I read something this week that got me thinking again about the photographs I took last summer.  The series entitled ‘Abandoned Magic’ was an attempt to back in touch with my earliest journeys in performance magic.  I talk a little about this project here.  

The photograph I chose for that presentation was an effect I made when I must have been around 10 years old.  Playing card to matchbox.

I can’t recall which magic book I took the instructions from, I’m guessing it was from a book borrowed from the library.

I don’t remember.

My memories of these objects are fragmented autobiographical vignettes of a childhood so distant.

I can see the house we lived in, I can feel the living room and smell the sulfur, phosphor and wood of the matchbox.  I remember the cheapness of the pack of cards the Joker came from. 

My only pack of cards.

Rubbish to do magic with, probably.

Even so, I used the Joker. This suggests to me that I valued the deck itself. I wanted to keep it intact. Choosing to make the trick from the easily sacrificed Joker.

The photographs remind me of loss, people, times, energy.

They remind me of how important magic was during my childhood.

This is the truth wrapped up in performative writing.

I can’t avoid doing that, I’m a magician after all.