REMARKABLE MAGIC

These two non-magicians shaped my magic career to an enormous extent. I think magicians might be particularly interested in my performance take away from Bob Dylan.

I sat across the green felt-covered desk, bathed in the light from a single brass lamp. I looked into the gray eyes of the man sitting there as he finished filling his pipe from a leather pouch on the desk.  I felt a swell of affection for this man who had sent me all over the world on adventures that had taken me into moments of great joy and even greater danger.

He looked up from his pipe-filling activities and smiled a smile that never quite reached his eyes. “Well.” He said, in a mild voice; “That’s the job. If you want to take it you will need to be in Jamaica by Friday.”  I returned his smile and said; “I’ll be there, what do I need to know?”

I suddenly abandoned my well-worn fantasy and reluctantly acknowledged that I wasn’t James Bond receiving a mission from M that would save the world. It was just me, Nick, on the phone with my agent Barry accepting another gig on a cruise ship. No saving the world, just two 45-minute shows. Darn.

Let me explain. Unlike many magicians, I didn’t become a magician to become another Harry Houdini. It wasn’t like that for me at all. When I was eleven years old I went to the local cinema and caught ‘Dr. No’ the first James Bond. It changed my life. After seeing the movie, I found most of Ian Fleming’s 007 novels in my brother’s bookshelf and read them with the same intensity that Ricky Jay must have studied ‘A Magician at the Card Table.’

I loved the gadgets and elegant tuxedos that were such a large part of Mr. Bond’s world. I craved those exotic locations scattered across the globe that Bond visited with aplomb and elegant nonchalance. I began to practice nonchalance on a daily basis. Nonchalance is hard to carry off at such an early age and my school friends just thought I was a little crazy. I also performed elaborate card tricks. That is an even surer sign of craziness than talking to yourself.

When the second Bond movie ‘From Russia with Love’ was released I was sitting in the cinema for the very first showing. For me, the most exciting part of the movie wasn’t the action scenes or the fighting. It was the incredible briefcase that Q had created for Bond. The attaché case was rigged to the hilt with tear gas canisters, hidden gold coins, special locks, and best of all a secret knife that popped out from the side of the case. I lusted after that case with all my heart.

After returning from the cinema, I went up into the attic and retrieved an old discarded briefcase that had previously accompanied my father to his office in the City. Since I didn’t have a folding rifle or bug-detecting equipment I decided to put the magic props from my fledgling magic show inside the case. They looked pretty darn good in there.

Forty-five years later I am still carrying the latest version of that prototype case with me as I jet around the world. The case is now filled with very cool magic props and every amazing electronic item that has an Apple on it. James Bond would have killed for an iPhone in those Fleming books from the fifties. Even Q wouldn’t have believed what it could do.

My case is heavily gimmicked and contains 34 tricks inside it, as well as the electronics and it still passes as hand baggage. This case goes onstage with me every single show and even houses a concealed butterfly knife with which I slice a lemon in half on a twice-nightly basis. There are no golden coins hidden in the lining of the case but there is a secret pocket that contains several  $100 bills. Just in case.

I left school and became a full-time magician and began the endless traveling that has so far characterized my life. I have managed to visit all those exotic backdrops featured in the Bond books and films. I’m pretty sure I’ve been to scads of places that 007 never even knew existed. I am now truly as at home in Jamaica and Russia as I am at home in Austin— maybe more so.

While I do sincerely love magic and the business of its performance, it is the vision of elegant espionage that has fueled my life and lifestyle. Like all guiding influences, the memories that ignited my passion have faded over the years. I have finally realized, but steadfastly refuse to acknowledge, that I will never be James Bond. Just as other magicians have realized that they will never be Houdini or Dai Vernon. Life is tough.

The good news is that I do have a black leather case filled with cool gimmicks and gadgets that accompanies me as I travel. However, I have reluctantly realized that I will probably never be asked to smuggle microfilm across enemy lines, concealed inside my ‘Devils Hank.’ I have never lost the desire to be asked to do so though. Without a dream, you become an act instead of an artist.

If the fictitious character of James Bond influenced my decision to be a comedy magician, it was another quasi-fictitious personality, with a longer than expected shelf life, who showed me how to keep it going. This person is the poet, singer, and musician Bob Dylan. It is Dylan the performer who I want to discuss in this article.

Bob Dylan has worked consistently and grown creatively for well over sixty years and has done so in the most difficult of places, in the public eye. The fact that some of his strongest work has blossomed after the age of sixty is not only unusual but highly inspirational. I have been a fan and student of Bobby the Z since the sixties and enjoyed every step and misstep during his career.

When I first decided to become a magician it was always my intention to be a ‘journeyman’ and to perform full-time magic for the rest of my life. So far it has worked out pretty darn well, despite the occasional misstep, which is another way of saying I am just like any other performer who wishes to be an artist and remain creative.

It is very easy to project youthful enthusiasm when you start out as a performing magician because you are youthful and enthusiastic and there comes a time when audiences no longer respond as they once did. Dylan has described the toughest time in his performing life as being when he had to learn to ‘Do consciously what he used to do unconsciously.’ This is the moment when self-consciousness’ enters the picture and can throw a serious spanner in the works for a performer.

The biggest problem with the arrival of self-consciousness is that it frequently proves to be the delivery system for the ultimate ‘death-watch beetle’ to the performer. This often manifests as a form of self-bitterness that is probably best categorized under the umbrella term ‘familiarity breeds contempt.’ Sadly, this contempt is sometimes projected to the audience who not unnaturally feel less than thrilled by it.

When you know where and when an audience is supposed to respond it becomes all too easy to project a degree of subtle belittlement upon them when they do so. Multiply this effect by twenty when comedy enters into the equation. Most comedy magicians begin by not even being aware that their patter is stock. It came out of a book (or someone else’s act) so it must be funny—right? Wrong. 

When the performer begins to realize that his show is filled with ‘hack’ material, but he does it anyway (“Hey, it gets a laugh doesn’t it?) that is when he or she has hit Dylan’s ‘needing to do consciously what you used to do unconsciously’ moment. The high-faulting performer may feel he is achieving a post-modern or de-constructional approach to his craft. Yeah, right.

The answer to this problem is learning to be, what is known as ‘in the moment.’  Regular folk would probably refer to this as spontaneity or more accurately, appearing to be spontaneous. This Zen-like state allows you the freedom to be spontaneous and react to your audience by performing to them, rather than at them. If you don’t find a way to correct this problem it is easy to be trapped inside your material.

Dylan found a way to escape this problem, and deal with it in a very simple manner— he just kept right on performing. This period of career began with what is generally referred to as the ‘Never Ending Tour’ and it continues to this day. Imagine the shock of realizing that you had created one of the greatest bodies of work in the last century and you were now drowning in it. Weird.

Dylan responded to the realization by singing his country, blues, folk, gospel, and rock music in the manner a jazz musician would approach the situation. Dylan decided to continue performing on a non-stop basis but to never sing any song the same way he had sung it before.  Sometimes the variations on his classic songs work magnificently, and sometimes they don’t, but what is important to Dylan is the feeling of walking on a tightrope night after night without a safety net.  Now in his 82nd year, Dylan is in the middle of a 2021-2024 world tour and finally seems interested in a consistency that is highly uncharacteristic for this mercurial genius.

There is a very good reason that the entire business of ‘bootlegged’ recordings began with Dylan. You can listen to recordings of him on a concert tour and one night a song will be slow and stately, the next night the same song will be a wild blues stomp. This is one of the reasons that all these years since he began his career, Dylan has never become a one-man ‘Rock & Roll Oldies Tour.’ Every show is an event and often the loudest roars of approval are from the way he twists a phrase or alters a lyric’s meaning just by an inflection of his voice. It is simple, difficult, and effective all at the same time.

It has become meaningless to debate whether Dylan is a ‘good’ singer or not, he has moved far beyond to a unique area of communication that has nothing to do with whether his voice is pretty or whether he hits the right notes. It just isn’t relevant. This is the main reason that Dylan’s stadium-sized audiences contain not just folk from my generation but people younger than some of his grandchildren.

Just as the glamour and excitement of James Bond made me want to be a magician, it has been my ‘ridiculous’ obsession with Dylan that has afforded me the key to remaining a relevant one. If you can juggle the elements of a classic song like ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ you can do the same with the Gypsy Thread. You can learn to truly own your material.

You too can make, break and re-arrange your Greatest Hits on a nightly basis—even if they are the Linking Rings or Cups & Balls. You owe it to yourself and your audience not to do less—repetition is how you learn a trick, not the way it should be presented.

~ by Nick Lewin on June 3, 2023.

Posted in Magic, Magic and Magicians
Tags: Bob Dylan, James Bond, Performance of Magic