'Magic is much like love, a beautiful moment of suspension from reality': Drummond Money-Coutts

Drummond Money-Coutts is a big name in the world of magic. Born into the financial dynasty of Coutts & Co, the eighth oldest bank in the world and private bankers to the British royal family for generations now, the 35-year-old magician, also known as DMC, is the son of Lord Crispin Latymer, and hence the heir apparent to the Latymer Barony. But it is magic that attracts DMC. He has completely mastered the world of magic. The magician was commissioned by National Geographic in 2013 and 2015 for showcasing his mastery of magic. His hair-raising Netflix special Death by Magic in 2018 explored some of the most dangerous magic stunts all over the world. This apart, DMC has a special place in his heart for India. DMC loves magic, practices it like a musician, and performs it like a maverick. In an interview with Firstpost, he reveals how magic captivates him, and how he continues to enthrall his audience worldwide even after the pandemic. Excerpts below: Why did you get into the profession of becoming a magician? As a young child, I was always fascinated by the impossible, the magical, and the mysterious. When I was eight years old, my father took me to the UK’s oldest magic store, which was situated underneath the main headquarters of Coutts & Co (where he worked for 20 years, and was founded in the 1600s by his direct ascendant Thomas Coutts), and suddenly, I realised that it was possible to learn how to create that same sense of astonishment for other people. My father bought me a deck of cards and a few simple magic books, and my whole life changed in an instant. Is that true that you decide to embrace magic fully while on a trip to India? Absolutely right! When I left school at the age of 18 (Eton College, founded in 1440), I spent six months working for Goldman Sachs in London. Very quickly I realised that the corporate world was never going to be a happy match, and so as soon as my contract was over, I booked a one-way flight to Delhi. Just a few weeks later, having dinner on a rooftop in Udaipur and watching the sun go down, I resolved to give my life to the one thing that set my heart on fire above all else: magic. Was your family appalled, to put it politely, when you decided not to go the money way? Appalled a little too strong, but there were certainly some reservations. It took a little time to get going, but once the wheel started turning, they all became incredibly supportive. [caption id=“attachment_10277101” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Drummond Money-Coutts aka DMC[/caption] In a world which has so many avenues for entertainment, how do you keep the audience’s interest in magic alive? There’s little question that within each human being there lies an innate appetite for the mysterious. As a performance art, magic can be traced right back to ancient Egypt more than 4,000 years ago, and has only continued to flourish in all corners of the world ever since. Tell someone you’re about to show them something impossible and there are very few people who won’t be completely transfixed by it, and I’m not sure that will ever change. What is the most dangerous trick that you have ever done? On the Netflix series (Death By Magic, a $10 million eight-part), the concept of the show orbited around recreating the stunts that had killed magicians through history. Whilst each stunt varied enormously in terms of the jeopardy (DMC played Russian roulette with a real gun in Nevada; he was chained inside a car filled with water in Miami; and buried alive under many tons of concrete in London), the two stunts that involved fire were certainly the most dangerous. Unfortunately, our safety team wasn’t quite what it should have been for a show of that scale, and I had to be treated by the on-set paramedics on three separate occasions. Ironically, for a show dedicated to the fatal mistakes of others, it certainly wasn’t a project without its mishaps. You have risked your own life during stunts. What motivates you to do that? In truth, it’s just as terrifying as you can imagine. As I say, for the Netflix series, I had to perform eight separate death-defying stunts, and each one posed its own unique cocktail of dangers and hazards. Having had the very close shaves that we did on that show, it’s not a concept I’d look to revisit. Which trick would you say took you the longest to perfect? Recently, I developed a deck of cards that I’d been dreaming about for many years; a deck called the ‘DMC Alphas.’ In contrast to a regular deck of cards, the Alphas is a letter deck, with each of the 52 individual cards displaying one single letter of the alphabet. Using the Alphas, card magic suddenly becomes so much more meaningful and personal, and one of my favourite routines involves having a spectator shuffle the cards, then deal a few random cards to the table. Once that’s done, I ask them to turn over the cards they’ve dealt to reveal that — impossibly —they’ve spelled their mother’s first name (or the name of their first crush). In terms of sheer impact, it devastates an audience. India is often called the land of magic because of its enigmatic culture. Did the country appeal to you in a different way? For me, the love story with India began the very moment I first arrived in Delhi. Even today, I can touch down at Delhi or Mumbai airport at 3 o’clock in the morning — after an 11-hour journey — and I’m still smiling and thrilled to be back again. The people, the energy, the culture, the food, the history – there’s almost nothing about this country that I don’t adore. As my grandmother — who also visited India just as much as she could — once told me, “In all the ways that truly matter, India is one of the wealthiest nations on Earth.” And you have a tattoo in Hindi, I believe? Yes, the little piece of India that I carry with me! On my very first trip, I carried many different books in my backpack. Each time we’d arrive in a new town or city, I’d race to the nearest bookstore and trade the books that I’d finished, and would read devotedly around the human mind, the spirit, and the soul. Once I returned to the UK a few months later, I decided that I wanted to write myself three mantras — three principles that I’d always adhere to — and having done that, I then had my friend in Udaipur translate the essence of each phrase into just one Hindi word. Those words are hausala, pyaar, and vishwas (now tattooed onto the left side of DMC’s head). Certain people use magic for negative reasons. Would you say that it perpetuates an unpopular perception of the profession? Unfortunately, any time there is something that can impact people at a high emotional level, there will always be those who want to misuse and exploit it. Through the centuries, the principles and techniques of magic have found themselves so often abused by desperate people, be they pickpockets, card cheats, or fraudulent spiritual gurus. Having met many of these people (DMC has spent time meeting both witchdoctors in Africa, and professional card cheats in Bangkok), it’s just a sad reality of the world we live in.

Much like the internet, magic has many different dimensions to it, and not all of them are positive.

[caption id=“attachment_10277111” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  DMC with Shah Rukh Khan[/caption] What does magic mean to you personally? I’ve always said that magic is much like love in the sense that what it means to me, to you, to a young girl at Disneyland or an old Buddhist monk, will all vary tremendously. Magic to me is like love, a moment of suspension from reality. In that sense, the challenge is to discover what your own definition of magic is, and then decide whether that can exist for you. It was the British children’s author Roald Dahl who once wrote, “Only those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” I’ve always thought of magic as being that beautiful moment of suspension that takes you away from yourself, even for a moment. Within that definition, it’s important to note that magic is something that we can equally find in music, film, literature, or poetry… that unearthly sense of wonder that freezes time, and stirs the deepest part of our souls. Do you receive flak for perpetrating the supernatural? Unlike some, I’ve always been very forthright about the skills that I have as having been learned and developed. I don’t believe for a moment that I have skills beyond anybody else. I’ve simply given many thousands of hours to honing and sharpening the abilities that I have. In that sense, magic is rather like music, nobody is born able to play the piano flawlessly, but they are born with the passion and the dedication to carry them through many years of careful study and practice. Do you design your own tricks? How long does it take to master them? Almost everything I perform today is something that I’ve developed myself. There’s not much joy to be found in parroting tricks and routines that were made by others — much like a musician only singing covers of other people’s songs — so it’s very important to me that I either create an idea afresh or put my own stamp on a routine, before sharing it with an audience. This process can take weeks, months, or even years.   How big a team do you work with for a show? For television shows, we work with enormous production teams and budgets, sometimes with as many as 100+ crew on a shoot day. For my own private work, it’s a much smaller team, and there is great satisfaction in having more creative control over the process. Can anybody become a magician? Just about! As I say, it’s very much like being a musician. Nobody is born able to play the chords and scales of any instrument, but they are born with the passion that will carry them through many years of commitment required to learn them. Magic, at its core, is just the same. Whilst it’s relatively easy to pick up a simple trick or two, developing the mindset and deeper understanding of a magician is something that will need years of focus. Theoretically, it lies within each of us to become the greatest magician in history. The only question is whether we have the patience to go through all of that hard work.