His eyes have wisdom. That’s what I thought when I first met him a few years ago. You may have seen him on Lower Greenville being magical and speaking poetry. Maybe, like me, you’ve seen him shadow boxing, doing tai chi or jogging around Dallas with his strong, stout and friendly Pitbull Orv. Maybe this is the first you’ve seen or heard of him. It won’t be the last. MadSwirl is proud to introduce to you a magician, a poet, a boxer, a land surveyor, a ‘medicine’ man, a flutist, a friend. Merlin the Magical One...

Me: How’s that for an introduction?

Merlin: Damn good, it’s pretty much all that.

Me: Is there anything I left out that you could think of?

Merlin: I mean no, don’t wanna talk about hustling people with cards

Me: “He’s a hustler, a grifter, he’ll con you outa your last buck... it’s Merlin!”

Merlin: (chuckling) Yeah...

Me: You wanna keep that part secret

Merlin: I didn’t ever really hustle people, it’s like boxing, I’d go play cards & try to use all these gambling techniques and when I caught somebody cheating, I cheated them back.

Me: That’s right, you can’t bullshit a bullshitter. So, Merlin, how’d you get into magic?

Merlin: Oh, I was about 14, 15, I was playin guitar and of course wantin to be an Elvis Presley. I had my own rock-n-roll band, so I got my buddy and told him he needed to get a guitar and took him down to get one and he gave me a book on magic, you know, the little ball-n-vase trick; you know I still do the little ball-n-vase trick and he went on to make some records and I’m still doin’ magic. I showed him his first chord and he gave me my first book on magic

Me: Do you still fool people with the ball-n-vase?

Merlin: I even fool people who know the trick. It’s all in the slight of hand. A trick, like life, is just a puzzle. You need to breathe life into it. You make it become magic.

Me: What makes your show unique? What will people walk away from it with?

Merlin: What makes my magic different is I use my own poetry that goes with it; alot of my poetry is my philosophy on life. When they walk away, I want them to go “Damn, he was a nice guy and he fooled the shit outa me” but by the next day, they’re going “He had somethin to say there, too.”

Me: When you’re talking about your philosophy on life, was there a certain point when you came to an understanding, or was it something you evolved into?

Merlin: The most eventful moment in my life came in a fight. This guy was a bad motherfucker. Well I beat him the first round, by the second round my ego got the best of me and for the first time in my life I knew what it was to get knocked down. When I was down, the strangest thing in the world happened. I was over here lookin down on my body and there was like a very wonderful glow, very pleasant. I was sitting there laughing at myself, thinking “how funny this is” at that point I don’t think I realized just what an affect it had, but now I look back and realize that right after that I moved from Minneapolis to Dallas and dropped out and became a hippie magician poet.

Me: Is that when you started practicing magic?

Merlin: I’d been doin magic for years, along with my boxing and I just came down here to get away, and be what I wanted to be. And I was tired of being a fighter. And I wanted to become a magician.

Me: What do your poetry and boxing have to do with your philosophy of life?

Merlin: We are a spiritual being. Locked, trapped in this physical body. I don’t care if you get an arm chopped off, what’s you is still there. A spirit that wants to experience the physical part of life. I am a spiritual being. That road led me there. Magic & poetry.

Me: So you’re a poet and you know it?

Merlin: You know something about writing poetry? It has nothing to do with the fucking English you speak. It comes from the soul, inside you. It’s not the words.

Me: Is art a true bearing of the soul?

Merlin: Know this, for sure. if you can’t stand naked, you can’t be a poet. You have to be able to take off a whole lot more than your clothes in front of everybody to write. Otherwise, you’re just putting words on paper.

Me: And you’re putting that into your magic and poetry. You mesmerize people at your shows. Is that part of the magic?

Merlin: Magic, to me, is an expression of the soul, in how you do it. Yes, it’s tricks and I’m using gimmicks to make it happen. I think, and the words I say is where the magic takes place. Not in the trick I do. Anyone can do the trick. 90% presentation, 10% trick is what’s in the magic. It’ll make you believe the impossible happened.

Me: Is your name really Merlin?

Merlin: Yes. Merlin the Magical One. To me, yes. Not the name my mother gave, but the name people 31 years ago started calling me. And after 2 or 3 years of fighting it, I said “fuck it, I’ll be Merlin”. I decided to become Merlin and knew in my mind, I’m Merlin. It was given to me; I didn’t give it to myself.

Me: And look at you now, you’re Merlin. The magic, the beard, the mysticism...

Merlin: Guess after 30 years I look like him. They say that people living together for years start looking alike. And after 30 years of living with Merlin, I look like Merlin.

Me: Who is Merlin?

Merlin: The Merlin that I’d like to project out, what I want them to see, is the love flowing out of my heart. And wisdom in my words to only be a positive in life. I only want to see good and let good flow from me. That’s the Merlin I want to be. Now I don’t know if I’ll ever reach that, but that’s my goal. But the best thing I can be is pure love.

Me: Advice?

Merlin: Learn to be dead to your past. Living only in the moment and seeing the beauty there. You’ll become a master. And when you align yourself with the universe, all things are possible. The past is the fucking past. The future, who knows? Right now. Be here now. They call it the present for a reason. It’s a gift. Enjoy it.

Me: Yeah, that’s good.

interview by Johnny Olson as seen in Mad Swirl (#2)