January 9, 2020
It would be the last positive memory I’d have for a couple of years. I had a little bit of money in my pocket and my perspective was changing faster than I could keep up. My older brother was teaching at Eton College. I told him I would come to visit. But I had ulterior motives. Michael Vincent, my childhood idol and one of my favorite sleight of hand artists, was giving a lecture in London.
I arrived in England, a week to spare before the three-day lecture-series would begin.
I spent the day before the lectures wandering around the streets. Thinking about a magic trick I had come up with months ago and never quite figured out how to do. Thinking about Bob Dylan lyrics and scenes from Dali’s autobiography. Inspiration had been playing hide-and-seek with me, I was looking everywhere I thought it might be found.
I came to an art gallery called Castle Fine Art. Hanging on the wall, Inspiration was staring at me. The paintings of Bob Dylan. I ignored the salesperson and kept staring. It hit me, the trick I’d been working on for months. Dylan gave me the answer, I knew how to make it work now. Something about those train tracks, the whispiness of the brush-strokes, and that bike leaned on a tree. It all seemed so obvious now.
While everyone was giving their lectures, I was playing with my cards, until Michael Vincent took the stage. He shuffled a deck of cards, talking about shuffle-stacking (the act of locating and positioning cards in the action of shuffling). Then he would deal out hands of poker and his hand would be the 4 aces. This happened again and with twists such as other hands having four of a kind kings and queens, but his hand always won with four of a kind aces.
Every magician in the joint was fooled and bad. Every other magician approaching something like that trick would fake it. So everyone was looking for the fake. There was none. Vincent could actually do what he said he was doing. He was just that good. You want to fool a magician, tell them the truth, they’ll never see it coming.
I wanted to talk to Vincent after he was done, but so did everyone. I didn’t have enough money to buy his book, so I just waited until there was a break for lunch. Finally I got Micheal’s attention and told him I liked the lecture, he could tell I was american and seemed to sense my excitement at seeing him in person. He invited me to have lunch with him. I sat directly to his right. I had been given an invite to the big boys table. Michael asked me if I had a deck of cards, I gave him the one in my pocket, it was very old, so I dived into my bag for a better one. He turned to me and said “You’re just like me, you keep a deck of cards until it disintegrates. But I’d never perform a show with one like this, do you keep another one?”
I said “I do, I was just about to grab it so you wouldn’t have to use that old thing.”
He said “No it’s fine,” with a twinkle in his eye as if to say “I can work with any deck.”
He showed the table some tricks and the deck went around and back to him. I asked if I could show him a trick I’d been working on. Maybe it’s the audacity of youth, I could have done any trick, instead I did the one I had just put together.
When the trick was over Michael Vincent said “Your card handling is fantastic.” He reached and grabbed my name-badge “James Mollenkamp, I’ll remember that. You impressed me beyond measure. Tell me, that last phase is that a punch-deal?”
“To be honest,” I said, “I don’t know what a punch deal is.” Then I showed him what I had done.
“Yeah that’s a punch-deal, takes a very light touch. I’ve never seen it done like that, it’s normally in the corner. Marlo in Spades 1947. Remember dates, it’s important,” he said.
He did remember me, he followed me on social media the next day.
It was one of the most life-affirming moments I’ve ever had. It’s hard to say exactly how much those few moments did for me. Nowadays I wouldn’t say I have “idols” in the way most people mean the word. But they say never meet your idols, I say choose better idols.
Two weeks after I got home from England the Covid-19 lockdowns commenced and gone was my reason for living. No more shows, no more trying to be a professional magician, no more pick-a-card. Just desolation and depression.
But one memory would play in my mind like a record on loop. Michael Vincent sitting directly next to me, “Your card handling is fantastic… you impressed me beyond measure.”
God bless Michael Vincent.
God Bless Michael Vincent
What a beautiful and honest story. I know Michael very well and his heart is as big as the man himself. Good luck to this young man on his journey to greater success. Talent is one thing, resilence, discipline and focus is more often how success is achieved.
Reading this story has given me such inspiration and reminded me of how little acts of kindness and encouragement go a long way. As a longtime friend of Michael, his kindness, charisma and warmth always lights up a room. What he says, he means wholeheartedly. Wishing you every success in the future James. Michael obviously saw a fire in you that will light the way for others too.