Coming To Terms
By Shane

When I was a teenager, I wanted to run away from home and marry Catherine Bach, the leggy actress who played Daisy Duke on CBS's "Dukes of Hazzard".

Wait, don't go nowhere -- this really does have to do with magic. Trust me.

Now, when I told my friends of this, they had all sorts of things to say: "You're nuts!", "Dream on!", "Hell, I'd rather go after Cheryl Ladd!" You get the idea. I was, to them, at once insane, a dreamer, and just plain wrong. Of course, these were my friends, and they were entitled to their opinions, even if all their opinions were both contradictory and derisive. Trying to peg a teenager with raging hormones and a good ol' crush on somebody pracing around in cut-offs and halter-tops as any one thing is something quantum phyisicists and new-age psychologists both would do well to examine. But I digress.

So here I am now, middle-aged, and I watch the terms get thrown around often enough about us. About each other. By each other. And, as with my friends, the pigeon-holing is derisive and insulting.

"Oh, you're just one of those boring mentalist types", says the magician.

"So what? You're just another cliché magician who can't act to save their lives!", says the mentalist.

"Yeah, but you actually believe the nonsense you do can be real! What a maroon!" says the magician.

"And you can't accept that there's anything else other than mastering every sleight Tommy Wonder ever mentions!" says the mentalist.

"May C'Thulhu feast upon your souls throughout eternity, and may Yog-Soggoth remember your names when you die!" says the bizarrist.

"Sod off!" says everybody.

And so it goes.

It has never ceased to amaze me the rifts we cause for ourselves. At the root of those rifts is nothing more than stereotypical fluff. And that statement is easy enough to prove; all I did was browse the net for thirty minutes, checking out chat rooms and forums from a variety of places. Here's some of the interesting intellectual treasures I've gathered:

• Mentalists are usually tree-hugging, new-age types. They perform long, boring acts, where a single effect can run a half-hour and have absolutely no surprise or entertainment value at all for their audiences. Even though they know what they do is pure fake straight out of the latest "fad" mentalism book, they still believe all that psychic crap is real and are too rabid to see any scientific evidence to the contrary. And mentalists think they are superior to everybody else.
• Magicians are pompus, self-righteous asses who can only entertain by being smart-alecks and going for cheap laughs or by trying to be stoic and mysterious but come off as psychotic. They're acting skills demonstrate an emotional range from A to B. They are so cynical and self-absorbed that they can't even imagine that any parapsychological occurences ever take place. And magicians think they are superior to everybody else.
• And bizarrists can't perform good magic at all and cover up their stupidity with long and boring stories. And bizarrists think they are superior to everybody else.
• And clown-magicians can't do serious magic so they stick to balloon animals at kid's birthday parties. And clown-magicians think they are superior to everybody else.
• And gospel-magicians can't cut a deck of cards without reciting both First Kings and Second Kings. And gospel-magicians think they are superior to everybody else.

Those definitions play out in our personal interactions with those in our art something like this: "Oh, So-and-so's just a <fill-in-the-blank-with-favorite-insulting-magic-type>". The stage direction for that would have a sneer added both before the blank and after, just for good measure. And the rift gets a bit wider as these definitions born of stereotypical stupidity gain another breath.

I can't be the only one who has sat through a 45-minute magic show, bored to tears, as the magician went through his act robotically and with as much emotional content as a can of disinfectant. Tell me no one else has witnessed first hand the hectic, frantic, and exhaustingly hilarious routines of a good clown-magician. And I can't be the only person on the planet who appreciates still the contact mind-reading of some mentalists who build suspense as easily and naturally as breathing. Of course, I'm sure more folks than I have stood spellbound as a magician displayed such miracles my breath also vanished with a wave of his hand. And I'm positive others have run screaming at the sound of a balloon-animal in the making squeaking incessantly in the hands of an amateur. And surely more than a few have been bored to tears by an inept Q&A routine.

The fact is there are good performers and there are bad performers. There are magic styles which will appeal to us and some that won't. There will always be good and bad in our art because our art is an expression of the human condition as we see it, and will always be met with disagreement and disapproval. That, too, is part of the human condition. As my friends had back when I was a teenager, everyone has an opinion.

But to somehow make the leap that, because of those damnable definitions we created, we are superior to someone because their style is not our own, because they perform in a manner which doesn't appeal to us, is just plain stupidity.To use a term, such as "magician" or "mentalist" or "bizarrist" as an insult is idiocy on an unbelievable order of magnitude. Think in terms of a Twinkie approximately 300 feet long and weighing 2.5 tons.

And if you think that way, brother, keep right on doing it. You'll get no Rodney King "Can't we all just get along" speech from me. Live in your own little hate-filled and stupidity-encompassed world with others that share your point of view. Look down on anyone that isn't in your little field. That's fine with me. Go ahead, Bunkie; stagnate your little self all you want!

For myself, and for a lot of others, we'll put that aside and learn from each other as we can. We'll take a look at what a mentalist does that could profit a magician, and the other way around, and we'll learn from each other without worrying about something as downright dumb as someone being "just" anything.

Hey, it could happen! Or, as my friends said back in my younger days, I may be insane, delusional, or just plain wrong.

But I'd still have taken Catherine Bach over Cheryl Ladd back then. Sorry, Cheryl.

Shane