Mahdi Speaks at EG
Mahdi Gilbert was invited to the EG Conference after the director, Michael Hawley saw him fool Penn & Teller on their hit TV magic show, Fool Us. Mahdi performs one of his favorite pieces, NO SE PUEDE HACER MÁS LENTO from the grand Argentian master, René Lavand.
Eric Mead then joins him onstage to conduct an interview for the audience and they talk about his life, how he got into magic, how he developed my techniques, and what he plan to do in the future. They finish it off by demonstrating a very old card manipulation to show their control of the deck through a shuffle.
Learn the art and science of card manipulation from the same book that Mahdi studied.
S. W. ERDNASE
Before Magic Edition
PDF | 142 Pages
First published in 1902, this is the first book to teach Slight of Hand with scientific precision and as high art.
The Expert at the Card Table was originally titled Artifice, Ruse and Subterfuge at the Card Table: A Treatise on the Science and Art of Manipulating Cards. The identity of S.W. Erdnase has been a mystery to magicians since it’s publication. This is the most influential book in gambling and magic history and is passionately studied and debated to this day.
"The passion for play is probably as old, and will be as enduring, as the race of man." - S.W. Erdnase
TRANSCRIPT
Mahdi Gilbert
Hello and hello! Thank you for joining me. My name is Mahdi and I have been doing the impossible my whole life.
I'm going to show you one of my favorite pieces of magic… because I don't have too much time… but I want to show you something really good and this is my favorite trick. This is actually the first magic trick that I learned and I've performed this all over the world and it's a piece (of magic) that I've grown with and it's also grown with me.
I don't need the whole deck I just need six cards. One, two, three, four, five and six. Three for you and three for you.
Can you check out these cards? Make sure they're normal. There's nothing special about them. Three blacks and three reds. There is actually something a little bit special about the cards… I've designed these cards this is my deck of cards so I'm very proud of that.
What I will do is I want you to see that every single card is a normal card even though they are hand drawn. Red, red and red and black and black and black.
Usually this trick and most of sleight of hand magic uses something that I don't have, something that I'm going to ask you to borrow in a little bit… your two hands… but first watch very closely.
We're going to spread and then mix the cards one by one that is with a red card over here… followed by a black, a red, a black, a red, and a black…
I said I would need to borrow something… can you guess what that is?
Your hands…
Can you open your fingers, hold your palms towards you with your fingers open and slowly push your hands together so that your fingers interlace one by one as if you were praying.
This is the position of the cards; red, black, red, black, red, black.
All the way through.
The same thing that's happening over there is what's happening over here. Pull your fingers apart… Close
your fingers… Put one hand on top of the other.
Because you do that over here… even though here we didn't touch anything… because you do that over there… the same thing happens over here…
We should now have black black and black and every single one of the reds together.
Now one of the rules in magic is that you never repeat the same trick twice. I don't follow the rules so I'll do it again… and that is with even more clarity… with some cards facedown and some cards face-up…
So there's absolutely no doubt as to what is where at any moment. So red and red and red and black and black and black. Black and red and black and red, black and red.
One more time… Same position… just like that the same exact thing should happen over here… even though these were just mixed… red, red, red, black, black, black, one by one…
So they were interlacing because you separate them over there they should be separated over here… One more time, all the blacks and all the reds. Can you take these? And you take these? And you guys mix them this time… So you put a card and then he can put a card keep going… and I know what some of you are thinking: This man looks a lot like me… maybe he's my son… So you there is no collusion, is it okay if we check the cards one more time?
They really are mixed one by one. Black, red, black and red, black, and red. Now I'm going to separate them into two piles and even though they're separated they'll never touch again. So you know what I mean let me show you all the cards once again. Hopefully the camera can pick this up but if not I'll show it because I want you to see. Especially because you're up close. So black, red and black, black and red and black and over here we have red and black and red.
One more time can you interlace your fingers? And can you interlace your fingers? And I already see some people in the audience interlacing their fingers… So to speed it up… if you have hands and would like to participate interlace your fingers.
Now if you believe in magic… if you believe in magic… only if you believe in magic… Pull your fingers apart and put one hand on top of the other. I don't know if you believe in magic… I really don't but if you do it should work…
Here we have black black and black and over here every single one of the reds… every single one!
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you guys so much! Thank you for joining me. Thank you!
Eric Mead
Mahdi Gilbert! Hey Mahdi.
Mahdi Gilbert
How are you, Eric?
Eric Mead
Well I'm great, how are you?
Mahdi Gilbert
I'm pretty good.
Eric Mead
Good to see you.
Mahdi Gilbert
Good to see you
Eric Mead
So, I'm gonna let Mahdi do most of the talking here but I just wanted to say one quick thing about the day we met, which was in San Diego some years ago at a magic conference… and a friend of mine, Derek DelGaudio said “Have you met Mahdi Gilbert?” and I said “No” and he said “You have to come over here” and I walked over and Mahdi was walking up to the table and Derek said “Would you show Eric something?” and I had probably the same experience that most people had when you walked up, I mentally set the bar so low because I thought if he can do anything I'm gonna pretend to be overwhelmed and I didn't have to pretend at all because Mahdi does real sleight of hand, like difficult stuff, what he's doing over there, it's very hard to understand if you're not a magician but he's doing real sleight of hand techniques without hands. So let's have a little conversation about your life. Can we start with, a lot of people maybe don't know, you also don't have feet.
Mahdi Gilbert
Yeah.
Eric Mead
And so let's talk about your physicality and how you were born and what…
Mahdi Gilbert
Yeah, so it's one thing, it's funny, everybody has a question but basically nobody asks me… I guess there's a code of etiquette in society… but a lot of people want to know why I am the way that I am and I was born the way that I am and the reason that I was born this way is because when my mother was pregnant with me… the baby needs a few things to survive. There's an umbilical cord and it connects you to the mother and you're pumped with oxygen and blood and all the nutrients that you need to survive and in between me and my mother there was some sort of a problem when I was in the womb and so I was cut off from then and usually what happens is the babies die in the womb but for me… instead of dying, my little body kept all the oxygen and the blood and all the important stuff for my heart and for my brain and then it just got rid of what it, I guess, it knew it didn't need and that was able to get me through.
Eric Mead
So you have no hands, no feet and yeah where?
Mahdi Gilbert
So on this leg… I have a brace on this leg and a prosthetic on this leg but basically… my shoes are not on my feet.
Eric Mead
So, that's a lot of challenge to be born with right? So tell us maybe a little about your childhood and what that was like.
Mahdi Gilbert
Yeah… you know… I always felt pretty… I don't know. I I guess when you're a child you… you don't see anything unusual about your life and, or your circumstances. We grew up in a very poor, poor family.
Eric Mead
Where were you?
Mahdi Gilbert
In Toronto. Born in Toronto and we lived in… you know… social housing and my mom had four kids and my father left when I was born so we… you know… we were… we were pretty poor. We didn't have a lot of the things that most people had and just the environment that we were in was very tough. I didn't realize it was tough at the time, until I got older, but we used to… you know… I would be robbed every day and beaten up and just treated horribly… just from my neighbors. That's just the way it was.
Eric Mead
Yes… Did you have prosthetics then?
Mahdi Gilbert
So it's funny… I got my prosthetics when I was young… well on this leg… my leg was turned inward a bit so they had to cut the bone a few times and reset the bone just to straighten the leg… and then I would have prosthetics because as I was growing up… but I had to learn and stuff. Actually a funny story, they wanted me to be the same height as other people which I didn't want but I went along with because I was a little kid and they gave me these long legs that were like stilts and every single day I would fall on my face. I came to my next appointment one day and my face was all bloody and they were like what happened? Then I I told them I can't walk like this so that gave me shorter legs.
Eric Mead
So what about school? Were you good student?
Mahdi Gilbert
It was pretty good. I had some difficulty in school because one of the things that I didn't mention… just growing up I always felt like everybody was looking at me like there was a lot of heat on me at all times and kids have no filter so they'll be like, “Hey look at that kid!” and you always feel super self-conscious so when I was growing up I had a language disorder which made me really self-conscious so I wouldn't talk much and I wouldn't really do my homework and stuff so the whole school, the school system didn't really know what to do with me because they knew that I was smart but I just didn't respond the way that I should have.
Eric Mead
So tell us how you came to magic? How old were you?
Mahdi Gilbert
You know, it's funny. I never saw magic growing up. Magic was sort of something that I knew existed I would hear people talking about it and to me as a kid I thought well there's so many stuff that I want in my life but everybody around me is telling me that it's not realistic, that it's impossible. So I thought if I become a magician then I can do anything, I don't have to listen to anybody. It's a very childish… it's not really how the world works but that's how I first got interested in it. Then I soon figured out that it was really hard so I stayed away from it because everybody was telling me… you know, when you're young… and everybody's telling you something you just believe it… and you just accept what they're telling you. That's what happened to me so I didn't approach magic. One day I saw a man on television who was doing magic but he was doing magic with his mouth and with the mind. He was hypnotizing people and getting people to think of things, then he would read their thoughts. I said, “Oh wow! I don't have hands but I have a brain and I have a mouth… maybe I can learn how to use it and and do some of this stuff.”
Eric Mead
Is that how you overcame your speech problems?
Mahdi Gilbert
Yeah so…
Eric Mead
Were you a stutterer? What was the…
Mahdi Gilbert
No, I just… when I was so nervous about talking I would always repeat what I was saying back out loud and then just repeating and also repeating what other people said. It's like I didn't process it the first time through. So this guy who I had seen, who was a mind reader, he was also very much into psychology and stuff and hypnosis so I'd read books about self help, self hypnosis and I would read how to increase your confidence and how to convince your mind of certain things just through repetition and through affirmations every day… every day.
Eric Mead
All right, so… verbal magic makes sense to me. It's really hard for me to imagine how someone like you goes, “I want to do sleight of hand.” What… How did you get to there?
Mahdi Gilbert
With the mind-reading stuff I didn't know that there was a trick to most magic so I would actually try to read people's minds…
Eric Mead
That's awesome!
Mahdi Gilbert
I became pretty good at it. I mean there's… there's… there's psychics that… so I mean, I don't know if some of them have powers but some of them don't have powers they're just very good at reading people so I sort of developed those skills and I had been using them in in high school basically to do psychic readings and I became quite proficient at it and there came a point where I didn't just want my magic to be mental or you know something that people had imagined, something in their mind. I wanted it to be something that they could see and touch and feel. I wanted it to be real, like the guys who I looked up to who did, you know, big illusions and things with cards and just, you know, making magic happen in real life. So when I was 16 years old I said, on my 17th birthday I'm gonna learn how to do magic and do sleight of hand. I would just sit up in my room all night in the dark and and practice. For someone like me who was learning sleight of hand as a kid there's a whole lot of literature that teaches foundational techniques but it's all written…
Eric Mead
None of it works for you. It's not applicable to your physical situation. So how did you even learn to…
Mahdi Gilbert
I often envision what is going on mechanically without the hands involved.
Eric Mead
Where you reading this in books?
Mahdi Gilbert
How to do this?
Eric Mead
Yes.
Mahdi Gilbert
No. I think I just sort of learned this from everything in my life. I just see how people do things and then I just figure out how I can do it just by pinning stuff down and moving stuff in different directions so that's what I did with cards. I would imagine hands moving different objects and then… what is the motion that's happening there and what is covering it? What are they doing with their hands that's covering that so that people can't see it and I would design my own techniques.
Eric Mead
So… doing magic is… Are you a professional magician?
Mahdi Gilbert
Sometimes.
Eric Mead
What does that mean?
Mahdi Gilbert
Yeah well, if I’m being paid.
Eric Mead
But you go out and you do gigs and people…
Mahdi Gilbert
Yeah, I do shows…
Eric Mead
And you've been on TV… I know Mike mentioned the Penn & Teller show.
Mahdi Gilbert
I've been on TV and so I started to do magic more professionally about 2 or 3 years ago and since then I've been able to really travel the world and perform for over 650 million people have seen my magic on television so I've been pretty fortunate.
Eric Mead
Better than me…
Mahdi Gilbert
Well… just more… not better…
Eric Mead
So we're gonna run out of time. Only two more things… Let's talk for a minute about what is next for you. What are you planning? What are you going to do? And you were telling me about a project that you were thinking of doing walking across America.
Mahdi Gilbert
Yeah, you know, there's a few reasons. I'm a big believer in metaphors in magic and I view magic is something that is real but people don't realize that it's real and so one of the reasons why I do magic with cards is I want people to realize that they're seeing something impossible… even before they see the trick and I want them to understand that metaphor and I thought well… what a great metaphor for me to do something even more magical. I was born without feet. What if I walk across America and it’s something I've always wanted to do ever since it was a little kid… having surgeries and stuff but it's become very serious and my…
Eric Mead
And so you're planning to do that?
Mahdi Gilbert
Yeah.
Eric Mead
When?
Mahdi Gilbert
Pretty soon.
Eric Mead
How deeply planned out is this or are you just gonna launch?
Mahdi Gilbert
No. I mean… I know how to walk so…
Eric Mead
Fair enough… you also do some speaking?
Mahdi Gilbert
Yeah, I do a lot of talks now at schools for the kids at schools… mostly colleges and universities but I would like to do more high schools just because I love talking to the young children and it's something about the kids… They just listen to me, I don't know why… People listen to me. Maybe they just imagine that I have a wide variety of experiences which are different than most of the people who are trying to give them advice. They're sort of coming always from the same mold and I'm coming from a different path so I find that they listen to me and if I can give them something good. I think it will help them.
Eric Mead
Can we do one last thing? I'm gonna call an audible here. You and I are going to do, in different styles, a top stock blind.
Mahdi Gilbert
Okay.
Eric Mead
That was code for what I'm about to show you. I have a deck of Mahdi’s cards and if you haven't seen these… I don't know if we can get a camera on these… Mahdi drew these himself. Can we get that camera over there? Can you get up close to this? The back design which Mahdi drew here is… there we go… a royal flush fanned out being held by a stump.
Mahdi Gilbert
I call it a hand… and on the box… well the motto on the box is Play The Hand Life Dealt You and I want to show…
Eric Mead
I was just gonna show briefly when you study foundational sleight of hand magic as a kid as I did, you learn basic techniques. This is a an overhand shuffle. The books will say with your thumb and your fingers grab the ends of the pack and just slap down like this… and I'm not paying attention. What I'm actually doing though is… magicians would call a blind or a false shuffle. I'm really shuffling the cards but I'm controlling a few cards and in this case… if we look at the top I have… even though I shuffled the cards several times… that's two… that's three… that's all four aces! It's just that's a blind shuffle of control. I shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, but I've kept the four cards on top and now just to show you how Mahdi had to reinvent sleight of hand for himself I'm gonna have Mahdi do the same technique.
Mahdi Gilbert
I've just been shuffling but maybe I can do something… I think that should get it… I think we should have an ace, another ace, another ace… and another ace!
Eric Mead
Thank you Mahdi!
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EG is an annual gathering and a community of brilliant innovators driving our most creative industries. The EG community is full of inventors and educators, artists and designers, writers and thinkers, scientists and engineers, musicians, magicians, icons, iconoclasts, young and old. Some are national treasures, or household names (depending on your household); many are not yet discovered. It is a talent pool like no other. The annual EG conference gathers every spring in Carmel, California and comprises over 500 members of the creative community, roughly 50 of whom give presentations about their passion projects. It is a touchstone for innovators in every imaginable field — makers and doers of extraordinary things, breakers of boundaries, explorers of frontiers, busters of myths. We hold the conference because creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Or on a clock. Or when you pay for it. Or by staying in your comfort zone. It’s a collective discipline, and there’s no substitute for being immersed with the best, ready to think differently. More intimate, more concentrated, more consistently surprising than any other gathering in the world, and definitely not stuck in any narrow industrial rut, EG explores the new and the different by engaging a remarkable mix of people. It is not just an ideas conference. It is a place to learn from people who have made their ideas real.
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