Leadership Article

The creator of illusions

author: Neculai Fantanaru

www.neculaifantanaru.com

I carefully keep in my bookcase a very old book, the strong palm fiber wrapping of
which is sewed with a red line. I cherish it deeply. It’s my only connection with its
author, a man who lived and will live forever in every person who was present at
one of his shows. A man who will live in every one of his spectators’ joy, in
everyone’s weakness and strength, in everyone’s secrets. I know little about him.
Because he never told anything about himself or his past. And he discouraged
every attempt of incursion in his life. I didn’t even manage to learn his name, there
are only a few who know it, because he wanted and knew how to keep his entire
existence a secret. Through the mystery surrounding it, he distinguishes from
everybody and I think that’s what makes him memorable. However, I, being the
only one having a memorabilia from him, know how he would like people to call
him: “The creator of illusions”.

Lights were off in the hall. At the left and at the right of the scene, on some small
pedestals, four torches were burning with a white-orange flame. The scene seemed
to be empty. Silence still reigned over. Then, on the background, a strange music
started to play slowly. Almost at order, the drums that increased suspense started to
echo. And, suddenly, HE appeared from nowhere. A Venetian style mask,
beautifully elaborated, was hiding his face. His black cape and suit, which kept the
mystery growing, gave him a noble aspect.

The show started. He slowly went up in the air. I was mesmerized by the way he
flew his cape from the left to the right, as if the cape was helping him to rise.
Everything started to feel unreal. He was different from all the other illusionists I
had seen on T.V. His person seemed dual to me: one visible part, the other
invisible, probably because of the dark that reigned over the hall. I couldn’t realize
if his fine performance was really hiding magic or cheatery. He sometimes
appeared, sometimes disappeared. But he was playing his part flawlessly. He
certainly saw through me and the other spectators, he knew what we were thinking
and knew how to act. I somehow felt in the middle of the most amazing
phantasmagoria of an original illusionist. He was passing over an emotion and an
extra special feeling.

During the entire show, I paid extra attention. I was hoping, probably like all the
other spectators, to discover his tricks. I wasn’t satisfied with the gestures and
manoeuvres he was performing, I felt the need to explain myself, to discover what
lied behind them. My attempts failed. All of his secrets, all the illusions he created
in that two hours show will remain known only by HIM – The Creator of Illusions.

Everything must seem real

An illusionist’s great secret is that he knows how to distract the audience’s

attention, after previously having set a connection with his spectators. Just like
some modern poets manage to seize ten connotations with a single symbol, he
succeeds in redirecting the audience’s attention with a single move. I managed to
understand why everything goes so well in a successful illusion show, because the
illusionist is a perfectionist. Nothing would turn up perfect if he wouldn’t struggle
to achieve perfection. It’s not that easy to go from one technique to another. It’s
not that easy to cast spectators off a concrete, objective world into a world of
illusions.

Illusionism involves a great number of materials, team work and a huge effort.
Everything that can be embodied and seized through human senses must be altered
in such a way that it can’t be perceived any longer.

In this kind of a show, everything must seem real. Everything must become
convincing. Everything must be clear. So clear that the mystery becomes even
bigger. Even if spectators try to find a plausible explanation, it mustn’t be
discovered. Observing isn’t an option. The public mustn’t perceive reality, but
something that doesn’t exist. Reality is filled with various sounds, smells, feelings
or even physical elements for the illusionist to succeed in detracting the spectators’
attention and perceptions. It’s not about tricks, but getting the audience along
elsewhere, in order to disconnect their beliefs.

Leadership is not an illusion show

Illusionists are people themselves. They have fears, passions, desires and ideals.
But they developed some knowledge and abilities common people don’t possess.

Leaders, jus like illusionists, developed some knowledge and abilities that few
have. And they know how to use them very well in order to ensure their rise and
impose their supremacy. But the biggest mistake a leader can make is that of
leading people to a wrong direction, after redirecting their attention, imposing his
personal reality. There’s nothing wrong into imitating an illusionist, in getting into
people’s heads and captivating their attention, on the contrary, it’s advisable for a
leader to always make them interested. But people can’t be nourished with “vain
illusions”. That’s the most important thing a leader must pay respect to.

Although a leader is endowed with an unusual illusionist talent, he can’t abuse his
position in order to perform tricks. Leadership, even if implies governing people,
it’s not an illusionism show for the leader to nourish a fantastic illusion. A great
leader can’t afford to play the “hocus-pocus” when people’s lives are at stake. And
he can’t rely on optical illusions created by his gestures’ ability and velocity, by his
hands’ perspicacity. Leadership, like someone well said, “is a process through
which a person establishes a goal or a direction for one or many persons and causes
them to proficiently act together in order to achieve them”. A leader who’s not able
to distinguish reality from illusion will waste his credibility in time. And if the
“show” he performs doesn’t meet people’s expectations, his career might turn into
a real fiasco.

As a conclusion: A leader must start from actual, objective elements, to conceive

concrete, feasible strategies and approach methods, because this is the only way
he’ll have supporters. But if those he co-opts will discover that he only possesses a
trivial stick called “the magic wand”, the so-called leader will soon smash
deplorably, completely abandoned. Disappointed, he’ll feel like a straw floating on
turbid waters.

P.S. A leader must be a man well-anchored into reality and, especially, he mustn’t
fall into the clutches of his own illusions.

( Neculai Fantanaru, 17 November, 2009 )

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