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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 24, 2017)
Personality Street Roots Feb. 24-March 2, 2017 worried I’d break it. And it wasn’t until I was If I really wanted to show off to teenage 48 and m et my wife (American artist Neil I’d show him my five Hugo awards. Amanda Palmer) that I thought, oh, you run Those awards for science fiction would your life completely differently to mine. You m atter more to him than the Carnegie fill it with doing the things you like, and medal or any other award. The fact that I’ve collaborated with Harlan Ellison or had meeting the people you like and eating the dinne r with Lou Reed, that would be cool. things you like. I suppose I could try that But the idea that grown-up Neil has Hugo too. awards, the younger me would think, wow, I still worry. I suspect it’s how I’m built. yeah, I came through. And if I could tell the The fear I can’t do it is probably the driving 12-year-old Neil one day h e’ll write a “Doctor force that keeps me writing. That part of me Who” episode ... wow. Especially as the The is actually in my books too - 1 do a really Doctor’s Wife came from an idea I had good “menace is just around the com er.” watching it when I was about 8. In 2009 my father died in the middle of a My novel, The Ocean at the End of the business meeting when I was on my way to Lane... it’s not actually autobiographical but New York to do a book that kid is me. I was signing. I got a phone call going back to the 7-year- from a sister when I was in old me and giving the taxi, saying dad had a myself a peculiar kind of h eart attack and died. I love that I didn’t have. I stopped, walked around a I a h w r feel the past Is was saying to him, it’s bit, then I w ent on to the dead or yonag Well a f l QK, everything’s going signing. There were about a ro a n d a n y s to re , 12,000 people there and I to be fine. I never feel s t ill th e ro F h id in g la a sta rte d signing a t one the past is dead or n m ^ a ^ u g n t T n e n I w ent PHO TO BY KYLE CASSIDY Neil Gaiman The comic king writes to his younger self: “Stephen K in g gave me the best piece o f advice - but I ignored it ” COMPILED BY JANE GRAHAM C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R t 16 it was 1977 and I was a punk. I talked three school friends into forming a band called XXX - I was the singer and songwriter. I was - “blossoming” is the wrong word but I was moving out of geeky. Many years later I went to a recording of a BBC Radio 4 comedy and I ran into Steve Punt afterwards. He said: “Oh, you’re Neil Gaiman!” $o I waited for him to say, my kids loved “Coraline” and instead he said: “I was at your gig.” I saw this little moment of starry eyes. I wish I could go back and give that moment to the teenage Neil doing his first gig in the school hall. And I wish I could also tell the young Neil, who eventually gave up all fantasies of rock stardom, that there will be weird times in the future when he’ll be onstage in Tasmania reading his poetry to an audience with a backing band which includes David Byrne. Or that he’ll sell out Carnegie Hall for a gigwhich, after readings," lie’ll sing th e* A Neil Caiman's book Norse Mythology is out now. The TV series “American Gods,” adapted from Gaiman’s Hugo- winning novel, premieres in April country song Psycho with a string q uartet So he’ll get to fulfill those rock star fantasies after all. It’s been really interesting talking to friends I’ve had since I was a teenager. My friend recently drew a comic that shows all this monstrous chaos going on all around the young me and I’m just calmly walking down corridors reading “Stranger in a Strange Land” or “The Left Hand of Darkness.” Happy to be living in the land of books. I definitely didn’t feel I fit in. I was awkward, uncomfortable, not terribly happy in the real world but incredibly happy in books. I used them as a survival guide and also as an escape. I dreamt of becoming a writer but it seemed complexly impossible, like dreaming of having invisibility or super- sjteed/~ . .lib ra ry sontewbere^ lo o k in g fo r a doorway young Neil isn’t around " any more. He’s still home. There was a that w ill lead him to there, hiding in a library message from my dad on somewhere safe where somewhere, looking for the answer machine. It everything works» a doorway that will lead was a cheerful message saying: “It was your him to somewhere safe m other and my 50th where everything wedding anniversary works. yesterday - beautiful If I could live one day w eather and you know, it again, I’d take my 50th was a lovely sunny day 50 years ago too. birthday party in New Orleans. In the Anyway, just calling to say hello. And you’re morning my wife, who was still my fiancee not there.” And that was the first time I then, inveigled me into a hat shop and cried. I just heard his voice and fell apart. If bought me a top hat. Then she said she was I’d known it was going to happen like that, there are so many things where I look back off to find a tea shop and she’d text m e and think, I wish I’d asked you that, I wish when she found one. Ten minutes later I I’d written that down, I wish I’d taped that headed off to m eet h er and crossed a big conversation. square on the way - there was Amanda, There are friends I thought would be dressed as a bride, posing as a human around forever who just went. Douglas statue. And then a load of our friends Adams. I loved Douglas, he was big and stepped out of the crowd and my friend complicated and irritating and wonderful in Jason performed a non-binding marriage equal measure. So many people who were part of your life and your landscape - I wish ceremony between an author in a top hat I could go back and encourage myself to and a human statue dressed as a bride. The spend more time with those people, learn whole thing was wonderful. more from them. Whenever somebody dies I Amanda is an amazing thing. There was feel I’m kicked up the arse by the universe. this point where I thought, I think I want to Time is a beef. I wish I’d known how fast m arry you because I’m never going to be it goes. I wish I’d enjoyed it more. Stephen bored again. She’s enough like me. Well, King - and again, I wish 16-year-old Ned had we’re from the sam e planet. But she does been able to be there, he’d have been in these amazing, surprising, peculiar things complete joy - he showed up at a book signing of mine in Boston in 1992 and that I would never think of doing. These afterwards we went to his hotel. He gave me Amanda things where you think, really? the best bit of advice. He said, you know, You’re really going to do that? Okay. I’ll you’ve got to enjoy this. This is magic. You stand here and hold your clothes and if you do a signing and hundreds come. You’re one get arrested I’ll bail you o u t I love you. of the most beloved comics writers in the world. Enjoy i t But I never did. I just wbrried.T worried I t would all'go' away. T Courtesy o f IN SR ngo / The B ig Issue UK bigissue:com @BigIssne I
