Yesterday, I watched a news story about an Indian magician trying to replicate one of Harry Houdini's escape tricks. He was to be lowered into the Hooghly river in Kolkata with his arms and legs trussed up like a turkey. In footage of him before the stunt, he says in Bengali that if he is able to escape it would be magic, else tragic. He had bright orange flowing hair,, a pencil-thin moustache and wore a red band around his head that was adorned with medals. His stunt costume comprised a bright yellow jumpsuit, red shorts and a swimming camp. The footage ends as he is lowered into the water, eyes closed and taking gulps of air. He never resurfaced. His body was found a few days later washed on the river shore about a one kilometre downstream.
He was a comic figure who probably earned his living performing in circuses in small towns. In an India engulfed in right-wing madness, he feels like a quaint figure representing sanity. The oddball impervious to the madness around him, free in his own world. When you feel like you are not fighting groups or ideologies, but fighting an age, fighting a world that you are only physically a part of but which appears alien to you in every other respect, perhaps the best strategy is to build a world of your own. Draw comfort from the magical, the fantastical. Magic does not represent an escape from the real world but is a world in its own right. Oddballs do engage with the world at large, but strictly on their own terms. When you don't seek affirmation or validation from the outside world, when even the threat of or actual violence cannot force you back into that world, when you are immune to ridicule and censure, the outside world has little power over you. I am sure I am projeccting my nihilism on the dead magician. Well, so what?
He was a comic figure who probably earned his living performing in circuses in small towns. In an India engulfed in right-wing madness, he feels like a quaint figure representing sanity. The oddball impervious to the madness around him, free in his own world. When you feel like you are not fighting groups or ideologies, but fighting an age, fighting a world that you are only physically a part of but which appears alien to you in every other respect, perhaps the best strategy is to build a world of your own. Draw comfort from the magical, the fantastical. Magic does not represent an escape from the real world but is a world in its own right. Oddballs do engage with the world at large, but strictly on their own terms. When you don't seek affirmation or validation from the outside world, when even the threat of or actual violence cannot force you back into that world, when you are immune to ridicule and censure, the outside world has little power over you. I am sure I am projeccting my nihilism on the dead magician. Well, so what?
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