We Can All Do Magic

On finding a little magic in sports, music and everyday life.

My last day in Hawaii! It’s been a blast. I can’t say I’ve been fully vacationing — I’ve worked quite a bit — but I’ve mostly been vacationing, which is a big step for me. I even bought a straw hat! I’ve also been pounding away on the final edit of FIFTY SEASONS — that’s available for preorder, of course, and if you preorder from Rainy Day Books, you can get it signed and inscribed however you like!

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“Sometimes, magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.”

— Teller

Teller gave this favorite-ever magic quote to my friend Chris Jones for a story in Esquire years ago. When he said it, Chris told me he gasped a little bit. I get it. Sometimes, someone says, writes, or sings something so perfect that you feel a shudder of joy and gratitude because the world looks just a little bit clearer, as if the optometrist flipped to just the right lens on the phoropter.*

*I’ve been wearing thick glasses since I was six years old, but I was today years old when I learned that the mask-shaped device with dials and different lenses in the eye doctor’s office is called a “phoropter.”

Sometimes, magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect … I’m here in Hawaii at this magic retreat trying again to learn how to do a perfect Faro shuffle. This is not the impossible magic trick I came here to learn; Joshua Jay taught me that trick on Wednesday, and it’s a great trick, and it will take some practice, but the beauty of that trick is that it is elegant and simple and should not take an unreasonable amount of time to perform well.

A perfect Faro shuffle?

Well, I’ve been playing around with it, off and on, for four years.

I feel no closer to the magic than I felt four years ago. But I keep trying.

What is a Faro shuffle? Well, my decidedly non-magical explanation is this: You take a deck of cards. You cut it in the middle. And then you kind of smush the two halves of the deck together so that the cards somehow (and perfectly) interlace.

It’s a very beautiful thing when done right.

There are people, apparently, who pick it up fairly quickly. There are others who never pick it up, no matter how hard they try. I seem to be in the second category. But it’s OK, I keep trying, I will keep going because I imagine a moment, sometime in the distant future, when I will be at a card game with friends, or there will be a deck just laying about, and I will pick up the deck, and I will cut the cards in half, and I will smush the two halves together, and I will do a perfect Faro shuffle, and everyone in the room will feel just the smallest bit of wonder. Whoa! How did you do that?

And I won’t tell them that I spent countless hours practicing and practicing, taking in the advice of dozens of magicians, watching too many videos — an entirely unreasonable amount of time and energy spent preparing for one hypothetical moment that might never actually happen.

I think that’s the wonder of magic. I’m not just talking about rabbit-from-a-hat, woman-sawed-in-half, coin-in-your-ear, Statue-of-Liberty-disappearing magic. I’m talking real magic, the thing that gets inside you and makes you gasp the way Chris gasped when he heard Teller sum up his life’s work.

To see Shohei turn on a fastball and send it soaring 500 feet is magic.

To read a perfect George Saunders sentence is magic.

To see Messi bring the ball down to his feet, dance through two defenders, and massage a shot past a helpless goalkeeper is magic.

To listen to Glen Campbell playing the William Tell Overture on his guitar — magic. I didn’t know Glen Campbell’s story until watching a documentary recently called “The Wrecking Crew.” I had no idea that for years and years before he became a star, he was a session guitarist, playing in the studio on everybody’s records. He played every kind of music there is, played so much that the guitar became an extension of himself.

Think of that and then watch this:

Magic.

Two world-class magicians joined us on this retreat. The first I have mentioned — that’s Shoot Ogawa, who has spent an unreasonable amount of time learning how to make coins vanish. He has one particular move that is so remarkable, so extraordinary, so mind-boggling that, well, it’s the closest thing to wizard magic that I’ve ever seen. He simply makes the coin vanish before your very eyes. That’s all. No covering up. No switches. The coin is right in front of you. And then it is gone.

It took him THREE YEARS to perfect that one move.

There’s another magician here, Jeff Kaylor, who, in addition to being a terrific close-up magician and very funny, also helped launch the Hand & The Eye, the new magical mansion and experience in Chicago. I have not been yet, but I will soon: it’s supposed to be extraordinary.

Anyway, Jeff’s thing is creating what he calls “Magical moments.”

“Every time I do magic,” he writes, “people always ask me the same question: ‘Jeff, can you teach me a magic trick.’ But what I’ve realized is that they don’t actually want to learn a magic trick. They want to learn how to make people feel the way that I just made them feel, the same emotion and excitement that you feel when you are a kid, and anything is possible.”

And he tells a story about going to a restaurant with friends. I might have a couple of the details wrong, but this is essentially how it goes: They have a great meal. Good food. Fun conversation. And at the end, he says, “I got the check,” and there are all the protests and mini-fights about who should pay the bill, but Jeff insists. “It’s OK,” he says. “I got plenty of money.”

And with that, he puts Monopoly money inside the little check folder.

Everybody laughs when the server takes the check, and they’re all imagining what will happen when they see Monopoly money inside. And then the server comes back and puts the folder down in front of Jeff. He opens it up.

The server had brought him change in Monopoly money.

Now, that’s not sleight of hand. That’s not a perfect Faro shuffle or making a coin vanish or Steph Curry making a three-pointer from half-court or Jacob Misiorowski throwing his disappearing fastball. But think of how the people at the table felt when they saw the change. The surprise. The delight.

It’s the same delight that all magic brings.

And any of us can do magic. I guess that’s the point, the big takeaway from my week in paradise. We can all do magic. It just means spending a little more time on it than anyone might reasonably expect.