It was exactly a month ago when he started with this crazy adventure. 30 days, 720 hours, 43,200 minutes. Two tubes run from his transparent box. One brings in water, the other takes it out. A box and two tubes. This will be his home for another two weeks. And then, his work will be done. Then he can go back to Emma and the kids. Then he won’t have to prove any thing to anyone.
Until next time.
I asked him once what drives him. W hat attracts him about making all his stunts, those death-defying feats he undertakes. He didn’t answer for a while. For a minute, I thought he never would. At the core, he is a very private man. Ask him about tricks, illusions or magic, he’ll talk for hours. But ask him something personal, and chances are he’ll get up and leave. Not this time. He looks at me with his penetrating eyes, as if he’s judging whether I really care about the question I’ve just asked.
‘Some people are driven towards something. Some people look ahead and see the destination. And when they catch a glimpse of it, they are propelled forward. I was never like that. I never had a master plan. Never had any clear objectives, really.’ He pauses as if he’s weighing the ramifications of what he’s just said.
He started performing on the sidewalks when he was 12, gaining instant popularity with people of all ages. W hen he was 15, a talent scout from New York spotted him and suggested to his grandmother (his mother had died the year before) that he start performing in the big city. ‘That kid had magic coming out of his eyes,’ noted Samuel Hunt, former program director at Radio City. ‘He would stand in front of you and do one of his tricks, never taking his eyes off of you. W hen he was done, you’d feel as if it wasn’t a human performing the trick. He was that good. But then he would show you how he did the trick, and would then do it again, and you still wouldn’t have a clue how he’d done it. That’s when you knew you were in the presence of greatness. Or the devil.’
His stage career was a short-lived one, however, ending after only two shows. Something about his magnetism, his electrifying presence, didn’t quite transpire on stage. The crowd felt it, the promoters felt it, but most of all, he felt it. He took a year off magic, refusing all requests to return to his street performances. ‘He would sit in his room all day and do nothing,’ his grandmother said once in an interview.
‘I would go up to him and say – kid, you’ve got a special talent, and if God gave you this gift, you need to use it. But I was better off talking to the walls. Nothing would change his mind. Nothing, of course, but that little girl.’
On December 14, 1992, Stacy Connolly was waiting for her mother to pick her up from school. When 30 minutes had passed and the mother hadn’t arrived yet, Stacy decided to make the three mile walk back home on foot. It was a cold winter day and heav y snow had fallen the night before. In one of those freak accidents life deals us sometimes, a speeding pickup truck failed to stop at a stop sign. To avoid colliding with a passing car, the driver swerved violently to the right, leaped onto the sidewalk and ran over Stacy. The driver was none other than Megan Connolly, Stacy’s mother, who was rushing to pick up her daughter from school. Stacy lay in a coma for the better part of that winter. The Connolly’s tried everything, from experimental medical treatments through blessings from various religious figures, but Stacy would not wake. Behind closed doors, the doctors began talking about pulling the plug. On a bright morning in April, Stacy’s mother made a trip three blocks down from their house. It would be her third visit to a young man whom Stacy had spoken highly of. A year earlier she had seen him perform some magic tricks and could not stop raving for days. Megan Connolly had no idea whether magic could help her daughter, but when your child is lying in a coma, you don’t rule out any thing.
All this happened such a long time ago, that hearing him recount this story, this miracle of how a young girl woke up from a coma after receiving a visit from a young man who simply lay his hand on her forehead, could lead you to underestimate the importance of this event in his life. But after the Connolly incident, he returned to the world of magic and never looked back.
And now he’s been locked in a Perspex cube for 30 days. Without food, without human interaction, without radio or television.
Most people, when asked for their opinion about his stunts, tend to fall into two camps. Those who think he’s insane and those who think he’s crazy. A fter all, why lock yourself in a cube for 44 days when modern life is as lonely and alienated as it is? But there is a third camp. A group of people who, like him, are not driven by some guiding light, some set of lofty goals, but something else altogether. You can spot those people amongst the crowd. They look at his box and wait to catch his eyes. W hen they do, they don’t wave or shout any thing, but simply nod.
In the last interview he granted me before leaving for his self-induced exile, the one where I asked him about what drives him, he said something I hadn’t quite understood at the time, but now suddenly makes so much sense. ‘Sometimes it’s not about where you want to go and what you want to achieve. Sometimes it’s about where you’re coming from and how fast you need to run away from it.’
