OLD VS. NEW MAGIC

There's an excerpt from the classic novel "The Catcher In the Rye" where the main character Holden Caufield says something along the lines of him refusing to read a book unless it was at least 100 years old. He used this time-test as a measuring stick for a story's merit. Similar things can be said of other disciplines- a monument in architecture, a recipe passed down for generations, or a school of martial arts flourishing long after its master's time.

In the art of magic, there is much division between "old" vs. "new". At conventions, old-heads oil-and-water away from the flashy fedora cliques. Bookworms behind their spectacles bemoan instant-downloaders for taking the quicker way to mastery. Even entire swaths of the community somehow become segregated: the old file into their weekly bagel shop jams as the young turn away to their phone cameras and post videos of themselves doing magic on social media.

There's a gold nugget somewhere in the middle of this supposed old and new; a hidden bridge between the two cities. The classical school of magic doesn't invalidate the modern, nor vice versa- both are connected as one family's generation precedes the other by blood and gene. To bring them together at table, I feel like the visual aesthetic of the new can help punctuate the subtle depth of the old and inter-mingle for a balanced attack on the mind of our art's spectators. Jeet Kune Do takes from all styles, old and new, as water has no age and no form. Harmonized, the masters and the students of this art form can become one.