Stage to Horizon

To many, magic is the sea. To me, it's the shore; as familiar as the samurai to his sword, or sunlight to the eye. It's an excuse to walk around and practice Bushido- no lie. It's a lopsided sculpture of myself in disguise that I constantly chip away at, with every show I do or crowd I run through. It's a portal to the outside, where I can say what I need to say in front of all the people in the way. It's a way, I was once told, as valid as any road. It's a journey that goes in a circle; around the world like an eagle and back; around the ego and back. I literally traveled the distance on this craft, meeting as many characters as RPG games are a blast. I crossed the sea and met my fiance in the Philippines, in that one specific class I did a show for. I suspect, magic is a way to love. I am in love with magic: a grain of sand in a universe of things I could have chosen to do. I could have been a recluse chopping bamboo! Instead, I am mastering myself whenever I step out of my cave and perform for you/me/doesn't matter who. I have nothing to prove. Magic for me is unproven alchemy: work turned to love, turned to God, turned to her, and into every important thing in the universe that I believe a soul should visit. I leave magic for love-work on Monday. I know it won't go anywhere, like the seashore. I'll miss it. 

-antidote

Secret Showoff

The allure of getting into magic makes me shake my big head. It's the cool! I will fully reveal that I liked magic because it made me feel like I had super powers in middle school: that I could do things others can't. If I want people to like me, I'd show them what I knew. I wasn't an aggressive performer though. I kind of kept what I did to myself. Until college! I really rode that as my cool wave. Haha! If weren't for the House of Flying Cards, I'd be just another wall flower at all those parties. I didn't really go to parties that much, though. But I was very un-ninja with my magic powers. I'd take every opportunity in college to let them out and be seen. I wanted to be known as the magician: no secret. Wow! I can't believe I fell for the cool. I fell for magic in a way I'd consider to be shallow in retrospect. God provides when needed. I guess, I needed magic. I did! I wouldn't have been seen in my fiance's class if I didn't do that show. God provides us with the tools we need to write our stories. I am grateful. Magic is cool. I'm really just a nerd. Hahahaha

-antidote

Magician to King

I have a new effect: Magician to King.

Being self-employed is a monarchy, and like all monarchies, it has a tendency to one day fall. I'm amazed at every day I wake up to learn that I am Houdini-escaping from the confines of the traditional 9 to 5 cubicle. I know my time with this art as work is borrowed, and I'm taking the chance to practice deeply.

Over the next few months, I will be working on a new video project to capture my moments with my art form in the corners of my late-night practice sessions. I know soon, I will have to be selfless and transfer ship to a 9 to 5 job, to support my fiance and upcoming family. But until then, I will sleep late and spend as much quality time with magic as I can.

The project is called "Cardboard Kingdoms", and introduces anyone who cares to follow me on a journey through a world of card magic routines performed to poetry. Each routine is its own frail, fleeting kingdom- kind of like a city of dominos that is destined to fall down with only me watching. I don't really get to express or perform these routines at my gigs that much, so these deep-night practice sessions are where I can really visit them, and get lost in the art I have grown to love.

The first of these kingdoms is the Sky, and is inspired by my long distance relationship with my fiance Agnes Pasco. Enjoy your stay, and if you'd like to see more, subscribe to the Cardboard Kingdom channel www.youtube.com/cardboardkingdoms, as I'll have a new kingdom ready for you to explore every few weeks or so this whole summer.

-antidote

Magician to Rival

New post by HOFC Founder and President Antino Art.

Read at http://www.antinoart.com/blog.html

Peace!

Magician to Alchemist

I have a new effect: Magician to Alchemist.

The purpose of this blog is to report my findings in my study of magic: my hidden findings; not the ones that involve learning new effects, routines, or even performing principles. The purpose of why I practice magic with the fervor of an alchemist is and always will be hagakure: hidden beneath the leaves for me to reveal.

I am a proponent of seeking the secret to mastery, like some rare earth metal or a planet with the elusive conditions to support life. Mastery is as elusive as time-travel, or getting into heaven on worldly works alone. I admit my faults and falls along the way, and my ego stares them down like an adversary yet to be defeated. I hate rivals. They bring out the fool in me, and I'm convinced to try and chase them down like shadows and catch up to their every move. I hate praise, and its allure, because it sways me away from my journey like a siren with its attractive words: praise God, and no one else. I wish to impart that on everyone I perform for, including the self I see in the mirror of my practice sessions. I fear criticism, like praise, because it can cause me to believe completely in the public opinion of others, and seek to validate every second of love-work I put into this art form with their judgement. I don't want to impress them, or to live in the shadow of proof. I don't stand behind proof, and instead, aspire to love what I do without proof. I have faith that I am in love with this art form; with my fiance; with God; with the belief that any good that comes from my magic is God's doing, and that any bad is from my own human imperfection. I am a horrible magician. I am naturally clumsy, socially awkward, set in my ways, and as oblivious an observer of people as they come. How I'm getting away with doing this for a living, I don't know. I know that I am capable of bringing out the God within through this alchemist-intense practice of this art I love only second to my fiance, my family, and God. The people who are not my audience for a fleeting moment of time, where praises, worship, and paychecks are at my grasp, are the ones worth practicing magic for; and getting good at it for. I hope to master this art in secret hopes of mastering self. The magician is the character of transformation.

I'm just going to be upfront with all the magicians in the scene that happen to be here reading this, and amazing me with enough non-indifference to come visit me here in the late-night corners of my alchemist-like lab: f**k learning new effects. The best effect learned in the practice of magic is the transformation of self. Do that, and I believe the reactions you'll get will go far beyond words, bookings, and tips.

And if you don't care to take any part of these findings I am humbly offering you an entire page of after years of laboring in the lab, oh well: God bless!

-antidote



PS Go HEAT

The Archer

The trick to catching a leaf is to let go; to relax your senses, and let everything else fall off your mind, so you don't know. It's the kind of madness that makes you not blink, and blank-stare into space. When I reach for it there, I grab air, I think...catching leaves is tricky: cranky, I chase. It's like pursuing a moment, and sealing it away in a box with no locks. The wind is ready to keep things unsteady, and the leaf gets let go like a dream I keep forgetting: I'm too slow. Catching leaves changes the way our eyes move. Surprises are expected; reflexes improve. And if you miss it the first time, you have nothing to loose! The wind picks up again, and I follow the leaf to its zig-zagging end: it flips, eludes, and spins out of control, until I'm lost, dizzy, and in the mood to fold. Catching a leaf on a windy day keeps me busy: it's my goal, so stay focused, despite the changes in direction that shake me off balance. I stay in my spot, and notice a leaf move down from the top into the mess the wind has made into a challenge. Despite the stress, I stay with it. If I look close, it'll stand out vivid. The trick to catching a leaf is to make the others disappear. My vision goes blurry. Everything goes clear.

-from Cardboard Kingdoms:
a collection of card magic routines done to poetry
DVD + Chapbook available summer 2012
at www.antinoart.com 

On Riding Bikes

There's a certain familiarity that resides in a box of Bicycle playing cards; the feeling of control in my hands; of expertise at the tips of my fingers. The way a strike-double hits the tip of my index triggers a shot to the memory, and lingers, as slight as an after-taste on the palate of the distant past. I see flashes of where I've been light up at every turn in the winding streets of my age-old routines, so I run through them with my eyes closed just to remember what it feels like to have the ground beneath my feet. The technical coreography carves its way through the chaos, and memory lanes open. I ride through each one on my Bikes, and breathe freely. There's a bold sense of belonging with the cards in my hands. Whatever in hell is chasing me at the moment vanishes completely. I'm home once the card box opens, like a genie back in the lamp and free from all outside demands for the time being. The painters of ancient China used to block out the present, and re-visit the recluse huts in the mountains of their finished works, as an escape to the turbulence that comes from the speed at which the world spins. Time sits in the palm of my hands like a monk in lotus position, floating in the familiarity of mechanics grip and twisting at their own leisurely pace down the paths my age-old routines can take them. Familiarity is mine once again, whenever I want it back, in situations that shuffle me out of control and make me want to retreat into the cardboard box of my Bicycles. Often times, comfort zones reside in boxes like these, and I find fifty two familiar faces inside mine waiting for me, whom I've seen the same way time and again in times of uncertainty. I thumb through each one like meditation beads, to make sure they're all there, as the things that surround me fall apart and I loose control of everything else.

-antidote