Seeking answers is something human, and I don’t feel upset by people going to a Magic show thinking part of the fun is to find them. They are missing the big picture in my opinion, but there is nothing I can do about it. All I can do is protect the secrets to the best of my ability and show them that there is more than meets the eye. But for them to see that, they need to be open to that notion or idea and that’s something I can’t control either.
I feel lucky that I have carved an audience for my work and that most of the people who buy a ticket to my shows already come with the right mindset. They also know my work is rooted in my experiences, and way of looking at the world. I openly talk about episodes from my past that were important and relevant to who I am today. And that honesty relegates the deception aspect of Magic to a secondary role.
There is this quote from a past review, something like: “with Helder, deception is put in service of the enlightenment.” It’s a nice way of saying what I try to do. What few people realize is that the answers they’re looking for are rarely the answers they need. Wonder is an answer and it takes real maturity to sit with it, to understand that no answer will be as satisfying as the wonder a question provokes. People feel happy when they solve a puzzle, but if the solution is quick and easy there’s no real emotional connection once you solve it. That connection is given by the complexity and time we spend with the original problem or question. It’s proportional to the time we sit with the unknown. That is what allows our mind to explore different possibilities and avenues that we might never otherwise.
Magic allows for the solution to that puzzle to never exist. What happens if it doesn’t? The mind will have to live with all of the new doors that it has open. And that alone is worth a lifetime of exploration.