David Blaine- The Modern-Day Houdini (illusionist and endurance artist)
Mentioning David Blaine White’s name, one would recall many of his amazing feats of endurance, which had broken several genius world records. He has also made his name known across the world as a street-magic performer, wowing pedestrians on streets all over the world. Here’s a video showing one of Blaine’s marvels.
When Blaine was a four year old kid, he saw a magician performing in the subway. This immediately sparked a lifelong passion within him towards magic. Ever since that day, he has been practicing card tricks for 8 hours everyday. He read about Houdini’s feats and wanted to follow his footsteps.
“As a child, I thought he was superhuman. As I grew older I realized that he was not, because nobody is. He just pushed himself harder than normal.”
His admiration of Houdini led him to taking series of death-defying stunts which included getting buried alive for a week, encasing himself in a block of ice, starving himself from food in a locked suspended box over London for 44 days, holding his breath underwater for 17 minutes, and so on.
“In truth, the only restrictions on our capacity to astonish ourselves and each other are imposed by our own minds.”
He is now 40 years old but is still curious to learn and perform the craziest of stunts.
“The hunger dies. That hunger, that curiosity, that desire that creates the ultimate passion to do something new.”
“Magic is all I have ever really thought about. It’s my obsession, my compulsion. My addiction.”
If there’s one thing that we want you to take away from this article, it would be to follow one of Blaine’s philosophy, which is best explained in his words:
“Whether you’re shuffling a deck of cards or holding your breath, magic is pretty simple: It comes down to training, practice, and experimentation, followed up by ridiculous pursuit and relentless perseverance.”
