Many have asked me over the years: "Is Uri Geller for real?" these days I get this question more often. The mentalism craze sweeping over the whole nation, is to me another clear symptom of current events.
The first evidence to the existence of magicians is found in paintings on a wall of the Egyptian pyramids. An Egyptian Khartoum performs the 'glasses and balls' magic, the same magic I perform today with different materials. I guess it is the second oldest trade in the world…
A magician stands on stage, shows the audience an empty paper bag and draws out of it three oranges, an audience member will tell his friends: "he pulled 4 Kg of grapefruits out of an empty paper bag". The gap between 3 oranges and 4 Kg of grapefruits has been my livelihood for 32 years.
The need to touch the intangible, to see the divine, to understand the secret, can drive people mad. A whole country sits mesmerized in front of television, wishing broken watches to tick again. Uri, you are the greatest, you might just be the leader we are searching for.
We have the need to lie to ourselves, to not see what's in front of us. So people continue to lie to themselves, exaggerate, and fantasize. I once watched the late Ami Dayan bend spoons in front of 300 people, it amazed me to see the audience's blindness – "He who doesn't want to see, won't" applies to this situation.
Lately, many magazine articles 'expose' the deceits of mind readers, Why is that? Are there no more 'real' political deceits? No more corruption? Apparently there are similarities between magicians and politicians.
Is Uri Geller real? I don't know. I haven't seen him looking at himself in the mirror, or express love to his wife and children, I don't know what he feels or thinks about. He is mostly photographed with his poker face on (so am I). I never saw him from up close or smile on the inside. Although I don't know the man, I know he is a pioneer, the most talented and charismatic, and a 'blue and white' winner. If there's any truth in the proverb "only dead fish swim with the stream", Geller is a shark.
I don't know if production considerations are the reason of Uri's arrival to Israel at this time, Zionism, or fate. But Uri has arrived at the right time. I think he should even form a political party, we deserve a leader who can bend Prime Ministers and Quassam launchers. Uri has another advantage, he is said to be rich.
There Is no doubt in my mind that the media gets in the way of magic, in the past a magic lantern was enough to satisfy audiences. There is a wonderful scene in the movie "Bye Bye Brasil" about a magician that travels to Brazil to find an audience. Television is also penetrating the villages and just when he is about to give up, he encounters a television set, in a church full of people of all places, and magically blows it up, Harry Potter style.
I send people who insist to know if magic is real to a delivery room, to see a baby being born. Can anyone explain the magic of birth?
Are we nearing the end of television's role in magic? This medium went as far as it could go, bringing a whole country to try to bend spoons. Amazingly, it has been done before, even here in Israel, sometimes in the 70's or 80's in black and white, on the one channel we had. People flocked to see the phenomenon, until someone was smart enough to shout "the king is naked". People rejected the act, and made Uri go on a worldwide tour, which was very successful and bought him fame and fortune.
America was also swamped with soothsayers at one time. The Great Houdini was summoned to Congress, wowed the politicians and helped the government and press hunt down 'witches'. Few years later, when his mother died, he paid all his money to the same soothsayers he used to chase, in order to bring him a sign from her.
Still, does 'real' magic exist? I once sat at a Washington hotel at a magicians convention and looked at a lamp hanging off the wall, I thought to myself 'move' and the lamp began to shake by itself, no props. I thought I was losing my mind, going mad. Luckily, I glanced at the window and saw the nearby train tracks…
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