Magician pulls back curtain on history of his craft

SALISBURY — Magician Jon Brunelle made a pencil levitate and hypnotized the president of the Salisbury Forum during “Illusory Magic: A Personal History of the Craft in Pictures, Words and Trickery,” a Salisbury Forum event at Salisbury School Friday, Feb. 6.

Between tricks and illusions, Brunelle provided a brief history of magic, and of his own career.

He said he was primarily active in the 1970s and 1980s, and showed a clip from Japanese television of him causing hard round coins to pass through a pack of playing cards and into a coffee mug.

“Notice my ’80s hair,” he said.

Brunelle said that in medieval Europe magicians had to be alert to charges of witchcraft.

They incorporated religious references into their acts to stave off such accusations, to the extent of a beheading illusion featuring John the Baptist.

The familiar “cups and balls” sleight of hand routine is old enough to have been satirized by painter Hieronymus Bosch in the 16th century.

His own introduction to the craft came at age 9, via a book advertised on a bubble gum wrapper: “Practical Magic,” by David Robbins.

Eventually he was able to make a living at it. One source of revenue was performing at industrial trade shows.

He developed a performance art act in the 1980s that combined surrealism and absurdism with elements of magic.

As to how the tricks work, Brunelle said successful magicians are students of psychology. They understand human perception, and how to “control the delivery of information.”

“Eye contact, hypnosis, clothing — it’s all misdirection.”

This was how he was able to “hypnotize” Salisbury Forum president Sarah Tennyson, while the audience laughed.

He also touched on how artificial intelligence is changing how people perceive reality.

He cited the time the early-20th century magician and escape artist Harry Houdini was bound and jumped off a bridge through a hole in the ice of the frozen Detroit River.

Houdini was down below the surface for quite a while, and the spectators feared the worst.

He reappeared, and subsequently claimed he freed himself quickly but was swept away by the current. Houdini said he made his way back to the hole, sucking in air from pockets in the ice.

The miraculous escape was passed along from newspaper to newspaper, and gained national attention.

“Even though the river wasn’t frozen that day,” Brunelle said.

If something similar happened today, it would be all over social media and be chalked up to “AI, the deep state, the Second Coming.”

Asked specifically about the effect of AI on magic, he said “it’s going to ruin everything.”

“I don’t think that anyone will believe photographic evidence.”

On the other hand, “if everybody distrusts what they see online, we’ll see more live performances.”