(mellow music)
- Tattoos, they're my journal, they're my timestamp, a map,
they act as mementos, reminders of things,
people and places, that I can never escape.
The good, the bad, the ugly, they're all a part of me.
(tattoo gun whirring)
So my first tattoo was this one.
Literally, I didn't care what it was,
I just thought the skull was cool and the colors were cool
and I wanted a tattoo really badly, I was 17
and I think I walked around for a week
with my sleeve rolled up, just the one sleeve.
F-F-T-B stands for Fortune Favors the Bold,
which I talk about in another video,
make your own luck basically.
I've got this one on my finger,
basically my love of photography,
so when I hit the shutter button, you see the word, Smile.
Fernweh stands for, it's a German word for wanderlust,
which means being homesick of somewhere you've never been,
kind of like my love for traveling.
These four hips of the playing cards.
A lot of people think it's a magic trick involved with it,
but if you turn it upside down, it sorta spells LOVE,
so represents my love for cards.
The word Villain is an interesting one.
It's kind of a contradiction.
I had it done because it sort of symbolizes
what people would think of you with tattoos,
although I'm not a villain,
I kinda like putting it out there.
This one I had done in Blackpool, England.
It, the fingers crossed represents sort of like deception,
lying, cheating, stealing, all things involved
when performing magic, so I thought it was fitting.
This one over here is Buster Keaton.
Buster Keaton was a silent movie actor from the 1920s,
but he was also somewhat of a magician.
He's basically the first person to really use camera magic
and he invented a bunch of laws,
when it came to filming things,
laws such as if the camera doesn't see it, it doesn't exist
and I use a lot of those principles, when I create videos,
so he's been a big inspiration for me
and funnily enough, Houdini actually gave him his name.
So Houdini was a friend of his parents
and he saw him sliding down the stairs as a kid
and said, "That kid's a real buster,"
and the name just stuck.
The knight represents my favorite chess piece,
the horse, the only piece,
that can jump over the other pieces
and the most unpredictable piece on the chessboard.
The cards here, I've always liked this sort of old diagram,
you know, I've always been attracted to sort of tattoos,
that look like they were made in Russian prisons
and so this one is no exception,
but instead of the words Luck, I replaced the L with an F,
(laughs) just thought it was funnier.
Memento Mori Carpe Noctem,
some of you may know I have some decks with, by those names.
Carpe Noctem sort of represents
my love for working at night,
sort of getting things done, when everybody else is asleep,
and thinking about tomorrow,
when you're still sort of grinding away at today.
I find I'm more creative at night, than I am during the day,
just 'cause, no distractions.
Memento Mori means remember you're gonna die,
which is a constant reminder.
There's a story behind that.
So Roman Generals, right after they win a war,
they'd go into these massive parades
and at the end of the parade,
you'd have the General dressed up as a God, as a deity,
painted face and everything and he would be victorious
and people would hail him and praise him
and beside him was like a cleric or a clergyman, a priest,
and they would whisper into his ear, Memento Mori,
reminding him that he's just mortal
and that he will die one day.
The moth sort of goes with the Carpe Noctem,
sort of a night animal.
This one represents magic is dead
and it was done by Obin Jones.
It doesn't mean magic is dead in the full sense,
but sort of the traditional look of magic, to me, is dead.
The knife through the bunny hat, you know,
sort of represents that
and how we're moving into a newer place within magic.
The bird is a swallow.
Normally swallows are tattooed on sailors,
after they get 5000 miles at sea
and then another one for 10000.
You'd see it a lot on ex-prisoners as well
and that sort of represented freedom,
so it's kind of what it represents for me,
is more of freedom.
The skull on my left hand is done by
an artist in California, when I asked him to just literally,
just draw me a skull.
I've always been fascinated with skulls,
I have a few of them on my body
and I like the biology of them,
I like the symbolism of them.
The tattoos on my left hand, so there's time, death
and love, which is the three things, that we have as humans.
It's the only things we have,
it's the only things we care about.
So the hourglass for time, the skull for death
and then 52 for love.
I sorta had it done on my ring finger
to represent how I'm married to the game.
This is a Viking rune and what that rune represents
is a sort of rite of passage that you go through
and when you get into adulthood.
The three unforgivable curses (laughs).
I'm a big Harry Potter fan.
I've read all the books.
I love how the books sort of start off
as like a children's book and through the latter parts,
becomes a lot darker.
You kind of grow up with the character in the book.
Same Again, that's a tattoo that I share
with a friend of mine, Daniel Madison
and sort of every time we get together,
when we see each other,
we're in different parts of the world,
but every time we get together, we have a good time
and we sort of tell each other,
"Next time, you know, Same Again,"
and it also represents, you know, when the glass is empty
and the bartender asks you what you want to drink,
you know, Same Again.
Y-Y-Z is the airport in Toronto, basically a second home.
It sort of represents the city, I love Toronto,
I love going there, I have a lot of friends there, so.
W-W-X-D, What Would X Do?
X stands for Xavier Spade, one of my best friends
and a mentor in magic.
So every time it comes to sleight of hand,
when I think I've got something down and I'm good enough,
I go to see him and he tells me it's shit,
so (laughs) that's no good.
Sort of what that represents
and so when I'm working on something
and I think it's good enough, I think to myself,
"What would Spade do, what would Xavier do?"
and he'd probably say it was shit.
The orange tree is Robert Hudang, Robert Hujang, Hudang,
you're probably more familiar with the movie,
The Illusionist with Edward Norton,
where he makes this orange tree sprout out of a box
and it grows oranges and then eventually
the oranges open up and butterflies come out
with a sort of handkerchief and a lady's ring
attached to it and it's a really magical moment.
Obviously in real life, it's pretty much the same effect
and now, by today's standard, seeing something like that
on stage wouldn't be as impressive.
It would very much be considered classical magic
and more of an art piece,
where's back then, before the internet, before television,
to be able to create life on stage
before someone's very eyes and control butterflies like that
was something revered and feared by a lot of people
and so the sense of astonishment was much greater back then,
because the contrast between what they know
and what they're seeing was really big.
This lady sort of represents paradise for me,
represents the perfect situation.
So naked lady under a palm tree, sipping out of a skull,
I don't know what that says about me, but I like it.
This one here's my logo, my old logo.
The triangle sort of represented deception
and the three teardrops is blood, sweat and tears,
it's what I put into it.
These numbers here I've done multiple times on video,
is a magic trick, you guys have probably seen it,
one of my favorite go-to effects.
For some reason, people really like tattoo reveals
as a magic trick, like it's just something innately
about it being in your skin and permanent,
that leaves them sort of astonished.
The mermaid in the bottle represents,
it's one of my favorite tattoos
and it kind of speaks to the disgusting nature
of human beings, how they see something beautiful
and have to have it
and so having that mermaid in a bottle kind of is that,
where I said to myself, "I need to have that on my skin."
Figure 52 from The Expert at the Card Table
is the classic pass, something I'm always trying to perfect,
something, a move I'm always trying to get better
and make more invisible and more imperceptible.
I'm constantly working on it,
so it's a reminder to keep working at it
and it's kind of funny and cheeky,
'cause when I'm performing, I'll actually perform this move
and the audience has no idea,
that the tutorial for it is on my arm.
This symbol here is,
I don't even know if I can speak about it,
it's a membership, along with another tattoo
I can't talk about is the four of Spades on my finger
and some of you may know is to be a member of the 52.
This one on my arm was done in Miami.
I went to a tattoo convention and performed magic
and met a really cool friend of mine,
who's now a friend of mine,
goes by the name of Johnny Nobody and we just clicked.
He loved magic, he dabbled and he wanted to ink me up,
so I got a portrait of Howard Thurston,
who's one of my favorite all-time magicians.
The picture itself didn't have the Devil
and he added that and sort of, his reasoning for it
was that it sort of represented both sides to me,
how we all have secrets,
how we all sort of live with these demons within us,
everybody has and as a magician, I think even more so.
Oh, the straight edge.
So the straight edge razor is another one of those tattoos,
that just looks iconic, like the old prisoner tattoos,
which I really love.
I love barbering, I love going to the barbershop
literally every week to see my friends
and so I've grown very fond of the whole barber life
and taking care of your beard and stuff,
so that's just another part of my journey.
Some people choose to wear their heart on their sleeves
and I choose to wear mine in my skin.
(mellow, funky music)