Thoughts on Magic
What is magic? Is it real? I don’t trust the word like I once did. The word once felt like mystery, like possibility. But I didn’t like the title Copper Magic that the publisher chose for my debut novel, especially in companionship with the magicky fairy-sparkle cover. I didn’t feel that either element reflected the tone of the book. The magic I was hoping to convey in my story was supposed to be mysterious, not shiny. Then, when Sandi Boucher agreed to work with me, one of the first things she pointed out was that I had made the Indigenous woman from the past practice witchy magic, which is way not in keeping with Indigenous beliefs. It felt good to take that stuff out, but from then on the word “magic” has had a shadow on it for me.
Unexpected Grace
Yet I don’t have another word or phrase to take its place. Synchronicity, connection to spirit, visits with the ancestors, unhuman entities, unexpected grace — none of these ring right. What to call it when I’m writing a scene with a parent owl and owlets and as I’m writing it I hear an owl outside, and when I go out to listen I also hear an owlet calling out to be fed? I looked up the calls and heard them online! Great Horned Owl juveniles in a California autumn aren’t great at flying or hunting yet and they still demand that their parents bring them food! Was I emitting owl energy and they responded? Was I primed to hear owl talk because I was in their world? Happy accident? Magical cohesion?
Synchronicity
And what to call it when I meet another writer — Kim Gottlieb-Walker — for the first time and find out over the course of a mere few minutes that she took a photo with me in it forty-five years ago and also she lives up the street from where I used to live in Laurel Canyon and also we have a friend in common and also we’ve both written novels that take place in the Vietnam War era? Four things! Were we destined to meet? Is there a cosmic reason that our paths crossed? Magical happenstance? Or is it that we’re in Los Angeles and this is how it rolls here?
Kim was the still photographer for John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, the first feature film I ever worked on. I was a motion control operator. The effects department worked for legendary B-movie producer Roger Corman’s scrappy effects company in a warehouse studio in Venice. It’s not typical for the movie’s still photographer to take crew shots of the subcontracted effects team, so when I met her the other day I asked why she took the trouble. She said that she regards filmmaking as the making of history, and the effects were part of that history. I love that! More about Kim.
I’m in the front row with the sunglasses. Photograph (c) Kim Gottlieb-Walker.
Zeitgeist
Also! Speaking of history! At the same get-together, I met Heather Martin — who, like Kim and me, is also writing a book set in the Vietnam era — 1970, the same year that my work-in-progress takes place! Kim and I are of the same generation, but Heather is way way younger! What are the odds? The get-together was only five people and three of us are writing about the sixties! Zeitgeist? Coincidence? Magical affirmation?
Speaking of magic and the Sixties, what about all those songs about magic back then? Off the top of my head: “Puff the Magic Dragon,” “Do You Believe In Magic?,” “Magic Bus,” “Spanish Castle Magic,” “Magical Mystery Tour,” “Magic Carpet Ride,” and the magnificent poem “God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot” in Leonard Cohen’s 1966 novel Beautiful Losers, later a song. A kind of magic was afoot in that time. Or call it transformation, the raising of consciousness, a time of exploration and expansion, a time of confronting racism, sexism, ageism, classism, homophobia, a time of building alternative institutions, a time of believing that a better world is possible. Magical, yes magical, thinking was normal then … in a good way. I don’t have a different word to offer at the moment.
May we continue in that spirit in this time of erosion. May we continue to believe in justice, serendipity, synchronicity, and magic — if that’s the only word that fits.
About the pictures
The owl is half of a two-page spread, illustrating the Hans Christian Andersen story “Thumbelina” in The Fairy Tale Book, published in 1958 by Simon and Schuster. Adrienne Ségur illustrated the book, which probably came to me when I was about seven. It was one of my favorite books for many years, mostly due to the gorgeous art, though I also loved many of the stories, translated by the American poet Marie Ponsot. My bohemian poetry-loving parents were most likely familiar with her work, since noted Beat-adjacent City Lights published Ponsot’s first volume of poetry as well as Allen Ginsberg’s Howl in 1956. My parents were big followers of Ginsberg, and later got to know him.
The women of Troy implore Athena, the wise goddess of war (and often associated with and companion to the Owl!!!), to spare their city from the Greek army. Illustration by Alice and Martin Provensen, from Iliad and the Odyssey, a picture book published in 1956 by Simon and Schuster. I was given the book when I was about eight.
The kind of magic I was imbued with as a child is embodied in this illustration by Roy Best from The Peter Pan Picture Book, published in 1931 by Whitman Publishing Company. Tinkerbell flies circles above Peter Pan as he dances with joy after Wendy sews his shadow to his feet. The book was given to my father by his aunt Maude and passed along to me. The pages are brittle now, but the colors are still vivid.
The songs:
“Puff the Magic Dragon” (Peter Paul and Mary, 1963), “Do You Believe In Magic?” (The Lovin’ Spoonful, 1965), “Magic Bus” (The Who, 1968), “Spanish Castle Magic” (Jimi Hendrix, 1967), “Magical Mystery Tour” (The Beatles, 1967), “Magic Carpet Ride” (Steppenwolf, 1968)
