowls and bowls of green olives, sardine soup, credo with grapes, anchovies laid atop more bread, artichokes wrapped in strips of haddock, mussels in cream sauce, juicy steak cooked rare, and ice cream with espresso for dessert. It was a feast.
After dinner, the group eagerly waited for Pandrea to begin. One of the magicians most fluent in English translated, and Pandrea showed them card controls, exclusive routines, and gimmicks he had developed. He also did some iPhone magic, including a trick where a phone’s battery instantly charges to 100 percent while in the spectator’s pocket. He spoke with confidence and made clear points: More than anything, Pandrea said, he wanted to create easy-to-use effects that still produced a powerful experience for the audience. “Spectators do not care about the method because it is the only part of the trick that is purposefully hidden,” he told the crowd. “It’s irrelevant how it’s done; what matters is what it does.” As Pandrea spoke, I realized that this is exactly what I would want in a routine of my own. If I was going to invent something, I needed to keep the method simple but still pack a punch. In magic, it’s the ultimate conundrum.
The next day, we packed our bags into Pandrea’s rental car, a candy-apple-red Mercedes B Class hatchback, and drove west through the countryside to Basque Country, which stretches along Spain’s northern coast. We pulled into San Sebastián, a small waterfront city that hugs a gorgeous inlet of bright cerulean sea. Boats dotted the water and people lounged on the white-sand beach. A light breeze carried in from the ocean and the sky was clear and bright. We ate lunch at a café along the shore before heading to that evening’s event.
This crowd was much younger than the one in Barcelona and, to me, more thrilled to take a selfie with Pandrea than hear him talk about magic. This lecture, held on the top floor of an old stone-faced home in the city’s residential sector, carried on the same way as his other events: the same tricks explained the same way, with the same pitch at the end for attendees to purchase DVDs, download codes, handmade gimmicks, and playing cards. Night fell during the talk and we drove back to the hotel in silence. Kristina took the wheel as Pandrea nodded off in the front seat. Although these tours offer Pandrea a lot of travel experience, a good chunk of cash, and visual fodder for his Instagram, they are clearly draining. But, when compared to the lives of countless others who have to hustle to succeed in the world of magic, Pandrea had it made, and he knew he couldn’t take it for granted.
In Buffalo, the real work begins after the afternoon lectures end. All the magicians grab drinks at the bar—mostly beer and whiskey—and get down to the nitty-gritty. Although the talks anchor the event, what people really came here for—same as in Blackpool or Vegas—was the close-knit camaraderie. They wanted to see what each other had been working on, share and receive tips on difficult sleights, chew on new plot twists spun into an existing routine, or spitball completely new effects altogether. The older guys mostly kept to themselves, rehashing experiences from memories past or immodestly showing each other moves that had been invented decades ago. The young guys gathered around and asked to see what the others had recently posted on Instagram.
Xavior held court at a corner table and showed a small crowd his work on Raise Rise, an effect invented and made famous back in the 1990s by legendary magician Ray Kosby. In this trick, the spectator’s card is placed toward the bottom of the deck, protruding halfway (or out-jogged, in magic parlance). The card then magically rises up and up the deck—still sticking out of the pack—until, at the end, it’s resting on top. For years it has been labeled one of the most technically difficult card tricks ever invented.* Xavior is known to do it better—more seamlessly, more magically—than the trick’s inventor. In fact, the trick became a pillar of his reputation. Xavior is obsessed with the minutiae of moves involved: certain types of grip, slight changes in finger placement, variations in spectator management for a more deceptive execution. He spoke on these elements to the small group that surrounded him that night in Buffalo.
“If you move your thumb up on the edge of the deck, here,” he explained, showing the others, “you get less friction with the move, and it works better.” He also talked specifically about how to better deceive the spectator. “When you do the move, come right up to their line of sight,” he said, demonstrating with the deck. “It really helps the illusion. They can’t see what is happening.”
This is possible on a biological level because your eyes aren’t built to accurately track movements of very thin objects, such as playing cards. The macula, which is at the very center of your retina, is packed with photoreceptors, and helps bring objects into high resolution. As Xavior gently brings the deck up, moving the protruding card just outside of your macula’s range, your brain can’t process that he’s executing a sleight. It just looks like the card rises up the deck, unprovoked. Xavior did the move once, twice, three times, and everyone audibly gasped. It was so flawless—it was like art.
“Some people say the way I do things is impractical, but that’s only because they aren’t good at it,” he said. “That’s why people call me a move monkey!”
From across the room, I saw an older gentleman watching, arms folded, brow pinched. He was in his early sixties, with a lean frame and a full head of black hair. He wore a brown suit jacket and relaxed-fit blue jeans. He looked confused, nearly transfixed, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He obviously knew what was being done with the cards, but he was shocked at Xavior’s skill. It was as if the card just floated to the top of the deck. “Say, uh—” the man started, easing his way closer to Xavior. “Can you do that again?”
“Sure,” Xavior responded matter-of-factly. He did the move again.
“I’ve been doing magic for over forty years and . . . wow. That’s . . . that’s amazing,” the man told him, mouth agape, hands on his hips. “You young bloods are really taking things to another level, aren’t you?”
Xavier smiled and said, “Something like that, yeah.”
The amount of respect being paid to Xavior during this exchange was clear. Magicians are evaluated by what they contribute to the craft. Being able to invent compelling magic, or improve upon effects already in existence, is what separates everyday enthusiasts from truly influential creators, no matter how old they are. I had seen the connection formed between magicians—in Buffalo with Xavior or in Spain with Pandrea—because of what these guys had contributed to the community. And I knew that, if I wanted to make an impact on the world into which I had been accepted, I would need to do something similar. I would need to invent my own trick.
Xavior showed his move a few more times as he explained the finer mechanical details. The man stared down at Xavior’s hands. Then he pointed at his finger, his eyes narrowing.
“What’s that tattoo on your finger?” he asked. “The Three of Spades?”
Xavior didn’t respond. He didn’t even look up. He just shuffled his cards, a smile spreading across his face.
15
Just a Simple Plan
Sports anchored my childhood. My father had always been a football fanatic, which was exacerbated by his time as a student at the University of Tennessee, a quintessential southern football school, during the years leading up to my birth. As I became older, however, secured by the goings-on of our small Massachusetts town, sports quickly built itself as a bridge between us. He coached my Pop Warner football team and eventually became president of the regional organization. We would drive to away games in his truck, me drinking chocolate milk and eating a cinnamon roll, him sipping coffee. He wore a navy-blue windbreaker with sunflower-yellow stripes, our team’s colors, and kept a laminated playbook jutting out of his back pocket. Although he continued to work long hours to expand his business, and to save money to build the big house in the woods, he still always made time to be involved with—and champion my participation in—sports-related hobbies. To him, it formed a camaraderie with my peers, taught the value of teamwork and leadership, and could instill in me the characteristics of becoming a well-rounded teenager and adult: things he wasn’t shown as a kid, but that he somehow knew to be important.
