Why Does Our World Need Magic?
I expect few performing magicians ask themselves “why” they do magic,
why they became interested in magic,
and why they choose to practice this unusual form of entertainment.
I suspect even fewer magicians have asked themselves “why” does the world need magicians or magic shows.
There’s some quote about the unexamined life not being worth living
…and I’d venture that the same holds true for the unexamined profession.
As an actor, director, performance artist, coach, author, consultant, and yes… magician, I’ve come up against, and tangled with, this question perhaps more than any other. Why do this?
Why perform?
For who?
For What?
I’ve created a professional credo for myself,
now whenever an opportunity arises to perform, I now simply hold my credo up in my mind’s eye, and hold the potential show up next to it
…. if there is a match I accept the booking,
if there is not a match I pass it along to a colleague magician.
So why do I do Magic?
I’ve delved into the meanings of four words,
and they seem to hold the key to my performing credo.
I entertain in order to:
Inform, Inspire, Enrich, and Empower, those who’s lives I touch with my magic.
Here are my four words, and their meanings for me as a performer, in more detail…
The Objectives for Spellbinder Entertainment’s Performances & Events:
INFORM
-To impart information to; make aware of something
-To acquaint with knowledge of a subject
-To give form or character to
-To imbue with a quality or essence
INSPIRE
-To stimulate to action; motivate
-To fill with enlivening or exalting emotion
-To affect, guide, or arouse by divine influence
-To draw forth; elicit or arouse, affect, or touch
ENRICH
-To make fuller, more meaningful, or more rewarding
-To add to the beauty or character of; adorn
-To make rich or richer
-To add nourishment to
EMPOWER
-To promote the self-actualization, or influence of
-To equip or supply with an ability
-To support or enable
-To invest with power
I know I won’t be able to meet all (or perhaps any) of these objectives every time I perform, and maybe it’s good enough just to attempt these goals as I also entertain my audiences.
I also know that no other magical artist or performer will have the same motivations and objectives as I’ve developed over my years of doing this.
The important thing (for my money anyway) is that I’ve thought about the “why” of who I am as a performer and the “why” of doing this professionally.
And that brings me to the second question:
“why” does anyone hire me, or more broadly,
why does the world need magic?
I’ve thought about that long an hard as well.
We live in a tough time, historically there has never been so much technology, so much information, such instantaneous communications, all making for a seemingly much smaller and more intimate world.
When a natural disaster, a personal tragedy, or an international war happen, we are informed about it in almost “real time” …we are in fact bombarded with information and images of horrific proportions… almost against our will.
We also live in a truly exciting, but also truly frightening time in history.
The stakes are higher than ever for an adult in our world.
The pressure to perform, the pressures to catch up with business and technology, the pressures to juggle personal and company budgets, relationships, and commitments.
We are on the go almost 24 /7…
and what feels like 365 days a year…
answerable to a dizzying hierarchy of people and circumstances both professionally and personally, all the while juggling our personal demands with those huge violent terrifying global images of the media.
Many, if not most of us wish we could hide under the covers in bed until it all goes away, or at least calmed down to a manageable roar.
Here and now in the 21st century, we grown-ups seek the safety, sanity, peace, and innocence of our lost childhoods more than ever before.
And more than every before I believe, we adults need….
may I say…
desperately need,
the security of once again believing in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy.
Allowing ourselves the fantasy, if for even a few moments,
that maybe unicorns and leprechauns can and do exist in our world,
is not only a comforting thought, but perhaps a necessary one as well.
For in a world where most of the terrors of hell
( which we once thought only lurked under our beds at night)
have been loosed upon us…
the hope that Magic also exists,
and can perhaps save our collective sanity is comforting to say the least.
Some of my best audiences are the offices of those barracuda-style cut-throat lawyers who argue insane laws in cold calculating courtrooms for a living.
Because when they are finally allowed the luxury to wind down, to let their guard down, to forget their high-toxicity careers, they begin to transform into ten-year-olds wearing their bunny slippers and hugging their wooly bears, right there before my eyes.
I can actually also see within those angry, frightened, responsibility-laden eyes, the eyes of a small boy or girl longing to be free, to be cared for, and to have the innocence and hope that long-ago belief in the Tooth-fairy can restore to them.
Our half hour of entertainment together is not merely a magic show, or a divertissement, but it is also the opportunity to once again accept the Magic of life as a tangible and real thing. And if Magic can be real, then the reality dawns that tomorrow might unfold in a better, gentler way as well.
We all need, and have always needed the “Magical” in our lives, and today that need to embrace and believe in magic and the magical is like a safety valve for our sanity, and a way to endure the madness of modern life.
I truly believe that this is in large part why the successes of “Lord of the Rings”, “Harry Potter”, “Star Wars”, and “Narnia” have been such a phenomenon over the past few years. We hunger for the fantasy and the spirituality that magic can bring back into our hearts, and our all to realistic, almost nihilistic lives.
Perhaps it is the comfort, hope, and relief that Magic and Storytelling can bring restore to people that has resulted in my successes as a magician. Last year I performed in eight states and two foreign countries, for about two-dozen corporations and almost as many private parties, it was a great year both artistically and financially.
I don’t think they booked Spellbinder Entertainment just to tell a few stories and perform a little magic.
I think they at least subconsciously needed a vacation from CNN and The Man, and Politics, and the Internet, and the pressures of work and life in general. And together we took a vacation to the long-ago and far-away, where it was sweet, and warm, and simple, and safe once again.
That is why I do magic,
that is why the world needs what I do.
I am able to turn off the lights each night feeling I’ve taken my training and talent and brought a little more than the mundane into the lives of my clients.
I hope more of my colleagues will also take the time to ask themselves “why”
and find out those meaningful and important answers for themselves.
Magically,
Walt
