Acta Deceptio: What Have You Done with Magic?

[Lyle Borders]

Every one of us in this forum can do a card trick or two. We can all trick someone. My question tonight is this - So what? What have you accomplished with your magic? I am not talking about your $4 Million stage show. I am not talking about the time you make Jennifer Aniston marvel at your magik skillz. What, in the grand scheme of things, have you actually done with your magic?

Who has taken magic to a children's hospital? Who has kept thieves entertained with card tricks until the cops showed up? Who had made someone who had a bad day smile a little bit more? As always, this is as open as can be, so let's hear what YOU do with your magic.

What really matters?

L

 

[armthehomeless]

Lyle,

I'm really glad you asked this question. This is the theme of a documentary style live performance project I'm working on with my brother and some friends. Fair warning, this could be a long response but I hope most of you take the time to read it. I'm going to be pouring my heart out in a way.

I'm 18 years old about to turn 19. I've been learning and performing magic since I was around 12. At first, as with most young performers, it was all about the effect and the reactions. At around 15 years old I asked myself why I perform. I had no clue and no good excuse. As trivial as it may sound, it had a profound impact on me. That's the day I quit.

As I matured and put magic behind me, I became very interested in current events, social, and most especially environmental issues. Did you know that over 50% of the worlds population lives on less than $2 a day? Or that 1% of the world population owns 50% of the planets wealth? Or that the United States murdered over a million people in Iraq and Afghanistan in wars that the majority of the United States population didn't want to be in in the first place? Or that according to a CIA memo obtained by Wikileaks that the U.S. is the worlds largest exporter of terrorists? This is when I became an activist, and more specifically an Anarchist.

Over the next two years I met people from all walks of life. I met a man serving 20 years in federal prison for destroying a Hummer car lot in protest of the horrific toxic emissions Hummers spew out. I met author Derrick Jensen whose understandings of industrialized civilization's destruction of this planet is priceless. I've spoken to many activists around the world over the Internet who would rather not be named. I've sent care packages to protestors in London, Athens, Tunis, Cairo, Manchester, Cambridge, and Madrid to aid in their fight to end oppression and corruption. Among other things, I aided in a rather high profile "acquisition" and distribution that led to a Congressional investigation into an American defense contractor and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

I'm not trying to brag or anything here. Frankly, I'm not proud of some of the things I've done due to the means of which I helped accomplish these things.

The moment that changed my life was what happened last June in Toronto at the G20 Summit protests that I attended. On the second day of the protests, some of the other Anarchists in our bloc (affinity group) broke off and decided to throw a newspaper stand through the window of an empty Starbucks. As that happened, riot police behind me fired tear gas canisters into the crowd we were in. I threw a couple canisters back at them and helped some of the other protestors who were injured by rubber bullets. In a matter of seconds riot police surrounded our group and began beating us with their batons. I covered a woman who was almost trampled by police on horse back with my body and I was then grabbed by the right arm, twisted around, thrown to the ground and the police officer dug his knee into the back of my neck. My bandana was ripped off and the man pepper sprayed me in the eyes and then zipped tied my hands so tightly that my right hand received nerve damage.

I was detained for two days without charge in a warehouse with the other protestors. When I was released and was allowed back into the U.S, they said I was arrested for jaywalking. The charges were dropped two months later. My spirit was broken. I was sore, I was confused, and I didn't know if we would ever get our voices heard while we are being demonized by the mainstream media as violent gangs and thugs.

I did a few things here and there and attended smaller protests around the Mid-West, but not much. I felt and still feel traumatized by the whole experience. Wikileaks exposed the United States' ugly face and Tunisia and Egypt fell along with Greece and now England. Over the course of 6 months, 50 or so fellow activists were served with federal search warrants and arrests. Some of whom stabbed me in the back and attempted to implicate me, but their wasn't enough evidence.

All of this led up to two months ago when I was reading "Resistance Against Empire" by Derrick Jensen. A television show depicting con-artists aiding the FBI was on in the background. As if my entire life led up to this moment, I came to a realization. To use the art that I once loved so deeply to convey and express my take of the zeitgeist of our time. To use magic as a form of activism by doing performances with the theme of raising awareness about global issues.

Art forms such as music and poetry have been used as a means of resistance and protest. So why not magic as well? Why not use magic as a way to communicate to others about the things that concern me and affect the planet and it's people?

Now not only do I carry a deck of cards, silver dollars, and rubber bands with me when I perform, I also carry with me flyers, pamphlets, and literature to give out to the audience after the show is over. To have them take something real away with them after being subject to so much artful deception throughout my performance.

I found the answer to the question that destroyed me when I was 15 years old and the remedy to heal the wounds and bruises given to me at the Toronto G20. It was to give a voice to the voiceless through this performance art. To help the audience realize a truth by showing them a web of lies woven together to create an entertaining experience.

That's why I perform. I perform to resist and protest a culture and society of exploitation and destruction. I perform to vent and transform the anger and sadness within me and express myself in the form of a performance piece. I perform in the hopes that it will maybe change something someday; that I might show and say the right thing to the right person who will help bring the change needed in this world now more than ever.

Art is resistance. It always has been and it always will. I will end this drawn out and probably pointless response that maybe one person will read with a quote told to me by a former friend and comrade that has taken a different path that I:

"In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay, and unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable, and help change it." -Ernst Fischer

 

[AndrewJ]

I help my club put on charity shows for disabled veterans. I don't perform in them, although I do run the sound board and sculpt balloons for attending children.

Creation, to me, is the greatest virtue.

 

[Craig Browning]

Over the years I've done several different kinds of Fund Raising focus bits starting with the local dog pound/Humane Society and AIDs related functions well before the term AIDs became a matter of common reference for that matter. My pet project over the past 15 years or so has been Adult Illiteracy -- I host Book Drive projects using my show, usually every April ("Don't Be a Fool" -- READ! is the main slogan).

How I got on that fixation is a funny but sad story. . . I was working in Nashville a.k.a. Hillbilly Central smack in the middle of the college district. For three nights I would go through the whole bit of handing out the book, having people find a word. . . finding that they couldn't read. . . they didn't know one word from the other. . . 40 and 50 year old people were completely illiterate living in a major metropolitan area in the late 20th century. . .
. . . what's more I was using the INSIGHT book test which has a ton of revelations built into it -- a solid 10 minutes of the show!

Though I've always had some tendency towards the promotion of education this situation cinched it and made me start looking at how to use the craft to wake people up.

Yes, I have used both, my work as well as my personal situation of being in a wheelchair most of the time, as a way to help raise awareness on Multiple Sclerosis, Diabetes II, and more importantly, to help those new to the whole limited mobility lifestyle "deal with it" -- it's not an easy transition; I've been in and out of a chair for nearly a decade now and I still visualize myself as being "normal" when creating an act sequence. . . try as I may, I just can't get the chair to jump off and back onto the stage, let alone move through the audience without rolling over a few toes. . .

 

[ReservoirRed]

I was recently asked to come perform at a charity event in dublin by my friend who was organising it, she is raising money to do a trek through the grand canyon with an irish childrens charity called bernardos. She originaly asked me to cheat her friends at poker. Which is a moral conundrum, is it ok to cheat people out of money for charity? Either way i said i would not. I would only cheat them if they knew i was cheating them. There's the tricky part. So i finally came up with an idea for a small card cheating show where people would be sat at a table with me and pay a small fee for chips to gamble and loose to me. Everyone who sits down and gives the 3-4 euro (about 5 dollars) will also get a raffle ticket, for some small prize, including the deck of bee's i used - to save me the hassle of proving im not using a rigged or marked deck to everyone sitting down over the number of hours. A 20 minutes performance, i intend to do it about 15 times in a row at my own table at the event. I really hope it goes down well. Im not sure how many people will go for it. If anyone has ever tired anything like this id love to hear about it. Ive performed at charity events before, but this time i want to actively help raise money.