11/11/2023 0 Comments Nytimes magazine![]() The ending, like a perfect rhyming couplet, is both unexpected and inevitable: It is, of course, the chosen card. But no matter the path it travels, the cochecito still seems to stop at the same card. Tamariz eliminates most of the cards, laying out those remaining in a different configuration, face down. Tamariz then invites another spectator to push the cochecito along the length of the deck it eventually seems to hit a snag and stops in front of one card, resisting the spectator’s hand. The deck is shuffled and spread out on the table. In it, spectators are shown a toy car - the cochecito - and one is invited to choose a card from a deck. The trick he did is called El Cochecito, and it is one of Tamariz’s signature pieces. He introduced Spanish viewers to the style of magic called “close-up,” done with ordinary objects, in near-enough proximity for a conversation and incorporating the participation of spectators. Instead of relying on carefully engineered contraptions, he engineered the attention of his audience. But Tamariz appeared on stage and screen armed with little more than his two hands. This put them as much in competition with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas as with their predecessors in magic they were creators of spectacle, witnessed at a distance. The sort of magician, in other words, who might actually make someone’s wife disappear. ![]() In the United States, the most visible performers of magic in the late 20th century were stage illusionists - Doug Henning, David Copperfield, Siegfried & Roy - all of whom worked with big boxes and flashing lights. The crowd gasped and squealed, and when each trick was over, those remaining craned their necks to catch the Maestro’s attention and be called up next. In the end, two spectators shuffled separate decks, both of which were then found to be in the exact same order, down to the last card. They each chose a card and replaced it in the deck, dividing it in half between themselves cutting again, each located the other’s card. Two volunteers shuffled a deck and cut it into four piles without knowing it, they had found the four aces. At times, he guided spectators through a procedure that led to an impossible result, without appearing to touch the cards himself. As often as Tamariz had someone pick a card, any card, as standard operating procedure dictates, he had them simply name one or even just think of one. ![]() Most of them joined him at the front at one point or another, and much of the magic seemed to be executed by them. The size of the audience - “spectators,” in the magician’s parlance - allowed them to sit just a few feet from Tamariz, which is his preference these days. I had just attended a performance by Tamariz at a hotel in the trendy Malasaña district, where 40 or so local residents came out to see him in the flesh. But Tamariz reacted as though it were the first time anyone had come up with the notion. “They always make the same joke,” he whispered to me, after a man asked him to make his wife disappear. ![]() A preternatural night owl - he often goes to bed when he sees the sun coming out - Tamariz is the last to leave any restaurant he dines in, permitting just about every other customer to approach him on their way out. He will pause midsentence to say hello, or pose for a picture, before returning seamlessly to whatever conversation he was engaged in the previous moment. (Imagine getting good and baked in public and seeing Kermit strolling by.) One passing woman did a Buster Keaton-grade double take, culminating in an expression of such uninhibited delight that witnessing it seemed to amount to a violation of her privacy. David Blaine has called him “the greatest and most influential card magician alive.” But in Spain, Tamariz is an icon, less like Blaine or David Copperfield and more like Kermit the Frog.Ī cluster of young men smoking a joint, heads bowed and pupils dilated, whispered, “Tamariz?” uncertain if they could believe their eyes. He is referred to by magicians all over the world, and waiters all over Madrid, as Maestro. Tamariz has been a professional magician for 52 years, and in that time, he has managed the singular feat of becoming both a household name in his home country and a living legend in magic everywhere. As I walked with the 80-year-old magician on side streets off the city center’s main drag, the Calle Gran Vía, heads turned left and right. Going out to dinner with Juan Tamariz in Madrid is a little like accompanying a cartoon character on a journey to the real world. ![]()
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