Illusion/Metaphor

I used to do magic. When I was 8, I got a 35-cent pamphlet on witchcraft from a supermarket in West Hollywood. I threw it out when the girl who had bullied me mercilessly for months broke her arm. To quote my friend Max quoting Niels Bohr, “They tell me it works whether you believe in it or not.”

Some thirty years later I took up sleight of hand. That didn’t last much longer, and all I kept from it are a few cherished friends and an obscure screen name. What I find interesting is that although the concept of magic is still entertaining as narrative, magic done live isn’t. In the audience of a typical world-class magic act, I’ll yawn and try not to look at my watch. People around me will gasp, transfixed by what they couldn’t possibly have just seen---how did they do that?!—and even when it’s objectively amazing, I’m still thinking “Oh God, how much longer?” (There are exceptions, notably the abovementioned Max. We’ll get to them in a later post.)

But I can read a truly crappy speculative fiction novel through to the end.

There’s a metaphor in this. Real illusion--- where the card appears in an impossible place and I have no idea how it got there, when a hatful of something gooey is suddenly dry but no more stylish for all that--- is as mystifying as how some people can cast their only vote completely opposite to their best interests. I don’t know how either thing happened, but I accept that it did because it’s true. At least the crappy novels generally have a happy ending.