David Lovering
of the Pixies

 

October 29th, 2003- On the Madcap Studio telephone

LK: In your childhood, were there any experiences that led you to understand that you would be doing what you are today?

DL: It kind of took me by surprise. I think the only thing I did as a kid was that I had done some magic in school, and I took a course for five dollars in my local town, and I only learned one trick if I remember, but it stayed with me through all these years. But I had no inkling that I would do it later on in life. I did it when I was a kid, and then I had given it up. I only did it when I was like eight or nine years old, and I hadn’t done a custom magic trick ever since until probably about seven years ago. And then I just kind of fell back into it incessantly. I’m always with a deck of cards in my hands now.

Back then, I didn’t think, not magic at all. If you were to have told me 10 years ago that I would be a magician, I would be like, “What are you talking about? Are you crazy?” But it’s my passion, and I love it.

LK: How did you go about learning to do what you do? You went to Wentworth Institute of Technology…

DL: As far as magic tricks, you mean?

LK: That, and the tools that you use and build for your specific performance.

DL: Well, my first love is card magic. Card magic is very limited. It’s more of an intimate type of group show. It’s kind of tough to see a pack of cards. So my interpretation of going to the next level in magic was my Science stage show act. It’s the love of all things- all of my hobbies combined is what the show is basically. So it has my love of science, it has magic in it, although I’m not saying that it’s magic directly, it’s more sciencey, it’s me and it gives me special powers, so it’s going off on all of the things I love: meteorites, electronics…I have built all of the tricks and electronics that I use; I built them myself. So, it encompasses everything. I think I learned more building one of the props that I use during my show, than the 4 years that I went to college for electronic engineering. That’s one benefit I got from that at least.

LK: How do you feel that the modern performer fits into, what one would call “modern society?”

DL: I think that trying to keep up with something new and different, more exciting, something technology wise. When you think about modern society, it’s a lot more complicated. I think you have to be more inventive hopefully. That’s what it is.

LK: Will you talk about some of the first music, art, books, or films that inspired you?

DL: I think “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” for a book, when I was a kid. That was good. The movie was good too; I enjoyed the “Willie Wonka” movie too. When I was a kid I was more into electronics, and how things worked. That was my big thing.

LK: What turns you on about that?

DL: Electronics? I don’t know. It was always a thing of wonder to me. I remember going into Radio Shack when I was a kid, or Lafayette, which was another popular electronics store that was around, and I would buy these modules, and just loved building things from schematics, and things like that. Discerning household things that I could build around the house and stuff. I was inventive, it was learning, and it just fascinated me more than any other thing, I think. I can’t put a reason why I was drawn to the stuff so much. I would rip things apart that were mechanical as well. I liked mechanical kinds of stuff, but electronics was definitely it, I dug that a lot more.

LK: Have you ever been injured performing any of your acts?

DL: I’ve fallen a few times; tripped over my own props. The whole crowd gets a laugh out of it, and I kind of have to get up and brush it off. I had one time where I was doing my show at a friend’s house, in the backyard, we had a big party. I had his wife help me out doing one of the experiments where we both hold a fluorescent tube. It lit, but I didn’t pay attention to my own warnings when I ask people to come up, and make sure you have properly insulated footwear. She had on sandals, and was standing outside in a grassy area, and the blades of grass were coming up and touching her feet. And because it is almost 20,000 volts that is in operation when this is happening, which flows through the skin, you have to be well grounded. So she started feeling this tingling in her feet, and was like, “What’s going on?” I had to shut it off once I realized what was going on, but Whooo. It’ll never happen again!

LK: So you performed at the 2000 All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival?

DL: That was probably one of the best experiences of my life. It was nice even just to offer, and they flew me out, and I was there for over a week, down in southern England. They flew all of my gear over, put me up in a hotel, and paid me too. I couldn’t beat that at all! I was the only non-musical performer on the whole bill. It was all bands, and stuff like that. I did my show two weekends, and it was fun. The press was really good about it, I had a really great time, met a lot of people, and they wanted to have me back possibly next year just to be the magician in the bar that is on the actual campus where this takes effect.

LK: Do you have any favorite magicians, or anyone you would like to talk about that is an innovator in the field right now?

DL: Yeah, this guy named Max Maven. He’s a mentalist, or a mind reader. He’s been very influential to me. He’s been a wonderful help as well. Another guy named Eugene Burger; he’s a close up guy. He does a thing called Bizarre Magic, which is kind of a new thing, he does a lot of religious things, but it’s really spooky.

LK: It seems like a lot of this kind of dates back to the Victorian Era, with people in parlors, and it’s very evocative. Especially talking about how card magic is very intimate. It seems like it is a form of communication as well.

DL: Yes, it is. Anyone can do a magic trick, but it’s basically the way it’s presented is what really sells it. You can put a lot of presentation into whatever you are doing. It is a powerful medium within itself, whatever to the effect of what you are doing. It depends on how strong that effect is. You can definitely add a presentation to it to take it somewhere else and draw some sort of emotional need or something from it. It is pretty powerful, what you can do with that.

LK: What do you think the difference is between performing music, and performing magic?

DL: In music, I think that you are giving a sense of escape. There is an escapism there that people can turn to music and it’s a form of escape. You also get hopefully some wonder in music. With magic, I think you get the escape as well, you have wonder, and you also get maybe a sense of awe…a sense of wonder in the way that maybe things that are possible are possible. That’s some sort of think that you can take away from that.

LK: Talk about Slow Fear.

DL: Slow fear. Slow fear. I can visualize a growing eminence that something is coming. Some feeling of, well, fear. A slowly growing eminence of fear that something is coming toward you.

LK: Lamppost and Television.

DL: Reminds me of words that you use in a pneumatic sense to remember items on a list. If one is a lamppost and one is a T.V., I would picture the items in my mind as someone giving me a list of items, like a picture with a T.V. under a lamppost visually, and that’s all I can equate to that!

LK: What about Pink Fuzz.

DL: The only thing that I can think of is those snowballs that I would see, you would get them to eat. They were pink kind of. Hostess Snowballs I think they were called. That’s what comes to mind.

LK: Black Feather Limbo.

DL: Some native limbo dancing with someone wearing a feather headdress.

LK: Modern Orange Sky.

DL: Well, in L.A. I would equate Modern Orange Sky to some of the sunsets we have in July or August when the haze and smog where I live gets so bad, that it clouds up the atmosphere and gives it an orange glow. It feels like you are on Mars sometimes, it is such a weird effect.

LK: What about Mermaid and Pharaoh?

DL: I can picture a Mermaid with a deck of cards, and the only reason why is that in magic there is something called a faro shuffle, not like an Egyptian Pharaoh but FARO. It’s a form of interweaving the cards exactly 26 into 26. But, I can picture a Mermaid doing it.

LK: Why would you shuffle cards that way?

DL: It’s a nice thing to see. It’s nice to visualize, and you can do a lot of control thing with it. You have control over the deck, basically. And it’s a nice shuffle as well.

LK: Adopt-a-highway.

DL: Bette Midler, yeah, there we go. She adopts a highway by me.

LK: Porch Light.

DL: Lizards. There are a lot of them that hang out here, little chameleons and geckos. There is one that lives in my backyard under a little grate, and he is enormous. He’s over at least a foot, maybe 14 inches from head to tail. The tail is pretty long on him.

LK: I’ll let my sweater figure it out.

DL: Beer gut. Beer belly.

LK: In music, jazz guys will talk about how notes represent colors, or tone will represent color, is there anything in magic that you can translate that to? What would be the equivalent of notes, or things that comprise the elements of magic performance? If notes comprise music, so if you broke magic down, what would be the notes or arrangement that would comprise a performance?

DL: I think there are certain events. You have to engage the person at first as to what it may be. You just want to surprise them I think is the only thing.

LK: When you think of magic performance, and think of music, I think of something like Penderecki or Branca, some sort of weird modern-classical sound, a very complicated one, in comparison to just a rock beat. It seems in magical performance you still have elements of beat and arrangement, and building things up and breaking things down…

DL: Yeah, at least in my stage show, you have a lot of control over that. Because there is definitely dynamics, like I come on strong, a visual effect thing will go off, and then it escalates and goes somewhere else, and ends on what is hopefully the best trick. So, the same thing could be said I guess for an individual trick. Whereas, some of the effects that I do where however they come along with me, you have to pick whatever presentation it is, whether it is high or low, or I may even screw up the trick as part of the trick, and then I would come back and get it correct. You take them on a roller coaster in some way. There are certain tricks, but they are all different.

LK: What is it like writing a trick, so to speak, like writing a poem? What do you feel when you do that? To come up with these creative ideas.

DL: A lot of it is because the ideas that I have, at least in my stage show, is from what I am restricted to do. Since I can’t do anything that smells of card tricks, everything is all unique. It’s all electronic based, or physics based, and something along those lines. I can only put all of my efforts into that area. I think of things, and things that I have seen and adapt them. I get little epiphanies here and there and that makes me really happy, especially writing it all out and building it from nothing. That’s what I really, really enjoy.

LK: Are European audiences different from American audiences to you, in magic?

DL: I have found them all the same. Maybe the gigs that I have been doing opening up for rock bands that are festivals on tour somewhere, I’ve found they were quite attentive in both places. And that’s how I gauge the show, how well it goes. I see how attentive I can get, especially when there is a bar involved. I know if I can climb the bar, I know it is a good show. I figured when I started touring with rock bands, I wouldn’t go anywhere, because it is a tough audience. Having attention. It’s something different that I do, which I think is a plus, because they are not seeing another band, they are seeing something that is completely different.