I drank my coffee as a potion and returned to my books.
Somewhere on my shelves I had a book about the history of theatrical magic.
*
And so I took the first step on a journey that would bring me to marvellous shores. My aim was to distil the lessons learned along the way into a form of practical wisdom, a new kind of magic with the power to re-enchant our lives: I wasn’t after a temporary fix to help me shake off the blues, I wanted to learn something that would stay with me, something that would strengthen me and help me cope with future crises.
At each step of my journey I tried to clarify, to myself in the first place, what was the lesson. It was like finding keys on a quest. Once I had them all, I would be able to open the doors to a new sense of wonder. I gave a name to each of these keys, and for each key I prepared a workout, a series of practical exercises. The order in which the keys appear is not random: there is a rhyme and a reason to their sequence. I recommend, therefore, that you read the chapters in this book, and do the associated workouts, in the order in which they are presented. There are doors that cannot be unlocked until others have first been opened.
I started with the firm view that wonder is not a zero-sum game, that we can be both accomplished and wide-eyed. I have found ways to embrace both the inevitable weariness of life and its glorious potential for wonder – ways that worked for me and might work for you. I claim no ultimate wisdom, but I have learned a few secrets, and I think you might want to learn them too.
Come on, let me show you.
The First Key
The Mystery
You feel, for an extraordinary moment, that there is more to them than you can ever dream of explaining
Ira and William Davenport never said they were mediums; nonetheless, they raised ghosts on the stages of the USA and Europe. They awed or enraged their audiences, but either way, they never failed to cause a stir. Their act was, in the mid-nineteenth century, cutting-edge magic.
On stage, the Davenport brothers would not utter a word, and they would always keep a calm demeanour: the otherworldly powers they raised left them unfazed. The shows themselves were quite slow by today’s standards. The brothers would be introduced by a third person as master spiritualists, capable of forcing spirits to do their bidding. Then they would sit in a dark wooden cabinet, and be tied up. Their helper would close the door of the cabinet and then all hell would break loose. A guitar, a tambourine, a trumpet and a violin (sometimes called ‘the devil’s instrument’) would play; thumping would be heard, and ghostly arms would be seen. Surely, nothing of the sort could happen without supernatural intervention? Surely the Davenports were calling forth spirits from the Otherworld? Or not, depending on whom you asked.
Spiritualism was born in 1848 in Hydesville, New York, where spirits started to communicate with two young girls, Margaret, fourteen, and Kate, eleven, by thumping on the walls. An older sister, Leah, spotted the business opportunity and helped Margaret and Kate to become celebrities in nearby Rochester, giving performances for paying audiences. Others saw there was money to be made from claiming to communicate with the spirits of the dead. An entire industry developed, offering what was, simultaneously, both a spiritual experience and a form of popular entertainment. Spiritualism became a worldwide phenomenon, and hundreds of people suddenly found supernatural abilities and cashed in on them.
People were hungry for ghosts, so the Davenports gave ghosts to people. Their tricks were far from perfect and were often exposed – which only added to the brothers’ mystique. Were they prophets or scoundrels? Their act excited the audience’s imagination: sceptics and believers alike wanted to see the Davenports’ magic with their own eyes, and the believers would find confirmation that the spirit world was real, and the sceptics would find confirmation that it was not. At the height of their fame, the Davenports performed for Queen Victoria.
Many years later, an up-and-coming magician by the name of Harry Houdini visited the surviving brother, Ira, now an old man in retirement. Ira had words of praise for the young artist, taught him his favourite rope trick, and after a conversation that both men greatly enjoyed, he said goodbye to Harry with the words: ‘Houdini, we started it, you finish it.’
Historians have long debated what Ira meant by this. Some argue that he meant that Ira and William had helped transform the spiritualist craze into a global phenomenon, and now it was up to Houdini to make it go away: what had started as showmanship was ruining lives, as people blew their hard-earned savings on attempts to talk to dead relatives. Harry would become a fierce opponent of mediums, but he would always defend the Davenports, who had never claimed explicitly to have spiritual powers.
Still, only a star-struck young artist could ignore the ambiguity at the core of their act. Were the two magicians pretending to be mediums for the sake of the show, or were they just two more swindlers pretending to be mediums by using tricks? Drawing the line is not easy.1
Magic has changed since the nineteenth century.
This ambiguity still lies at its core.
*
Imagine you have been feeling downcast for quite some time – for several years, in fact. You haven’t been through any major traumas, but a thousand small things have piled up: you never seem to get the praise you deserve at work; you and your partner have sex that’s sort of okay, but hardly mind-blowing; and it’s even been quite a while since you came by a novel that kept you reading late into the night. In fact, you can’t remember the last time that something truly excited you – the last time, if you dare put it this way, that you were really happy. You don’t feel exactly sad (you have food on your table, and a roof over your head), just… downcast.
What happens next is that you get used to it. You take your current mood for granted, and slowly but surely that mood becomes a rock-solid fact of life. To the point that when – at last! – you have the chance to feel better, you can’t even see it. Your boss praises you lavishly for closing that deal with Shanghai, but you do not take her seriously. Nothing can brighten your mood because by now you have come to believe that the problem is not just your downcast mood – it is your whole life, it is you.
This is a dangerous spiral, one that might extend your grim times for ever. At every turn it gets more and more difficult for you to get better, because you don’t remember what better feels like. You know there is a sunnier place, somewhere, but you haven’t a clue where to look.
It is hard to cook a recipe that you tried only once, ten years ago. And the same goes for emotions. The less we recall how they feel, the more difficult it is to feel them again: it took three ghostly visitations – plus some time travel – to remind Ebenezer Scrooge what compassion looked like. The part of him that used to nurture such emotions was out of shape, worn out by greed and anxiety. Emotions, like plants, wither if you do not tend them.
You cannot search for your sense of wonder if you don’t remember what it looks and feels like. You might still stumble upon it by chance, but the more time passes, the less likely that becomes. You reach a point where your memories of wonder are too remote, too vague, to be of any use.
Sense of wonder is like an ancient motorbike that we have left out in the cold for too long. Its battery is drained, so before we can think about taking it for a spin, it needs to be jump-started. But the motorbike is sturdy, and a spark is all it takes.
I searched for my spark among the magicians.