There is almost nothing as captivating as a good magic trick. Watching something that defies gravity, odds, and the basic principles of physics and mathematics happen before our very eyes gives us an infusion of awe that feels incredible. Even knowing that it is an illusion, a well-executed trick, can cause a rush of astonishment that titillates both mind and body; it is a flat-out betrayal of expectations that can raise our heart rate in anticipation and, perhaps, a little fear, yet it comes at no personal cost to our well-being.

And there is almost no one who captivates audiences with a good magic trick quite like David Blaine. Arguably the most renowned magician of his time, he can make his audience believe that it can’t be an illusion—his tricks appear as real as they are inconceivable. Blaine was four years old when he first felt the spark of awe for magic. Standing on a subway platform in Brooklyn with his mother, a nearby busker performing simple pocket magic piqued the young boy’s curiosity. A few decades later, his own spectacular skill at sleight of hand would make Blaine a household name. Card tricks performed on the street in front of a dozen or more witnesses tickled our wits, seeming to invert the rules of logic. An old-fashioned illusionist with a modern-day film crew to showcase his feats, Blaine quickly became the new face of magic.

In 1999, when he was buried alive for seven days in a plastic box, he took his game to another, Houdini-esque level: dramatic performance artist. Since that record-breaking feat, Blaine has orchestrated countless stunts, each more high risk and unimaginable than the one before it. He stood for thirty-five hours straight on a fifty-five-centimetre-wide pillar rising thirty metres in the air above Bryant Park in New York City. He spent forty-four days in self-imposed starvation inside a transparent Plexiglas case, measuring one metre by two metres by two metres, suspended nine metres in the air over the River Thames in London. He has swallowed (and regurgitated) fish, engagement rings, needles, swords, nails, and a frog. He has floated more than seven kilometres above sea level by holding fifty-two colourful helium balloons, like a live-action remake of the animated film Up.

Is it ego or something more philosophical that motivates him to undertake such dangerous and attention-grabbing stunts? Blaine is a polarizing figure and has many detractors, but no matter what you think of his inclination for the outrageous, the attitude he brings to his work strikes me as a fascinating perspective on sitting with uncertainty and the fear that is baked into it. Few people have as deep an understanding of fear as Blaine—a knowledge he has acquired by facing down those feelings of dread and carrying out a deep investigation of what they’re made of. He pushes his body and mind to the limit, and while it’s the spectacle of the needle-through-the-arm kind of physical extremes that attracts the most attention, it’s the mental attitude behind his stunts that interests me.

What would go through your mind were you to stand, as Blaine did, in March 2023, for the opening of his Las Vegas residency at the Resorts World Theatre, atop a twenty-four-metre platform and prepare to jump? The prospect of falling nine storeys onto a pile of cardboard boxes has to be uncertainty at its most acute and a good reason to be afraid. What if I don’t land on the target? What if I sever my spine and never move independently again? What if I land on my head and die? What if it hurts? What if I look like a fool and end my career?

The list of things to be afraid of in those unusual and perilously uncertain circumstances is long and, from a comfortable seat safely on the ground, somewhat nauseating to even contemplate. But those don’t seem to be Blaine’s questions as he stands poised to undertake his dangerous feats. What does he think or believe that allows him to process fear differently? In addition to being a spectacle, a marvellous distraction, a gimmicky illusionist who redefines the limits of possibility, Blaine offers an example—extreme and provocative though it may be—that it is possible to change our relationship with the unknown.

Why do we refer to death as the Great Unknown? We cannot possibly know what it will be like, and we associate the inability to prepare for and master something with a negative........

© The Walrus