ghost of my waking
By Yan • Sep 24th, 2007 • Category: Random Tidbits
It’s no secret that I love Neil Gaiman and that I have a healthy obsession with Dream. I rave about Neil and his Sandman graphic novels whenever I can, sharing my fixation with anyone who’s willing to listen.
There are those Gaiman admirers (“someone” comes to mind) who seem to think that Sandman readers belong to a so-called “elite circle.” These are fans who flaunt their literary “tastes”; artsy-fartsy types who sit in coffee shops to talk about how profound they are for having read the Sandman. Because they enjoy their intellectual delusions, they have no wish to include others in their circle.
…I am not such a fan. I don’t consider myself special for having read the Sandman. Rather, I consider myself lucky for having experienced such profundity. And to this very day, I thank [some-guy-who-shall-forever-remain-nameless] for introducing me to this extremely wonderful obsession.
I try to return the favor by telling the world about the Sandman. In fact, in my eagerness to share this masterpiece, I have imprudently divided the world into two: Sandman fans and non-Sandman fans. Non-Sandman fans, in turn, fall in two categories: (1) those who have not had the pleasure of reading a single volume - or a chapter even - of the graphic novel; and (2) those who utterly and completely did not get the point.
My compulsion takes the form of an irrational (and perhaps misguided) need to convince these people to succumb to Gaiman’s power.
Of course I am aware that this is a somewhat limited view of the world. And I do make an effort to understand how someone, after reading his stories, could remain indifferent to the Lord of Dreams. But so immense is my respect for this great work of art that, for the life of me, I cannot understand how anyone could not appreciate its beauty.
Liken me to a mother who thinks the world of her newborn son. No other baby can be as adorable. No other child can be as perfect. …But perhaps more appropriately, I am a besotted suitor, ready to slay anyone who slurs the name of my beloved.
Infatuation notwithstanding, it seems to me that whenever I talk about the Sandman, I somehow fail to express the full extent of its beauty. If Neil Gaiman were to ask me to write an introduction to say, a re-print of one of the volumes, I would decline without hesitation. It would be the highest form of flattery (if this happens, I’d die happy. seriously); but nay, I am not worthy. It is beyond my ability as a writer and as a human being to convey the essence of the Sandman. [And at this point, I am reminded of Despair, who, in Endless Nights, Neil describes as "...a writer with nothing left that (he) knows how to say."]
I have written several texts (in various forms) about dreams and hope and the dream of hope. The title of this entry is the title of the first Gaiman-inspired song I wrote. There are a dozen more that took shape in waking, and still infinite others in the dark recesses of my unconscious, filed meticulously by Lucien in the Library of Dreams.
Once, not so long ago, Mark toyed with the idea of e-mailing Neil (what a down-to-earth man he is; oh, neil!) to humbly ask him to listen to my songs — or rather Hastang’s songs, as only the words are mine. But I begged him not to. My words are not worthy of Neil. I am not worthy. (Talking to a dreamer who was precariously clinging to the side of a cliff, Morpheus subtly tells him to let go: “When you fall, sometimes you die, sometimes you wake up…and sometimes you fly.” - Will I ever have the guts to find out if I can fly?)
In retrospect, this entry was meant to be a short blurb about how I lost my “Sandman chamber” (a glass-enclosed shelf that protected my beloved collection in my old condo; a.k.a. a place of worship) and how my volumes have been demoted to my headboard, where they now lie exposed to the elements. But then again, once I start talking about Gaiman and the Sandman, I can’t seem to stop.
But perhaps I should. I am not making a valid point; not really, no. Perhaps I should leave you, instead, with one of my favorite introductions from a Sandman volume. I always read the introductions, you see. Not only are Sandman introductions written by some of the biggest names in literature, but they are actually very entertaining. To me, at least, these introductions are indicative of how great writers attempt to make sense of Gaiman’s work.
This one, written by Gene Wolfe (one of the best fantastic fictionists of today), is light and amusing and conversational. This also happens to be a very effective prelude for first-time readers. I tried to cut some parts, edit out some paragraphs, but I must tell you that I was compelled to paste the entire text here (save for the second part, but only because it talks about characters who are specific to that volume). You’d thank me for it. Enjoy…
Do u read introductions? I do, and after having read a good many of them, i am sadly aware that most of us who write them do not know what they are supposed to accomplish, which is to enable you to start the stories without embarrassment. Like a special introduction - some friend says, “This is Nina. She likes mint juleps and breeds ferrets,” and you’re off.
So here. I am not to introduce you to Neil Gaiman or the artists (though I would like that), or solely to His Darkness, Dream of the Endless (that is to say, to the Sandman) but to his stories , the most extraordinary ever in this graphic form, and among the most extraordinary of all time in any form.
What makes them so extraordinary? For that matter, why should they require an introduction, when most stories do not? Well, let’s suppose that after you’d chatted awhile with Nina, the friend who introduced you to her were to say, “This is Pythia. She lives in a cave - it’s haunted by the ghost of a giant snake and she answers questions in cryptic verse. Her answers are always true, and generally a little truer than we like.” You’d feel that you’d met somebody extraordinary then, wouldn’t you? And you’d want all the introduction you can get.
So here. I am tempted to say that because these are all, in their various ways, about the Lord of Dream - and dreams are forever telling us truths so large that we can assimilate them only with difficulty - naturally, these stories do, too.
Which would be a lie. Non sequitur; it does not follow. In the hands of almost any other writer, the characters in these remarkable stories would talk nonsense. If that other writer were good, it would be spectacular and even plausible nonsense, but nonsense nevertheless.
When I was much smaller, it seemed to me that the best way to achieve the spectacular effects I loved in movies would be for the people making the movie to actually do them. If (a random example) Imperial Scouts were to chase Luke on antigravity speeder bikes, the best way to photograph it would be for Lucasfilm to build speeder bikes and put Imperial Scouts on them. Why not? If Commander Skywalker and Hans Solo were to visit the Ewoks’ arboreal village, why, round up some Ewoks and have them build one. After furious lectures by a dozen or so of my contemporaries, I realized that I had been wrong; it was far better, far more adult, to fake everything, which was what the studios did.
But now that I am an adult myself, a grown-up depicter of things that don’t exist, I realized that the child I used to be was right. It would be better, really, to build the speeder bikes. Lucasfilm doesn’t do it because it can’t.
Not so Neil Gaiman. Let him conceive an entity who is to speak large and cryptic truths, and he makes the entity speak large and cryptic truths like, “His madness kept him sane.”
You must consider this, as Miyamoto Musashi the Samurai is always telling us. Then read the story about Sam the newspaperman and the Emperor of America, and think about it again.
“‘You look terrible. White as the man in the moon. Are you always so pale?’ ‘That depends on who’s watching.”
Hidden in a string of throw-away lines: “Any view of things that is not strange is false…”
These one-liners, these minor aphorisms or whatever you want to call them, are merely the little stuff, of course; I quoted them just to give you the idea and because it was easy.
What is important and central is that, time after time, the stories themselves are true. I don’t mean simply that Neil Gaiman’s history is good history and that his myth is good myth - although they are.
I mean that you will understand yourself and the world better for having read them, and that you will have been both ennobled and troubled by the experience; that this is not just art - all sorts of ugly and foolish things are art - but great art.
When Harlan Ellison introduced The Sandman: Season of Mists, he described the dismay of all those “artsy-fartsy writers and artists and critics” at Neil Gaiman’s winning a World Fantasy Award with a “comic book”, thus (it seems to me) dulling the real point he should have made. Which is simply that it’s almost incredible that a “comic book” should be good enough to win — to force itself upon the judges. That the wildly improbable has occurred, and some of the best writing of our time is appearing in a graphic medium in which writing traditionally comes second — and a long way second at that.
“Any view of the universe that is not strange is false.”
[Gene Wolfe; Introduction to Fables & Reflections]
PS: In Volume V: A Game of You (I think), Gaiman, prompted by his editors, unwillingly published a draft of a script for one of the Sandman stories. Prior to seeing the script, I had no idea how the writer-artist dynamic works. Upon seeing it, I was amazed at how much control Gaiman had over the process. I mean, I always assumed that he’d write the dialogue and the artists would illustrate the pages based on their interpretation of Gaiman’s words. On the contrary, Gaiman actually described, in full detail, each and every scene (including background and foreground) that appeared in each and every frame. Not only that, but he also dictated how each character is positioned (sitting down, standing up, leaning on the wall, touching his hair, etc.), their clothes (including color and texture), their facial expression, and even subtleties in demeanor. The number of frames per page, the borders on these frames, were also his bidding. …Talk about writing coming second? Nah, not with the Sandman.
I think I’m done for the day/night. My body clock is screwed up.
I’m off to see Kai’cul.
See you in my dreams.
PS: Yeah, yeah, I’m beginning to recycle my posts. Blame it on hysteria. More later.
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Yan (a.k.a. Yannie, YanYan) is a young-ish entrepreneur, writer, poet, artist, graphic designer, web geek, lover, friend, daughter, connoisseur, gourmand, amateur chef, coffee addict, control freak, and incessant dreamer. Not necessarily in that order.
© 2008 FubarGenre | All posts by Yan
