People like to be tricked. Hoodwinked. Baffled. Dumbfounded.
Especially when they’re hurting or hopeless.
So every month, for an hour or so, four unpaid magicians show up at the Shepherd Center on Peachtree Street to entertain people who are confined to beds or wheelchairs.
Donnie Golson is a financial adviser, Tim Wolfe a night court judge, Rick Hinze a retired computer expert and Mark Hatfield a pilot, all members of the Society of American Magicians and the Georgia Magic Club.
On a recent Tuesday, after a score or more of patients limped or rolled into a therapy room, the four started chanting, “Here comes the judge,” because Wolfe was to be the first to perform.
He did a trick in which he appeared to turn three different lengths of rope into three ropes of the same size.
The audience gasped. Golson did a card trick, in which he asked an audience member to imagine a specific card — then guessed it. There were tricks involving steel rings and disappearing bottles. Gasps suggested the viewers didn’t believe their eyes.
Unless you’re a member of a magic club, forget about figuring out how the tricks are done. Each takes years of practice. And don’t bother asking.
“People always ask,” says Golson. “I’ll say, ‘Can you keep a secret?’ They’ll say yes. I’ll say, ‘So can I’”.
Wolfe says the two main rules of magic are not doing the same trick twice, and never explaining anything. He won’t even tell his wife, Kim, a retired scientist, how he does the “professor’s nightmare” rope trick.
“I’m fascinated by the complexity of it,” she says. “It drives me crazy.”
Audience members laugh, applaud, even shout in glee, and that’s why they attend the shows, says Midge Tracy, director of volunteer services at Shepherd.
“These magicians come once a month to brighten up the patients’ day that up until dinner time was filled with long hours of grueling therapy,” she says.
Laughs can be nice, but watching the tricks can boggle the mind.
“In magic, when you trick people, they know you are trying to trick them, and they are trying to catch you,” Golson says. “And they think you’ve performed a miracle.”
The mystery is what’s made people like the late Harry Houdini famous. There’s something in human nature that makes magic seem mystical, says Dr. Rick Winer, a Roswell psychiatrist who also likes magic.
“What is so confounding to us as observers is that seeing should be believing, but we still can’t believe it,” he says. “The magician creates the illusion of doing something that defies explanation. This can create a certain fear or anxiety in us because we tend to fear the unknown and become anxious about questions we cannot answer satisfactorily.”
It’s the anxiety that adds excitement, and makes it so appealing, even frightening.
Which is why some in the audience shouted and a few even put distance between themselves and the magicians, who perform a couple of hours but practice a lot more.
“It’s extremely satisfying to bring a little joy into their lives,” Golson says. “It’s fun.”
Well, maybe not always.
“Once, ending a show, I said, ‘I hope you all get better soon’,” he says.
“And somebody yells, ‘I hope you do, too’”.
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