C H A P T E R F O U R

My Dad

I often reminisce about the good ol’ times—me

and my dad sitting on my brother’s Barracuda.

As you can probably tell by now, I come from a family where we genuinely care about one another. In some ways, I know what we have as a family is rare. We are tight and committed to seeing one another do well. There’s unconditional love and support that I recognize as being an essential ingredient in my own success. I am who I am today because of my father’s guidance and sage wisdom. He lived an authentic life. He is my inspiration to try to live up to the standard to which he lived his life. He set the bar pretty high. I strive each day to make him proud.

My dad was a pretty strict disciplinarian. It was my mom who al-ways tried to coax Dad into loosening the reins. I wasn’t even allowed to wear blue jeans as a kid! I could never sneak out of the house in the middle of the night or get away with smoking a cigarette. Someone was always looking over my shoulder, whether it was one of my older brothers or my parents. I guess that comes with being the baby of the family. Despite the strict rules, I managed to keep everyone on their toes. I wasn’t a bad kid, but I was always pushing limits.

In 1995 my father was diagnosed with stomach cancer. After he heard the news, the doctors delivered a second blow. The disease had progressed to stage four—the worst-case scenario. Doctors gave him

three weeks to live. Dad was the type of man who didn’t buy into what the doctors were telling him. He knew he could outlive their grim pre-diction. As the saying goes, that which does not kill you, makes you stronger. At least for my dad, it inspired him to live stronger. He started doing sit-ups and push-ups every morning just to prove he was a man of strength. He was very ill on the inside, but on the outside his physi-cal condition was superb.

For most of his life, Dad was always the picture of strength and good health. He understood the science of nutrition and physical activ-ity, even before it became fashionable. As a young man, he was a body builder featured in many muscle magazines. He was a Golden Gloves boxing champ and a Pennsylvania state wrestling champion. His

My mom and dad.

I guess this is where my obsession with physicality comes from. My dad was a top athlete, a body builder, a boxer, and a football player. It was ingrained in me as far back as I can remember.

athleticism and physique were always important to him. He had the chance to play football on scholarship for Penn State but chose to take care of his parents instead of attending college. Family was every-thing to my dad.

He was such a strong man in both character and physical strength. Throughout his life and during his illness, he continued to train like an elite athlete. I think that kept him alive much longer than any-one expected. Remarkably, the day after the cancer surgery on his stomach, Dad got up from his hospital bed and began walking so he could quickly rebuild his strength. He always had such a positive out-look. Dad had a marvelous attitude about connecting the mind, body, and spirit, something that was very forward-thinking for the time. I watched him and marveled at his attempts to conquer the disease that was eating away at his life. I absorbed his spirit into mine. He amazed me each and every day.

There were some really rough days during my father’s illness, but he always smiled. He lit up a room. When anyone asked how he was doing, Dad would always answer, “I’m doing great.” Other people talked to him about their personal issues, and instead of thinking of himself, he reached out to help by talking to them and motivating them to change their circumstances. He tried to live the final years, months, weeks, and days of his life as if nothing were wrong. He never once gave in to the notion of his mortality. He never complained about pain or discomfort. His motivation was simple; he had a grandchild on the way. At the time, my brother J. D. and his wife were expecting a baby. My father was de-termined to live long enough to meet his first grandchild. And he did.

My father used to say, “Illness is a part of life, son.” He taught me to appreciate the people you love and to cherish each moment because you don’t know how many moments you’re going to have. I think about those words every day—especially those days I am putting my life on the line by choice. My father didn’t have a choice about dying. His dis-ease was irreversible. He had to live knowing he could die at any given moment. That’s why I don’t fear death. I don’t worry about dying at all. Death is a great stimulus for the imagination. I watched my father live a peaceful life, even in his final moments. Our family is very spiritual, but my father was an extremely religious man. He had faith and be-lieved you can move mountains if you set your mind to it. If you have enough belief in yourself, there’s nothing you can’t do—especially when you’re willing to work for it. His faith gave my dad comfort that allowed him to cope and deal with his failing health.

Watching my father die was agonizing for me. It made me take a step back and assess my choices in life. Let’s face it. Everybody is dealt a different hand in life. It’s all about how we choose to play that hand. Some people die in their sleep, others get hit by a car, while others at-tempt death-defying stunts that sometimes, not often, but sometimes can go very, very wrong. Choices. Life is full of choices.

“Even though my dad is no longer with us, there’s a little bit of him that lives inside my brothers and me. We all have something from him that he’sgiven to us. We were blessed to have had him.

If we can be a fraction of the man that he was, that’s something to strive for. If we can do that, we will have lived a successful and fulfilling life. ”

Costa, my brother

When my father was diagnosed, I put my career on hold. I wanted to stay at home and take care of him. I had a harder time accepting my father’s fate than he did. When his throat became too blocked to eat or drink, I made sure he had fluids by hand-feeding him water and juice using a teaspoon. I became desperate to get him the help he needed to survive. Every doctor we took him to said the same thing: “There’s nothing we can do.” I can’t accept that self-defeatist attitude, not for me, and certainly not when it came to my father’s life. There must have been something we could do. I make my living figuring out ways to make the impossible possible. Surely I could find a solution to this problem. I insisted the doctors perform a tracheotomy so my father could breathe on his own a little easier. Maybe it was selfish, but I wanted as much time as I could get with him.

Still, it was hard for me to accept, but my father was fading away. I realized it was more important to choose how we would spend our last moments together than it was to find a way to prolong the inevitable.

My father died in 1998. He died in my arms. I knew he was strug-

My dad posing with Tronik, just before he was diagnosed. To this day, I take this picture with me everywhere I go.

gling to hold on, but it was time to let him go. I whispered to my father, “Go.” He closed his eyes and peacefully drifted away.

My dad’s death helped me realize how precious life is. My perspec-tive on everything changed after he passed. Things I thought were im-portant, like music or magic, paled in comparison to cancer and death. What I do is entertainment. It’s not cancer. We have troops overseas fighting a war, endangering their lives for the sake of ours, for the sake of our country. It sometimes makes it hard for me to think what I of-fer is in any way significant or should be rewarded. And yet bring-ing entertainment to the world, making people think and feel, raising their consciousness and belief that anything is possible, is relevant if not essential. Historically speaking, entertainment has always thrived in times of war and depression. People need that escape then, now, and forever. I had to press on.

My sense of responsibility to take care of my mom and the rest of my family was enormous after my father died. Although I’m the crazy one in the bunch, we all understand one another really well. We have tremendous respect, trust, and love for one another. Of course, those feelings are heightened when it comes to my mom.

As a performer, my aim is to do all kinds of wild, dangerous stunts and tricks to ensure you fully engage in my demonstration from begin-ning to end. To accomplish this, I am always pushing the limits of what is attainable without getting hurt. You can’t be senseless when you at-tempt the kinds of demonstrations I do. You have to have a balanced blend of courage, training, diligence, and skill. If you don’t, you will end up killing yourself or being very disappointed with the outcome.

Look, I don’t want to die, but risk is a part of what I do. You can’t live your life in fear. What I do is insignificant in the real world because I choose to place myself in dangerous situations. I recognize the risks I take. I don’t have to. I want to. My father and other people with illness in this world don’t choose to have that illness. It chooses them. My father was never scared—or at least he never let on that he was fright-ened in any way. He had a resolve that was enviable and admirable.

My father chose to be incredibly positive and to tap into the kind of courage I have never had to know. His inner strength and outlook on life was such an inspiration. Everything I do, I do for him. I dedicate my life, my art, my success, and my love to my father. It is my greatest dis-appointment that my dad isn’t here to see what I’m doing. All of those years of struggling, scraping together every last dime to stage a show, all of those years of promising him I’d make it—somehow it would all seem so much more significant if Dad were still here.

Courage is a willingness to face what is not easy. Courage empowers people to be stronger, to grow and evolve as better people. Being honest with myself is my greatest act of courage. I live in a world of make-believe. A made-up fantasyland of illusion. It takes a lot of guts to look in the mirror and call yourself out, to see what and who you really are. It takes a tremendous amount of bravery to say you’ve been wrong. It

may not be the most popular answer or what someone else wants to hear, but it takes courage to face the truth. Courage comes in all shapes, sizes, and forms. To me, my father demonstrated the type of courage where he shielded his family from his pain. He didn’t want any of us, including himself, to go to a negative place. He wanted to uplift us and be an indelible role model. What amazes me is that he would wake up every day and say he felt great—even when I know he felt like shit. His outlook has given me a totally different perspective and appreciation for days when I feel sick. I always know I’ll get better. My dad didn’t have that luxury.

I often get a chance to meet kids with disabilities, who are in wheel-chairs or whose bodies are riddled with terminal diseases. They have a smile from ear to ear. They have a love for their family and an appre-ciation for every minute of life. They have a disposition and acceptance of their lives that just blows my mind. They appreciate what they have and don’t focus on what’s missing or what they’re losing. They don’t get caught up in the crap most people do, myself included. Seeing these kids is a reminder of how important it is to enjoy the moment. I find myself gravitating toward challenged people because I know that at the end of the day, they live a richer life in a shorter amount of time than most of us. They totally get the difference between quality and quantity.

No one knows how long they have to live. When I’m in a wine bar-rel attempting to escape high above a concrete parking lot before the barrel is dropped and I am splattered all over the ground, I can tell my-self, This will be over in a few minutes. I know I’ll be fine and that I’ll survive. I don’t fear anything I do, because I don’t fear death. When you don’t fear death, what on earth is there to fear? It doesn’t matter if I’m lying in a coffin trying to escape or lighting myself on fire, I face fear head-on—I find my courage and muster up my composure to stay cool and keep myself professional. I tell myself to just get through what I’ve got to do. I trust my instincts and my training to know without a doubt that I will survive. That’s how I get through a lot of my performances. If I don’t kill myself, I know I’ll be all right.

J. D., Dad, Costa, Mom, and me.

“Dad was the main link in our family. To lose the main link of a chain means that chain is broken. Losing our dad was such a blow to each and every one of us. Not having him in the equation was such an empty feeling. But it brought us closer because we no longer had our dad.

We had to support one another.”

J. D., my brother

Not long after my father passed away, I found the motivation to really get my website up and running. My first album was coming out, and I needed a place to sell it. My father always told me it was important to appear bigger than any venue I was playing. He said it was better to create the perception that you’re larger-than-life, that you’re more successful than you might actually be. I had set up cor-porate headquarters for Angel Productions in the den of my mother’s home. I set up a four-line phone system that answered automati-cally and gave you options like, “You’ve reached Angel Productions Incorporated. If you want to reach Criss Angel, press 1. To reach Angel Productions Incorporated Recording Artists Group, press 2.” I thought this system followed my dad’s idea of appearing bigger than we were. Of course, I answered all of the calls, processed all of the credit card orders, and took messages for Criss as “Nicholas.” I wanted to use a different voice when I answered as Nicholas, so that no one knew they were speaking to me. I didn’t have enough money in those days to hire an actual assistant. I barely had enough money to pay the phone bill.

To sell my CD, I installed a toll-free 800 number. Occasionally, peo-ple phoned in to order the CD and I’d forget about Nicholas and answer the phone using my real voice. People would say, “Criss, is that you?” I could never say yes. One day, I started getting an inordinate number of calls—my phone was ringing off the hook. I’d answer and people were asking about booking the trip they just heard about on TV. I was getting hundreds of calls a day asking about a European vacation offer. I did a little research and discovered a European travel company was using an 800 number that was similar to mine.

Just in case you didn’t know this, when you call an 800 number, the company you’re calling pays for that call. All of a sudden, I was paying for hundreds of phone calls a day that had nothing to do with selling my CD. It was beginning to add up—and fast. I called the travel company to explain the situation. They were losing money and busi-

Every moment is but a memory to cherish forever.

My dad and I at his sixtieth birthday party.

ness because I had a similar phone number. I suggested they buy the number from me. They offered me $30,000! Because of that, I was able to fund myself for the next year, allowing me to do what I needed to do to advance my career to the next level. I wanted to get out of playing small clubs and rooms and move into larger live shows.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-24