I remember my mother had this deck of cards that her mother had given her and that she passed on to me. It was a gypsy tarot deck that I used to carry everywhere.

As a kid, I always was obsessed with Houdini.

I'd like to bring magic back to the place it used to be 100 years ago.

I thought instead of burying myself under dirt, I'd bury myself under water so everybody could see that you're there.

I'd go to Coney Island to hang out, and I saw a magician doing a rope trick on the boardwalk. I was fascinated. I guess that's how it started.

As a kid I used to hold my breath longer than anybody else, and then I heard stories about people accidently underwater for 45 minutes - how do you recover from that? It's not a miracle. Something allows us to survive.

Basically, I was a kid growing up with a single mother in Brooklyn.