Wearing the hat

When he was just 5 years old, Ari Freeman wondered if it might be possible to fly.

“To lift oneself off the ground or to jump then jump again before hitting the ground in order to get even higher ... I was having very vivid dreams, where I could in fact, lift myself off the ground,” he says.

“In one recurring dream, I learned how to do a special sort of skip that meant that, with enough effort, I could hover above the ground with great speed. This dream kept happening, and I learned to go a bit higher over time.”

Freeman was 6 when he first met the Wizard.

“When I was a young child, I was fascinated by medieval things ... stories of knights and wizards and shining armour,” he says.

His first important interaction with magic occurred when he was about 10 or 11 years old and he read fantasy novel A Wizard of Earthsea.

“This is about a boy going to wizard school that later influenced Harry Potter. In this book, the writer, Ursula K Le Guin, puts forward the idea that words are magic. This gave me permission to try and think about how magic could be used in the real world.”

The idea that attributing something with a name gives it power – “Rumplestiltskin theory” – embodies Le Guin’s work. Freeman embraced it.

Women weave spells or “put on a glamour” when they wear make-up, he says.

“I discovered that the less I shaved, and the longer the beard got, the more fun life got.”

He started studying the Wizard before finally approaching him.

“Are you prepared to wear the hat and all this stuff?” the Wizard recalls asking him.

“If you wear the hat you are halfway there because you’ve got to be clever and you’ve got to be prepared to look a fool at the same time ... it is hard to do both. He has to watch me interacting with nutters and weirdos and crackpots and political fanatics ... and see what I do.”

Freeman now has a total of four wizard robes, including one he designed. It boasts colourful squares which represent his music.

Around his mentor, Freeman is deferential. He hangs back as the Wizard stomps majestically down the hallway of his inner city home, past giant bookcases full of magical books.

The Wizard laid out some rules: “I am the boss and that’s that. If anything comes up, you have to give in to my decision because otherwise it is not going to work. No master can operate with a rebellious apprentice.”

The wizards sit opposite each other at the kitchen table and engage in animated debate about esoteric topics, hands and arms waving enthusiastically in the air as each seeks to drive home their point.

A group of wizards is known as a “disagreement”.

“Wizards love to argue,” says the Wizard. “It’s an important part of being a wizard.”

Freeman collects ideas about magic from those who are skilled in it.

“Most importantly, I try things out in the real world,” he says. “I consider being a wizard a community role. People who do their magic only at home tend to only end up enchanting themselves, which can easily become delusional. I think it’s best to take responsibility for being a magician. The effectiveness of one’s magic should be decided by one’s audience, not by oneself.”