My name is Patrick Barnavis and I'm an East Coast native that shuffles cards.
I've had cards in my hand for something like five or six years.
I spent the first few years goofing around and trying everything out and wasting time
really up until when I finally did something right.
I didn't know what I did right, I didn't know what I needed to do next, but I couldn't
get away from the feeling that I was totally onto something, the feeling that I had figured
out what it means to be cool somewhere in the world.
That feeling meant so much to me because frankly I've never been a very cool person and if
I'm going to be honest with myself I'm not super attached to what Carter Street looks
like.
I'm pretty blind to it I think.
I don't know what my moves look like and I don't care to know.
I was never concerned with doing things the right way because I didn't think anybody
really expected anything of me so I tried everything I could think of and I created
as fast as I could and each attempt gave me a little more experience and pushed me a little
closer to a better version of myself.
After five years of tiny successes and failures your guts going to get pretty good at telling
you when something's good or bad.
If I see somebody else has something good I usually just take it.
Being original is a risk I've never been interested in taking.
The only thing that I've ever been concerned with is how moves feel right now, how other
people's moves make me feel right now, how my moves make other people feel right now.
So I'll take anything from anybody if it helps me do what I need to do because I'm a selfish
creator you know I'll look that guy in the eye and take his favorite idea and thank him
for it in the same day.
The best creators are the guys that can steal your move without you noticing.
The guys that can use your own idea and make you feel like you're looking at something
new.
At the end of the day for me, Carter Street is an emotional problem.
What's profound about Carter Street is how pointless it is yet.
Here we are.
I don't think Carter Street is any more or less pointless than any other art form and
that's the one truth that I can't shake.
I am not an electrician, a mechanic, I'm not a farmer.
What I do doesn't help the world keep spinning but the way I move can move someone's spirit
and to move someone's spirit is to move their whole world and after I move their world it's
over, done deal, they'll feel that same nagging burn in their chest to move someone else and
it won't go away and so they succeed or they give up on themselves.
That's legacy, that's real.
The only thing I'm attached to is the size of the crater that I'm making.
If I have to stop doing this one day I want kids around the world to see that crater and
understand that Patrick changed the world.
I want that crater to be enough to move people by itself.
What is art really?
To me art is just the opportunity to make somebody feel what I'm feeling.
There's no other way for me to do that other than to create and why do people create?
We create because we want things, not toys, I mean we want, we have intention.
Those intentions, those goals are what motivate us to create.
Creation is just a means to an end and that end is decided by the realest part of you.
For me the end is to set somebody's insides on fire.
I want to be so good.
Everybody has to change their whole life just to be like me.
I want to be so good people are worried they can't be like me.
That's more powerful than any one, any one moment in time where I got things right.
I hate saving material because I don't think any move is all that important.
Creators block is what happens when you're caught between the person you were and the
person you think you need to become.
Saving material keeps me trapped in my own head and I don't need any of that.
The more attached I get to a move the harder it is to move on to the next one.
That's all I'm looking for when I create what comes next in the story.
I think that's all people really want to see, the future, the next thing that happens.
Every time I create I'm predicting where we're all heading, I'm commenting on where we are
and I'm looking back at where we were.
I'm a bigger picture kind of guy, I don't wake up in the morning and choose to continue
doing cardistry.
I pick up cards because it's what I do.
Life brought me here somehow by virtue of consequence and I accept that.
Magic Brown Abyss is a cardist and that's all I need to know.
