Alan and Magic

For those who have heard the Neil Gaiman interview done at NU107 by Quark Henares and his gang of merry men, you may actually remember the conversation topic on writers and how-well-does-Neil-know-who which just naturally flowed to Neil knowing Alan Moore. One interesting line which Neil said went:

"...but I do remember when (Alan Moore) became a magician. It was his fortieth birthday. The telephone rang and a voice said, "Hi Neil, it's Alan. Listen, mate, just phoning up to let you know that I just turned forty and, uh, I thought, you know, that I'm having my mid-life crisis early so, uh, I'm becoming a warlock."

The NU guys had a good laugh.

I did, too.

Curiosity got me to look into what Alan Moore was actually thinking when he made the unusual decision and found something out from Alan's interview done by Frank Beaton for Ninth Art in conjunction with their 100th week anniversary entitled Snake Charmer: An interview with Alan Moore. The interview also somewhat revolved around a theatre piece Alan did, entitled Snakes and Ladders.

"...About ten years ago now, in 1993, when I turned 40, I suddenly decided to announce that I'd become a magician, just for a bit of a laugh really. But everyone took me seriously, so then I had to actually do some magic. I had initial experiences which seemed, at least in my book, to be magical experiences.

"As with most things in my life, I will try to process them in some creative way. Having had all of this extraordinary new information pouring into my head as a result of this magical experience, my first thought was 'How do I process this?' Following a kind of instinct, along with a couple of other friends who were experimenting with magic of a similar bent, it kind of felt that the most natural way to express some of the ideas I was receiving on account of the magic was in some sort of mixed-media performance."

I am currently reading the ingenious novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel, the first novel of Susanna Clarke, and found out that although people claim themselves to be magicians, it does not necessarily follow that they are actually doing practical magic. It might be a common misconception that magicians normally practice magic from day to day to actually get results depending on the need. Or at least, for me. Yet it seems that for centuries, in the nexus-of-magic Europe, most magicians shared a deep fascination in magic which led them to study the history and the craft itself, likened to historians studying history and astronomers studying the heavens. The lot professed to be magicians and yet they kept themselves distant from doing practical magic saying that it just isn't done that way. As it was, practical magicians are said to be a handful or just a countable number in the midst of the number who claim to be magicians. So, magicians may not necessarily be practical magicians.

Hmmm, interesting. I just thought of sharing what I learned and read about.

posted by Fritz @ 6:52 AM