Over the past few days, friends have been contacting me about Derek Delguadio's show, In & Of Itself, which played in New York several years ago for more than 500 performances, and which is now available on Hulu. Everyone wants to know whether I've seen it, and what my reaction to it is, so rather than answering everyone individually, I thought I'd process my thoughts here as one collective response. Maybe in so doing, it will become clear how I actually feel.
Let me start by saying that I met Derek about ten years ago when I first arrived in Los Angeles. Words and adjectives that come to my mind about meeting him: extremely serious, quite intelligent, highly skilled, a tad crass, and not especially friendly. This is pretty common in the magic community so I don't want it to sound like a dig on DD, it's simply the nature of a craft built on secrets and on the fact that I was not someone who could advance his career. Some magicians do not mind sharing with others, while other magicians guard their secrets jealously, or worse, with ferocity. Derek handled cards expertly and could even do a few moves I'd not seen anyone else do before--things that were original, and that was cool to see. He did not smile easily.
While I showed up to the Magic castle on a periodic basis to have a good time and meet colleagues, Derek was there virtually every night. He had moved to Los Angeles into an apartment complex across the street from the Magic Castle, part of his master plan to meet the right people and build his name in the magic community and elsewhere.
At the time, I espoused having similar goals as his. But looking back, I don't feel being a famous magician is what I wanted. Certainly I had spent most of my life honing a craft, and it's nice to be appreciated and to give people a gift of magic. But I never saw it is a viable way to make the kind of living I wanted for myself. Don't misunderstand--there are magician's that make very nice livings doing magic, and indeed the field of magic is an entire industrial complex. But the only place I could see myself within the complex was as a performer, and for reasons that are difficult to articulate, pursuing magic as a career was not natural to me. Business is in my blood, and I always knew I wanted a business that endured during good times and bad times--where I was selling something that was necessary; this proved extremely prescient in the last year during COVID-19, where my business never shut down and has remained busy throughout. I'll leave that for another time.
Lady Gaga sang "I live for the applause". Well, after years of singing in a cappella groups and performing magic for audiences since the age of 12, eventually I realized that I don't live for the applause. I love applause. It's terrific. Everyone loves to be appreciated, and approved of, and to be received well. But in me, there was, and remains, no void to fill. And I wonder how much that motivates the average Hollywood actor or performer--filling the void, or not having other options, running to something, or running from something.
When I first moved to Hollywood, I lived in an apartment building above Ian Kessner. Ian, a cool Jewish guy from Toronto, was married to Israeli actress Bar Paly, and one day I found myself hanging out with him at this apartment. I gave him a bit of my story, and he informed that in his early twenties he was close pals with Leonardo DiCaprio & David Blaine, and that the three of them used to hit the town together regularly. I mentioned that I knew David from my time doing magic in NYC as a teen, and that in some respects I wanted to follow along in his path.
Ian responded quickly, and in no uncertain terms, that this would not happen. "You're not going to be anything like David Blaine Michael." I asked why, and he followed up with a series of questions: are your parents still married? Yes, happily. Did you go to college...earn a degree? Yes, Philosophy & an MBA. How about brothers and sisters...are they okay? Yes, very well thank you. You had plenty of money growing up...yearly vacations kinda thing? Yes, we did not want for anything. And how about you...you have some money, doing okay? Yes, I've been fortunate for sure.
"Right", Ian said. That is NOT David Blaine at all. David never knew his Dad. He slept on his mother's couch and they had no money. His mother had a hard time keeping herself together and could not support herself let alone David. From the time he was 14, he's been hustling every day and night to make a living for himself and take care of his mother. He has no back up plan. He's not going to switch to real estate if magic doesn't work out. He thinks all day and night about magic. When he's figuring out where to eat, it's based on who may be there, and what he will do if he sees someone famous. Every thought, every action, every motivation, is curated around the singular premise of being a famous magician. There is no home base, no place to rest, nothing to fall back on. Everyone he meets wants something from him and he can never let down his guard.
In an instant, my desire to be anything like David Blaine vanished. It is much easier to me, and rather than running from that fact, I gradually learned to accept it, and more, be thankful for it. Extremes breed extremes. Sure, the sword that has been endlessly steeped in fire and annealed into fortitude is strong, but that process is violent and unpleasant. It is easy to admire that fortitude and to think oneself less than someone who has endured what it takes to achieve it, but few healthy people would choose it.
Last night I watched Derek's Delguadio's show. In many ways, his theme was similar to a show I wrote and performed years ago in NY called ADD-Lightful, about the challenges of articulating an identity when none of the words seem to fit. Magician? Nope. Conjuror? Bad branding. Sleight of hand Artist? Come again? Transcendental artist? Thesaurus please. And this struggle is not inconsequential when we live in a society that often asks us to define ourselves by what we do. Derek's show does an excellent and poignant job of examining this question, and the magic is truly wonderful. His acting was also terrific and a bit of a revelation.
Nothing is a pure accident. In my show, years ago I toured audiences through various chapters of my life. At one point I thought I would be a magician, then a singer, then a life coach, then a real estate developer, then a guitarist, and so on. The goal was to tell personal stories of hardship, joy, exploration, and revelation. Derek's tail, again similar in thematically, is more painful. His father ran off before he was born out of wedlock. His mother supported them and he longed for the day when he might meet his dad. One night, he tells, he awakens to find his mother on the couch kissing another woman. Sadly, a community of homophobes turns on them, slanders her to his face, and eventually leads to their relocation.
Hearing the story was painful, and Derek appears in pain throughout the performance, almost as if his belief, rational from his perspective, is that the journey of self exploration MUST be fraught with pain. This is where we diverge. To me, the existential sadness of identity crisis is nearly synonymous with the human condition, a basic ennui that we all feel from time to time but do not let define us. My tail was full of jokes, and moments of magic that dazzled and delighted as I worked to provide my audiences with a vacation from their problems. Derek's tail indulges the part of ourselves that falls pray to a destructive inner voice, without providing a coherent hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel, or a corresponding to joy that offsets the pain. Perhaps this is the case, and certainly the show has resonated for so many that saw and loved it. And I enjoyed it as well. It is only a matter of stylistic difference that I bring it up here: until I have transformed or transmogrified the pain that often motivates art into something uplifting, I do not perform it. It happens to be my artistic sensibility to spread light, even while I value artists that expertly mine the darkness.
All told, I unequivocally recommend seeing Derek's show. I hope that it provided him joy, remuneration, and a modicum of catharsis.
Michael Friedland
January 25th, 2021
