We live in two worlds: The real world. And everything else.

The real world is your kid having a meltdown about nothing. The smile and laughter of your kid. The ups and downs of marriage. The hug when you come home. The family dinner with wine and candle light. Throwing out the trash at 6am in the morning. The darkest hours of your life. The little triumphs.

And then there’s everything else. Your work persona. Your neighbor persona. Your family persona. Your friend persona. Your father persona. Your husband persona. Add to that the newest fad: the personal brand.

Most of the time, these worlds stay separate. Makes sense, especially in these times of oversharing and living in public. But, once in a while, the real world shows up in the everything else world. In this case, the Interesting North conference in Sheffield, England. When the real world shows up and talks about important things, about things that make a difference and share their inner feelings – that’s when magic happens.

Marcus Brown plays many roles: Dead Artist, Sacrum, Charles Stab, The Joker, The Kaiser on the Toilet, Jack the Twitter. But for these few moments he was just Marcus Brown. A real person telling a real story. And it was magic.