Sunday, Dec 21, 2008 at 3:49 PM (Public Entry)

Okay, so he got me.

I can't even remember when I first visited Tim David's site. Somehow or other during that innocent visit I signed up for his mailing list. As a rule I hate the damned things, but his was tolerable. The mailings were spaced out, never intrusive, and contained some good information. There sometimes was an offer to make a purchase, something I steadfastly refused.

Until today.

Tim simply made the deal too sweet for me to pass up. I reasoned that even the most basic information was worth the asking price. What I expected to get were a few secrets. What I got was much more.

Magic became a part of my life when I was about 5 years old. After watching Chicago magician Marshall Brodien advertise his products on televison (Everyone can do magic with TV Magic Cards! It's easy once you know the secret!) I was hooked, and my grandmother bought me one of his kits. It wasn't much, a couple of rice bowls and a set of cups and balls designed for Tom Thumb, but I plunged into it with all the exuberance of a wonder-struck kid.

It wasn't long until I was walking up to the public library on the weekends to check out any available books on magic. That's where I discovered the giants of the art: Thurston, Downs, Hermann, and Houdini. I was particularly fascinated by a magician named Max Malini.

Malini was a card expert. At the time, my little body was still growing. I was inspired to discover that Malini had very small hands. So small that palming a card was a near impossibility. I read of how Malini never took his eyes off the spectator when he needed to perform a difficult pass. He would engage them in conversation and patter until they took their eyes off his hands. Sometimes it took forever. Whenever they did, no matter how briefly, the deed was done. Malini gave me the confidence to fool an audience, and taught me a lot about misdirection. In no time I was performing some tricks that had people shaking their heads. They were simple, but effective.

As I got older the legends of the past gave way to Doug Henning and Copperfield and a desire to do big magic. They problem is, that stuff doesn't translate very well to a show put together by a poor kid from Texas. Little by little as I got older, magic started to take a back seat to other things. It was never forgotten completely, but the "magic" in magic seemed to have disappeared.

Today, when I got signed up and logged in to the Card Trick Insider website, I felt the spark of a very old flame. There she was, patiently waiting to be rediscovered. I looked at the effects presented and realized something I had forgotten: it doesn't take a multi-million dollar stage show to put a smile of joy and wonder on a kid's face. It takes a cheap deck of cards, some plastic rice bowls, and a set of cups and balls made for Tom Thumb. It's all about what you put into it that matters. If you really believe in the power of this art to mystify you can do it with the simplest things. If you don't, nothing will work for you.

Tim David has done a wonderful job of bringing me, and countless others, back to their magical roots. For that he deserves a spot in those library books I mentioned earlier.

Sign up for this site. Use it. Remember, it's all about what you put into it. Create blogs, write about your art, and network with your fellow magicians. That kind of stuff is priceless.

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