What can I say about Mat L’Anoire? Not much actually. If I’m honest, I barely know the chap! I have become very familiar with his work of late though, so perhaps I’ll just sum it up with an analogy…
I watch a lot of movies and I’ll watch pretty much anything. So, as well as sitting in front of the current A-lister’s, twelve squillion dollar, digi-fest I can often also be found, eyes glazing over, in front some obscure, low budget independent. I have to be honest – a lot of the ‘indies’ can be a chore because a lot of them are, well, shit. I always slide the DVD in with some trepidation, wondering if the next two hours will be spent with some young directors ‘artistic vision’ slowly eating away at the core of my very being, digesting my will to live. But, I watch them anyway because there’s nothing better than the thrill of stumbling upon a gem! Which brings me to Mat L’Anoire…
The first I ever heard of Mat L’Anoire was through a short e-mail with a simple Word document attached. Having read the e-mail, which was short but polite, and regarded the moniker with some dubiety, (I was really hoping it was a stage name!) I double-clicked the little ‘W’ icon, simply entitled ‘ACAAN’. I began to read the contents with the same type of trepidation that one of the afore-mentioned ‘indies’ might induce. Was the next ten minutes going to be spent trying to make sense of another poorly written variation?
It seems superfluous now to tell you that I was delighted with the contents, but delighted I most certainly was! “What do you want to do with this?”, was the crux of my reply. Mat said that he’d like to publish it along with some of his other creations in a small book of mentalism. Other creations? There was more? There was more! And so it was that I sat at my PC, happily double-clicking my way through a lot more little ‘W’s, completely devoid of all trepidation – it turns out this particular ‘indie’ was definitely one of the gems!
As I said earlier, I don’t really know Mat L’Anoire (and I still don’t know if it’s a stage name or not) but I do know his material is among some of the nicest mentalism I’ve seen in a long time. I only wish I’d come up with it myself!
So, here it is folks. I give you – Nevermind: The Mentalism of Mat L’Anoire.
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