We are not human beings derek
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He becomes a prodigy at card tricks, and if anything, he undersells just how great a magician he became-in the past, he’s been judged as the best in the world. Let’s begin here: DelGaudio spends a portion of his show and his book detailing what drove him to magic, and his early belief that, in fact, honesty is not always the best policy. All of that, but also frustrating because of the ambiguity, and the possibility that by striving for answers-by obsessively picking the meat from the bones-we are actually moving further from truth. The intellectual stuff, though, is where this begins to get very interesting…and also a little eerie, and perhaps uplifting too. That is the raw surface power of the performance: It’s enough to stun you, and like the melody of a song, none of the intellectual layers matter without that critical first ingredient.
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In describing the letter trick, he once said, “my goal is to get you to the point where it’s easier to believe that a miracle happened than the truth of what we actually did.” In this, he succeeded with some of us, because the visceral feeling is too much to ignore, and in the specific moment-before the comforting wheels of logic begin to spin again-we do believe. It just happened, and it happened despite the fact that I knew on an intellectual level that the people in the audience were strangers to DelGaudio, and he to them, that they would probably never see each other again, and that the “connection” I found so moving was all based on physical and emotional manipulations. It wasn’t something I had to analyze or think about or ponder. More to the point for most of us, how do you respond when you see this happen to someone else? Some will be left cold, but my answer is also common: It moved me to tears. You already know enough, and if you’re at all in tune with the streaming world, you’ve probably heard plenty (positive and negative, perhaps) to intrigue you. I’ll also relate the same very good advice that was given to me-see it without foreknowledge, and with as few preconceptions as possible. If you haven’t yet seen In & Of Itself, I’ll warn you that spoilers lie ahead, and that what follows is best read from a place of familiarity anyway.
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Second, and most important, is the implication that the reality constructed for human beings-the things we “see”-are in fact a distortion which brings us away from, not closer to, the truth. First, there is the ambiguity, a hallmark of most magicians and a quality that DelGaudio uniquely extends into the emotional realm on both page and stage. In more than one respect, the biblical koan is perfect for both works. This is the quote Derek DelGaudio uses as an epigraph in his book Amoralman, a memoir published this year with impeccable timing, coinciding with the Hulu release of In & Of Itself, the film adaptation of his long-running stage show.