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You are sitting at your desk in class, awaiting your teacher’s arrival. Suddenly, a six and a half foot tall student begins performing magic for your class, shooting individual cards from hand to hand, catching every single one. The magnificent performance has been put on by the school’s very own Houdini, senior Bertrand Wilden.
Wilden’s magical adventure began when he received a magic deck of cards for his 15th birthday. At the beginning of his freshman year, Wilden began teaching himself how to do tricks by reading “How-to” magic books. Wilden continued to study magic because he found performing enjoyable. “Entertaining people is just really fun,” he said.
Inspired by illusionists Penn and Teller for their willingness to try new things and be unique, Wilden believes that most important component of a good trick is a good magician who acts natural throughout the performance and avoids fumbling around. “A good trick depends mostly on the magician, not the actual trick,” he said.
When it comes to show time, Wilden does his best to act naturally, throwing a few jokes in between his tricks to lighten up the audience.
“Magic is really difficult because it’s so nerve racking,” Wilden said. “When performing, there’s so much pressure to not mess up.”
Wilden, however, swallowed up that pressure, took the stage at last year’s talent show and astonished the audience with illusions performed with metal hoops. With speed and precision Wilden linked the metal rings together to form a chain and unlinked them again.
Although he does not show off his magic at official magic shows, Wilden will occasionally perform before a class starts or during a free Mod. Senior Cicely Barker is one of the lucky students. “He knows how to make the trick seem typical, when it really is not,” Barker said.
Performing magic tricks is not something every student can do. Nor is Wilden’s method of getting home. At the end of every school day Wilden goes to his locker, stuffs his bag full of textbooks, and heads home not on a bus or in a car, but on a unicycle.
“It took about a week to learn how to ride,” he said. “But it took three weeks to actually learn how to ride well.” Wilden learned how to unicycle last summer while visiting his cousins in Los Angeles. Mastering the one-wheeled vehicle did not come easily, though. “You fall a lot, but it’s really not that bad,” Wilden explained. “You usually just fall onto your feet.”
Unsurprisingly, Wilden is able to perform on a unicycle. “I can juggle while on the unicycle,” Wilden said. “It goes along with magic.”
After he graduates in June, Wilden plans to study abroad in Europe, and will continue with his talents once there. “I’ll probably live there for a few years and continue to unicycle and juggle,” he said.
Bertrand polishes up his acts by repeatedly practicing his tricks. When it comes down to it, Wilden simply believes that magic should simply be entertaining and fun. “Magic is just entertaining people, it’s not about making something incredibly hard to understand, it’s just about putting on a good show,” he said.
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