GM: Right, so we've found this thing--and they're having this pathetic debate with a bunch of clerics saying "This is terrible, they will never find God" and other people saying "Yeah, God's just a neurological spasm, we've debunked everything." And in a this, why has no-one said, "OK, we've just found the God switch! Why don't we press it!" But nobody's said it, the whole argument's about "Religion's been debunked" and "Hah hah, we've debunked you" and "You'll never debunk us!" and nobody realizes the actual implications of what they've just done. What if we go round every prison and turn it on, every child molester?

JL: OK, magic--I have to ask, why bother? I mean, we can do anything already. Like I said, it's a beautiful day, why not go to the beach, live your life, why not go fall in love? Why concern yourself with the metaphor? Why sit in a room conjuring shit? Why bother with doing those things?

GM: Because it's fun! You could just as easily say why bother with falling in love? 'Cause it's nothing but trouble! Why bother with making cars? They're nothing but pollution. It's just about playing, creating, you can join in with the universe in creating, because the universe is a creative thing. And if you don't want to join in something then fuck off and go do something on your own. If you don't want to do it then don't do it. For me it just got me out of my miserable adolescence, that was my excuse.

JL: How would you define magic, though? The Chaos people and Crowley seem to define it as getting what you want, you always have to get what you want . . .

GM: You know what I think it is, it's the bleedin' obvious. That's what magic is, it's just becoming aware of the absolute obvious. And suddenly it all becomes magic, it's just like when you take acid, everything becomes significant. Magic makes everything significant. And it gives meaning to everything, it enriches everything, so I want to work with that. It's like a drug, it's better than that, it enriches the world, we can peer into the rest of our lives. Our bodies make huge armies of antibodies that never really do anything. And we don't even think about what we're doing, these huge machines that we move around in, that we operate in, and my god, that's nothing but real magic. And once you become aware of it, you pay for the Understanding, you make the Understanding applicable. Like I said, I've gone away from the occult and gotten really interested in seeing the world in new ways--like look at that tree behind you [points to the tree], that's a living thing that we barely even notice. [Laughs] And how's it engaging in its environment, and what's it's sense of me, what kind of chemical messages is it getting from the sweat that comes off our bodies, what is going on with that tree?

JL: Would you say that the ultimate message of your work, then, would it all boil down to "flick the switch"?

GM: Yeah . . . thank you for thinking of that. If you hadn't said that I never would have thought of it. [Laughs]

JL: Well, thanks for talking.

GM: No, it was great. It's always good to find someone who gets it.