6 Questions with Magician Steve Spill

[Photo: Steve Spill]

1. Reading your book, you get the sense that you are a man who has met everyone. How has working with some of the top people in entertainment shaped you own ambitions and outlook on life?

Those who I've worked with or admired most possess tremendous enthusiasm, great energy, and enormous self-awareness. My ambitions is to continually strengthen those qualities in myself and communicate with audiences while being the funniest and most amazing I can be.

2. What was it that attracted you first to magic and has this fascination sustained you throughout your career?

I was 5 and my dad was bedridden for a couple of weeks with an ulcer. That's when he lit the flame of magic in me, which, to this day, had never gone out. He sat up in bed -- his jaws sagging at first, his face pale, stubbled with beard hairs -- and taught me the simple trick with two strings that his father, my grandfather, had taught him. What I witnessed that day was one of the great thrills of my life.

The instant he started teaching me, a transformation came over him or from within him, he was no longer a slumped man in bed suffering from ulcer, suddenly vital and strong as if nothing was the matter with him... a regal master mentor, majestically passing the baton, the magic wand, to his son. Nowadays the same sort of thing happens to me. If I'm ill and have a show to do, another set of reflexes take charge and the ailments seem to vanish while I'm on stage. After that day, instead of Legos or little green army men, the only toys I played with were magic tricks.

One of the tricks of our trade that I love is the lying. Dyslexic displays of honesty that range from tiny little manipulative untruths, to big, fat in-your-face lies. To be a professional magician is to be an expert at dispensing disinformation, duplicity, hypocrisy, distortion, deception and fakery without any of the guilt or unpleasant consequences. And we magicians enjoy the thrill of getting away with it.

3. You explain and mention many original tricks you perfected throughout the years. Which one is your favorite and why?

My favorite is whatever new thing I happen to be working on at any given moment.

4. Your book includes a chapter on all of your failed ideas. Why did you include it?

Not ALL my failed ideas... that would fill many books. These are cherry-picked stories in the continuing saga where I had an idea, worked up a method to do the trick, got the props together, scripted the routine, and rehearsed it. But on stage, in front of real, breathing strangers, for one reason or another, it wasn't a keeper. In other words, these were routines that turned out to be useless and insignificant. I've included them in the book because in one way or another I found them to be poetic.

5. You are an artist, but you also run a business together with your wife, who is also an artist. How do these various identities mesh?

To write, produce, and perform a show in a theater that you designed, built, own, and operate, you have to be equal parts dictator and diplomat. You must be both the astonishing magician and visionary storyteller on stage and the guy shoveling raw sewage in the middle of the night because no one else would and everything would be lost if it didn't get done. You must be both an extravagant artist and a penny-pinching jerk. It isn't easy, and it isn't always fun. It isn't about money or fame. It's about what it takes to share you vision with those who want to see it. 

6. What advice would you give aspiring magicians?

Nobody makes a living as a magician by accident. You have to want it pretty bad. Success is enjoying the journey. The stamina of a marathon runner is more important than talent. Hard work helps you improve, and when you're obsessed, you make your luck.

I'm not big on giving advice, and I hate to give anyone false hope because luck has played a part in whatever success I've had, but I'll say this: By utilizing your skills and by being true to yourself and working hard it is possible to create an act or show that will -- if not rake in millions -- at least not find you on welfare at the end of the day.

[Photo: Skyhorse]

Steve Spill signs and discusses I Lie for Money: Candid, Outrageous Stories from a Magician's Misadventures on Tuesday, May 19 at 7pm. 

http://booksoup.com/steve-spill-2015

5 Questions with Amy Fusselman

Author Amy Fusselman [Photo: Amy Fusselman]

1. Your work tends to be intensely personal, even when you're taking on subjects that might seem impersonal at the outset, like the philosophies of space and play for example. I think there are a lot of writers who struggle with giving themselves permission to write creative nonfiction because it seems too personal. Do you ever find yourself struggling with this, and how do you deal with it? 

This is a great question. I feel that part of my passion about Savage Park is related to what you are asking about here. I do think the freedom to be creative is very hard for people to hold onto. It gets shut down at an early age.

In D.W. Winnicott’s book, Playing and Reality—which I read as part of my research for Savage Park—he includes the following passage in his chapter on adolescence. I love this paragraph so much and have been trying to quote it as often as possible as a public service:

“If you do all you can to promote personal growth in your offspring, you will need to be able to deal with startling results. If your children find themselves at all they will not be contented to find anything but the whole of themselves and that will include the aggression and destructive elements in themselves as well as the elements that can be labelled loving. There will be this long tussle which you will need to survive.”

I really want this concept to make it into the public at large. The very common idea that if you are doing a good job as a parent, your children will be less trouble: so often this just isn’t true. As parents, don’t we want to raise our children to be whole people—people who have access to all their emotions, who are alive and awake to all the beauty and possibility—and yes, the tragedy—of life? I hope so. Savage Park encourages this.  

But I digress! To answer your question: I don’t struggle too much with giving myself permission. I struggle in trying to edit well. If the work is personal, I want it to be so for the right reasons.

2. Reading Savage Park, I was reminded of an amazing park in the city where I grew up called Brigadoon Park. The amazing thing about it is that it has three enormous cement slides that have been there since they built the park in the 1970s. All of the neighborhood kids know to slide down the slides on pieces of cardboard, even though there's a sign prohibiting that exact thing, because it makes you slide down about 10x faster—so fast that it's impossible to land on your feet and you usually fall hard into a sharp pile of tanbark. I wouldn't call the slides dangerous exactly, but they're definitely unforgiving. You kind of have to learn where the limit is, and sometimes that can only happen through minor injury. I've never seen any other parks like Brigadoon Park probably for this exact reason. Do you think American parents and children could benefit from more spaces like these?

What city is that? I was in San Francisco this summer and was told about a park I didn’t get to visit, at Seward Street. It sounds similar. The Seward Street slides were designed by a 14-year old (!!) and built in 1973 (pic below).

But the short answer to your question is: Yes!!

Seward Street slides [Photo: teamboost]

3. There's a great anecdote in your book about how your toddler Katie greets inanimate objects by saying "Hi!" Do you think there's a difference between how children and adults approach space? What do you think changes?

I do think children, and especially young children, who are just learning to navigate space, are more open to the concept that it’s a medium with properties of its own. I think we adults are more prone to just seeing through it to get to what we want. It’s stopped existing for us. I write in the book that play is a state of consciousness that we are born into, and it decreases as we age. I think that’s part of it. We lose that flexibility in how we experience. We have to work at it if we want to keep it.

4. I loved the documentary "Man on Wire," so it was especially enjoyable to read about your interactions with Philippe Petit. Do you have any insight about the way "PP" (as you refer to him in Savage Park) approaches space and play? What do you think enables him to take on such incredible feats—like walking on a tightrope between the World Trade Center towers—that most of us would never even consider? 

I love that movie as well and was so happy to take that wirewalking class with him. In class he referred to himself as a “tenacious little rat” and I thought that was an interesting image. I’d say he has that approach to his artmaking. He is absolutely relentless in his efforts to bring his artistic visions to life. But that fire is balanced by a very disciplined and methodical approach: a profound respect for space and objects. PP can be a fantastic clown—but he is in no way the fool. He is an incredible artist.

5. I was reminded a little of Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust while reading your book. Are there any specific titles that you looked to for inspiration or background research while writing Savage Park?

I did read a lot for Savage Park and besides the Winnicott book I quote above, I have several others that I love. One is Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens. It’s an overview of the play element of culture, and it has a lot of fun asides in it. For one, Huizinga felt that professional sports had completely lost its play element and suffered from over-seriousness. And he wrote that in 1938!

Amy Fusselman will sign and discuss Savage Park: A Meditation on Play, Space, and Risk for Americans Who Are Nervous, Distracted, and Afraid to Die on Friday, February 13th at 7pm. 

http://www.booksoup.com/amy-fusselman-2015

Holiday Gift Ideas for Her

Gentlemen! Look no further than the Book Soup holiday catalog. We've got what you need for your lady who loves to read...

1) Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham - $28.00

 “Lena Dunham” is not a person anymore. In the few years since “she” has skyrocketed to fame, her name has become a discursive lodestar around which a constellation of buzzwords has gathered: Millenials, Feminism, White Privilege, Twentysomethings, Oversharing, $3,000,000 advances, and on and on. What’s often lost in this flurry of passionately glib chatter is the fact that she’s an honest to god artist. And aside from being a bang-up filmmaker with a powerful vision (when is she gonna make her next movie anyway?), she happens to be a warm and generous writer prepared to confront the most embarrassing and endearing aspects of herself in the interest of making you feel, dear Reader, less awkward and alone.

2) Stone Mattress: Nine Tales by Margaret Atwood - $25.95

Fresh off the triumph of her MaddAddam trilogy, Atwood releases this collection of nine stories. Revolving around themes like lost love and getting older, each of these tales is a gem which could fuel a novel-length book if Atwood had felt so inclined. She kept them short, though, which means we get to enjoy even more of her wonderfully realized characters and settings.

3) Bohemians, Bootleggers, Flappers and Swells: The Best of Early Vanity Fair edited by Graydon Carter with David Friend - $29.95 

From 1913 through the Jazz Age, Vanity Fair served as a hub of American culture. Featuring essays by legendary writers ranging from Gertrude Stein to Langston Hughes, this celebratory collection shines a spotlight on a pivotal time in American history. It provides fascinating insight, all with a wink and a smile. This book is perfect for Gatsby fans, jazz enthusiasts, and/or prohibitionists.

4) Yes Please by Amy Poehler - $28.99

We want to sit at her table! Who wouldn't want pearls of wisdom from the funniest person in Hollywood? She's part advice counselor, part raconteur, and ALL laughs! It's filled with funny stories from her life, too. Hard to believe this is her first book. We'll say yes, please, to the audio book as well.

5) Vivian Maier: A Photographer Found by John Maloof - $80.00

Finally! An all encompassing collection of the incredibly evocative street photography from the now infamous nanny whose work was stumbled upon posthumously by a Chicago historian. Featuring never-before-seen content from her journals and recordings, and lovingly compiled by Maloof himself, this monograph is not to be missed.

For even more gift ideas, browse our holiday catalog here.