Three Things from Edmonton podcast - episode 105: magic, misdirection, observation

Poof! 

There goes another week! Here are three things that made for some happiness and gratitude. Here's Three Things, episode 105:

                           

1. Magic 

Juan Tamariz is an up-close magician. The Spanish legend invites his fans not to fill seats in Vegas-style auditoriums, but, instead, to take a chair around a table and watch a seemingly unexplainable card trick transpire before their very eyes. Experiencing Tamariz in close quarters is probably, and guessing here, but probably like what Trevor Zegras felt when Connor McDavid made him disappear with a spin toward the net and a backhander goal against the Anaheim Ducks, which is not the item, but still, it’s worth a how-did-he-do-that lookback when you have a sec.

I learned about Tamariz last week in an article in the New York Times Magazine. The author, Shuja Haider, points out that Tamariz is a master of the careful management of the attention of his audience. What is seen is not necessarily recorded by the audience, or is actually eliminated. Neuropsychology tells us, Haider tells us, that short-term memory persists for up to 30 seconds and then begins to perish unless it is encoded as a longer-term memory. This was somewhat heartening to read. One night last week, I can’t remember which, I crawled out of bed, put my jeans back on and, in parka and boots, walked out to the driveway to make sure that the back garage door was closed. This is my version of, did I leave the iron on? I eyeballed the door and hiked back to the house. By the time I was back in bed I could not remember, with certainty, that I had actually seen the garage door closed. So back out I went again, and back in I came, and then back out I went a third time. To end the madness, I narrated out loud the fact that it. was. closed. A physician might conclude from this confession that I am slipping. And I might be. Or, a bit overloaded these days, I may simply have unwittingly performed a magic trick on myself in the style of Tamariz and his ability to disrupt the memories of his watchers.

Which is, maybe, what Dylan wants us to consider as we listen to Murder Most Foul, the 16-minute song ostensibly about the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, but just as much about political magic.

It happened so quickly, so quick, by surprise
Right there in front of everyone’s eyes
Greatest magic trick ever under the sun
Perfectly executed, skillfully done

In a tweet that appeared out of nowhere on March 26, 2020, the day the song dropped, Dylan wrote stay safe, stay observant and may God be with you. That central injunction, stay observant, might be the surest way, the only chance we have of not being monstrously blinded. 

2. Stand up guy 

If you missed it, Miss Ukraine made headlines last week for her dress in the Miss Universe Pageant in New Orleans. Viktoria Apanasenko strode on stage resplendent in a Warrior of Light get-up—sword, body armor and giant mechanical eagle’s wings attached to her back, the usual—as a tribute to her country’s spirit. A timely gesture, even though I’m not a big fan of Miss Universe. I’ve always had more of a soft spot for misdirection. 

“When you’re telling a misdirection joke, when you’re doing a magic trick, you need people to lean forward,” Graham Neil reminded me last week. “How do you get people to lean forward? The art is in the setup.”

Neiler was the entertainment reporter when I worked at CTV News. He did inventive standups in his reports and did stand-up comedy on the side. He remains unique among my friends who make me laugh in being able to explain why I am laughing. He’s a scientist of comedy. He takes comedy seriously. It’s not child’s play. The newsroom would be on deadline on some big story and he would wander back to the back office to try out some new material he had fashioned. His misdirection jokes were my favourites. Maybe for a reason similar to the allure of magic. In tricky word or tricky deed, both misdirection and magic deliver the sudden and half-unexpected appearance of a result without anything, seemingly, that caused it. For an instant you don’t quite know where you are, or what the rules are. You’re off balance. You’re falling, but you know you’re safe, but you’re falling.

(Classic Graham Neil misdirection joke dissection in podcast link above. And below the belt.) 

3. Observation 
 
The only trick I can reliably pull off is the one where I have a quarter visible in the palm of each outstretched hand. Quickly, simultaneously I turn my hands face down onto the table, each coin now covered by a hand. The coin in my right hand I then gather into a fist, transfer it under the table, knock three times, and, voilà, I lift my left hand to reveal two quarters!  Impossibly, the quarter in the right hand has passed through the solid dining room table. Shelagh has seen this trick so many times that I decided, when I decided to try a magic trick on her last week, to try a different magic trick, a card trick this time. By Tamariz, it worked, her card, the Ace of Clubs, was the 15th card in the deck, just as I had predicted.

“How?!” was her reaction.

Like all of us who have had magic tricks performed on us, Shelagh had reason to believe (that’s an interesting phrase, reason to believe) that I would, in fact, somehow find her card 15 deep in the deck. Her question about how I pulled it off might not be the only one. Why, knowing it’s coming, is it still a thrill when, predictably, the unexpected happens?—that might be a question, too. The lengths we go to to be surprised might be something to keep an eye on.