"How Magic Is Like Black-And-White Televisiion"

(To me, if not to anyone else; but, for me, that’s enough.)

It was the third time we had seen Helder Guimaraes, a wizard of card tricks and acts of magical illusion, perform. 

In his onstage demeanor, Helder Guimaraes is unflashily down to earth.  A local newspaper review said, “He seems remarkably sincere and trustworthy for a man committed to deception.”

(Possibly his first “deception” of the evening.)

Guimaraes begins his performance with a thematic anecdote.  He was driving down a very narrow street, when, as he was passing, a woman opened her driver’s-side door, causing an accident.  After exchanging pertinent “information”, in an effort to placate the misfortune, the woman said,

“Everything happens for a reason.”

After waiting a dramatic beat at the end of his anecdote, Guinareaes says,

“Does it?”

The magician then performs a series of amazing card tricks and illusions.  Confounding, “Everything happens for a reason”, what passes before our eyes is demonstrably unreasonable.

As in, “That cannot possibly occur.”

The inferred offering is a breather from our everyday life, looking for explanations and angles.  Guinaraes asks us to surrender fully to the magical experience.  There is actually no available alternative.  In this “80-minute show without intermission”, figuring out “How did he do that?” is simply – you will pardon the expression – “not in the cards.” 

So we may as well give in, and just enjoy being fooled. 

And, perhaps, after leaving the theater, consider the troubling elements in our personal lives we try constantly to explain but would be better off accepting as “unknowable” and just allowing them to happen.

And with that, I may have ventured an extraneous step too far.  (I just wanted to get that in.)  Going back a paragraph…

From the “audience perspective”, magic is an experience that cannot ultimately be explained.  (Beyond the explanation, “The practitioner is trying to fool us.”)  We look on, with feelings of genuine awe and amazement.  And no reasonable understanding of what we just saw.

The prevailing message is, “Here, it is legitimate not to know.”   What we just saw?  It’s magic.  And that’s it. 

Black-and-white television?

It is exactly the same.

(To me, though, perhaps, not to others.)

First of all, polls indicate that audiences in large numbers will not watch black-and-white movies on television.  That’s why “colorization” was invented – to eliminate the “black-and-white” experience from the universe.  (The way we, through science, try to eliminate magic?  Just asking, in parenthetical brackets.)

Me, I enjoy black-and-white movies on television.  And old, black-and-white TV shows as well.

Why?

(Note:  This idea came to me years ago, when I switched from black-and-white TV to a color Sony Trinitron, and I nostalgically missed black-and-white.  Though, as you know, I am a chronic complainer.)

First of all, I don’t understand why people reject black-and-white programming.  For me, the lack of color was never an impediment.  Not once watching a black-and-white movie was I distracted by thoughts of,

“What color is that shirt?”

(Because it is not black-and-white wardrobe.)

What I appreciate… okay, I have wondered what color Matt Dillon’s shirt is, but that’s all… what appealed to me about black-and-white programming was its exemplary uniqueness.

Black-and-white television was the one thing in my life not inevitably in color.

Everything else was in color, whether I wanted it to be or not.  Black-in-white TV was a glorious exception, a refreshing oasis in an oppressive “color-wherever-you-look” reality.

Just like magic’s an oasis from the necessity of trying to figure everything out.

That –  Ta-da! – is how magic and black-and-white television are alike.

I have spared you the tedium and me the frustration of explaining a phenomenal card trick in words, which, like, I have tried, and people check their phone messages while I am talking,

Instead, I dug up a TED Talk of Helder Guimaraes in action.

I invite you to enjoy watching it unfold, giving your “figuring things out” muscle a rest.

Then, watch a black-and-white movie on TV. 

You’ll be surprised how little you’ll think about the shirt.

And how much the two experiences are the same.

“The man’s tenacious, if nothing else.”