MAGIC MIRROR ON THE WALL WHO IS THE FERRIS ONE OF ALL?

Is this the Ferris of them all?

Did you see that? He just explained a joke. The sin of all sins. Next he'll be laughing at his own gags, tee hee.

I am going to combine mirrors, mazes, a zither, an armonica, a classic flick and an ancient fun park into one deliquescent blast. Fasten your jocular straps.

And yes I do know deliquescent is about something that salt does. Please be advised to take it with a pinch. Or a grain for the gob-smackingly small-minded.

Here's a video by me to get the roll bawling. Get ready for unserious mirror maze fun in Vienna. Please click play on the picture displaying my smooth spy acting. Stanislavky's 'The Method', you know?

Here are strange stories about a mirror maze and the famous Ferris wheel in Vienna.

There's a great finish to this story. It's the next post called A Mirror Finish with incredible revelations about Snow White.

First, the build.

Here's what really happened with the video above kids.

A MAZE.

I am a trickster, so I played a trick on the two boys in the maze. Somehow I worked out how to get out of the maze. Then how to get back in again in a flash. It was probably just luck that I figured it out, but an inventive magician is good at solving secrets.

The people in the maze were really trapped. So I decided to be outside the maze when they looked at me and then when they looked away I hopped inside. Then inside the maze when they looked at me again. Backwards and forewords, backwards and forewords. What a scream. They were going crazy because I was like a ghost. A bit of the old in and out.

I was having such fun that I did crunch my camera into an invisible sheet of glass. A sickening clunk. Even thinking about it now, my stomach goes hollow. The camera was wrecked. I did have to buy another one the next day because it finally fizzled. Great blistering blood oranges, my credit card needed Prozac. 

And, I loved that camera, we were to be married in the Spring.

Next truth. I did crash into that guy in the video. Wait. He crashed into me. He was caught in my terribly lovely vortex warp.

This accident gave me more wobbly footage than I wanted.

What to do, what to do? So I made up a little video story for you using that unfortunate video material and then I threw in some Prater amusement park delights and a dash of eye candy. 

I take tips.

Just so you know. The Prater is one of the oldest amusement parks in this world. I can't speak for other worlds. It started as a pleasure field in the year 1162. 

Here's some perspective about that date. In that year of 1162, the fierce leader on the Mongols Genghis Kahn was born. Thomas Becket became the Archbishop of Canterbury [three centuries before Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales] and the land was cleared in Paris to build the Notre Dame cathedral. At least they were all busy.

The Riesenrad is a very old Ferris wheel from 1890. Please don't get too excited by its name. The exotic sounding Reisenrad means 'giant wheel'. No big deal.

Here's the good part. This wheel is very famous. It's a movie star. Many classic films feature the old whirler. James Bond, Scorpio and on and on and around and around. But the movie that made this wheel iconic was The Third Man.

The film scene is now yours to see. In this here video.

As you see, this cool film thriller had the wheel, it had Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten all going around together. It also introduced to a rapt world an instrument called the zither. That's just the most fabulous name for anything. 

My mirror maze video above has a sweet piece of the Harry Lime Theme composed for the picture by zither whiz Anton Karas. Ah yes, the maestro of the resonant and the plectrum. Dirty talk, don't you love it?

The Harry Lime Theme was a sensation worldwide from the 1949. Even the emperor of Japan was a mad fan. I suppose you could slice sushi with a zither.

The zither that played The Harry Lime Theme. 

Now seen at The Third Man Museum in Vienna.

The music I use in the crystal maze part of my video is really something. It's played on the world's rarest instrument, the glass armonica invented by US founding father Benjamin Franklin. Also known as the hydrocrystalophone. It works exactly like music that comes from stroking the lip of wine glass with a moist finger. Franklin spun different sized glass discs inside a polished wooden cabinet. A reviewer said, "The sound is mysterious and ungraspable, almost otherworldly and filled with dreamlike shadings. It's absolutely compelling". 

They always sound like that, reviewers, don't they?

Thanks to the keen eyes of my friend Pierre Taillefer, the witty French curator and historian, I found myself looking at a working glass armonica in Vienna. Too bedazzling. It was Franklin's own instrument used by him in Europe. Insert mind spin here. I discovered this loopy object when I was looking for somewhere to rest my coffee cup at a gala at the elegant National History Museum. It was a 'what in the hell is that?' moment. My cup looked so lovely sitting on one of the world's rarest musical masterpieces. And I didn't leave a ring.

Now for some mirror maze material. You don't have to read it because it's really meant for perverse enthusiasts and assorted fruit cakes. That's all of us in one way or another, so we'd better get over it. 

 My mind mirrors yours 

I say mirror mazes are worth looking into. 

But then, I would say that.


I'll also say that the mirror mirrors the mirror. Please have fun with that one.

Mirrors are our friends until they turn against us and show us what we do not want to see. Us, old. Then they are like relatives we prefer not to know.

Even so, mirrors are fabulous when they're meant for fun, decoration or spectacle. The best are the halls of mirrors. These cause sensible people to bleed excitement.

And yet, as much as we love them, halls of mirrors and crystal mazes are not easy to find. They hide in far away places like palaces and unique parks made for thrills. They're never down at the shopping centre where they should be. Or in psychiatric offices where they might unbend minds without pills.

Instead we have half-hearted mirrors on the sides of escalators and inside elevators. It's like architects go out of their way to hide the real fun of mirrors.

Couldn't we have just a little flair with infinity? Everybody goes silly inside a crazed loop of reflected infinity. We all love being between two mirrors facing each other plane to plane. The warping sight of you inside you and inside you forever is such a funny flip-out. All of your worries and heartaches evaporate in an instant.

The flea-bitten mirror mazes of carnivals are always disappointing. They're all worn, weary and not very clever. The mirrors look sad and lost. The paint is flaked and faded. They match all the penny-dreadful rides around them.

What you might not know is that mirror mazes use plastic mirror to stop lawsuits when all those clumsy people smash into the glass and cut themselves to ribbons. Pretty ribbons, but still ribbons.

It becomes a challenge to find fantastic reflective halls and mazes of any kind. The hedge ones are good but need better drainage. You always seem to be hopping over puddles. It's hard enough getting through a maze without ruining your favourite shoes. Even in the middle of the most sizzling summers, there's still puddles and mud. I finally worked it out, gardeners should learn how to squirt their hoses better.

The cream on top of all must be mazes made of mirrors.

For me, only the most specific kind of reflective maze will do. They must be brilliantly constructed from mirrors and clear glass windows. That's the trick. The combination of see-through panes and mirrors dazzle the human mind. They change perception so that all things go wrong in the funniest way. Comin' at cha.

Great lighting is part of the act too. The best mirror and glass mazes have the most insidious lighting. They sparkle and dance. They toy with your senses. They give you a feeling that brightness is your friend, but it is not your pal. That bright lighting illuminates the tricks of reflection and makes you dance the dance of disaster.

Before I leave mirrors, here is something you should know to clear up a myth. Modern magic illusions do not use mirrors. Most people think they do. Rub it out of your mind. There were a few more scientific mirror illusions in ancient times, but magicians of today don't need them. 

Solved. 

The Myth Busters don't even need to waste time on it.

Instead, with magic, it goes up sleeves after sawing a rabbit in halves wearing a top hat. No modern magician does any of these things really. If only I could say the same thing about card tricks.


Moments of reflection:

 Credits: 

William Zeitler. World leader in the realm of music and composition with the glass armonica. 
I recommend that you sample his magical and beautiful musical skills.

http://www.williamzeitler.com/store/C.‬

Andy Warhol mirrored by the master of the designer eye, Philippe Morillon. The image is from his exceptional book of cultural wonders 'Ultra Lux' [1981].

Infinity mirror sculpture. By Portland Glass at the University of Maine.

The passenger side rear vision mirror of Tim Owen's car as we drove across Arizona.

Magic Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography. 
Compiled and edited by Albert A. Hopkins. Munn & Co, NY. First published 1897. 
Copper engraved plate on wood illustration of a fanciful, but possible mirror illusion. 
Three people become a crowd. Yes, three's a crowd.

Magic Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography. 
Compiled and edited by Albert A. Hopkins. Munn & Co, NY. First published 1897. 
Copper engraved plate on wood illustration of a fanciful, but possible mirror illusion. 
Three people become a crowd. Yes, three's a crowd.