Men's clothing, and magic, and psychometry

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Partner and I went recently to the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, to see a show about men’s clothing.

Shows likes this – fabric, clothing – usually bore the hell out of me. But this one was amusing, and really memorable. They had one of Mark Twain’s shirts. They had one of Andy Warhol’s terrible shaggy white wigs. They had a dapper trim little tux that had belonged to Fred Astaire, and a very small dress suit belonging to Truman Capote circa 1970. They had a Harris Tweed suit that might or might not have belonged to one of the British royals in the early 20^th century.

I was amused and really gratified to see these things. These were garments worn by famous people, and –

Well, and what? Why does that make them special?

Not long ago, a scientist on television showed how people impute mystical properties to things owned by famous people. He showed a group of people a fountain pen that he said had belonged to Albert Einstein, and asked if they wanted to see and hold it, and they all handled it reverently. Then he showed them a sweatshirt and told them it had belonged to Jeffrey Dahmer the serial killer, and asked them if they’d like to handle it or try it on. No one wanted to touch it.

He lied in both cases. The pen didn’t belong to Einstein, and the shirt didn’t belong to Dahmer.

But I understand implicitly what those people felt. We feel instinctively that objects take on the properties and personalities of their possessors. There are even psychics who claim that they have the skill of psychometry: the ability to read the histories of objects and their owners.

I own a Jean Cocteau lithograph – a portrait of Erik Satie – which was once owned by the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. I like to think that I can feel the personalities of all three when I look at it: Cocteau’s imagination and drive, Satie’s whimsy and purity, Shostakovich’s dark humor and power.

I probably can’t feel any such thing.

But I like to think I can.

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Dowsing

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Dowsing is looking for underground water – springs, wells, etc. – by magical means.

 

 

Many dowsers use a split twig, which looks like a slingshot. They hold the two split ends like handles, and walk. When there’s water below their feet, the twig will tell them so. It will tug at their hands, and draw the twig to earth.

 

 

When I was growing up in southwest Washington state in the 1960s, dowsing was a fact of life. A family friend named Ruth was a water witch; she made good money dowsing wells for people.

 

 

My father did it himself, but he had his own method: he filled a ketchup bottle with water, and suspended it from a thick piece of twine, and carried it around the field, looking for water.

 

 

(Here’s the thing: in those days, in southwest Washington, the water table was nearly level with the ground. There was water everywhere. After a heavy rainfall, you could put a stick in the ground, and water would gush out.)

 

 

(So how hard was it to be a water witch? Not very.  And how often did they succeed? A lot.)

 

 

This doesn’t mean that I disbelieve in it. A lot of animals can smell water; why shouldn’t people be able to do that?

 

 

But finding water below ground, in southwest Washington, in those days, was just too easy.

 

 

I believe in all kinds of crazy crap, but in this case, I’d like to see a bit more proof.

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FOR $2 ONLY!

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Numbers are magical. Partner works with numbers for a living, and claims an intimate acquaintance with them. I myself have a kind of mystical respect for them. When I go to the health club, I always try to get a locker with a prime number on it. Why? Because. I automatically / reflexively check phone numbers and address numbers and years in my head, looking for magical correspondences. Partner and I realized early on that we were meant to be together, because his birthday is October 7, and mine is July 10. 10/7 and 7/10, see? Now add the ol' seven-ten split from bowling, and the fact that Partner's sister's birthday is 11/7 . . .

 

 

It gets into everything.

 

 

For example: I was at the store the other night, trying to decide which chips to buy, and then I noticed Chester Cheetah leering out at me from a big bag of Puffcorn with the legend: $2 ONLY!

 

 

Well, it's a big bag of Puffcorn, and – while I acknowledge that Puffcorn is mostly greasy air and orange coloring and salt – that's a mighty good price.

 

 

They did not insult my intelligence by making it $1.99, you notice; they made it a nice round reasonable $2.00. And not $2.00, but $2 ONLY! I love the reversal of the words: not “only two dollars,” but “two dollars only!” It's vaguely non-standard English – just enough to make you pay attention.

 

 

And it's bright orange!

 

 

As is the Puffcorn.

 

 

I am captivated by this. It makes me wonder how my brain works, and why it's affected by things like this. It tells me, most of all, that numbers are real; they're at work in the world, and they interact with us in all kinds of ways.

 

 

Do I need to tell you that I bought the Puffcorn?

 

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Magical thinking

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Partner is a very pragmatic person, but I know he believes in luck. If his team (the Patriots / the Red Sox / the Bruins) is too far ahead or too far behind, he doesn't like it. He doesn't want to watch, but he's afraid to look away; I think he's afraid that his awareness is affecting the game in some quantum way, and he doesn't want to stir the pot too much. He gets very jittery, I can tell you.

I catch myself talking to the world a lot, as if I could influence it. It's not exactly praying, and it's definitely not bargaining – what can I offer the rain gods, or the gods of luck, if they do what I want them to do? And how would I be able to tell, in any case? But evidently I find the conversation comforting. I do it a lot.

So Partner and I are both magical thinkers.

I have read Jared Diamond and Richard Dawkins on the idea of “cargo.” This is the idea, common in some South Pacific locations, that Westerners have lots of mysterious stuff, including airplanes, radios, guns, and medical equipment. They're never seen to make this stuff. If an airplane breaks, they don't fix it; they send for a new one, and magically a new one appears.

Silly people, who think airplanes and radios are magical!

When I lived in Morocco, I heard lots of stories about the former king, Mohammed V. He had baraka, magical power, partly because he was king, partly because he was considered a saint.

My favorite story was this:

The French, who used to control most of Morocco, did not like Mohammed V, as they were afraid he might lead his country to independence someday. They exiled him first to Corsica, then to Madagascar. On the way to Madagascar, the airplane carrying Mohammed V had engine trouble. One of the crew came back to the passenger compartment to let the king know there was a problem. Mohammed V was lying down; he had a heart condition. When he heard the news, he rose from his couch, went to the cockpit, took off his prayer cap, put it on the plane's control panel, and said: “Fly.”

And the plane flew.

Mohammed V's son, Hassan II, was no saint. He was by all accounts a venal man, shrewd but not brilliant, willful, certainly not saintly. But he was the King, and he inherited his father's baraka.

He survived two brutal assassination attempts. One was at his birthday party in Skhirat, south of the capital, in 1971; a group of Moroccan military cadets came into the palace and opened fire. As many as a hundred people died, by some accounts.

But the king survived.

A year later, returning from France in the royal plane, pretty much the entire Moroccan air force tried to shoot him down.

And again, the king survived.

Funny, funny. People believe in magic.

I don't believe in magic. Do you?

Oh, wait a minute. Yes, I do.

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