MY NAME is Jason Cole and I’m a magician. I was born in Barbados in 1972 and grew up in the middle of the island, in St George, right in the sugar cane. One of my earliest memories is being tied up by a sheep. When they’re staked off, you go up to pat them and they run around in circles and wrap you up to your neck. I don’t wear sunglasses. If I find a pair lying around, I’ll keep them for a few days until I lose them. But it’s just easier to squint in the sun. I’ll listen to whatever’s playing on the radio in the car. I have no CD player, no TV, no Internet, nothing. I read and write, that’s all. I’m reading Kafka’s Metamorphosis now. So Kafka would be my favourite author right now. It’s like the music: whoever’s on the radio is my favourite, whoever I’m reading . . . . I got to Serbia because I met a girl in the United Kingdom and followed her there. I brought her back to Barbados with me. That’s my wife, Sasha. I have two daughters, Alex and Vanya. Two fantastic girls. No sons, and I’m finished. I’ll eat anything from luncheon meat to lobster. But beef-and-potato roti is top of the list of things I’d put in my mouth. I was raised Roman Catholic, but I’m not religious at all. The eldest child had to go to Confirmation and we all had to go with him so I spent about 12 years in that process. 12 years! If there was a God, he’d have a little more forgiveness than that. It’s bizarre to me that adults believe in Adam & Eve. They’re fairy stories. The Greeks did something similar, the Egyptians, too. It just so happens that a bunch of people liked the stories from Jerusalem better than anybody else’s. I was told you have a direct line to God when you pray. Maybe I should pray; but I should also buy lottery tickets. When the Nigerian football team prays at half-time, that just unifies them as a team. They could be praying to God, they could be praying to Biscuit. The question is, did it work for them? They lost. So maybe they were praying to the wrong God. At school, my best friend had asthma and I thought it was cool to have asthma. I went home one night and said, “God, can I have some asthma?” Sure enough, three weeks later, I got asthma. It was just timing. So that’s God for you. Growing up in Barbados your options are water sports options. Cricket was an option but I only have one eye, so I have no depth perception. I never made a team.I was hit in the eye as a child and never got it working again properly. Obviously it affects my surfing. As a child, you take things in stride and come out right as rain. As things happen, it was pretty mild. I don’t believe in God, but I believe in magic. I think Jesus was a bit of a magician himself – the water and the wine, the raising from the dead. I do a trick where you change water into rice. If that impressed people, I could maybe get a following and, over years and years and years, be deified. I started magic in 1990 while working in a restaurant in London, flair bartending. The management told me to stop throwing bottles because I was breaking them. A magician came into the bar one evening and I got him drunk enough to show me some tricks. I was soon making more money than the bottle-throwing guys. I came back to Barbados and was working in a hotel, doing mainly bar magic for drunk people. That’s the best kind of magic. You can’t always trick a six-year-old but you can trick a drunk adult any day of the week. When my daughter Alex was born 12 years ago, I switched from adult to kids’ magic. I had to throw out some of my favourite routines. Disappearing cigarettes and taking off brassieres, for example, don’t work with a young crowd. I came up with a modified half-hour/45-minute routine I still do today. There are no magic shops in Barbados so it’s impossible to restock. So I really have stuck with the same show for about ten years. I have 15-year-old kids coming up to me who know exactly the tricks I do, from when they were four. The bad thing about the job is birthday parties are mainly Saturdays and Sundays. It would make my life a lot easier if people had their children’s parties during the week. An hour on Saturday or Sunday cuts right into your weekend programme. My kids have grown out of it and no longer enjoy seeing me doing magic. It’s embarrassing for them, I think. So that isn’t too nice either. I suppose I could train them as assistants, but over the years, they’ve revealed most of my tricks to their friends so I’m a bit disgruntled. They’ll eventually inherit a box of old shakers and napkins and some wigs and, whatever they choose to do with it, they can. When you get up there and all the kids are looking to you for something amazing – and you can produce it for them – it really is a very special feeling. Even the adults in the back row waiting to heckle, sometimes their jaw drops. It can be quite awesome. A Bajan is a hardworking, tolerant man or woman who lives in a very beautiful place with like-minded people. There are people in Barbados who just get on with their lives and don’t thank God for every single thing that crosses their plate. Barbados is a very safe and special place. I always wanted to go to New York and live in the bright lights with the movie stars. My father told me I would one day be happy I was born in Barbados. That day is here. I am content with my life. Barbados makes me content.
