Magic Is Dead, page 19
I listened intently and tried to be gentle in my responses. “That’s the eternal struggle of ambitious people, of creative people,” I said. “You achieve your goals and look back and say, Eh, it’s not that special.”
“My end goal is to be seen more like a performance artist, not just a guy who invents magic tricks,” he said. “I am thinking in terms of Marina Abramovíc. She’s a full-blown performance artist. The art is her. She is the art, rather than what she is doing. And I want it to be the same with me. Although playing cards and magic and all that shit is kind of a big part of me, I feel like I’ve picked the wrong thing. I feel like I am kind of halfway there in becoming that kind of artist. I feel held back by magic.”
“But I feel like you are at the perfect place in your trajectory as an artist to go on to this next section of your journey.” I had to keep him on track, to make him realize that this wasn’t all for nothing.
“It’s like the motivation is gone,” he said. “It makes me think that this has been the wrong choice. If there’s another choice, it’s sitting back and doing nothing. I can’t do that. I’ll end up killing myself. I have to find something to get on with.”
“You have all the time in the world,” I said.
“But, like, is the52 even worth it? I almost want to step down and let someone else take the reins.” My heart jumped. He couldn’t just drop the52. He couldn’t let it dissolve into nothing, not when the task was nearly complete!
“It’s taken so long to get this far,” he continued. “I was sure we would find fifty-two people instantly and start thinking differently. When we met you, that was perfect, organic, and the reason you got invited in. But it is really difficult to manage such a large artistic movement. I started it and I have to finish it, but I have to detach myself from it for a while. Laura will take the reins for now. It’s good to be part of the52, but I sometimes feel that I’ve gotten it all wrong.”
“You have all these tools now, more of a platform than you ever did.”
“All of this is just keeping me connected to the magic world and the industry and community. Is that what I really want?” I assured him that what he had created was something truly special—it was what had drawn me into this world in the first place. But he was overwhelmed. “I’ll find a way to get back into it,” he said. “I just need time.”
That phone call was the last I heard from him.
His newfound apathy tore me up inside. I had learned so much about myself during this adventure, about how a journey through magic, and the people you meet along the way, could bring out the best in a person. And to see him sinking deeper and deeper into anger and frustration, to be searching for meaning in his own life without looking at what was right in front of him, made me upset. He was pulling away, and I didn’t know how to help him. He had given me so much up until now, and I couldn’t give anything back.
I sat at my desk and flipped through a book he sent me after we first met: Magic Is Dead, a fifty-two-page manifesto, each page a short declarative statement, almost like poetry. The book’s introduction was short. I read the lines, “Everything I have learnt to be true, relevant and important about magic is written between the covers of this book. I am Daniel Madison. Magic is Dead.”
PAGE 1: Magic is the lowest form of entertainment.
PAGE 4: Magic is when people think it’s real, and in order for people to think it’s real, it cannot be presented as magic.
PAGE 6: The magician hides the art of sleight of hand so he can showcase it as something that it’s not. This is devastating for the art, yet essential for the magician.
PAGE 7: Deception is a beautiful art often devastated by the hands of a magician.
PAGE 8: Magic has the power to be an art. It’s a shame it’s wasted on magicians.
PAGE 11: The strongest magic does not lie. It invites the audience to lie to themselves.
PAGE 13: Magic tricks are a perfect distraction from a person’s overwhelming insecurities.
PAGE 25: By any means necessary.
PAGE 31: The more I try to understand magicians the further away from them I want to be.
PAGE 33: If nobody hates you then you’re doing it wrong.
PAGE 35: Exposure to the lies of magic distorts the perception of truth.
PAGE 38: Magic is a stepping stone away from reality. This is both good and bad.
PAGE 41: The hours, days, months, years will teach you things that you may not want to know.
PAGE 50: Every once in a while, the Lion has to show the Jackal who he is.
PAGE 52: Magic is Dead.
He inscribed the title page, “Ian, thanks for your support,” with his signature underneath. As I sat there reading, trying to find clues to Madison’s next move, I realized something. I smiled. It was funny, sly even, and it kind of shocked me when it first popped into my head: I had only ever seen Madison perform in person once.
It was during his trip to New York with Ramsay. We were at As Is, a watering hole in Hell’s Kitchen that has become the go-to hangout for young magicians in the city. We met up with other members of the52, including Xavior Spade and Tony Chang (the Ten of Hearts). Many people who come to the bar are just having drinks after a regular workweek and probably don’t realize that some of the world’s best magicians and card junkies are hiding among them.
After we grabbed a round, Ramsay sidled up next to a girl at the bar and leaned in to spark a conversation. She brushed a ribbon of chestnut hair off her face, cheeks pinched as a grin crept up toward her ears. She was intrigued. Ramsay had drawn her in. He raised his hands, palms out, as if proving their innocence, and slowly brought them toward her cocktail. Six inches away from the glass, he slowly began to drift his hands back and forth. Her straw started to move. It whooshed left, and then right, thrashing more and more violently as Ramsay waved faster and faster. The girl brought her hands toward her face but stopped halfway, frozen in midair, fingers splayed. Her mouth hung open and her glasses slipped down her nose. Ramsay threw his arms upward and the straw launched out of the glass, landing on her lap, droplets of the drink leaving small spots on her jeans. She screamed and jumped out of her chair. “What!” she yelped. “How did you do that?!” Ramsay didn’t say anything. He didn’t even pick up the straw, which fell to the floor. He just sat back, smiled, and took another sip of his beer. He never touched the girl’s drink, I swear it. I saw it with my own eyes.
Madison and I clutched our glasses and watched Ramsay perform from afar. Madison was decked out in his usual all-black attire, and he intermediately sipped his whiskey—a double Jack Daniel’s on the rocks.
“Hey, I know you,” a tall, gangly blond kid with glasses said, leaning toward Madison and me. His face was flushed, his expressions animated; he’d clearly already had a few drinks. “Daniel Madison, right?” Madison nodded in response. The kid introduced himself as Jeff, a local magician. He had just come from a gig, “some boring corporate thing,” he explained, fanning and fiddling with the deck of cards he held in his hands, the muffled sound of shuffling cradled underneath the thump of hip-hop music. “So, what are you guys doing in New York City?” he asked.
“Just here to film a few things,” Madison said in his growling British accent, all throat and sandpaper. “See some friends.” Jeff nodded sarcastically, as if we were keeping something from him. Jeff threw a look at me. “Are you working with these guys, too?”
“Nah,” I told him, taking a sip from my glass. “I’m just hanging around.” That animated nod again—he was sure we were hiding something. The life of a magician is built around deceit, and we were certainly no different—the sentiment ingrained in Madison’s blood, me guilty by association.
He continued to look at me as we stood in silence for a moment. “So . . .” the kid started, trying to lift the conversation out of its awkward lull, “which one of you is going to show me a magic trick?” Madison slowly sipped his drink.
“I don’t even have a deck of cards on me,” Madison told him. After a pause and another swig of whiskey, he said, “But how about you just name a card.” Jeff rubbed his chin, as if deep in thought.
“The jack of hearts,” he said, adjusting his glasses.
Two jokers sat atop a stack of napkins on the bar (from someone else’s deck, removed from a fresh pack) and Madison reached out to grab them, putting down his drink in the process. “I guess we’ll just have to use these,” he said, picking them up. “Jack of hearts, right?”
Jeff nodded. Madison pinched the Jokers between his thumb and forefinger. He swayed the two cards gently from left to right, as if fanning a Polaroid, and held them for a moment, arm outstretched. He separated the cards and revealed, between the two jokers, a jack of hearts.
“Like you said,” Madison started, handing him the three cards, “the jack of hearts.”
Jeff stood there, frozen in place, speechless. He grabbed the cards from Madison and just looked at them. “But . . .” he started, unable to complete his sentence. He glanced up at me, as if looking for help—trying to find a clue, anything to make sense of what just happened. Madison, the king of the underground, had just lived up to the hype.
After a minute, the guy looked back over at Madison and said: “How?”
Madison, in a rare moment of genuine happiness, smiled.
18
Origins
I was plopped down on my couch in my apartment in Brooklyn, reading a book, when my phone pinged. Yo! I’m outside. It was a text message from Ramsay. I tossed the book onto my coffee table and opened my front door. Ramsay had his camera pointed at me. He was recording.
“Look who it is!” he said, shoving the lens into my face.
“Get that thing out of here! What are you, the paparazzi?!” I said, laughing, covering the lens with my hand. He pulled away and turned the camera onto himself.
“All right, guys, just got to Brooklyn!” He was narrating now, vlog-style, for his YouTube channel. “I’ll be hanging with Ian for a few days. We have some fun stuff planned, but I’ll be taking you along for the ride. Let’s go!” He turned the camera off and slung it around his shoulder.
“It never stops, eh?” I said.
“Gotta do it for the channel, dude!” he said, laughing. He reached in and gave me a hug. “So, what’s been going on? Have you been working on your trick?”
“Trying, but I’ve been busy,” I admitted. Although magic had become a daily part of my life, I still had to eat and pay rent, so I had spent the past few months working more on magazine articles than card tricks.
“Don’t worry, man. It takes time. Nothing great happens overnight.” We walked down the hallway toward my apartment. We stepped in, and Ramsay took out his laptop. “I gotta edit some footage, for the video that I’m supposed to put up today,” he said. “Then we can go hang, fuck around, meet up with Xavior. Cool?”
“Yeah, whatever you want.”
“What time are we heading into the office tomorrow?” he asked. I had pulled some strings and lined up a collaboration for Ramsay with Complex, the music and fashion news outlet. They wanted him to come into the office, do a short interview, and perform some magic for the staff. It had been a fast-paced few months for him, especially on YouTube, where he was really starting to blow up.
“In the afternoon,” I said. “We have plenty of time, so we can grab lunch first and head over.”
“Perfect,” he said, opening his laptop. “I’m really stoked. I’ve got some good stuff planned.”
After Ramsay started regularly posting on YouTube, months back, he quickly broke 100,000 subscribers and was becoming much savvier with his videos: sleeker cinematography, a more fluid and pronounced on-camera presence, crisp studio lighting, seamless editing, and enticing graphics. His channel had for years acted as a digital portfolio, chock-full of promotional magic fodder, but it lacked a sense of character and narrative so common with influencers nowadays. Fans want to follow someone’s life through social media and, for thematic channels, perhaps learn something in the process.
When Ramsay decided to give his channel a real shot, he set up a strict production schedule. He began posting weekly tutorials, walking viewers through basic effects and sleight-of-hand moves. He also started vlogging (short for video blogging) and took viewers on his adventures around the world: to conventions and meet-ups, work trips and vacations. He started Reacting to Bad Magic, a series that became much discussed if not altogether infamous in the community, which showcased, front and center, what Ramsay and so many other young magicians saw as wrong with their craft, and from which they wanted to distance themselves. He also spoke to the camera in his home office, a ring of light illuminating his face, about his viewpoints on magic as an art form. He showed viewers what the life of a magician was all about. He opened up about his past, telling stories of learning magic from his grandfather. He let people in.
As his notoriety grew, he also made friends with other YouTubers, including King Bach, a former Vine celebrity known for his comedic skits (he broke 16 million followers and 6 billion loops before the mobile platform tanked), who agreed to do a collaborative video with Ramsay in New York City and post it to his 1.5 million subscribers. Making YouTube videos is much more complicated than just turning on a camera, pressing record, and dumping the footage online. Situational, self-documentary videos with a clear narrative through-line always perform well, and the guys wanted to make sure their collaboration had some substance. They agreed to have Ramsay teach Bach some magic, and they put a little performative twist on the project: Ramsay would be doing tricks on the street and Bach would see him from afar and ask if he would teach him some tricks, as if their meeting happened organically. It would give the video some semblance of a plot. After it was posted, the video grabbed hundreds of thousands of views and sent a bunch of new followers Ramsay’s way.
As the months went on, Ramsay also started landing high-profile gigs, some of which fell right into his lap. While waiting for a flight to Los Angeles for an Ellusionist trip, he saw that Patrick Adams, a Hollywood actor best known for his role in the television series Suits, was waiting to get on the same flight. Coincidentally, they ended up sitting across from each other on the plane. Ramsay struck up a conversation with the television star and did some magic, fooling Patrick with simple card tricks. The guys exchanged numbers and ended up hanging out while they were both in LA. Ramsay took him to the Magic Castle, they became buddies, and at the end of his trip, Patrick asked Ramsay if he would perform at his upcoming wedding with Pretty Little Liars actress Troian Bellisario. Patrick flew him out to California for the three-day affair. Ramsay performed every night, after dinner and during cocktail hour, and enthralled Patrick and Troian’s guests, including actors Chris Pine and Zach Quinto. Zach loved Ramsay so much that, a few weeks later, he asked him to perform at his fortieth birthday party at the Standard Hotel in Manhattan. Ramsay designed two tricks specifically for Zach and his boyfriend, Miles McMillan, a famous male model who has worked with the biggest names in fashion, including Tom Ford and the late Alexander McQueen. Following the mind-set of Max Malini, Ramsay wanted to create a moment specifically for his two hosts. He wanted to leave them with something they’d never forget.
As the sun set behind the Manhattan skyline, guests mingling around the chic rooftop bar, Ramsay brought Zach and Miles aside. “Let’s try something,” he told them. Ramsay explained the concept of six degrees of separation, a theory that everyone and everything is somehow connected. He proposed that they introduce random information to see if it made a connection for them. Ramsay asked Miles to think of an animal and told Zach to take out his phone and multiply a series of freely chosen numbers in the calculator. Ramsay then wrote the arithmetic’s result, a random number, on a napkin.
“Does this number mean anything to either of you?” Ramsay asked. Both Zach and Miles shook their head. It did not.
“Okay. Well, Miles, what animal did you think of?”
“A skunk,” he responded.
“Does that animal mean anything to you?”
“Well, it’s the name of our dog, actually,” Miles responded, smiling, looking over at Zach.
“Oh really? That’s interesting,” Ramsay said. He took the napkin, the random number scribbled on its face. He turned it upside down. The digits now read as a word: “SKUNK.”
He handed them the napkin. “A little something to remember this evening by,” he told them. They ran around the room, showed everyone the napkin, and explained what had happened, what Ramsay had just done for them. Ramsay watched and waited. He approached them again.
“Actually,” Ramsay said, “one more thing.” He paused. “You know, some people think, when they choose a playing card, it represents them, kind of like in tarot—”
“The king of hearts and the king of spades!” Miles blurted out. Ramsay smiled. He fanned out his deck and removed the two kings. “You know, I was thinking the same thing.” He asked Zach to take out his phone and turn on the spotlight. He put the beam of light to the back of each card. As the cards illuminated, a silhouette emerged. Zach and Miles looked closer, nearly squinting. What they saw were their own faces staring back at them, hidden within the cards and only visible when held up to the light. “Keep these, to go with the napkin,” Ramsay said. Zach and Miles stood there, mouths hung open, astonished.
Despite the uptick in gigs, Ramsay kept his focus on YouTube. His reach skyrocketed and, when he hit 250,000 subscribers a few months later, he was contacted by a few production companies asking if he was interesting in doing a television show, landed branding deals with Skype and Squarespace, partnered with the SyFy television show The Magicians for some promotional posts and a live performance for the cast, and was even flown to Italy to speak about magic on YouTube at the Masters of Magic convention, the largest gathering of magicians in Italy. His channel was now earning him thousands of dollars every week.
