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

poppers. One day, I had been learning how to do the glide where you move from one foot to the other in aseamless way. I’d practise it in between some body popping. Messing about, I did the glide and, at the end, combined it with popping. Jimmy said, ‘Oh that’s amazing, you should keep practising that’. It suddenly fell into place and made sense. I could combine elements of dance with shuffling.
    It’s like when you’re cooking at home and you accidentally put the wrong ingredient into something, but then it tastes better and you’ve suddenly created this great new chicken sauce. I combined two things that shouldn’t have been together, but they worked – they tasted good!
    I soon discovered that body popping could transform my act. Anyone can shuffle cards with a bit of practice, and I quickly learnt how to do it like a professional gambler. I would ‘riffle’ the cards, which is when you split the deck in two and then interweave them as they fall. I could do the cascade where you lay the whole deck out flat in one smooth motion, and I learnt how to work the deck so it would fly through the air from one hand to the other.
    When I did those moves at school, the kids were impressed at first, but they soon lost interest. But when I showed them my new ideas, they were in awe all over again. Thanks to breakdancing and body popping, I learnt how to incorporate the moves into my card shuffle, giving me another way to appeal to kids my own age. A few years ago, I taught myself to shuffle in slow motion. Now it’s second nature to me, but it took a lot of attempts to be able to stack them at odd angles or flick a card up on the air and kick it behind me.
    Really, I am my own audience so it made sense for me to work alongside the culture that inspired both me and the kids around me. I always wanted to make sure that no matter what people thought of my magic, there should be enough skill displayedthat they have to respect it regardless. Even if they think what I’m doing is a ‘trick’, hopefully they’d still appreciate the dexterity of my hands, the expertise behind it, and my approach.

    YOU’VE GOT TO put your heart and soul into it if you want to succeed at this game; you won’t make money overnight and you have to look at the bigger picture if you’re heading for the top. I’ve achieved a lot so far, but I haven’t touched where I want to go. It’s not easy – you will get knock-backs – but you have to take the criticism. You have to have good people around you. Listen to everyone’s advice and take it in, although you don’t always have to do what they say. But listening and making a considered judgement on what you hear is so important. I don’t take criticism as a personal attack. I know when someone’s intentions are honest and when they’re just being jealous. Even if it’s delivered in a horrible way, I think it’s still important to think through what someone has said rather than dismiss it straight away as someone ‘hating’.
    When you’re doing what you do – whatever it is – you’ve got to set high expectations because these days everyone is competing on a world scale. If you want to make it as a singer you’ve got to think that you’re going up against Adele, Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber. If sport is your thing, consider the Beckhams, the Bolts and the Messis. I looked to Blaine, Copperfield and Penn and Teller in the hope that one day I might be mentioned in the same breath as them. If you read up on these kinds of people then you will find the beginnings of their stories are somewhat similar to mine. In all those cases, those guys, like me, worked relentlessly on their chosen craft from a really young age. If you’re fortunate to discover that you’re not only good at cooking, piano or table tennis, but you love it, then keep at it and work as hard as youcan. In later years it will pay off, even if it’s not in the way you might have expected. And it’s never too