When is Magic Too Real?

It’s been quite a month, and I wanted to let you know some of what we’ve been up to! We’ve just returned home from our tour of Indonesia. We spent four days in Bali, shooting “McBride in Bali”, which will air on Balinese television soon. I was working with Balinese magician Deddy Cobruzier to create a brand new “Burned Alive” effect in which both of us were engulfed in flames. It was a lot ofwork and a great deal of fun, too. We even had some time for some sightseeing, and enjoyed going to Ubud, the village of the mask-makers and wood-carvers. The people in Bali, generally, do not have the cynical, know-it-all, seen-it-before, quasi-boredom attitude toward magic. They believe the magic is real. This can be a good thing for us, coming in and manifesting magic wish bubbles and plucking rainbows from thin air. Though for some magicians who perform mind-reading or other mentalism effects, people become genuinely frightened by the magic and begin to think of the magician as dangerous and evil. We found ourselves walking a thin line between disturbing the comfortable, and comforting the disturbed.

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