When the Durham magician Michael Bloemeke emailed the INDY to pitch coverage of his shows, I immediately recognized his name.
This was because I had personally experienced Bloemeke’s magic when, at a birthday party he was performing at two years ago, he made an X appear on my hand. One minute, my palm was bare; the next, it was intimately Sharpied with a robust X. I have no idea how it got there.
“Was that…okay?” the birthday boy asked, pulling me aside. “I mean, was it like… violating to have that appear on your skin?”
This friend, by the way, wasn’t a child, nor was the next person’s birthday I attended, at which Bloemeke also held court with a larger-than-average crowd of adults who had gathered for the occasion. Truth be told, Bloemeke was trending in my social circle. Another friend took the magician’s business card and convinced his boss to book Bloemeke for a corporate event.
I didn’t feel violated by the marking; I did, however, maybe now believe in magic.
Bloemeke, 28, has been performing his trade for about a decade. This week, he’s taking the show on the road to Europe—his first time out of the country—to the Fédération Internationale des Sociétés Magiques (FISM) competition, which runs July 14-19 in Turin, Italy. The competition dates back to 1948 and is comprised of 97-plus magic societies. Competing in it is a big deal.
“In America, you know, there might be a little smaller competition at this convention here or there, but then this is the big one—this is, like, the main event,” Bloemeke says. “It very much feels like the Olympics for magic.”
Bloemeke grew up in Raleigh. In 2014, his freshman year in college, he decided he needed to become more interesting.
“Honestly, one day, I just thought that I needed a thing,” Bloemeke says. “I was like, ‘I need something that might be interesting and memorable.’ I was worried that I was too boring.”
“Honestly, one day, I just thought that I needed a thing. I was like, ‘I need something that might be interesting and memorable.’ I was worried that I was too boring.”
He pulled up YouTube and typed in “how to shuffle cards.” From there, research progressed to a few easy card tricks that he’d practice for his campus church group.
“It was mostly just cards for a long time. Eventually, it moved beyond that and snowballed into, just, everything, as I got more and more interested in magic and practicing and learning new stuff,” he says. “And then you learn all the good stuff is in books, so then I start buying magic books. And then I find that I’m at the local magic club.”
He’d found his thing. Soon, Bloemeke says, he began putting together shows and attending magic conventions. He won awards from the International Brotherhood of Magicians and received a “Master of Magic” degree from 4F Magic Inc., an exclusive, close-up magic convention. (Close-up magic is exactly what it sounds like—magic performed at close range, like sitting at a table with a magician.)
He fine-tuned his act, which involves lots of self-deprecation, sleight-of-hand card tricks, and a variety of props riffing on the classics. He’ll intermittently snort a rubber band into his nose and ask an audience member to cut up a rope, only for the rope—somehow!—to appear reconnected. Now he’s a regular in the Triangle performance circuit, booking shows at birthday parties, bat mitzvahs, and even weddings. Not kids’ birthday parties, though—he prefers performing for a room of adults.
“Magic’s not good for them,” says Bloemeke, referring to children. “In order to understand the trick, you have to understand what the rules of reality are, and then you can do something that kind of breaks that [rule] and is impossible. But for kids, everything’s impossible, so it’s not really magic. Clowns honestly work better.”
In March, he quit his job doing software testing in order to prepare for FISM and do magic full-time. FISM takes place every three years—it was last held in Quebec in 2022—and has two genres: Close-up and stage, which then have three sub-categories. For close-up, those are card, parlor, and micro-magic; for stage, mental, manipulation, and general.
Bloemeke is one of just four magicians traveling from North America to compete in close-up; within the category, he is performing a ten-minute parlor magic act—the only American magician to compete in that category. Though he won’t say much about his act ahead of FISM, he says that, if all goes well, he’ll post the act on YouTube afterward. (“Unless I totally bomb,” he clarifies.)
Several weeks ago, I attended a casual show that Bloemeke was performing at Bull City Ciderworks. As I slipped into my seat, the magician was explaining to the audience that he’d had a beer before the show. “See?” he held up an empty Corona, then placed it in a paper bag and flipped the bag over, holding it in such a way that it was obvious he was gripping the bottle from the top. Nothing fell out. Nice try, Bloemeke. “Now it’s gone,” he said.
But the trick wasn’t over. As the evening progressed, it became clear that this routine is all part of his trademark gaffe: establish camaraderie with the audience with a trick that they can see through. Add some bluster. Next: perform a trick they don’t understand and blow their minds.
Bloemeke did just this by asking, “Wouldn’t it be cool, though, if I could make the beer reappear full?” The audience nodded. He reached into the paper bag—a thin, average brown lunch bag—and pulled out a full Corona, then handed it to a woman in the audience. She cracked it open and tentatively took a sip. “It’s a beer,” she confirmed.
After the show, I tracked him down and asked about the Sharpie hand trick, which I have probably thought about once a week for the past two years. Could he do it again? He avoided the question, instead seamlessly transitioning into a hand clasp with another local magician walking by, thus pivoting into a new conversation. This disappearing act was fair enough; still, I found myself checking my palm throughout the night, half-expecting to see an X.
Follow Culture Editor Sarah Edwards on Bluesky or email [email protected].