Does illusionist David Blaine have a death wish? “I have another decade . . . before something goes wrong”
Extensive article by Cole Moreton for the Telegraph..
LONDON — The first time I meet David Blaine, he is weird. Really weird. Zoned out, distracted or high on something, I can’t tell. It’s a private dinner in an upstairs room at a London hotel and he enters without small talk. Dressed all in black with a black baseball cap, the American illusionist is big, bulky and intimidating.
His eyes are droopy but his gaze wanders the room constantly, until he has something he really wants you to know, when he stares at you like the snake in the Jungle Book. “I’m going to try something new,” he says quietly, in a New York hipster drawl. “Would you like to see it?” Of course. We expect to be astonished. So a card goes missing and is found under a wristwatch. Another is chosen at random and its suit and number appear written on the side of a pen. He makes a pack vanish from under our noses, by riffling it in one hand.
People gasp and wow and ask, “How do you do that?” As if he was ever going to say. Some of these tricks are familiar to those who know magic, but the execution is breathtaking. Blaine practises with the cards for eight hours at a time and astonishes people every day of his life. He seems to find it easier than talking to them….