"No lock has ever locked itself; it is always man’s idea. In all things lies a yearning for freedom. As the river moves toward the open sea, as the sea itself is endlessly evaporating, ascending and finding new confinement in clouds, which in turn relax and lose their contents to gravity—there is not a lock in all the world that would rather be locked than open. Recognizing this, the resourceful escape artist does not ‘pick’ a lock. He seeks the openness at its heart, and calls softly into it, coaxing awake with his thoughts the device’s own self-knowledge. So, to return to the question—” Houdini whirled around on his heels and walked upstage, plucked Pinocchio from his chair and returned to the batten, holding the puppet aloft for his invisible audience to behold. “Pinocchio was a master of running away from home. Indeed it was the first thing he did after his legs were made, as soon as Gepetto had helped unstiff them. Before that point he walked with stiffness, rather like certain militias of today. He had not yet begun to tackle jails, whales, and, most famous of all, his own wooden self, the subject of tonight’s demonstration. Now. How did Pinocchio the human ‘escape’ from Pinocchio the puppet? “On the technical level, since we do not know the exact position of the boy inside the marionette, let us for discussion purposes assume that he was arranged in the most problematic posture known to liberationists: that of the straightjacketed individual, in which case his arms would be folded behind him, in this manner.” He demonstrated with the puppet. “This posture is identical, incidentally, to the one I assume in my just-released motion picture feature, The Man From Beyond, where I had myself frozen into a two-ton block of ice. Ice of course is less dense a substance than oak, pine, or wood of any species, but both ice and wood, when molded closely to one’s physical body, are several orders of magnitude more challenging than the sheets and straps of a canvas straightjacket. I can assure you, however, that a straightjacket provides plenty adversity for any man. I happen to have one backstage if anyone should care to verify this statement?”
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