The Burden of Secrets

I keep secrets so they (the audience) don't have to. I carry a burden of secrets that literally destroys my ability to see the world in a magical way....

- Derek DelGuadio, Magician

At one point in my life, I imagined wanting to become a magician.  Most young boys go through this and successfully emerge at the other end of adolescence with more realistic career goals; me, I'm still thinking some four decades later, that if I could only find enough time to practice....

Magic continues to fascinate me because of the power of its secrets.

This is more than being compelled to know how particular effects are accomplished, but why they work.  Why, for example, can Penn & Teller disclose their methods and yet continue to entertain and amaze?

Famous TV Magic pitchman Marshall Brodien would punctuate his commercials with the line "Magic is easy once you know the secret."  This was a back-handed assurance that even the least-dexterous would be able to impress with his merchandise.  What he should have added is that, in most respects, magic is stupid once you know the secret.

This is not to say that the secrets are stupid because they are not.  Often the method(s) used in a particular effect are based on quite sophisticated concepts.  Once you know the secret, magic can make you feel stupid for having been fooled by what are pretty straightforward methods.  Anyone who has ever learned the "Illusion of the Stolen Nose" or the "Mystery of the Removable Thumb" has some sense of what I mean and what Mr. DelGuadio is talking about.



Since I was not going to be a performer, I chose what I thought would be a compromise career path.  I went to work in the theatre creating illusions of time and place to help the performers tell their stories.  I was not the sorcerer, nor his apprentice, nor even the broom carrying the bucket of water; I was the guy who made the broom.

To be sure, we were not making the Statue of Liberty disappear, or anything like that, but, by the same token, it was surprising to learn what little it takes to deceive the eye so that it takes as solid something that is flimsy, or three-dimensional when it has only two.

As with magic, the early focus of this work is on technique.  What size of brush, or type of sponge, is used to create "realistic" bricks?  What is the best way to make river rocks out of joint compound?  How do you make a root beer float that won't spill during a dance routine?  Each in their own way is a kind of magic trick, a small illusion designed to transport the audience seamlessly into the world of the story.

After I left the theatre, I then spent some time working for attorneys.  As I was to find out, this was not such a radical career change as it might, at first, have appeared.  Success in this field too depends on secret knowledge and mastery of technique.  I don't want to succumb to the conventional wisdom about the legal profession, because, to that time, it was one of the best jobs I had had and it more than prepared me for my next career which was in municipal government.

Here again were the familiar components of secrets, illusion and misdirection.  And here too was a disappointing similarity to the removable thumb and stolen nose tricks.

Also common among these worlds is the concept of secrecy as power, as advantage, as leverage.  Knowing something that others do not is what makes it possible to make things possible like illusion or profit, or public policy.

As I was also to learn, secrets are never free.  There is a price to be paid in acquiring them and there is another for keeping them.  This is the side that I see far too frequently in the work I do now.

To work in mental health is to deal in secrets. 

Almost every day, people come to our offices because they have learned a secret about themselves, or a loved one and they need help figuring out what to do with their secret knowledge.  People who live with mental health conditions exist in the same world as the rest of us.  Whether they are the person who has received the diagnosis, or a family member of that person, they know precisely what society's prejudices are.  They know what you think of them and so they don't want you to know that they're sick.  They know that a diagnosis of a mental health condition is the lens through which the rest of their life will be viewed.  Their diagnosis will be the clause at the end of ever sentence, the discount for every achievement and the rationale for every setback.  "Pencils successfully sharpened by mental patient."  "Applicant with mental illness makes typos on job application."

Is it any wonder that people are reluctant to engage with treatment?  Accepting help means letting go and entrusting your secrets to others.  This can often be a challenge with low-value secrets such as a password, or a romantic crush; can you imagine the stakes where mental health is concerned?  And lingering in the background is the specter of hospitalization, involuntary confinement and forced medication.

Never mind that the standards needed for confinement and medication, not to mention the shortage of psychiatric beds, have made that an increasingly unlikely outcome, this notion is so deeply embedded in the culture that people are often surprised to learn that instead of depression leading inevitably to the straitjacket, it can be successfully treated and could be no more of an inconvenience than are seasonal allergies. 

When people disclose their mental health conditions to us, or more frequently, their personal stories that have helped to shape those conditions, they are relying upon us to keep them.  The very process of help-seeking demands that, in order to access treatment, the consumer has to surrender some, or all, of their burden of secrets.  For most, this is just as difficult as it would be for David Copperfield to disclose how he floated across the Grand Canyon, or walked through the Great Wall of China.

And disclosure is not always a guarantee of relief.  If a consumer, or prospective consumer, discloses information about their racing thoughts, or hallucinations, or plans for suicide, they reveal themselves to prejudice and bias.  Their diagnosis, or diagnoses, become part of their identities, a classification, a membership card in the Separate and No Longer Equal club.

To work in mental health is to understand that secrets are also kept because their exposure, their disclosure, would provide unwelcome advantage to another and reveal a vulnerability.  To work in mental health is to recognize that people build their sense of themselves and their place in the world on a foundation of secrets.  Disclosing these secrets is surrendering power to others.

My boss, Paddy Kutz, has been helping people who live with secrets for four decades.  People often come to her because she is a familiar face in the community and because she is not a doctor or a counselor.  When they recognize that they are up against a problem and don't know what to do, they come to our offices and go into closed-door conference with Paddy to develop a strategy of response.  Can they get the help they need without disclosing their secrets?  Can their family member be "fixed" without it having to come out that they have a "problem?"

She has had lots of these conversations with people in all walks of public and private life.  She always has the Kleenex at the ready as she patiently explains that "secrets keep us sick."  Some of her visitors remain unconvinced and leave the office with their secrets clutched ever-closer to their breast, but many, many more, leave with a brochure and some phone numbers and a strategy for moving ahead.

It is common knowledge even among those who would not be caught dead at a magic show that magicians are sworn never to reveal their secrets.  The assertion is that if the audience knows how the trick is done, their appreciation of the effect and its performer are diminished.  If the public knows what the magician knows then there is no reason to pay to see their performances.  Jobs for magicians will disappear and the art form will die.

This position insulates the role of magician as keeper of special knowledge unavailable to "civilians."  This position places an emphasis on the trick and not on the experience of magic.  With this perspective, we focus on how Copperfield might have made the Statue of Liberty disappear rather than that he did--that we could be convinced that something that monumental in scale could vanish by the wave of his hand.  This position reduces the role of the performer from that of the artist to one of mere expert technician.  This position also relieves the performer of the responsibility of innovation:  if the secrets are protected then they can be endlessly recycled.

Some years ago, there was a manufactured scandal when Fox ran a series of specials featuring the Masked Magician.  In each of these programs, the performer exposed a variety of magic tricks ranging from the close-up effects of the tabletop to mega-illusions seen only on TV.  His stated motive for "breaking the magician's code" was to promote innovation and creativity and to help move the art forward.

What's true is true.  Secrets may create the illusion of power and control, but in their hoarding comes the responsibility of protecting and defending them and this, in time, becomes its own full time job.

I became interested in magic because of the secrets--this is not surprising for someone keenly aware of how powerless they were--but four decades later I remain interested in magic because of the opportunity to tell stories and create wonder.

There is no question that secrets provide, for a time, the illusion of power, but like most things built on an illusion, there is no permanence, no security, only, as DelGuadio says, "burden."



--Graham Campbell
Associate Director

PS - I was prompted to write this because some very significant secrets were disclosed to me.  As a result, I wanted to take action, but because they were disclosed in confidence, I could do nothing that would not betray that confidence.  As a result, I was left with homilies about secrecy and an imperfect analogy to magic.  My intent in ending with Penn & Teller  was to make the point that the secrets only have the power we give to them and, in disclosure, the "magic" is not diminished.