At Mellow Mushroom in the American Tobacco Campus, half a deck of cards flies from the palm of a man’s hand to the inside of a card box across the table within a second. The cards inside are all the same color. At the Local 506 in Chapel Hill, a coin wrapped in a bundle of tissue paper is lit on fire, burning a hole through the deck of cards it is sitting on. The coin lands on the first in-tact card on the deck. It happens to be mine. At Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, I unwrap a new CD case to find a card stuck on the inside cover. My name is signed on it. Who knew that the Triangle was, literally, a magical place?
When I first met Michael Casey, a magician from North Carolina, I was skeptical. A magician? I thought. Magic, like many other things from my childhood, like becoming a famous rock star or award-winning novelist, had died out and been replaced with prospects of the “real world,” of becoming the next big CEO or acing the LSAT. What I admire about Casey’s work, however, is that his performances are more than just slight of hand. As one of the most sought after magicians in the Triangle who has also performed at Duke, he makes people believe in magic again.
I had the opportunity to interview Casey, who, as a local music aficionado that tours with his favorite bands, put me on the guest list for a show last weekend. He described magic as a way of breaking down people’s cynicism and defense mechanisms. His favorite people to put on a show for are the ones who don’t even like magic because of the opportunity to transform their paradigm of the world.
“Your entire life since you were born you had a category to put everything in and if you didn’t, you made one,” he told me. “You have boxes and sub-boxes for everything. Magic happens when you show someone something that uses all their boxes. It gives you something you can’t put into a box.”
Now, some of you may be thinking that magic might be great and all, but so what? It’s not as prestigious as a profession as a doctor or a president—certainly not jobs that we go to Duke to get. A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduate, Casey is the first person in his family to attend college. With a biology major, he works for a pharmaceutical research company by day and performs at night. Exerting as much confidence and influence as any executive of a major corporation, he turns the world of the vice president of PricewaterhouseCoopers, to whom he frequently presents his work, upside-down, even if it is for a few moments. His accomplishments prove success does not fit the form of the same box either.
For seniors like me who are trying to figure out what to do with their lives, Casey’s story of how he decided to pursue magic reminds me that we must do what we love, which coincidentally, often is what we wanted to do when we were little. Even as a child, he had always loved magic but didn’t really trust his instincts until a major event changed his life. For the first time in his life, Casey was forced to fly on a plane, despite having a fear of flying and a horribly bad feeling about the trip. As the plane was about to land, instead of slowing down, the engines began to reverse and the plane shot up into the air at a 45-degree angle. Everyone in the plane was panicking, including Casey, who promised himself that from then on, he was going to trust his gut. “You know that song by Alanis Morrisette, ‘Ironic?’” he said. “I didn’t want myself to be a lyric in one of her songs.” (“He waited his whole damn life to take that flight/And as the plane crashed down he thought, ‘well, isn’t this nice.’”)
Practicing hard in a little magic shop in Raleigh, Casey worked towards his goals. The owner of the shop had told him not to tell anyone that he had started just six months ago because he was already so good. Now supporting a family of his own, Casey is an example of a success story of someone who went after his dreams, however unconventional or farfetched they seemed. “It never dawned on me I could get paid to do this,” he told me.
Casey inspires us to find what makes life magical for us and to pursue it.
Sue Li is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every other Monday.
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