In 1980 I began a walk across the United State with a high school friend. We walked for about 9 months. Many have found the stories along the way interesting, so I've started writing it down. So far I've written about 20 "episodes" ( most are a bit short to call a "chapter"). These are rough drafts (full of mistakes) and still in need of a bit of organizing. I plan to reorganized the whole when I finally get the complete story down and see how it "fleshes out." I'm toying with the idea of publishing it as book. In the meantime, I appreciate any input, comments, corrections or things you'd like to hear more (or less) about.

When I took this walk I had taken a "hiatus" from magic. In high school I was working fairs and corporate events. Then I felt challenged to give it all up. Not because it was wrong, but because it had become so important to me. I sold all the magic I had just before taking this walk. I got back into magic a few short years after returning, but my perspective had totally changed.

Thanks in advance for any comments.


"THE WALK"
You can find ALL the episodes of the Walk here:
http://www.billswondershow.com/blog/inde......rder=asc

Below are a few lines I wrote as a "preface."

I'm interested in hearing in what ways your perspective was changed. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, this is one of those rare times when we can say the speaker has "walked the walk".

Thanks Randy and Daffydoug for stopping in to make a few comments. Sorry I didn't get right back.

My perspective change regarding magic didn't have much to do with my walk across America. During this time I didn't think of magic at all. I was learning about myself and the world apart from magic for a change (my identity was wrapped up in magic since I was 3 yrs old). I'll write more about my perspective changes on magic later.

The short of it is I was doing commercial magic at fairs and corporate events, then I gave up everything. When I began again, I avoided anything commercial and did very few gigs as I developed routines as merely personal artistic expressions. I honed them around poetry that moved me (such as the "Hollowman" by Elliot or "Tiger Tiger" by Blake). I am now back to doing commercial magic. There is another story between the lines, I may expand on later. The Walk happend between it all.

Very interesting Bil. I will bookmark your adventure for future reading.

Years ago I strapped on the backpack an went off into a somewhat remote area of NY state.
I was alone and didn't see another soul for a couple of days at a time. Even when I did pass someone on the trail it was generally a smile and a nod that said hello.

Being alone, without media and outside contact for several days gets you tend to get you thinking about things you never did before.

At the end of the trip there was a moment when I tried to speak but couldn't do so right off. I hadn't use my voice in days. Kind of weird actually.

I doubt that there are too many people who have experienced being totally independent, wandering in a remote area and being without any type human contact or media for any length of time.
It was a soul cleansing experience so to speak.

Thanks Jaz,

It is interesting what you can discover about yourself when you are left devoid of anything "new" for days on end. I found a strange need to babble nonsense. About not speaking, when I was in 8th grade I was into reading about Taoism and would occasionally have a "word fast." I would try to go 24 hours without speaking a word AND not draw attention to myself. I found speaking used an amazing amount of energy. The silence seemed to triple my energy and ability to focus.

About the walk...I wrote the episode 5 first and it may be the better place to start for those who just want to check out a chapter to see if it interests them. The chapters before this are mostly preparation and won't really give you a feel for the journey. In this chapter we meet a strange young woman running barefoot in the snowy woods during a bit of a snowstorm. She was wearing only a light skirt and occultic jewelry and asking if she can borrow a sleeping bag.

THE WALK: Episode Five "Leaving California"

http://billswondershow.com/blog/?p=21

Later adventures include experiencing a gold rush, being lost on the Continental Divide, living at a commune in the desert with folks preparing for the end of the world, watching lightening kick desert sand around us one day and in a blizzard the next, living with "Jesus People" in Chicago, encounters with a host of religous sects and issues of the 1980s. However, for me, the vast amount of time alone in the desert was most memorable.

Interesting. I'll tell you this, the absolute worse book I ever read, ever, and I mean so bad I stopped reading it twice and forced myself to read the whole thing just to convince myself it was as bad as I thought, it was, was called "My Walk Across America". Yours will no doubt be better than that one.
Steve V

Thanks Steve. I'd be interested in hearing what you liked or didn't like. I read the book after taking the walk (I'd seen some articles while preparing to leave). It was a popular book. Probably one reason I never considered writing about my experiences. I'm only doing it now because it's meaning has grown for me over the years and I want to try and capture that. I may not do it in this first draft though. Eventually, I'd like to weave the "Then and Now" in a seamless poetic way that shows how I carry this experiece with me and how it effects me and others. It's hard to know for sure what people want to hear more (or less) of. Too much or too little detail. Like I said, any feed back is helpful.

About my change of perspective with regards to magic...
I promised to get back to that, although it doesn't relate directly to the walk. As I said before, the short of it is I went from "commercial magic" to pursuit an artistic vision (with few gigs) back to "commercial" again.

From ages 8-11 years old I was fortunate to have met and been encouraged in magic by folks like Jay Marshell, Sid Lorraine, Neil Foster and others at the Abbott's magic Get togethers. An elderly magician (Delbert Lutin) had "taken me under his wing" and introduced me to them in the late 6o's. I didn't fully understand their status at the time, held them in deep respect because of my "mentor." They would be sitting in the folding chairs chatting and I'd try to impress them with latest thing from the dealers table! They'd give me kind teasing. But in a few short years I was working a lot of commerical gigs and had my little brother help me as "the menace of magic."

Zip forward....
My family started going to church when I was about 15. I was aware some church folks thought magic wasn't good, and didn't know how the church would react. Well, they loved it, and got me involved in performing for churches and camps. This went well for a couple years, but I some things were about to change. I had a couple original Gospel routines I submitted to a magic magazine. They sent me a note that made me mad...but it did make me think. The note said they couldn't accept the routines because the policy of the magazine was to keep religion and magic separate. They quoted, I think it was John Booth, about how mixing them compromised both magic and religion. I didn't agree, but I began to notice some truth to it. Magic always seemed to overpower any message I was giving, and the message seemed to distract from the magic.

I was struggling to find a solution to this when our church had an evangelist come. I was asked to perform a bit before Sunday school. Well, that evening the evangelist berated the church for "allowing me to practice Witchcraft." Well, the whole church split over the deal. To make a long story short (and let's not start talking about religion), I quit doing magic. Not because I thought it was wrong, but because I didn't want to cause another church to split. But also, because I wasn't comfortable with the "message magic" I was doing. When I decided to take the walk, I wanted to discover who I was apart from doing magic. My identity had been wrapped up in magic since I was three years old.

Forsaking everything I went on "The Walk" and learned a lot about myself and America.
A few years after returning from my walk, I began having dreams in which I saw myself performing a kind of magic that was "expressive" without being didactic. It was also far beyond my abilities at the time. I began to study the "art" of magic and completely avoided anything "commercial." I wasn't doing gigs, but I was developing my "vision" at the time. I was working on things like giving visual demonstrations of T.S Elliots "Hollowman" and Blake's "Tiger, Tiger." I was frustrated by it not being able to achieve the skill needed to flesh it out as I saw in my mind, but I kept working on it. Then in I went to New York magic Symposium in 1985, my first convention since Abbotts! There I met Jeff McBride for the first time. I'd never heard of him, but he was doing the kind of act I had imagined, and I got to talk to him about it briefly. I had a different style and "message" to express, but I was encouraged to see it could be done and without a huge collection of props.

I honed this for a while. I returned to college and got a minor degree in theatre. Dispite this, I was never satisfied with my achievements. When I read Steinmeyer's "Device and Illusion," he said some things that made me realize that my creativity was stifled by trying to "create the impossible." I needed to find the "internal story" that the method demanded, and them build on that. I found I had been trying to create from the other direction. There is some success in that, but a lot more frustration.

Well, due to some painful "crash 'n burn" experiences, now I'm full circle. I currently perform mostly commercial magic and only occasionally toy with "message magic."I guess the point of this was I had to "find myself" before I could "put myself" into something.