Translator: Tomás Guarna Reviewer: Sebastian Betti
When I was 12 years old, Elena, my literature professor,
asked the students in my class to prepare a story,
to tell a story about something that we really liked.
Some chose movies, others chose TV shows,
some rock band, things like that.
I, in that moment, already wanted to be a magician.
I really liked magicians and stories about circuses.
I prepared a story about magic and circus arts.
At the same time, I was going to an educational psychologist
that helped me pay a little more attention in school
because I was a bit disperse.
(Laughter)
There was also another alternative to that which was a pill
that at a time was given to kids that didn’t pay attention,
and it made people pay attention
to those things society wanted them to pay attention to.
Luckily, they didn’t choose that and they sent me to Liliana’s.
That’s where I went. To learn how to pay a bit more of attention at school,
which wasn’t going completely well.
If I had taken the pill back then,
now I’d be the sort of person that drinks very dark coffee,
with no sugar, and is angry at the entire world
because they don’t act the way he wants them to
and Messi doesn’t play hard enough, and all those things.
(Laughter)
Luckily that didn’t happen.
I was at Liliana’s.
Liliana helped me concentrate a bit more at school
and I told her I had to write this sort of story about magic
and that I wanted to finish the lesson with a magic trick,
the most decent trick I had, at the moment.
I didn’t have the guts.
In reality, it scared me a bit.
And her, with the sweetness that characterized her
with her love and tranquility, told me:
-Don’t be a wimp, do the trick, if nothing happens, it’s just a trick,
you do the trick, it’s a nice finishing touch.
I brought myself to do it, told the story, showed my empty hands
showed that a handkerchief appeared from my hand, put it back,
showed my empty hands again,
showed again that the handkerchief appeared
and my classmates and teacher clapped.
(Applause)
I did very well on that class day, and got a very good mark,
and Elena was amazed by what I had done and said to me:
-Look, in five months there’s a literary competition
and in the closing night the school is hosting an event.
We’d like you to do a magic show.
Do you have a show prepared?
-Obviously, I said.
It was obvious, I was 12 years old, I didn’t have a prepared show,
but I did have five months to actually prepare that show.
And in that show, I mixed music, magic, and comedy,
which were the things I liked the most.
I realized that it wasn’t that I had a hard time paying attention to things,
but that I didn’t want to pay attention
to geography, math, physics, basically.
That what I liked was to pay attention to other things.
I was very scared. The day of the show came.
I was feeling very confident, because when I was younger, at eight
I played the drums in a jazz band and did scat singing
(Scat singing)
Very strange for eight year olds, but that’s what we did in Bahia Blanca,
where I lived, there was a jazz band and I played the drums,
sang scat, and was the presenter.
But the day of the show, just before coming out,
those five months passed, the day of the show came.
In a very dark place of myself I wished a catastrophe happened,
that the theatre exploded and killed everyone inside,
(Laughter)
even my mum and dad, who were there watching me,
just not to do that show.
The time came, they said:
-Ladies and gentlemen, Radagast.
I came out to perform and it came out great.
It came out okay, I’m not saying it was...
It was a nice show, really.
A 12-year-old showed up, did some magic, comedy, and some music
that I included because I really liked music.
People asked for my business card after the show.
Business cards, I say this because you’re all very young,
were pieces of cardboard with your name on them.
The equivalent to today’s contacts in your phone
or the handles in social networks.
Damn millennials.
(Laughter)
I had business cards, I had a lot of confidence, I was 13 years old but
to be honest, at 13 years old one is very confident.
I got business cards printed out.
They said Radagast, below it said comedic magic
and my house phone which was 49018.
I handed out the cards and soon enough my house phone started ringing.
They started to hire me to perform at events, kindergardens,
then schools, parties, churches, weddings.
I started to work a lot.
I was very young but I worked a lot.
All the money I won I invested it back in some course I could take,
buy tricks remotely.
There was no internet to study through the internet.
In Bahia Blanca, there were no magicians and I started buying things,
I started doing shows and such.
I started working lots, but I started to get bored
because it was always the same thing:
I made the jokes that worked, the tricks I knew,
I didn’t have much more tools than those,
I couldn’t study magic.
So, my very wise parents told me:
-Why don’t you take some theatre class
or some other thing that will nurture you and such?
I started. This was some time ago.
I started the theatre class and a friend showed up,
a classmate, not a friend, a classmate with juggling cubs.
Something clicked. I said:
-I want to learn how to juggle, I want to learn how to juggle,
I want to learn how to juggle, I want to learn how to juggle...
I want to learn how to juggle.
The kid realized that I was a bit too insistent.
And put me in touch with some guys from Rosario that were in Bahia Blanca
teaching some juggling classes and busking for them.
They had just come to Bahia.
I invited them home. I told them:
-You don’t have a place to live?
You can stay home, my folks won’t have a problem.
I took them home.
One was a Rastafari and another one had half of his face tattooed,
I swear you by my mother.
They were in the living room teaching me how to juggle,
my mum comes in and says:
- Who are these guys?
I go to the kitchen and I tell her:
-Mum, they’re the juggling teachers
that are going to be teaching me how to juggle and are staying at home for some days.
-Perfect.
So, they stayed for some days.
They taught me how to juggle with clubs,
with a diabolo, with balls, I learned how to spit fire
and it blowed my mind, I couldn’t believe it.
I would go to stoplight, and I would do some juggling
and spit fire with my friends.
We’d put up the show in the street and collect donations.
I started to mix that with some magic tricks I knew.
The show started to grow.
It was great, I was mixing things on the way, it was really awesome
and I kept making money to re-invest in what I liked doing.
I started to get bored again.
It started to become automatic again
and just in that moment, my folks
with much love and generosity, told me:
-Are you going to stay here?
Why don’t you go somewhere else and see how it goes?
To Buenos Aires.
Someone could interpret this like they were kicking me out.
Maybe, but no, they were inviting me
to dare do something else.
I moved up here, to Buenos Aires.
I told you guys I get distracted a lot, right?
Sorry. I’m imagining there’s a ninja turtle and a
Teletubbie next to me dancing.
That’s why I’m get a bit distracted.
(Applause)
I moved to Buenos Aires, started taking classes in different things,
clown, pantomime, more juggling, acrobatics and more.
I was waiting for the phone to ring,
that phone nobody had the number of because I’d just gotten to Buenos Aires,
to do events in Buenos Aires.
There was no phone, so I’d go to the cyber café in the corner of my place
and send emails to every producer or event organizer I could think of
so I could keep doing my shows and live on my own in Buenos Aires.
In reality, it wasn’t me sending the emails,
but my representative, who was actually me,
(Laughter)
but I’d sign off with another name.
I thought it was so fun that it was some other guy.
(Laughter)
To me it was much easier to sell someone else’s act than mine:
-You’ve no idea of this show I do, you’ve got to hire me!
And the guy would say:
-No, you don’t know what this guy does!
No, he’s amazing! Nobody has seen him yet in Buenos Aires!
I’d just gotten here, it was obvious.
Nobody called me for a long while.
Emails would bounce back, or they’d say:
-The truth is the market is already collapsed, no, no.
Until I caught one off guard and he hired me.
From that show came others
and I started to work again in Buenos Aires,
looking for new things, new quirks and that sort.
My colleagues weren’t fans of the act, because in reality,
I didn’t really prepare my shows the way magicians usually do
as I had never received proper training.
I thought it up from the side of comedy.
So, my colleagues didn’t love the idea of a guy doing magic
but that screamed and wore clown shoes,
that sometimes sung, that threw juggling clubs or spit fire.
Therefore, I wasn’t well accepted by my colleagues,
but as I had my representative that told me:
-Everything’s fine.
I kept on going.
I just kept doing my thing.
At 22, my girlfriend at that time
tells me she’s pregnant with Bianca.
My daughter Bianca is born.
I kept working as a magician, travelled abroad a lot.
There’s something I really like that’s serendipity.
Serendipity is the word that defines when a fortunate event
happens to you without you expecting it while you’re looking for something else,
as long as your spirit is prepared
for new things to happen.
When’s someone’s searching and searching and searching
serendipities happen that can make you change course.
If I have a clear course to go from here to there
and I only look up there, up there, and only up there,
a lot of things are going to happen around me
and I won’t realize it.
In one of those serendipities I had, a foreign producer got in touch with me,
I started working in Colombia, in Peru, in Venezuela,
lots of things.
I was a father, I should’ve stayed in that place of comfort,
where I had events and everything.
A really good opportunity came up, to be the clown…
You guys know that clown that looks like It,
that eats a lot of burgers?
He has some restaurants,
he’s doing really well.
I went through five auditions.
The last call I told them:
-I’m not a fan of this, I’d rather keep doing my own thing-
I didn’t want to be a 9 to 5 clown, to be honest.
It helped me realize what I really wanted to do,
which was to keep playing.
I told them no and I kept doing my thing,
believing it was going to be alright.
And really things went along fine,
but I was getting bored again.
It happened to me that I wanted to play with
something, I needed new tools, I started looking for new things,
I wasn’t feeling very comfortable.
I did a season in Villa Gesell,
that I shared out of chance with a guy that was like a guru to me
that showed up in my life, that made me... (Sound effect)
And I know a lot more of sound effects to,
the vacuum cleaner... (Vacuum cleaner)
(Pigeon cooing)
(Feline roaring)
And I know a lot more (Applause)
And it kind of calmed my soul
because I was really unsatisfied with what I was doing
because I had heard those colleagues I really admired
tell me:
-But you’re a clown, not a magician
not a comedian, not a musician, so what in hell are you?
Blah, blah, blah.
And he told me: -You’re Radagast,
focus on being Radagast
and focus on being the best Radagast you can be.
What do you want to do tonight?
I was doing shows in that place, in Villa Gesell,
that was a restaurant that had a theatre inside.
I say: -Look, I’d like to do this.
I show them what I did in stoplights in Bahia Blanca
when I was a kid.
I saw: -But this isn’t good, I don’t know…
-No, no, you have to do that, and look,
let’s add it this and let’s do it with a background music you like.
It was doing something completely different to what I had been doing.
That night something happened that was similar to when I did the trick for Elena,
or when I did that first show,
or when my folks told me:
-Are you gonna stay here?
I heard that again and went out to do the scene
the routine I had prepared.
To this day I still do that routine, with some changes in the way.
But that night, when I came out to the stage, my soul exploded.
The applause I received must’ve been the most powerful I’d even heard before,
not because it had been stronger than others,
or before the applause had been very powerful,
but I felt it very powerful because I felt I was back playing,
doing what I really liked doing,
which is to play on the stage without any sort of rules.
I felt very happy. I was truly satisfied.
That’s where everything changed again, I started to play again, to sing again,
I started putting on the kind of shoes I wanted to,
I stopped listening to the masters who said:
-No, no, no, no, no, no.
And I kept doing my thing trying each day to be the best Radagast.
A while ago, once again by serendipity,
three years ago I met a Fernanda, my girlfriend,
and she immediately realized I was unsatisfied,
because time went by,
and I got bored again of what I was doing and said:
-Why don’t you start studying something that you’ve never done before?
Why don’t you learn standup comedy?
-Standup comedy?
No, that thing with a guy with a mic that says:
No, no, no way.
No, I don’t like it, I don’t like it.
-But it’s because you don’t know it because you’re ignorant.
Go study standup comedy.
-No, no. -Go study standup comedy.
I signed you up for a standup comedy class.
I went to study standup comedy.
-Yes, my love.
And I went to study standup comedy.
It blew my mind again.
Obviously, I was trying out a tool I didn’t know well yet,
it was like a new Batman toy,
to take out, to play with.
I started meeting lots of people, I started getting in touch with others,
I took another theatre class, some dancing lessons
I started to sing again, I started to dare to do again,
and in the way I met Federico Cyrulnik,
an Instagrammer I really admire, and he told me:
-You have to play with Instagram, start playing with Instagram.
-You think so? -Play with Instagram.
When I started playing with Instagram, my head was blown again.
I didn’t have a schedule or rules, I could do what I wanted to,
I could play just how I wanted to.
I started to bring back a lot of stuff from when I was a kid
in the carpentry workshop of my grandfather, for example (Horn),
something I did in my grandpa’s yard,
or I’d start to play an invisible flute,
what I did with my brother when he played the double bass
and I didn’t know what to do so I’d do-- (Flute)
and played the flute along.
I started to play again with my daughter,
in reality, to bring back all those games I did all the time with my daughter,
with my folks or with my friends, I started to play again
and I started to feel really happy again.
That Instagram account also brought a bunch of things.
It allowed me to begin a tour all throughout the country
and also abroad, which I had always wanted
and dreamt about. Everything happened.
I’m fortunate enough to be often asked by journalists,
when I’m doing interviews, if I feel I’m in my best moment,
and I always answer that yes, because I have always been in my best moment,
because I always understood as the best moment all that was going on for me,
from putting up posters with my friends with glue,
so that people would come see us in the theatre,
or when we’d go to a corner to juggle and spit fire,
or today acting in a theatre,
or today giving a TED talk here
to a bunch of people that I don’t know why they’re making so much silence
and listening me with so much attention, I thank you very much.
(Laughter)(Applause)
In the field I work in, there’s always a damn word going around, “success,”
and to me, success isn’t where you reach,
what I told you about before, to say
-I want to be there.
To me success is all the way you go through and all that happens on it.
If you do devote yourself to what you love completely,
and this doesn’t mean that you’re always going to succeed,
things will go badly thousands of times,
and this has to happen so you can learn and keep on going forward.
In fact, in a festival a while ago I was yelled at by 150 Colombians
because I made a very unfortunate joke
and I was declared an undesirable person in the world of magic.
(Laughter)
I carry that title, ladies and gentlemen.
(Applause)
When I was younger,
500 people stood up and asked for their money back.
I had made a conceptual act of some Martians
that kidnapped me and took me to a very dark planet
and I had to do magic tricks and comedy for them to set me free.
It wasn’t a good show. (Laughter).
All the media on Bahia Blanca had me on them and read:
"Radagast screwed it up."
(Laughter)
But what was going on with me?
If I didn’t do what wanted in life and devoted myself to doing my thing,
the next day, after failing or having a problem, I’d think again:
what a bummer, this thing I’m doing!
My job is a piece of crap.
Instead, the day after failing with the Martians or in Colombia,
the next day I woke up and kept loving what I did.
Another question they ask to me sometimes is:
-And now that you’ve made it?
I haven’t made it.
I haven’t made it at all.
Being in more theatres or being better known isn’t making it.
To me, making it is grabbing two chips,
go gambling and winning at the casino.
That’s making it rain from above.
And to me, the only things made from above are holes and poop,
those also come from above. (Laughter)
I’ve been going since I was 12 and I love doing what I do
to play and to play for a living.
I love to play, but sometimes I forget,
but luckily, I’ve a lot of people by my side,
my ninja turtles, who are my daughter, my folks, my girlfriend,
my friends, or my work team,
who, when I forget, tell me:
-Play, Rada, play.
So please accept my apologies if I leave playing.
(Applause)
When I was much younger, when I saw my parents
eating with their friends,
I, instead of toothpicks stuck on charcuterie,
imagined they were swords for my Rambos.
Or when I was a bit scared at night
I’d meet up with Batman to chat and he’d pass along some tips.
Or when I saw the snowballs,
that you shake them and the snow inside moves,
I imagined I got inside.
I like, with my acts, to bring back that kid
who is still looking at the world of adults.
Thank you very much.
(Scat singing)
(Applause)