When I was younger, an early teen maybe, I met Dynamo (the magician) AKA Steven Frayne, at a birthday party for my fathers friend. I think that my fathers friend was his… uncle…? It’s fuzzy. It was a party of adults and I was young, it was largely uneventful for me, haha.
It was in the middle of the crohns and arthritis flare that took him off of the nations TV for a long time. He had been an inspiration to me when I was that age, and meeting him there was exciting, despite him being so different, he was quite sick. He let me take a photo with him (I won’t post it, it was pre social transition for me, and mid illness for him, I’d bet neither of us want it floating around tumblr.)
I thanked him and said that he was cool, we talked for a bit (I was so, so shy, so my parents did most of the talking for me.)
Back then he inspired me to want to be a magician, which never came to be, but now as an adult going through my own insane health problems, he inspires me to keep going.
Watching his newest show, “Dynamo is Dead”, he is going to be buried alive and emerge a new man. I’m very aware he probably survived, or they wouldn’t have released it, but I still respect the sheer mental power it took to DO THAT. I hope I have that amount of power somewhere in me.
He definitely won’t ever read this. But thank you, Steven Frayne, for showing me that I should never let my pain stop me from reaching my purpose. Even if my purpose changes. I wanted to be a magician. Then I wanted to be a paramedic. Then, I got too sick and weak to work in the medical field. Now, I’m an artist. I was always a ‘doodler’, a ‘drawer’, but now, I am an artist. And it’s, in part, thanks to you.
