The other night a member of my audience noted that their son was "significantly older" than I was. I walked away smiling, appreciating my apparently youthful appearance. Perhaps they would not have believed this article celebrates my 30th year as a professional magician, also coincident with my debut on my 14th birthday. So, here is a partial measure of my path so far.

I've trekked to Mount Everest and back; conducted 10-year study of synchronicity; written a book about the bullet catching stunt; and I'm the only person ever produced as a one man show by the great Lyn Austin's Music-Theatre Group. My writing has, in part, covered: native Indian magic, the Marx Bros. grandfather-magician, a sweeping dialectic on the magician's concept known as misdirection, a contemporary history of the rabbit and hat icon, and Buster Keaton's use of illusion.

A good deal of my time has been spent defending magic as an art. I've come to realize that magic is seldom regarded as an art because it is infrequently practiced with the tenets of other arts. The secrecy factor of the magician also prevents deeper understanding. Magicians are easy targets for critics. But if you look really carefully, you'll see we are players and well represented historically as comedians or dancers. Having performed 10,000 live shows, I only consider my personal best being 3-minutes long. Just prior to 9/11, at the Central Park band shell, as host of the Independent Festival for Downtown Culture while Rebecca Moore's band played, I conjured. I'll match those three minutes against anything else. Though, to me, art has never been a horse race.

I've probably met hundreds of thousands of people. Performances have varied, from a randy nightclub in Bangkok to the swank Rainbow Room in Manhattan for the Chairman of Japan's oldest bank. (The Chairman, a rotund man with a long white ponytail thought it was hilarious to kneel down underneath the table to view my sleight of hand.) A famous mountaineer and I once stood side by side at roughly 15,000 feet above sea level using the great Himalaya to comfort our bodily functions. After a bar show in Manhattan, a high tech. operative once showed me "a sound device," which, to my knowledge, has never been used commercially. I've been injured in a terrorist attack in Paris and conversely, I've found love in the most unexpected places. Three places I started as a student, I ended up as a teacher.

New York City has been my home for 27 years and I've stayed closer to home since 9/11. (I was pretty close to the thousands murdered in Manhattan that day.) Travel is more difficult for the magician carrying odd-looking props. Returning from Amsterdam in 1998, I had to prove I was a magician or face arrest for carrying a prop knife aboard the plane to New York. I enjoy the reputation of being one of New York's finest magicians. Though, at a show in Petoskey, Michigan in July 2004, when I was announced as being from New York City, one former Air Force intelligence officer chimed up, "Well, we won't hold that against you." Once, meeting the organizers of a student upheaval in Kathmandu, I was asked if I could make these organizers, literally, invisible.

Unlike magicians believing ego is an essential component of the practice, I believe wonder working is made better by leaving boastfulness behind. Houdini (hardly a reticent sort) advised that performers should not tell audiences how good they are, for they would soon form their own opinion. I agree, so I keep my introduction to seven words. In the past year my niche has included opening for the hit group October Project and conjuring on stage at BB King's with the Jazz Mandolin Project. I dig these projects. A friend of mine said, "Too bad you haven't done any great gigs recently." I'm lucky; my friends make me laugh and I think laughter is really magical. Make no mistake, I believe in magic. John Lennon and I both believe that "magic is real." Ask me about this some night backstage.

I have a "second city" where I occasionally hang my hat. So if I am not in New York, then call me in Seattle. I've invented many tricks and illusionary concepts for a wide variety of people. A few notables: Diane Keaton, director Martha Clarke and Spain's Trade Commissioner. A physically disabled child once followed my lead to cut a deck of cards with one hand even though his muscles had never moved that way. The attending doctors dropped their stethoscopes in disbelief. I'm not the only magician to have had this experience. World Champion Magician Johnny Ace Palmer once made a child who's face was paralyzed, smile. Entertaining children all over the world has been a gratifying experience.

I am neither rich, nor poor, tall nor short, stout nor skinny. I'm invisible when I want to be. I can go anywhere; do most anything. Marvyn Roy's truism has applied to me: I've sometimes lived like a millionaire without being one. A great blessing of my life is that some of my heroes have become close friends. When I wake, I begin my day with advice from a small book. When I sleep, I wonder if I've fulfilled that advice. To me, work is life. Loving what I do is my lifestyle. And I realize that upon dying, most people don't consider their work first. The fellow who modernized magic in the latter half of the twentieth century, Doug Henning said: "A real magician does it all the time." As a lad, I was first attracted to performing as a magician. David Letterman once said that those who stand on a stage did it because they received too much love, or not enough in their formative years. I'm a combination of both. Thirty years later, having met and entertained such folks as Edgar Mitchell, the 6th man to walk on the moon, Sir Edmund Hillary, and Frank Sinatra, I am sure of a few things. No one ever told me that this was a "people business," or, that you sometimes had to work hundreds of hours for seconds, if not minutes, on stage. Both truisms have surprised me.

Johnny Carson once told me that magic as a wonderful hobby, though he found it difficult to make a living at. However, Carson' s millions made as a TV host, are not comparable to the magician who has to deliver live. Magic doesn't work on TV because of the inevitable manipulation of the video medium. Magic creates wonder when it's presented live in the same time and pace as the audience. Truthfully, I cannot tell you how many times people have told me they have never seen magic the way I present it. Recently, while entertaining at a wedding party at the St. Regis Hotel, I was asked by a man from Africa to entertain his relatives nearby while he translated. Though, magic is an international language.

To be art's master, you must become its slave. In 2003, I re-discovered this component of creativity while lying in a hospital bed manipulating a prop with the only part of my body that moved, my hands. Recently, I was honored to have been the only magician booked at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's gala titled, The Magic of the Garden. Amidst the lush grounds I wore a top hat that looked new but was in fact that 102 years old. The white tie and tails I wore were made in the 1960's and had previously appeared on stages worldwide. At the Garden I met a man who, genuinely, revolutionized the magic art. Who was he? That's a secret. Sometimes those who are not famous are the greater creators. The art of magic is filled with such characters.

People tell me my wealth is that I have more genuine friends than anyone they know. I never cultivated a lot of friends for the wealth of it. I just believe in treating others, as I'd like to be treated. So far, so good, mostly. Here's my definition of a real friend: they don't hurt you purposely. I've encountered the other side, believe me. Though, a real pal recently quoted the Marines, "The only way forward is through." I'd rather have no relationship than a dishonest relationship. In this sense, a famous writer has told me, I am exactly wrong for a career in show biz. Some of the bad guys I've given my trust to believe that not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth. Sad creatures.

Mine has been a free-floating report. I've slept in castles and ally ways. Problem solving (something I enjoy) can keep me awake for days. One time I decided my path required contemplation. I disappeared into a mountain range for months. Returning, I had a few answers, and more questions. To me, life is a kaleidoscopic adventure. Anything really can happen. A friend whose hand I held as he lay dying affirmed this to me. He whispered, "If you live long enough, it'll all happen to you." I believe the mind and material reality are intimately connected in ways our sensory filters disregard. I think that reality as we perceive it is as malleable as putting your finger in the sand of the beach. Feel free to disagree, it takes the kind of experience I've had to come to this conclusion.

I also know there are a lot of phonies out there who would take your money, time and spirit if they made you believe that they had a stronger piece of this psychic connection. As John Mulholland counseled, "beware familiar spirits." And as Harry Anderson says, "keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out." I'll add, be not so closed minded that you miss the signals of intuition. Forget not humans are animals. Figure out how birds intrinsically follow magnetic South, and you too will live with a sharper edge. I'll leave it up to you to define what the "sharper edge" is. Honesty is my very sharp sword, and creativity, is my shield. As a pre-schooler my teacher wrote that I as a pleasant child who objects when "my sense of justice was violated." I'm still the same way, and therefore I walk alone a good deal of the time.

At a rock club recently, the booker, a heavy metal-looking six-footer of leather and long hair rightfully asked his lighting designer why he booked a magician (me). The lighting man looked to me in the dungeon of the club as if to say, "explain it." After I spoke, the big man sporting a thick wallet chain and a beard that could have cut through titanium said, "He's a pro, give him anything he wants." Note to younger performers: the "gig" isn't just what you do on stage.

I'm not a materialistic person. My friend, the late Jack Flosso, owner of the world's oldest magic store, always said in his energetic vaudevillian best, "Ben, don't give it to 'em." Jack knew what I have come to learn: buying a piece of Katharine Hepburn's estate at Sotheby's doesn't really get you any closer to what made Kate great. I once watched a Woody Allen movie with Ms. Hepburn and walked with her holding my arm through a lobby. It was as if the seas parted when people saw us. Talk about real magic!

It takes over a century for someone in my position to be "discovered." Usually this happens via a kid who reads about some exploit in magic history: Chung Ling Soo's dramatic death, Houdini's escape from a Siberian Prison Van or Lafayette's "dying twice." That kid may be inspired one day to ascend the platform and do a trick or two. If they are lucky, the audience will enjoy their performance. But what makes that kid stick to it, day after day, year after year, still mystifies me.

Though, I've recently had a small clue. Recently I visited to the Catheterization Lab at NY Presbyterian Hospital. Not the most cheerful place you'd ever want to be. People there have serious cardiac problems; their pain genuine. It got around that I was a magician. So, while talking to a nurse, she asked if I'd visit their station and give a small show.Afterwards, one of the nurses, said, "Omigod! I've got to get back to my patient to make sure he is still alive!" License to thrill: that's what it has been like. From a dying man who requested to see a magician as his last Earthly wish to experiencing Radiohead's performance shaking 37,000 in Madison Square Garden I've been there. It was a gas to have worked with their video team well before Tom Yorke and crew did. Free tickets are a perk I enjoy. With my mind and hands, I've found friends, life, death, and the will to overcome adversity, companionship and residence in the greatest city in the world. I am assured that what you sew, you reap.

My career has given me all access. It has not given me what I imagined 30 years ago. Natch. "Sleep late; see the world," said magician Milbourne Christopher. Ditto.