Sunday: 05 October 2003
random musings » Blaine drain...
I have a lot of time for illusionists. My respect began back when I was a child, where I was always fascinated by TV magicians. However, it wasn't until my graduation ball that I finally met an illusionist face-to-face and had to take my metaphorical hat off to this rather odd breed of individual.
If you've never seen an illusionist at work first hand, I can only suggest you go and do so. There's something sobering about someone pulling one elastic band straight through another that's firmly wrapped around your fingers and from right under your nose...
David Blaine is one such illusionist that I have admired for a while now. His street card tricks are second to none and I wouldn't deny him the publicity he has deserved as a result. However, I'm not really convinced by his current antic, suspended in a perspex box close to the River Thames. Not only does it seem rather pointless, but I'm not sure that acting as a target for the local golfers was ever his intention.
In case you've been hiding in a perspex box these last few weeks, I'll recap. David Blaine, renowned illusionist has decided to hole up in a box suspended in the air and close to the Thames for 44 days with only water to keep him going. The exact reasoning is actually rather unclear. I mean, if he were doing this for some religious purpose or to see if he could pull off what numerous Indian Fakirs have done for centuries, then I could see a modicum of point. However, all he seems to have done prior to this little stunt is to outline what happens to the human body when it's denied food.
As a result, I (along with the rest of the nation) have found myself wondering exactly why he has decided to do this, as there seems to be very little illusion attached (unless he's going to disappear up one of his own orifices on day 43 and reappear waving and grinning from the top of Tower Bridge). The claim is that it's just an endurance test, but in the tradition of cynicism I've come up with a few of my own conclusions:
- he's just carrying out some kind of experiment to see if the text books are true because he's clearly barking;
- he's doing this for infinite publicity and a good stint in the nearest hospital because he's barking;
- he intends to just walk out of that box in 44 days, unscathed and unruffled because he has put himself into some form of meditative state, thus declaring his allegiance to media-wh8redom and to be forever mentioned in the same breath as that spoon-bending neurotic Uri Geller and that overly made-up fraudster David Copperfield.
For his own sake, I'm hoping that he's just barking, there's no permanent damage and that he returns to the sanctuary of his card 'tricks' before the mumbled cantation of 'tw*t' turns into a national catchphrase for the clearly unstable numbnut...