in & of itself

There is much I want to say about In & Of Itself, a performance by the magician Derek DelGaudio, that I can't. Partly it's that anything I might say about the show, even really minor details, seem like they would be spoilers, and that feels wrong - it feels wrong even though very few people ever read these words, which are after all not for anybody but myself, and even though even fewer of you might go see this show before it closes in a month or so. I am not alone in that regard; Joe Posnanski, whose blog post here inspired me to go see it, says really nothing about what takes place inside the theater, and the Steven Colbert interview with DelGaudio is equally unwilling to part with any details. (This American Life spilled some of the beans, and I will not link to that.)

But I also simply can't tell you anything meaningful about the show, because - you had to be there. I mean, I could tell you this trick or that, whatever, the color of his suit or the set or the cards on the wall (there's a detail, but that's well disclosed various places, and it's pretty much the first thing that happens in the show; happens before the show starts, actually). You might react, "huh, that sounds cool" but I don't think I would be able to get you to understand: No, it was beautiful.

And I can't tell you about the show because I am still not sure what I saw.

I guess it was magic. I guess, because thinking about every "trick" that occurred - there wasn't any mystery to it, in a sense. There's an extended bit with cards, and the wonder of it is that DelGaudio was doing everything in plain sight, in front of your eyes, people six feet away from him and a camera zoomed in, you can see his hands moving in close up and he does things that simply seem impossible. And that is a lot of the show, indeed: there are things in front of your eyes that you are not seeing. There is a light offstage right illuminating him - here is something else I will tell you about the show - and he talks about that light, and the person causing it to turn on, and why she does that when she does that; he calls attention to the fact that we are in a theater and this is artifice; there is no illusion about the artifice, except he also says "I can only say these things because you won't believe me," like no matter how hard we try to pierce the artifice we insist on believing that it is artifice.  Not all these thoughts are my own, really.  But most of what he does, even - especially - the big number at the end, is not so much about what he did or how he did it as how is it possible that he could do that.

I guess that is magic. At some level though, it is craft, not art, although maybe craft taken to that level becomes art. It is an unbelievable level of craft which is indistinguishable from magic.

But this performance, as a whole, is unquestionably art, by any definition but particularly by Hammett's definition which is: work or performance wherein the audience participates in the construction of meaning.

But I cannot tell you what the meaning of In & Of Itself is because I do not know what it meant. I am still working that out; writing this is part of working that out. People will tell you it is an exploration into identity, and it is partly that. The show itself seems happy enough to promote itself as that, but then again in the business you sell what you can sell, and that's probably something the artier folks who wouldn't be caught dead at a Magic Show - me for example - can hang onto. Maybe that's what DelGaudio thinks it's about. But then again, "wherein the audience participates in the construction of meaning," so he doesn't totally get to say.

I think - this is a postulate; I may reject it later - In & Of Itself is about seeing. That's obvious, you know, like when my professor Terry Hummer described writing in his notes about a novel, "Names matter." Of course a show that uses sleight of hand is about seeing, and more importantly what you don't see. So I should fix that: In & Of Itself is about not seeing. It's about the elephant in the room.  Literally, there is an elephant in the room. Not literally, of course, it's metaphorical, but there is literally a metaphorical elephant in the room (there is something else I have told you about the show), although even for that someone on Twitter described his son saying "I see the elephant, Dad," and then seeing it himself, so I think it is possible that there was a literal elephant in the room that I missed, like that video where you are watching people passing a ball and miss the man in a gorilla suit strolling through.

I have no idea what I may not have seen that was right in front of my eyes. And maybe that's why I find the show so powerful, now.  (I am not sure I found it exactly powerful yesterday.  I found it wonderful, delightful, you know, those sorts of things - but today I am finding it powerful.)  I go through life wondering, often, How do they see that?  How do I not see that?  And I feel alone in that; I feel like everybody else has the secret power, except it's not secret, everybody has it, that tells them how to react, that enables them to see other people clearly in ways that are a complete mystery to me.  It is right in front of my face, six feet away, and everything is moving a little too quickly, with a little too much distraction, for me to notice it.  It is possible however that nobody has this power, that not seeing is just the human condition, and we are all trying to go through life looking like we see everything.  Like we have figured out the tricks when we are just guessing, and probably guessing wrong.  We cannot even see ourselves.

I'm going to leave it there.  Here is a picture of a brick.  It is just a brick, painted gold, sitting at the corner of Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas) and Houston Street.