The allure of getting into magic makes me shake my big head. It's the cool! I will fully reveal that I liked magic because it made me feel like I had super powers in middle school: that I could do things others can't. If I want people to like me, I'd show them what I knew. I wasn't an aggressive performer though. I kind of kept what I did to myself. Until college! I really rode that as my cool wave. Haha! If weren't for the House of Flying Cards, I'd be just another wall flower at all those parties. I didn't really go to parties that much, though. But I was very un-ninja with my magic powers. I'd take every opportunity in college to let them out and be seen. I wanted to be known as the magician: no secret. Wow! I can't believe I fell for the cool. I fell for magic in a way I'd consider to be shallow in retrospect. God provides when needed. I guess, I needed magic. I did! I wouldn't have been seen in my fiance's class if I didn't do that show. God provides us with the tools we need to write our stories. I am grateful. Magic is cool. I'm really just a nerd. Hahahaha 

-antidote

I have a new effect: Magician to King.

Being self-employed is a monarchy, and like all monarchies, it has a tendency to one day fall. I'm amazed at every day I wake up to learn that I am Houdini-escaping from the confines of the traditional 9 to 5 cubicle. I know my time with this art as work is borrowed, and I'm taking the chance to practice deeply.

Over the next few months, I will be working on a new video project to capture my moments with my art form in the corners of my late-night practice sessions. I know soon, I will have to be selfless and transfer ship to a 9 to 5 job, to support my fiance and upcoming family. But until then, I will sleep late and spend as much quality time with magic as I can. 

The project is called "Cardboard Kingdoms", and introduces anyone who cares to follow me on a journey through a world of card magic routines performed to poetry. Each routine is its own frail, fleeting kingdom- kind of like a city of dominos that is destined to fall down with only me watching. I don't really get to express or perform these routines at my gigs that much, so these deep-night practice sessions are where I can really visit them, and get lost in the art I have grown to love.

The first of these kingdoms is the Sky, and is inspired by my long distance relationship with my fiance Agnes Pasco. Enjoy your stay, and if you'd like to see more, subscribe to the Cardboard Kingdom channel www.youtube.com/cardboardkingdoms, as I'll have a new kingdom ready for you to explore every few weeks or so this whole summer.


-antidote 

I have a new effect: Magician to Rival.

I'm just going to lay this out there, for all the magicians who have thought of, secretly are, or are planning to in the future, provoke me into competition. I am a naturally peaceful soul, and despise contests that determine who is the best, because for me, there is no "best": one color isn't better than the other, only truer to its essence. Light moves just as fast, be it coming from a candle or from an explosion. 

But in case you have been wanting to call me out and cross blades, I'm actually pretty proficient at what I do, and most likely am sitting on presentation and patter concepts you and a good percentage of the magicians in this consumer-like, commercialized scene are mind-moves away from thinking of. 

So here are my stat lines for the competition seekers and approval needers: knock yourself out in stacking up your power levels against mine. 

-----

Performing experience: 13 years
Performing style: Nitenichi (two heavens as one)
Companion sword: Original routines and effects mixed with mainstream crowd-pleasers
Long sword: Original poems (none of that sex-joke comedy bullshit get out of here with that there's enough of it on TV)
Strength: Street show and parlor show
Weakness: Walk-around and table-hopping
Purpose: Hagakure (hidden beneath the leaves/you don't even know) 
Gigs per week: 2-3
Regular Venues (at present): 4

Street show: SWORDS
Props: 1 Pen, 1 Sword, 52 Cards, 3 Poetry Books
Setup: None
Gimmicks: None
Running time: 10 minutes
Average hat per show: $15-$25
Highest single hat: $80
Highest single tip from one person: $100
# of effects in show: 4
            Leaping Wave (Variation of Mark Espinosa's ACR): 6 years experience
            Freecap (original): 6 years experience
            Book Werm (Varition of Remy Connor's Book Worm): 5 years experience
            Laido (original): 4 years experience
# of poems in show: 4
Experience: same show, 1-2 gigs per week, for the last 5 years

Parlor Show: S.O.L. (streaks of light)
Synopsis: My unwritten legend challenges me to rise above the things people normally say and do in order to fill its pages, in a magic show that blends visually compelling demonstrations with original poetry
Setup: 10 minutes
Running time: 1 hour 
# routines/effects in show: 10 (5 original)
# of poems in show: 10 (10 original)
Average compensation per show: $150-$200 
Experience: same show, 1-2 gigs per week, for the last 5 years

-----

Newspaper Articles: 7
TV Appearances: 5
Continents performed on: 3
Contributions to the magi community: 1 magic club (founded 2005 at the University of Florida)

---

I hate to do this, but sometimes closed-fist is needed. Magicians are such ego-slaves, and sometimes they crave competition with the restlessness of a drugee, so if you want that from me, stop hiding it: be real with yourself and ask me and every other mage you know to provide you with competition! 

I'm calling you out before you can: come at me with your best street and/or parlor show. I am pretty confident I've done enough time in this art to have a Bboy moment and smoke you. I can probably take you out in basketball, Soul Calibur, and Ninjump on the cellphone as well. 

Keep competing, and may God bless you with smiles on your journey to be the best. 

-antidote 

PS Florida State Magic Close-up Competition here I come

I have a new effect: Magician to Alchemist.

The purpose of this blog is to report my findings in my study of magic: my hidden findings; not the ones that involve learning new effects, routines, or even performing principles. The purpose of why I practice magic with the fervor of an alchemist is and always will be hagakure: hidden beneath the leaves for me to reveal.

I am a proponent of seeking the secret to mastery, like some rare earth metal or a planet with the elusive conditions to support life. Mastery is as elusive as time-travel, or getting into heaven on worldly works alone. I admit my faults and falls along the way, and my ego stares them down like an adversary yet to be defeated. I hate rivals. They bring out the fool in me, and I'm convinced to try and chase them down like shadows and catch up to their every move. I hate praise, and its allure, because it sways me away from my journey like a siren with its attractive words: praise God, and no one else. I wish to impart that on everyone I perform for, including the self I see in the mirror of my practice sessions. I fear criticism, like praise, because it can cause me to believe completely in the public opinion of others, and seek to validate every second of love-work I put into this art form with their judgement. I don't want to impress them, or to live in the shadow of proof. I don't stand behind proof, and instead, aspire to love what I do without proof. I have faith that I am in love with this art form; with my fiance; with God; with the belief that any good that comes from my magic is God's doing, and that any bad is from my own human imperfection. I am a horrible magician. I am naturally clumsy, socially awkward, set in my ways, and as oblivious an observer of people as they come. How I'm getting away with doing this for a living, I don't know. I know that I am capable of bringing out the God within through this alchemist-intense practice of this art I love only second to my fiance, my family, and God. The people who are not my audience for a fleeting moment of time, where praises, worship, and paychecks are at my grasp, are the ones worth practicing magic for; and getting good at it for. I hope to master this art in secret hopes of mastering self. The magician is the character of transformation. 

I'm just going to be upfront with all the magicians in the scene that happen to be here reading this, and amazing me with enough non-indifference to come visit me here in the late-night corners of my alchemist-like lab: f**k learning new effects. The best effect learned in the practice of magic is the transformation of self. Do that, and I believe the reactions you'll get will go far beyond words, bookings, and tips. 

And if you don't care to take any part of these findings I am humbly offering you an entire page of after years of laboring in the lab, oh well: God bless!

-antidote