In the August 2018 issue of my column, I published an essay about poetic ideas and magic’s potential to bring them to reality. There, I gave the example of the “1-3+2=0” effect by my dear friend Ricardo Rodriguez from Spain. (A clip of Ricardo's performance is below at the end of this post. What follows is simply a handling of that routine. His is impeccable and perfect (you can watch it on YouTube and learn it—if you know Spanish—from his book Magia deAltura published by El Caballo del Malo). However, the method used by Ricardo, although brilliant in his hands, did not fit my needs. For that reason, I decided to try a simpler method. But beyond the methods, the fundamental value of this piece is the premise and the path he found to illustrate it.
One more thing: The phrase “magic as a bubble within which other rules prevail” is from Gabi Pareras, specifically his presentation of Twisting the Aces.