What happens to the magician's soul when his face has been burned by the stares of ten thousand judges? Or the soles of his shoes after ten thousand miles of walk-around performance? Does the busker, in his war helmet bowler hat, become as snappy and cold as the streets he calls home? Does the heckled become the heckler of life?

What becomes of the callouses on his hands after lugging all those props up hotel loading docks, through narrow corridors, or across crowded festival streets baked in the sun?

Is it romantic to become and stay pro, in laymen gig land, for 20+ years? What of his eyes- do they see the magic still as it once was handed to him by some storybook shop owner 20 years back, when magic shops still existed on picturesque sidewalk corners? Does he still hear applause?

Does this 20+ year mage pro still wear the same grandfathered suit from the 1980s? Does he shave? Or does he let himself go to become as grizzled as mall Santa, the center of attention but not really- face concealed behind anonymous face to face the hours as they become years and decades in front of these passing crowds that seem to get younger? Does he become the old face you see, but don't really look at, as you drop money into the faded hat of?

Is the pro entertainer the the crying clown, the depressed jester, make-up streaking down wrinkles when the lights go out, eating pancakes at Denny’s at 2am? At a bar at 2am?

Does he tire from putting up an act? From peddling a show? When the real him seeps out, what magic seeps out then? What does the magic look like for the mage soul pro of 20+ years?

The hobbyists grow old and merry. The trick kids can’t sleep, feverish with the bug. The award-winners, inventors, lecturers- the “Names”- cruise down hallways of magic conventions like the populars of a high school. And then that middle-class, middle-age worker population of trench vets- I’m curious where they be at, and what the magic is like there.
 

Master magician Rocco Silano once reverberantly told me, during the days of my magician adolescence, that magic comes from the Soul. He said the word ‘soul’ with so much emphasis; as if letting the word echo into the great abyss of what we cannot see, into the mysteries of things that stretch onto the distant stars of infinity.

This was his response when I asked him what the most important thing his great teacher, the grandmaster magician Slydini, had taught him. So I aspired to carry that principle or ideal with me ever since. I’ve hung giant scroll banners of it along the walls of my metaphoric dojo. I’ve let the calligraphy ink of it seep into my hands and fingertips.

And then there’s the execution of this. How does one use magic to express the soul, out from the shadows of our being into something that can be seen, felt, and remembered? How does one vanish all the applause static of conventional 'WTF', 'LOL', or 'NFW' reactions to reveal that deep impact painted on the faces of an audience? Bruce Lee mentioned to express oneself honestly without lie was near impossible.

Enter magic: everything is possible. What if our souls were just that: orbs of this magic we chase, incandescent in the color of our auras; reservoirs like surfaces of ponds, rippling with every step and bearing the reflection of those we meet.

I aim for this reaction: for people to see that reflection; that soular light amid the commercial neon of the city skyline. I don’t know how, but magic should guide my practice journey toward this north star ideal, to perhaps see it for myself.

So how can lost cards and vanished coins, and rings that link or ropes that tie themselves, be pathways to the soul, from the soul, and of the soul? To express one’s being through stories is one-sided. With paintings, limited to perspective. Musicians in their solos strike close chords. A dancer's moves tread at the boarders.

How does the magician, with all his comedy and misdirection, stumble into that fray of soular expression? If I vanish a coin, can I incept people to let go of material things? If I find a lost signed card, can I help someone find themselves? Can I unite lovers across miles of ocean with a transposition of two rings? If I do a show on the other side of the world, can I find my soul-mate? (Done and Yes!)

The goal of soul stretches to the heavens. I guess, this is why I can't stop practicing magic. How can that distance be leaped? With magic, there are loop-holes. We are weightless!

Read somewhere that blogs needed to bear useful info. FYI...

1. Give magician a flying chest bump (unless mage is a shorter Asian man/ninja, in which case he/she may vanish to evade you.)

2. Articulate your train of thought derailing, play by play, in vivid, quotable prose.

3. Come up with a new curse word for what you're feeling.

4. Run in a circle, then come back.

5. Cry.

6. Play it forward and amaze someone at random the following day.

7. Tell everyone you know what you just saw in one sentence or less, sounding as cray as possible.

8. Laugh at yourself, you fool.

9. Don't ask magician to make your loved ones or your bill disappear. That is called killing and stealing.

10. Bask in the illusion, blissful dreamer.
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