Keeping the Magic Alive: Sleight of Mind with “Arneleo the Great” and “The Great Barusky”
By Marya Mann
Although the element of surprise is the capstone in the magician’s pyramid of tricks, magic is no accident. Just ask two Kona tricksters who found serious commitment in a very funny business.
Is it optical illusion or supernatural sympathy with a universe that follows the magician’s bidding? All will be revealed. So sit back, relax and enjoy the performance. The magic will set you free.
Arneleo the Great, also known as Arnold (“Arnie”) Rabin, received his first magic kit at the age of five and has been continuously perfecting his craft for more than 60 years. After cutting his theatrical teeth with Berkeley’s Moving Company Street Theater in California, he performed with Rapid Transit Street Theater in Chicago, and, by way of the Woodstock Festival in 1969, he arrived in South Kona, along with a cadre of other hippies escaping the dominant paradigm during the ‘70s.
Like many, he found a true love, married, had children, and embarked on his “day job” as owner of A Real Estate Concern in West Hawai‘i. As Principal Broker, he admits with a conspiratorial wink while sitting in his Kainaliu realty office – fingering a deck of cards on his desk –that he sometimes uses magic in closing real estate transactions.
It’s a tricky job, but somebody’s got to do it.
On the other hand, Barusky the Great, also known as Barry Gitelson, was so shy as a child he failed a class once by refusing to stand up and read a report he’d written. Arriving on the Big Island around the same time and era as Arnie, they became friends.
Barry discovered his theatrical calling when Arnie offered an adult education class at Konawaena High School in 1972. “Arnie said, ‘Will you come take my class? It’s free, and if you take it I get paid. I just need 13 people to sign up and I’ll get paid. You don’t even have to come, just sign up.’ So I did,” says Barry.
And abracadabra! Soon after, Arneleo needed a new assistant for his magic puppet show. Barusky was his man. They threw away all previous scripts and performed together impromptu—a captivating team. Eventually, they dropped the puppets too and began dwelling in a world of spontaneity, cultivating their instincts to surprise, astonish and make everyone wonder: what in the white rabbit world is going on? “We wanted to wake people up out of their complacency,” says Arnie of their improv
theater days.
What is magic? Love is magical. Cats and ozone-scented waterfalls have a magic about them, but what is stage magic, really? “Magic is the willing suspension of disbelief,” says Arnie. “I never claim to be magical. I always tell people this is for entertainment. People will believe what they want to believe.”
People who want to laugh and enjoy the card tricks, coin tosses, scarves, knives and a sorcerer’s enchantment with chairs, tables, ropes and top hats, “will go down the garden path with me,” says Arnie. “It’s psychology and timing, but I do mainly comedy magic. It’s mysterious, but that’s just the vehicle to build tension, and when you get a laugh, it’s funnier. I always try to create a shtick. I involve people and build a dramatic story along the way, having some fun with them.”
Magic isn’t for everyone. He’s been called “the devil” by a woman in a children’s Halloween spook house and once onstage doing his Kellar Knot Trick, when audience volunteers are asked to come and tie the magician up, he’s had grown men try to screw him up completely.
It’s impossible to escape, but Arneleo does, just like the iconic escapologist and stunt performer Harry Houdini, who actually named himself after the more revered French magician Robert Houdin according to Arnie. “Before that, the French government sent the original Houdin to Algeria to subdue the natives. He did a trick similar to the one David Copperfield does on TV: Houdin bit a chicken’s head off, spit it out and picked it up, put it back on the chicken’s head and the chicken walked away. The headman bowed and said, ‘You have superior power.’ And that’s how,” concludes Arnie, “Houdin subdued the entire country of Algeria.”
How did he do that?
“Very well, I’d say,” the maestro teases.
Can you tell us how?
“Can you keep a secret?
Yes!
“So can I,” he says, a glint in his eye.
Resisting the temptation to tell how a trick works is a finely-honed ability for Barry too. He’s more likely to share notes on the delicate art of bonsai gardening, a beloved hobby that enchanted him after moving to the Big Island in 1970. Embracing the hippy lifestyle while farming on a commune in Honaunau, the self-described “poor haole Jewish boy” born and raised in Washington, D. C. discovered the magic of growing plants for food, which grew into an appreciation for bonsai. Hooking up with David Fukumoto of Kurtistown, “one of the true great masters of bonsai,” he eventually became the President of the Big Island Bonsai Association.
Ah, but where did he learn how to swallow a six-foot-long balloon?
“It’s so simple to misdirect somebody,” explains Barry. “One thing they’ll do is they’ll follow the moving object, if you move your hand. Or if you use a person’s name, as soon as you say it, they’re going to look at you. My hands could do anything.”
We are standing on his lanai in Captain Cook, surrounded by the graceful miniature trees he meticulously shapes, when he introduces me to his wife Kris, one of the Great Barusky’s first fans.
Did she ever assist her husband on stage by letting him cut her in half?
“No,” she laughs.
“Of course not,” quips Barry. Without blinking, he says, “That was my sister. Now she’s my half-sister.”
Barely inside the doorway, Barusky has a deck of Bicycle playing cards in his hand. “You’re into neuro-linguistic programming, aren’t you? Come sit here for just a moment.” He points to the chair in front of a wood table.
Okay.
“A deck of cards. Shuffle to your heart’s content. Now, I may as well tell you. . .Relax. Now, you think you’re shuffling. It’s completely free will, of course. And I am controlling every move you make. Tell me when you’re done.”
Following directions, the shuffle happens.
“Just like I was hoping you’d do,” he says. Cut once. Three piles. Choose a card. Shuffle shuffle. Watching closely, using all 100 billion neurons in the brain, observant eyes, seeking out the decoy movements behind the patter and manipulative, attention-diverting moves.
“Is this the card?”
It is. How did he do it?
“It’s all pure physics.”
Can you explain it?
“That’s actually called ‘The Trick that Can’t Be Explained.’
You’re pulling my leg. Are you lying to me?
“Would I lie to you?”
The irony of a magician’s skill-set is that they create subterfuge to spark a deeper truth. They use illusion to break illusion, create an unnatural—or is it supernatural?—maneuver, an artful dodge, to alert us to a truth. We don’t know everything. There’s a lot going on we can’t see. To trip people up, magicians trip the light fantastic, take us on a trip.
They hack the neural net that shapes our perceptions, making us see with fresh eyes, shaking us up enough to be stunned and tickled back into the present moment. We’re not in Kansas, Tahiti, or worrying over the laundry. Or trying to focus with such complete attention as to not be tricked into seeing something that isn’t real. But we are tricked anyway—by surprise, flash, daring, chutzpah and humor.
We want to believe the incantations, sleight of hand and spell-binding spectacle that stir the ever-alive child within. Novelist Tom Robbins writes that we need magic because, “Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.”
“Otherwise they are just living in this Maya, you know,” Barry shakes his head, sympathetic. “The illusion of what’s going around them.”
Nothing is beyond the reach of devoted magicians. Rope-to-silk tricks, card tricks, flying deceptions and daring adventures that thrill the imagination. But no death-defying acts—unless you consider life itself to be a death-defying act. No self-destructive media events like Houdini, who performed straitjacket escapes while dangling upside-down from the roof of a building for publicity. “He easily could have died doing many of his tricks,” says Barry.
So what’s the difference between you and Houdini?
“Basically none. Except he didn’t do comedy and I don’t risk my life,” Barry chuckles. “And we’re not doing it for the money.”
These two Kona tricksters do a couple of noble tricks that Houdini didn’t do either. In the early days, they performed shows at Kona’s Hale Halawai for all the handicapped children on the island, “The Very Special Arts Show.” They’ve gone into schools, homes, senior care centers and community centers. They perform at least two volunteer shows every month.
“It’s fun,” Arneleo says, “To have powers and abilities far beyond the abilities of mortal man. You catch the bug. If you like to entertain, tap dance, sing, it’s the kind of thing that gives you energy when you give it.”
Barry agrees. “It just feels natural. At first it was nerve-wracking and there were still those butterflies. Before every show, Arnie and I will peek through the curtain, like at the Aloha Theater for our Magic Spectacular, and we’ll look out, and we’ll put our arms around each other and we’ll go, ‘We love you, just so you people know.‘ “
Both magicians participate in the Big Island Magic Club, which meets on an irregular basis. “We show each other tricks and teach each other. We need young kids to start getting interested because we’re getting older and we need someone here to carry this tradition on,” says Barry, whose “day job” as manager of the Kona Coffee Mill provides a good fit for his performing lifestyle.
Together, they have sustained one of the longest-running show business traditions in Hawai‘i Island history: The Magic Spectacular, an extravaganza that offers magic, mystery, mirth, perhaps some mayhem, and most delicious of all, lots of laughter. The 26th Annual Magic Spectacular on March 17 features these two local legends as well as Big Island Magic Club members, performing onstage with headliner magician Stephen Bargatze, known as the “funniest comedian in America,” at the Aloha Theater in Kainaliu.
You can expect tricks, surprises, glamorous lighting, sobering amazement, zany comedy, even awe at these magic performances, but beyond the illusions, the broader magic may be taking place offstage. The Magic Spectacular will benefit another magical resource, SKEA, the Society for Kona’s Education & Art, a vital cultural center founded in 1981 by Arneleo’s late wife, Teunisse Rabin, to provide classes, exhibits and events for people of all ages in the community.
Anyone who wants to know the secrets behind the magic, the explanations for tricks that can’t be explained, the impossible escapes and supernatural conjurings that are essential tools in the master magician’s tool belt will want to take Arneleo or Barry’s classes. They mentor youth, teens and adults through the Big Island Magic Club.
What does magic offer a boy, girl or adult?
“Definitely a possibility of a way out,” Barry says, and he’s not just talking about escapology—or is he? “I mean, you can find employment eventually. It’s not steady work, but you can get well paid (for parties, concerts, events). And the rewards are way beyond the money, way beyond. I’m not a big illusionist. I mean, I have a guillotine, I can saw someone in half, I can do a chair suspension, I can do illusions. Illusions are easy. They are usually just pieces of equipment you have to know how to work. But what really inspires me is the humor.”
The non-profit SKEA, offering the magic of arts instruction, art camps during school breaks, and a community center in South Kona for everyone, deserves to benefit from the Magic Spectacular, says Barry.
“SKEA has been an amazing part of the community here. They have brought art into the schools when the government failed us and they are so important, I mean for kids to have that, and to have a community meeting place that has been there for all these years – a place where you can go take classes or go to a concert or do anything. It’s just an important part of the community; we can’t lose it.”
The Magic Spectacular will help keep the magic alive.
Magic, it’s not just a trick of the imagination. It’s the perpetuation of the imagination. ❖
The 26th Annual Magic Spectacular will be performed on Saturday, March 17, at the Aloha Theatre in Kainaliu with a matinee at 2:30 and evening show at 7:00 p.m. See calendar for more details, and for information, call 808.323.9707.
SKEA is located on Mamalahoa Hwy in Honaunau, at the site of the historic Japanese Language School, between mile markers 105 and 106. For more detail, call SKEA at 328.9392.
Reach Arneleo the Great at 808.322.3677 or arneleo@gmail.com
Reach The Great Barusky at 808.323.9707 or alohamagic@aim.com
Contact writer Marya Mann at Marya@LoomOfLove.com.
