I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: WRXP, 101.9 FM, New York City (45 days later).

The past two weeks I have been listening to this station more because I have been doing work in the garage (building a chicken coop).  Without going into my neurotic music listening, I’ll just say that I listen to the radio rather than CDs when I do noisy work.  And so, WRXP.

I haven’t listened that much since my last post, but the most dramatic difference to me is that they seem to have real commercials now.  Wal-Mart seemed to be advertised a lot, and there were one or two other name brand items (with effective ads obviously).  They still have all of those weird ads for services rather than products (in fact if you need full term life insurance, just listen in for 20 minutes and you’ll hear that one).  But I guess they must be doing well if the real companies are showing up.

They still play way too many commercials.  But heck, that’s commercial radio for you.

They also seem to rely a lot on a few bands that surprise me: Dave Matthews in particular.  I’m not a big fan of his, so I’m surprised to hear him so much; however, overall I think their selection is quite good.  They seem to be off Pink Floyd and on to Zeppelin now, which, frankly would be a neat idea for this station: pick a classic rock artist that you will overplay for a week, and then move on.   What a cool thing: you could do all kinds of back catalog stuff, and less popular songs and then, just as people got sick of them, switch to someone else, and repeat.  Genius!

Anyhow, the other thing I wanted to mention is that the only person with any credibility to ever be on MTV, Matt Pinfield, is a morning DJ on the station.  He and his co-jock do a bit too much DJ banter for my liking, but mostly he’s just a dude who loves music and will tell you more or less fascinating stories about whoever he’s going to play, and then play good stuff.  I heard a fun interview with Supergrass the other morning, which was good.  Pinfield also knows his music enough to ask good questions and still be fun.

Hilariously, he also committed the hilarious gaffe that I used to commit in high school: pronouncing the Police album: “Outlandos DE Amoor” rather than the more accurate Outlandos Damoor (surely he must know that by NOW).  (Like pronouncing the Plasmatics album COOP DE AY-TAT, rather then Coo DAY TAH (I’m guilty of that too).  And, I found out that he grew up in East Brunswick, NJ, merely a few miles from where I now work.  So, Matt, if you ever used the North Brunswick Library, well, you should come back and see how nice we look now.

[READ: August 13, 2008] “The Real Work”

This piece was recommended by two people who commented on my post about Alex Stone in Harper‘s Magazine. They both said that this was a far better, far more appreciative article about magic.  And they were right.  I won’t really compare it to Stone’s except to say that Stone’s piece (whatever his credibility may be) was designed as a suspenseful tale following the events and the winner of “The Magic Olympics.” He also gave away some secrets to some of the tricks he did and saw there.

Gopnik’s piece is more of a loving appreciation for magicians and their work. It’s available here. It focuses primarily on three magicians.  Jamy Ian Swiss (Of whom I had never heard), Penn & Teller (of whom I have heard and whom I like very much) and David Blaine (who I begrudgingly like, and after this article am confounded by).  The gist of the article is that these magicians live the life so completely that they do little else but perform and talk about magic.

A line from the article reads: “The world at large, of course, is not particularly interested in hearing why someone is wrong about magic, or doing magic the wrong way…”  And this is true.  I’m, probably more interested in magic than anyone I know, and I’m not really that interested in it.  And yet, as I mentioned in the comments to the Stone article, I love hearing about people who passionately believe in what they do.  So these guys fascinate me.

And that leads to Jamy Ian Swiss.  Swiss is considered one of the masters of sleight-of-hand.  But really what you take away from the article is his sense of love for the art of magic.  He pontificates about it, he creates aphorisms about it, he lives and breathes it.  In fact, there are some quotes where his passion is almost madness. And yet, when he says:

Truth, deception, and mystery are big material, and they’re the natural, the intrinsic subject of magic.  And I propose…that it’s the only art form where that’s the intrinsic subject.  And that’s why with all the indignities and absurdities of being a professional magician, we’ll always need magic.

you can’t help but believe him.  And even as I rethink it and think it sounds kind of pretentious, I think he’s right.

Penn & Teller, on the other hand, make a point of exposing the secrets of magic.  They have a show called “Bullshit!” which is great, where they expose anything that the get their cameras on, and their entire act is designed to show that magic can’t possibly happen.  Except that they never actually reveal anything, and they do fantastic magic shows.  Perhaps the only secret revealed in the article is that Teller actually does talk and that his house is just as bizarre as Penn’s (My personal favorite is that the house has a skeleton embedded in a glass topped table…when you stretch open the table to fit more people, the skeleton cries out in pain).

Swiss and Penn & Teller are friendly with each other.  They have deep conversations (and we are privy to a small bit of one).  And you really come away from from the article with an appreciation of just how smart these guys are (and maybe that’s why Woody Allen has a magic fixation, too).

David Blaine poses a different problem for everyone.  He is interested in transforming magic into more of a spectacle (no, really?), to make it like a cross between performance art and a reality show.  The article makes it seem like there’s some difficulties between Blaine (who seems to offhandedly dismiss “tricks”) and Swiss (who doesn’t see magic in the oversized way that Blaine does).  But Blaine is clearly a smart guy too.  His bookshelf is packed with big, important books, and his quotes sound not unlike Swiss in their borderline pretentious proclamations:

My endurance pieces are all about taking away the ego, putting yourself in a position so intense that the ordinary ‘I’ doesn’t exist anymore. You’re surviving the way a baby does—or it’s like just before an accident, when you see everything, the seats and the road, and the dashboard and your life, in slow motion. That heightened sense of awareness, the blinding flash of being shocked out of your logical mind—that’s magic for me.

Is this man serious?  And if so, is he a tool, or really sincere (or a really sincere tool).  Clearly this is a case of two men with opposing viewpoints in conflict.  Blaine is one of those people who rubs me the wrong way and yet who I respect for his tenacity and his talent.  This article made me like him a bit more even if he does come off like a prat most of the time.

There is also mention of David Copperfield.  He is often a punchline, and yet it seems that his craft is quite good.  He has also amassed a fortune and has created an enormous private collection of magic memorabilia.  I mention this because it reminded me so much of the scene in Quarrington’s The Spirit Cabinet, where they go to the auction of magic memorabilia.  I wondered if Quarrington had seen Copperfield’s treasures.

So, having been immersed in this controversy for a bit now, I’m not sure where I stand on the issues (clearly I don’t have near enough information, especially not to say anything about Stone’s work).  But in general, I totally respect the magician’s code of never revealing secrets, and yet I still want to know (sometimes) how it’s done.  I’m going to quote myself from my Alex Stone article comments:

When you watch movies and they do crazy stunts/FX and you go “WOW, How’d they do that?” and then there’s a special feature and they show you how they did that, sometimes you feel cheated. “Oh, that’s how.” But sometimes you go, WOW, seeing them do that was just as cool as seeing the final product (I felt this way about a lot of the stunts in the Bourne Ultimatum). Is magic the same way? Where you learn how someone does and you just marvel that they can actually do it, or that they do it so well? I guess it depends on the viewer.

And it also depends on the trick.  Sometimes I’ve thought, if I could just promised to never reveal the trick to anyone, would they tell me?  Probably not.  But that’s okay too.  I’d never have the guts to ask someone.

I also have a greater respect for magicians than I did a few weeks ago. Although I still think that Gob is a hilarious character on Arrested Development.

Where will magic enter my life next, I wonder….