Flying V is thrilled to partner with Silver Spring coffee shop, record store, and community space Bump ‘n Grind to present a one night performance of our brand new show THE VERY FABRIC OF REALITY. Created by local musician and magician ZIA HASSAN, and directed by Producing Artistic Director JASON SCHLAFSTEIN, THE VERY FABRIC OF REALITY is a brand new one-man show that weaves together original magic, music, and storytelling to explore the relationship between randomness and meaning, and the journey of what it means to grow up.
Friday August 3rd @ 7:30pm / Doors at 7pm
An Interview with the Magician
How did you get into songwriting and magic? What made you decide to bring them together in this show? Have you ever combined them before?
Both magic and songwriting are habits I got into at an early age (around 6-7).
I had a strong sense of reality as a child, but also a strong sense of wonder. When I saw my first magic trick (my grandmother making a coin disappear), it made me question my assumptions about what was real and what wasn’t. Soon after that, I was buying every magic book I could get my hands on and learning some pretty advanced stuff at an early age. My family humored me for a while and knew how the tricks worked, until about age 8-9 when I fooled my uncle (who loves puzzles and is really sharp) at a wedding (I did a classic routine called The Invisible Deck). The power to truly confuse and disorient adults is something every kid wants. I just kept going with it into adulthood.
My love of songwriting came out of my love for music. I had a record player before I could even talk and would have Michael Jackson and Madonna records on repeat. I knew where the grooves of each individual track was on Bad, for instance. Someone like me can never become a fan of a medium for very long before they start making content themselves (which is why I also publish books, record movies/shorts, make podcasts, etc). So at age 7, I asked my piano teacher if I could play my own composition at a piano recital and she let me. I made up songs in the shower all the time and when I was 13 or so, I constructed an entire song in my head and knew how the chords should sound, etc. I made my dad buy me a guitar and I figured out how to play the song. Hundreds of songs later, my process hasn’t changed very much.
I’ve always wanted to combine them but couldn’t quite figure out a good way to do it. The common link between the two arts is the way that the audience makes their own meaning from the pieces. In the same way that we hear songs that makes us reflect on our own life, magic can do the same thing, and it’s all about showmanship. I feel like I’ve really worked that muscle while working with Jason on the show.
What does the title of the show, “The Very Fabric of Reality,” mean to you?
It’s inspired by a David Deutsch book called The Fabric of Reality, which is about the multiple worlds hypothesis. When I learned about the theory of the multiverse (that there are infinite possible universes existing all at once, hiding in higher dimensions within vibrating objects that physicists call “strings”) it made me want to reach out and touch air particles to see where everything else was hiding. It made me want to pull back the curtain… except, I couldn’t, obviously, since I’m stuck here in the third dimension. So that wonder that I have about what I don’t and can’t ever know… that is me brushing against the very fabric of reality. And that’s what good art makes us feel – a good song or movie or book’s origin is mysterious, sometimes even to the artists themselves. Call it a profound sense of wonder.
Has your relationship to music and/or magic changed over the course of your life? What does it (one or both) mean to you now that you might not have expected at the beginning of your journey with it?
I’ve only recently started thinking of magic as a way to connect emotionally with people. I remember this occurred to me when I did a mind-reading trick on someone who had thought of a deceased relative. When I revealed that I had written that person’s name on a piece of paper before they had said it out loud, they cried. Before moments like these, magic was just something I’d use to “fool” someone, which isn’t as useful, as cool as it feels for the magician. People don’t like being fooled. But they love being in a state of wonder.
I’ve also learned to love tricks where it feels like the audience has done something remarkable (like, perhaps they predicted a card or someone else’s thoughts). I’m the one pulling the strings of course, but I love making people feel like they did something magical all on their own. I love acting surprised when it happens and watching their reaction to their own “power.” It’s how I feel when I teach children (I’m an educator)… except that power is true, as opposed to conjured.
How has your relationship with your family, and the changes in what that means to you over time, affected the show or your development of it?
I think all children, when they become adults, discover that their family are human beings. They are humans that make mistakes, that get hurt, that are fallible. And the quirks that have always driven you crazy, you start to see those as assets. And then you start to realize that the stuff you inherited that you always hated about yourself … those are assets too. The show deals a lot with growing up, and how growing up seems to happen in specific moments. Moments with family members, whether they’re positive or negative, tend to comprise a huge chunk of those moments of growing up. That can happen at any age.
And as an expecting father, I’m starting to see how it works from the other side. It’s something I barely understand at the moment but could talk about for hours. More on that in a future show.
What are you most excited about sharing with us in The Very Fabric of Reality?
I’m excited to share moments with the audience that might make them think of moments in their own lives when they’ve grown up. Whether that happens in the form of stories, songs, or magic isn’t as important.
What should potential audience participants be prepared for in terms of interaction?
They should be prepared to be spectators, which is a term that is used in magic to refer to audience members. Being a spectator comes with a unique responsibility: in order to really enjoy the experience, you must abandon the need to know how everything works.
Abandoning that need is something I’ve done over and over, in various ways, over the course of my life. It’s part of growing up.
The Very Fabric Of Reality
