David Blaine: Drowned Alive? Part II
Posted By Paul Kotik on 2 May 2006
He’s lost fifty pounds since January in the course of preparing for this event, he says. Blaine is a very fit-looking young man, with well-defined and highly toned musculature. He lost the weight, he explains, to reduce as much as possible his tissues' requirement for oxygen.
His preparations have included going through scuba certification and several stints learning freediving from the PFI team. Blaine’s resolve is impressive. He traveled from his New York City home base to wherever Kirk & Co. could squeeze in some quality time with him. His final pool training session with the PFI Team was just last night, during which he was inspired.
When I’d first taken my place in the front row of the media corral, squatting on cold pavement under the phalanx of TV camera lenses, I’d asked a very authentic-looking stills photographer why she was there. “Why am I here ?” she mused. She had useful objects - pens, sunglasses, tape, markers, pouches and so forth -velcroed all over her, a loud statement of her practicality and experience. “I guess some guy’s going to go into that ball with the water.” Persistent interrogation drew out the name of the New York daily newspaper she worked for, David Blaine’s name, and the suggestion that Blaine is “probably famous, maybe in Europe”.
Copyright 2006 Paul Kotik/DeeperBlue.net
David Blaine now had the press eating out of his hand. He revealed that last night’s pool epiphany had resulted in a change to the stunt plan. That’s what he called it: a stunt. At the end of six days, he announced, he’d be pulled out of the sphere. He’d then be handcuffed and otherwise bound with chains weighing 150 lbs., and tossed back into the sphere sans breathing apparatus. He would then hold his breath for about nine minutes while freeing himself from the iron restraints. "If I fail", he intoned, "I will drown and the world will see something pretty insane."
Whoo-hoo! The journalists liked this a lot. They whooped and cheered as Blaine melted away from the microphone and headed for his cloth Bucky Fuller hut to complete his preparations. The spectators now numbered several hundreds, and packed the mezzanine balconies of nearby New York State Theatre and Avery Fisher Hall, waving and calling out to Blaine as he handshook and autographed his way to privacy.
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