’’I believe anything easily, provided its quite incredible.’’-Oscar Wilde If you thought magic shows are for kids and gullible adults on vacation, think again! Because here comes David Blaine - Magic Man, to turn the definition of magic on its head.This new avatar of magic is heart warming, intense, scary and above all simply incredible.It’s no-frills, no-fuss pure entertainment. David Blaine is a magician(he prefers the title MagicMan) almost everyone has heard of. His most publicised exploits include: staying confined in an underground plexiglass water tank for weeks(he lost 24 lbs), staying frozen in a giant ice block for days, staying up on a tower for a heck of a long time and finally jumping from there on a heap of cardboard boxes and right now he is hanging from London Bridge on Thames in a fibre glass box. Standing upright with no room to move, no food, no water for next 44 days.So why do we want to see this whacko dude doing all these weird stuff, when he has quite a lot of people watching him anyway? we should simply watch him because he has taken magic to the next level.He treaded places where angels feared to and came out with flying colours. This New Yorker, with an amazing fan following and creme-de-la-creme of the hollywood celebrities as his starry eyed friends, grew up in Hell’s kitchen.He is almost as fearless as his famous neighbour in hell’s kitchen (Daredevil) and has definitely more aces up his sleeves.
David Blaine has given magic a new flavour: magic for magic’s sake. Hence, no make-up, no stage, no props.He wears no cape, no hat- only usual Tee-shirt and trousers, necessarily black. He travels around the world from concrete jungles of NY to remote ends of South American forests to show magic to every man on the street and every aborigine in his hut.and lest you think he is a lowlife desparate to prove himself to the world, here is a little trivia: he owns an eponymous production company. The intense look on his face and his large hawk eyes (he rarely smiles) tells us to take magic seriously: its neither a bag of cheap parlour tricks nor something evil and convoluted.’’Magic is pure, intense drama and the whole world is its stage’’, he says.The admiration to magic runs deep down our blood, descended from our ancestors. That is why we never forget a pure brilliant piece of magic throughout our lives. A couple of most incredible magic pieces by him(shown in this series), are: He takes a chicken, just detaches its head from body effortlessly. both the parts alive, kicking and completely comfortable of their detachment, then puts them back together.(this is supposed to be the oldest piece of magic, recorded in Egytian scriptures, which was performed by a renowned magician in Pharaoh Cheops’ Court in 2500 B.C.) He tells a girl to go far, write the name of the most important person in her life in a piece of paper, fold the paper really small and come back to him. He puts fire to it and rubs the burning piece of paper on his hand to put off the fire. The name appears on the place he rubbed the paper. He takes a dollar bill from the hands of a Tahitian woman and levitates it, controlling its movement in the air without touching it. Swallows a piece of thread, takes it out through a place next to his navel. Requests a kid to choose a card from a deck of cards and then put his(kid’s) hand on his (David’s) chest. he removes his shirt and the denomination is painted bright, just where the kid put his hand. All these and much more incredible pieces of magic are shown in this series in AXN, when he travels around the world. Also, his daredevilry of being frozen in a giant ice-block(David Blaine: frozen) and standing atop a tower (David Blaine: vertigo) will be shown.Those who missed the first episode(David Blaine: Magic Man) on 5th october, take heart.(the next episode on 12th october is David Blaine: Street Magic.) All the episodes will be re-run on 24th october.Give it a try if you are in front of TV at the show time. I also switched on AXN just out of curiousity. Hope you do the same and get hooked! Those who are more interested in him, can read his book: Mysterious Stranger: A book of magic. he describes the most memorable magics of all times, how he got hooked into magic as a kid, after seeing the piercing look of Houdini in one of his photos while performing, magic as an art, a science (after all the science of Chemistry sprang out of Alchemy and Sorcery )and a tradition. All in clear, flowing, charming English.His website is https://davidblaine.com, but doesnt give much information.