May 16, 2007
Moore on Magic
This is probably the best and most interesting interview I have ever read with Alan Moore.
I tend to see magic, in a way, as a kind of language. I think, unsurprisingly, the gods of magic ARE the gods of language. And magic is, in a sense, a kind of language with which to read the universe. It’s a language of symbols with which you can extract meaning from the most mundane things. And in fact it’s that aspect of magic that I find myself attracted to. The idea of magic as some weird alien Dr. Strange dimension that one can escape to from this one doesn’t really appeal to me. I think that if magic his anything, it’s about realizing the [stage whispering] unbelievable supernatural magic is that in just the fact that we are thinking and having this conversation. Realizing just how magical every instance is, every drawn breath, every thought. Just how astronomical the odds are against it. How wonderful. And following through these kinds of beautiful chains of symbols that can lead to some interesting revelations. But again these are revelations that to me relate to a new way of seeing life in this ordinary mundane world rather than an escape to some fantastic new plane of existence. It’s about uncovering the revelation that is in everything.
There is so much good stuff in this one, I could quote half of it. Go read it.
(For those who don’t know, Moore is the reigning mad genius of comics, who did more than just about anyone else (other than Neil Gaiman’s Sandman) to get them considered an adult medium. He is most famous for Watchmen, V for Vendetta, From Hell and Promethea. A bunch of his work has been used as source material for really awful movies (with the exception of V for Vendetta, which survived pretty well) and he is well worth checking out, as are his spoken word incantations, and so on and so forth.
Holy crap! He just got married.
He’s normally freaky looking in a completely different way.
(interview via technoccult)
Filed by billy at 12:59 pm under consciousness,language,research
3 Comments
thanks for the tip, though I now read Technoccult regularly thanks to the link I explored from your website 🙂
Moore spoken word incantations? Do you have any of those that I could borrow?
If you email me your address I can probably mail you something…
Sweet. like he moore. read him well.