the beginning of my journey…
I grew up in the 90’s in Tampa Florida where there wasn’t a lot of magicians or magic stores. I mean I guess there was but I was 10 years old and had to beg my conservative parents (who thought Magic was the work of the devil!) to buy me a Milton Bradley Magic Show kit. It looked something like this:
The only access I had to magic was searching for library books (where my mom would drop off me and my 2 brothers off after school as if it was free day care while she went back to work. We would read and read and I would search all things Magic. I even found a book of Love Magick…which was more about wicca spells….lighting a blue beeswax candle, make a cross of catnip and lavendar under a waning moon and repeat the name of whomever you wanted to love you 9 times…clearly it didn’t work cause I didn’t know where to buy catnip and what the hell a waning moon was (I eventually looked it up in high school but it was too late…she was taken).
Summer of 97, my parents were eager for their “soon to be Ivy League” child to succeed so they signed me up for college elective credits at the University of Tampa where I signed up for Miming, Magic, and Movement” with 2 other middle school friends and then “Acting 101” at the Faulk Theater. The first class we watched “The Art of Card Manipulations” by Jeff McBride and my eyes were opened.
Wide open.
It’s been non-stop since then. I showed my parents how i could pull a multitude of cards from my hands…and not have to have sold my soul to the devil hahaha. I excelled in that summer school class and my instructor told my parents about my passion. So finally they brought me to M&P Costumes where they had a small selection of magic books and props. I started to have enough for a show and performed for high school talent shows and birthday parties for $$. They thought…hey…not bad….kid’s got a knack for this. Sure, they occasionally hid my books when Finals and SATs rolled around the corner (I always found them). Sure, they still told me not to perform at church lest they be judged as heathen parents. But being good parents, I think they saw the joy in my eyes every time I performed and it opened me up as a shy kid to speak to any one… “Hey, want to see the greatest card trick of the century? Pick a card!”
It’s amazing to me the stigmas that we carry around in our lives. Misinformed, close-minded, untested beliefs. How much time and healing does it take to get over that pain? How much potential was squandered through the fracas and rumpus of our internal self-doubt? We need to embrace our fears and shame to turn them into something beautiful. For years, I performed magic for friends and my parents always made sure I knew it was a hobby, not a profession or career…but lately I’ve started to perform full 30 minute–1hour shows of sleight of hand and mentalism. I’ve found a new purpose and confidence that I wish I had 10 years earlier.
So I’m changing. I have to believe this hobby of mine which has been enjoyed for simple leisure and self-entertainment has a flip side and has a potential to enlighten and be a force of purpose and meaning.
From Wikipedia “M-Theory”
Although a complete formulation of M-theory is not known, the theory should describe two- and five-dimensional objects called branes and should be approximated by eleven-dimensional supergravity at low energies. Modern attempts to formulate M-theory are typically based on matrix theory or the AdS/CFT correspondence.
According to Witten, M should stand for “magic”, “mystery”, or “membrane” according to taste, and the true meaning of the title should be decided when a more fundamental formulation of the theory is known.
