TRANSCRIPT: My name is Alan Moore and I am a writer and magician, and all of my life thus far, I have lived in Northampton. Northampton is a town that is at the economic, geographic, and historic dead center of England, and to a degree, this town is my territory.

At the age of 40 in 1993, I decided that I had a fairly stark choice in front of me. I could have a midlife crisis, which was fashionable amongst a number of my 40-year old friends, or I could perhaps attempt something more interesting and go absolutely stark slobbering mad and declare myself to be a magician. I felt that the latter option would probably have more entertainment value, both for myself and for those around me, than simply wandering around asking what it was all about and where life was going.

Magic has pretty much dominated my work and life since then. It has, more than anything, opened up a different kind of language, a different way of reading and understanding the world around me, Magic, I've come to realize, is not an escape into some fabulous nether dimension, some marvelous, mystical dream world populated with extraordinary creatures. Yes, there are extraordinary creatures and strange dream landscapes that are very much a part of magic, but magic, more than this, to me, is a new way of seeing our own world. It's a new language, a new set of eyes, a new way of reading the signs and symbols and messages that surround us every day. Part of that for me has been the task--as a shaman, as a magician--of mapping my territory, trying to understand the streets that I walk down every day, trying to understand the mundane and perfectly ordinary town in which I live from a new perspective, on a new level. For the magician, the act of walking down the street to the shops to buy 20 Silk Cut is a profound magical act. Part of this is understanding that every moment of our lives, we are already living in a magical territory.

To some degree we live within our consciousness. We do not actually see the world: what we see is our perception of the world; that is all we can ever see. Thus, our perception, our consciousness is, in some sense, a truer reality than the hardcore reality of bricks and mortar that surrounds us. For the magician, the act of walking down a street is less to do with the solid paving slabs beneath his or her feet, more to do with the web of association, of memory, of fiction, that surrounds the place through which the magician passes. Any street that you walk down will have layers of association and memory connected with it. It will have memories of when your mother perhaps pushed you down that street in your push chair when you were 18 months old; you'll perhaps remember playing with your friends there when you were 10; walking a girlfriend home down that street when you were 17. There will be all of these personal layers of recollection and history.

On top of that, there will be the history of the place itself, that information that you've managed to cull from history books, town records, famous people that are associated with this site, murders, ghosts. There will also be a layer of rumor, lie, legend, prejudice. A certain neighborhood is associated with a certain class of people, usually the wrong class of people. This may be justified, it may not be, but it has a certain reality in that that idea will be coloring the thoughts of anybody who passes through that location. So to some degree, as the self proclaimed, self-styled Shaman of Northampton, I felt that it was my duty to try to understand the landscape around me in a new way, to map it, to impose my own map of what were important concepts, important places, important to me, to impose that map upon the landscape, rather than simply follow the maps that have already been given us--civic maps, political maps.

To some degree, in this cusp of the century, we are at a unique standpoint in our history. Something is happening to our maps and to our sense of geography, partly through increases in our skills and abilities with communication, partly through the sudden dominating presence of the internet. Our sense of geography is almost evaporating. Geographical distances, which a couple of centuries ago would have ruled our lives and the possibilities of our lives with an iron hand, now seem to mean far less. We can talk to somebody in Japan; in a couple of moments, we could be in Japan, probably within 12 hours. This is quite staggering, when you consider it in the light of, say, our grandparents, who, in the case of my grandparents, probably never went beyond five miles of the place of their birth throughout their entire lives. Consequently, our maps are evaporating, if you like. They no longer mean the same thing that they did. Distances these days are electronic distances, rather than distances measured in how fast a horse can travel or how fast a man can walk.

Consequently, with the maps tending to boil away, become less meaningful, it seems that we have an opportunity. We can, to some degree, reclaim our circumstances, the landscapes around us, impose our own maps, impose a network of sites and locations that have meaning to us in terms of our own private mythologies.

Magick is real. We've all just seen Alan being filmed materialising.

He's a great man, treasure of Britain if not the whole world

There is a reason you are watching this now

0:38 the auto-captions say "I could have a middle earth crisis." Looks like it  lmao

Hello from syria

"Moy naim is Alan Moa. Oi'm a roita. . . " -took me a while to hear him properly. I LOVE dialects and his speech and rhythm are unique. The deep sonorous tones are soothing.

Woah I was skeptical about magic being real, but this guy just willed himself into existence like Dr. Strange! That ought to shut up nonbelievers.

There is magic just in reach. Find it, feel it, move it as it moves you.

words are will

Whenever he said he wanted to impose his own map of the world as opposed to other maps that have been given to us from the outside, that was fucking real. Very relatable. He is describing an experience i have struggled for years to describe but i felt like i had failed and given up on it. Thank you man

What's funny about reading comic books growing up is that there was pretty much no television interviews with, creators and when there was it was a special treat. Of them Allenmore was the least represented in most mysterious, never giving interviews none that I was aware on TV. I had no idea what he sounded like I just knew he was British. And all the last couple weeks have I been exposed to him, I realize the living legend he is. And this particular video some'd up exactly what magic is for me. Unseeable unhearable thoughts consciousness. Ideas imagination. Something that comes from nothing creation. How horrible that are capitalistic commoditizing it.

WE BELIEVE YOU! WE BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU SAY! D:

Just stop staring at us like that...

Thank you so much for this upload :D

Wow thanks

Another interesting one 👍

Hiya, loving these series of Alan Moore talks, just wondering what they are known of collectively, I would like to a copy of them as a whole. Thanks for posting them :)

Yes yes yes yes!!!!

🤘💯

Meanwhile Michael Warrens eyes wander to the hearth