Nothing Is Impossible: The Real-Life Adventures of a Street Magician Read Online Free PDF Page A

where I lived. But I didn’t care about the journey. It was a fresh start for me; no one knew who I was and no one knew I had been bullied before. The first day I got there, someone asked me what I was into, and I said, ‘I like doing magic.’ I did some, and theyloved it and they accepted me. I felt like I could be myself. When I told them about my Crohn’s they just said, ‘Oh, that sucks,’ and that was that. They didn’t act like I was some alien out of space. They were much more mature about it. I found that people wanted to hang round with me, watch me perform with my cards. It created an immediate connection. Magic was my way of bringing people together.
    That first time when I took away Paul and Ben’s strength, thanks to Gramps, my whole life changed and I knew my life’s focus would be magic. It wasn’t the idea of fame or money attracting me back then – far from it. It was simply that the most wonderful feeling rose up inside me whenever I showed someone magic; it made people happy. I’ll never, ever get bored of watching people’s faces when they witness something astonishing.

I’d spend hours shuffling, figuring out new ways of moving the cards

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    CHAPTER 2
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    HUSTLE AND BUSTLE

 

    ‘I’VE WORKED IT out; I know how you do it!’
    Every now and then my friends or my girlfriend will suddenly, out of nowhere, announce that they’ve figured out how I do a certain piece of magic. The funny thing is it’s always something random. I haven’t done magic like my shoelaces tying themselves since 2004. But just recently, one of my oldest mates came up and said, ‘I’ve worked it out!’ The thought of people sitting around talking about how I walked on water blows my mind.
    There are so many elements involved in every single thing I do. The average person doesn’t understand all of the technical intricacies that go into one piece of magic. They might see how one element is done and the illusion is broken for them. They think because they’ve seen one little thing they know everything,
    ‘I saw you do something behind your back.’
    ‘Oh, right. What did you see?’
    ‘Well, I don’t know, but you did something, so that’s how you did it!’
    Unless you’re into magic then it can be hard to appreciate the way someone actually does something, rather than just the end effect. It often takes someone who’s really into the art to understand it. I watch other magicians all the time because I appreciate the spectacle, the art, the style of that magician. It’s beautiful to watch magic when it’s perfectly executed.
    Take music, for instance. You’ve got so many unknown kids out there who have the same potential as some of the biggest, most famous rappers. But the normal person on the street wouldn’t appreciate the fine detail that they put into their wordplay. It would take the ear of an emcee to hear a rapper from the UK and say, ‘Wow, that kid’s cadence, his punch lines, the way he structured the lyric, his use of double entendres is amazing.’ Sometimes it takes an artist to fully appreciate an artist.
    I don’t mind that people want to work it out. But I hope that my magic is strong enough that ultimately people just enjoy it. I really want people to believe in my magic because then anything is possible. There’s something that Joseph Dunninger, a pioneer of magic, once said: ‘For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not, none will suffice.’
    That’s very, very true. I think magic is a feeling, it’s an emotion. It’s something that is brought out in someone when they’re witnessing something they can’t explain. They think, I can’t explain that, it must be magic .

    I THINK THAT part of my success as a magician comes down to a combination of factors that informed my childhood years. I was ill a lot of the time and I lived on a rough estate, so my mum didn’t like me playing outside. I spent a lot of time indoorscooped up in my bedroom.