Cosentino - Anything Is Possible

for my family

Pierre Baroni

Pierre Baroni

CONTENTS

Shev Wanigatunga

Trapped underwater in agonising pain, shackled and sinking and desperately trying not to give in to the urgent need to breathe, I really thought maybe I had pushed myself too far this time. The scar was still fresh from my most recent near miss, when a razor-sharp knife had carved into my chin in a stunt gone wrong. But at least Id lived through that one. The situation I was in now was exactly the kind where one small problem starts a chain reaction that ends in serious injury or even worse. And it was all of my own making. Scrabbling for the chains, I knew I had only seconds before water started to fill my lungs...

When I am moments away from disaster as I was then and have been too many other times for comfort, the world takes on a deadly simplicity. When things are dangerously out of control I focus on my fingers, praying they dont slip on the locks, I focus on the air I have left so I can tell myself to ignore the bursting pressure in my chest, and I focus on the numbers ticking relentlessly down to the point of no return. If I can focus hard enough Ill keep at bay the panic waiting to flood over me.

Why do I do this? Why do I, again and again, put myself in harms way performing these wonderfully elaborate, wickedly complicated, wildly dangerous stunts? The simple answer is that I am compelled to push myself as far as I can go and then keep on pushing and thats the way its been since I was a little boy.

Magic has changed my life and shaped my world. When I was young my path was altered forever by a magic book. Im a believer in destiny and stumbling upon that book felt like the first step in unlocking my true destiny. The book was about magic but its power was much greater than the information it contained. The way I felt about it worked a deep and unexpected spell on me, opening up endless possibilities. Being able to perform magic took that shy, struggling boy who had been written off by many and put him on the path to my life today, travelling the world to appear before thousands of people and astounding, shocking, delighting and entertaining them.

Its impossible to overstate what magic means to me. Its my life, my work, my purpose and my passion. I commit everything to it, and risk everything for it. Stage magic has an elemental power and not just on the audience. When you learn to make a dove appear you feel you are controlling life. When you have an audience in the palm of your hand you feel youve been given a remarkable gift.

The best magicians have an impact that lasts far beyond the final curtain. The power Houdini achieved through magic spoke to the people of his time, telling them that nothing can stop you, nothing can hold you back as long as you really believe in yourself. Looking at him and what he had created they could see the truth that we are all free to be extraordinary, in whatever form that might take. Its an incredibly powerful message.

I hope that my life in magic speaks to people in a similar way. Ive lost count of the number of things I was told were impossible before I did them. If Id listened to the doubters and the self-proclaimed experts I wouldnt have achieved anything. Instead I listened to my heart and to the believers who were always there for me. With their support and my own stubborn determination to succeed I found I could do anything I set my mind to. Trust me, anything is possible if you just believe.

So come with me and let me tell you my magical story...

Twenty-two years ago I stumbled across an enchanted key. It changed my world, UNLOCKING A FUTURE I D NEVER EVEN GUESSED AT . T HIS PARTICULAR KEY WAS HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT ON THE SHELVES OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY : A BOOK ON MAGIC . I T WAS FOR ADULTS , NOT CHILDREN , AND WHEN I PICKED IT UP I WAS TWELVE YEARS OLD AND COULD BARELY READ . B UT FROM THE MOMENT I STARTED LEAFING THROUGH ITS PAGES I WAS TRANSFIXED .

At that age school was torture for me. When Id first begun it was fine. I couldnt read at age five but hardly any kids could; thats one of the things you start to learn in your first year. I liked books and Mum read bedtime stories to me every night. I especially enjoyed the silliness and the language of Dr Seuss and the amazing richness of the illustrations and story in Dinotopia. In Prep year it didnt matter that I jumbled up the letters in my name, Paul, when I was asked to spell it out in stickers, and it still didnt matter that I didnt know how to write my name when we were supposed to carve it into the clay pencil block we made.

But by the end of the year I hadnt progressed in the way the other kids had. In Year 1 expectations were higher and I was aware I was slipping behind. I started developing techniques to hide my problem. I always sat up the back and kept quiet, hoping to remain under the teachers radar. I never, ever put my hand up to answer a question for fear of making a mistake. Like many illiterate adults do, I came up with tricks to deflect attention anytime my inability to read was in danger of being exposed. But with every month that passed my anxiety increased.

What made me even more self-conscious was my awareness that education was highly valued in our house. My dad arrived here from Italy as an eleven-year-old migrant who didnt even speak English, and yet within a short space of time he mastered English and did well enough at school to go on to university and become a structural engineer. My mother was a school teacher, soon to be promoted to assistant principal and then principal. She worked in the public system but we boys went to a private school. Not a Catholic one, as many children from Italian families did, but the Anglican Wesley College, a co-ed school that ran from Prep to Year 12.

For a while I got away with it. If I was ever asked to stand up and read aloud I would start crying. The teachers assumed it was a case of extreme shyness and before long they automatically skipped over me when they were selecting people. And so I continued to fall between the cracks. By the time I got to Year 2 just the thought of school made my stomach clench. The kids around me were doing their work and learning while I spent the whole day thinking, If I do get called on what am I going to say? How am I going to get out of it? It was a self-perpetuating cycle that put me further and further behind.

That year we moved from North Dandenong to Lysterfield. It was only a few kilometres away but it represented a huge change for me because in the previous house wed been closely surrounded by friends and now we were on two hectares of land. There was lots of room to explore but it felt far from familiar faces. My sense of isolation grew but I was so determined to hide my problems, even from my family, that it wasnt until Year 3 when the other kids were reading fluently and I was just starting to handle tricky words that my teachers really tried to find out what was going on.

Being an educator, Mum was well aware that my literacy skills werent yet where they needed to be, though she knew I was bright enough. But I hid my unhappiness from her and did my best to disguise just how hard I found the work my classmates could do with apparent ease. She took the long view: shed seen enough kids who were late bloomers when it came to academic skills not to panic. She remained encouraging and kind when she sat with me in the evenings as I stumbled through simple readers.