It was exciting to see Neil Gaiman live at the City Recital Hall in Sydney on the weekend. It was a satellite event of the Sydney Writers’ Festival (surely one of the world’s best writers’ festivals). As Jemma Birrell, Artistic Director, mentioned in her introduction, Neil has over 2 million twitter followers so no wonder […]
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By: [email protected],
on 2/1/2015
Blog: Perpetually Adolescent (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: neil gaiman, Book News, Dave McKean, Stardust, coraline, Sandman, Odd and the Frost Giants, Graveyard Book, Signal to Noise, the rabbits, FourPlay, Mirrormask, Fortunately the Milk, Book Reviews - Childrens and Young Adult, Book Reviews - Fiction, Joy Lawn, The Sleeper and the Spindle, Hansel & Gretel, Ocean at the End of the Lane, SWF, Tragical Comedy, Wolves in the Walls, Add a tag
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 5/22/2014
Blog: Neil Gaiman (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Eddie Campbell, what style is, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, fourplay, Hayley Campbell, Add a tag
Enter for your chance to win one of five pairs of tickets to see Neil Gaiman live at Carnegie Hall with FourPlay String Quartet on June 27th! Prize package includes a meet & greet and photo opp with Neil himself.
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 5/1/2014
Blog: Neil Gaiman (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Hansel and Gretel, Carnegie Hall, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, fourplay, Add a tag
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 1/30/2013
Blog: Neil Gaiman (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Tasmania, melbourne, Amanda, fourplay, Mona, Hobart, kate Miller-heidke, Is Tasmania Secretly Cool, David Byrne Yes Him, Dunalley, failing to sleep in on a Sunday morning, Polly J Rocket Adams, Mofo, Keep moving, Add a tag
Frankly, I think Polly has a future in showing books to people.
(Photos taken from https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.10151236486214607&type=1 )
The school wrote about it at their blog entry at http://newdunalleyschool.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/a-visit-from-neil-gaiman/. It's a really inspiring blog, as they chart their recovery from the fires and chart the plans for the new school...
Time was tight, so we flew by seaplane to Hobart so I could do an interview with ABC's Helen Shield (you can read about it and listen to it here: http://blogs.abc.net.au/tasmania/2013/01/neil-gaiman.html). (And Helen's interview with Polly is at http://blogs.abc.net.au/tasmania/2013/01/douglas-adams-little-rocket.html).
A mad dash to a quick rehearsal/soundcheck with Jherek and a string quartet, along with our special guests David Byrne and St Vincent, and an even madder dash back to the ABC studios to do another interview, this time with Triple J's The Doctor (You can read about it/listen to it at http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/thedoctor/blog/s3673304.htm). Then back to the Mona Festival. I got there at 7 minutes to 6. We were due on at 6, so I found a dressing room, changed clothes and went on stage to read "Click-Clack the Rattlebag", sing Psycho, and, my favourite moment of all, read my "Australia Day" poem with Brian Ritchie playing didgeridoo, and David Byrne making animal sounds on the guitar.
I listened to Kate Miller-Heidke singing wonderfully immediately after us (her cover of David Byrne's Psycho Killer was unbelievable. It was a bit like this:)
And then came the best bit of the whole night as Jherek and I had a close encounter with a guide dog puppy named Quinnell.
.jpg)
I nearly forgot to mention, a couple of days earlier Amanda had asked me on Twitter to recreate her famous Map of Tasmania photo from the last time she was there. So, with the aid of a Map of Tasmania apron and photographer Dianna Graf, I did. And then Polly did too.
And then Polly and I were getting up at 6 am again and we headed to Melbourne, where we stayed with my friends Peter and Clare. They have the best house in the world.
I spent a day or so mostly being interviewed -- the photo is from the interview at http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/books/melbourne-in-authors-good-books-as-he-plans-next-fun-escapade-20130123-2d7e6.html.
I'd a talk at the Atheneum Theatre, under the auspices of the Wheeler Centre. I signed lots of books for people, and then stumbled off for a late drink and dinner with lots of Melbournian friends, including Sxip Shirey, Meow Meow, and someone named Knibbs who can, like me, raise both eyebrows individually or set them scurrying across her forehead like startled caterpillars. ("Did you teach yourself in front of a mirror when you were a kid too?" "Yup.")
Four hours of sleep and I said goodbye to Peter and to Clare, and to Polly too (I'd pretty much adopted her by the time I left, so it was a sad goodbye made happier in the knowledge that I'd introduced her to lots of people who would be fun for her to know in Australia) and flew to Sydney, where I was interviewed, had my photo taken by Tamara Dean (look at her beautiful photo art here and here) and then I had lunch with my Bloomsbury publishers and answered questions for them on video, and ran to the Sydney Recital Hall where I met FourPlay String Quartet for a rehearsal.
I really love the guys from FourPlay -- it's such a delight doing stuff with them. We ran through the Fireball XL5 theme. We took the first fifteen minutes of FORTUNATELY, THE MILK and they created music and sound effects on the fly. They made glorious bush sounds for the Australia Day poem. Working with them now is so comfortable and easy.
I read the first fifteen minutes of FORTUNATELY, THE MILK... (it is so silly).
And then I gave an acknowledgment of country, and read the Australia Day poem, and we were done. No signing -- it was a long event, there were about 1100 people there, and I was knackered, but I scribbled on things for the people at the stage door on the way out.
Production entity Jordan Verzar and Festival boss Ben Strout, Jemma Birrell (artistic director of the festival) and festival PR Ainslee Lenehan and I, along with my old Whitgift school friend James Croll, stumbled off for an exhausted drink and conversation after the show, winding up in the bar of the hotel I was staying in, the somewhat O.T.T. but beautiful "QT", where the people were so nice and helpful. And then I was sleepily packing and it was daylight again, and I went to see the people at Animal Logic, who had given up some of their Australia Day to show me the beautiful film work they had done...
I proofread the UK edition of OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE on the plane back to the US, and read Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor. I breakfasted with my son and daughter in law and daughter in San Francisco airport. I got home to Amanda...
I slept. I slept for three whole hours, and then the furnace in the basement belched out soot and smoke, the smoke alarms went off, the fire brigade arrived, and my hopes of catching up on my sleep were dashed. (Nothing was damaged. Nothing burned. And the Cambridge MA fire department are fast.)
The first of my episodes of SELECTED SHORTS went up on the radio. I got to select and introduce stories I loved -- in this case Ray Bradbury's chilling "The Veldt" read by Stephen Colbert, and James Thurber's "The Catbird Seat" hilariously read by Leonard Nimoy.
You can listen to it HERE.
(I'll be hosting for the next few weeks. Why don't you subscribe to the podcast? Information and links at http://www.selectedshorts.org/podcast/. There are some great stories on the way.)
Then an interview with me went out on Morning Edition. You read about it and listen to it here: http://www.npr.org/2013/01/28/170085113/watch-this-neil-gaimans-imaginative-favorites It's about things I love, or things that influenced me.
No, I won't tell you what they are. Go and listen to it. It's fun.
(There were things on my list that we didn't have time to talk about: Doctor Who's Curse of the Fatal Death and the Magnetic Fields' Andrew In Drag video, for example...)
And I should stop writing this blog and go and write about weird stuff happening underneath London instead.
But if you've made it this far, the next week should be interesting. I'll be doing a really exciting (and quite goofy) Art Project, and you'll learn a bit about it in this film. (Along with seeing Cabal, alive and well and happy, three weeks ago.)
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By: Neil Gaiman,
on 1/25/2011
Blog: Neil Gaiman (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Peter Cook, Is Tasmania Secretly Cool?, Blog titles that were just the words in my head when I titled the blog that are quotes from strange, fourplay, Add a tag
I should be writing the thing that I'm going to read tonight at Sydney Opera House.
(You can, of course, point out, that I should have finished it before now. I will undoubtedly agree.)
So, because I am not yet posting anything, here is an account of what I did a week ago, with photos, from someone else's blog.
http://jacwabbit.blogspot.com/2011/01/neil-gaiman-amanda-palmer-some-tassie.html
And here's Amanda's blog entry on her last Wednesday in Tasmania: http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/2839942590/being-nick-cave-or-the-holy-prophecy-of-the
(No, the title of the blog doesn't actually have anything to do with anything. Although you can listen to the original here, and understand all.)
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By: [email protected],
on 2/1/2015
Blog: Perpetually Adolescent (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: neil gaiman, Book News, Dave McKean, Stardust, coraline, Sandman, Odd and the Frost Giants, Graveyard Book, Signal to Noise, the rabbits, FourPlay, Mirrormask, Fortunately the Milk, Book Reviews - Childrens and Young Adult, Book Reviews - Fiction, Joy Lawn, The Sleeper and the Spindle, Hansel & Gretel, Ocean at the End of the Lane, SWF, Tragical Comedy, Wolves in the Walls, Add a tag
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 5/22/2014
Blog: Neil Gaiman (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Eddie Campbell, what style is, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, fourplay, Hayley Campbell, Add a tag
posted by Neil Gaiman
Here's things that people would probably like to know...
This is the poster for TRUTH IS A CAVE IN THE BLACK MOUNTAINS Reading Event at the Carnegie Hall (and it lists the other gigs too. I think there may still be a handful of Barbican tickets available on July 4th and 5th, I'm pretty sure the Warfield is Sold Out, although they may release a few closer to the date, and right now Usher Hall in Edinburgh, which was the last concert to go on sale, still has plenty of seats, and even has some in the Stalls).
Please feel free to spread it around...
If you can't afford to come, or feel like chancing your luck, there is a Facebook competition where you can win tickets, at the William Morrow Facebook page:
Enter for your chance to win one of five pairs of tickets to see Neil Gaiman live at Carnegie Hall with FourPlay String Quartet on June 27th! Prize package includes a meet & greet and photo opp with Neil himself.
(And, of course, you can order tickets for the Carnegie Hall on June 27th via http://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2014/6/27/0800/PM/Neil-Gaiman-The-Truth-is-a-Cave-in-the-Black-Mountains/ - click through and you can decide where you would like to sit.)
...
The biggest publication news of recent weeks is that Hayley Campbell's book THE ART OF NEIL GAIMAN is out. You can learn who Hayley Campbell is, and all about the book and how it came to be, in this delicious Comic Beat interview. It's filled with glorious details. I like the bit about me and kids and Alan Moore and kids and Custard Creams vs. Bourbon biscuits best. Here she explains the interviewing process:
He would give me all the answers I wanted plus loads of things that were entirely irrelevant because it was just me and him talking in a room and we do that all the time. It was a weird interview to do. I only noticed this was happening when I had to transcribe 17 hours of it back in London, and sat there listening to us trying to save a bumblebee who’d got caught in the fireplace. For half an hour. ‘Ooh he’s got soot on him. Look at his giant cardigan. Shall we put him outside on a flower?‘
Honestly I think I have to burn the tapes.
(Useful Warning. DO NOT CLICK ON THELINK AND READ HAYLEY'S INTERVIEW IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED BY SWEARING OR BY ANY DISCUSSION OF THE GREAT WALL OF VAGINA.)
I read the book a few months ago, and really liked it, as much as it's possible to like something where one is too embarrassed properly to relax and enjoy it. I was reading it to approve the text, but I loved the text and spent most of my time trying to fix the dates on the picture captions.
Hayley is a really funny writer. She's observant and interested. I'm really looking forward to her novel, when she writes it, and am also a little bit scared.
Salon has some hitherto unseen drawings by me (and a couple by Jill Thompson) up at http://www.salon.com/2014/05/20/the_fantastic_world_of_neil_gaiman_take_a_peek_into_the_authors_personal_archive/
And you can go and check it out at Amazon.com, where the poor guy whose entire reason for living seems to be giving everything on Amazon a one star review has already given it one star review. http://amzn.to/1vxTAYK
Hayley's going to be taking over the role of interviewer from her father, ace illustrator Eddie Campbell, for the Barbican and Edinburgh TRUTH IS A CAVE gigs on July 4th and 5th.
…
There's a really sweet little photo spread and interview in Boston Common magazine about Amanda and me in which they list us as one of Boston's most Stylish Couples.
Quite when I slipped into this parallel dimension in which I can be described as “stylish” without anyone in earshot actually sniggering, I do not know. But I am going to make the most of it while I'm here.
Labels: fourplay, what style is, Hayley Campbell, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, Eddie Campbell
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By: Neil Gaiman,
on 5/1/2014
Blog: Neil Gaiman (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Hansel and Gretel, Carnegie Hall, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, fourplay, Add a tag
posted by Neil Gaiman
I'm back on social media from today. And my last class at Bard until Autumn is tomorrow night. I owe the world a big post on life and the things that go with it.
But first, this one is important:
There are many peculiar places in the world, places that can hold your mind and your soul tightly and will not let them go. Some of those places are exotic and unusual, some are mundane. The strangest of all of them, at least for me, is the Isle of Skye, off the west coast of Scotland. I know I am not alone in this. There are people who discover Skye and will not leave, and even for those of us who do leave, the misty island haunts us and holds us in its own way. It is where I am happiest and where I am most alone.
Otta F. Swire wrote books about the Hebrides and about Skye in particular, and she filled her books with strange and arcane knowledge. (Did you know May the 3rdwas the day that the Devil was cast out of Heaven, and thus the day on which it is unpardonable to commit a crime? I learned that in her book on the myths of the Hebrides.) And in one of her books, she mentioned the cave in the black Cuillins, where you could go, if you were brave, and get gold, with no cost, but each visit you paid to the cave would make you more evil, would eat your soul.
And that cave, and its promise, began to haunt me.
I took several true stories (or stories that are said to be true, which is almost the same thing), and set them in a world that was almost, but not quite, ours, and told a story of revenge and of travel, of desire for gold and of secrets. Two men, one very small, are travelling west to find a cave said to be filled with gold.
I wrote most of the tale on the Isle of Skye. When it was done it was published in an anthology called STORIES, and it won the Shirley Jackson Award for best Novelette, and the Locus Award for Best Novelette, and I was very proud of it, my story.
Before it was published, I was set to appear on the stage of the Sydney Opera House, and was asked if I could do something with Australian string quartet FourPlay (they are the rock band of string quartets, an amazing, versatile bunch with a cult following): perhaps something with art that could be projected onto the stage. I listened to FourPlay's music, and, possibly once I heard their take on the Doctor Who theme and the Simpsons Theme, and a cover of Cry Me A River I liked nearly as much as Julie London's (and I like that so very much), I knew wanted to work with them.
I thought about “The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains”: it would take about seventy minutes to read. I wondered what it would would happen if a string quartet created a moody and glorious soundtrack, as I told the story, as if it were a movie? And what if Scottish artist Eddie Campbell, the man who drew Alan Moore's FROM HELL, writer and artist of ALEC, my favourite comic, created illustrations for this most Scottish of my stories and projected them above me while I read?
I was scared, going out onto the stage of the Sydney Opera House, but the experience was amazing: the story was received with a standing ovation, and we followed it with an interview (artist Eddie Campbell was the interviewer) and a poem, also with FourPlay.
Six months later, we performed it again, with more paintings by Eddie, in Hobart, Tasmania, in front of 3,000 people, in a huge shed at a Festival, and again, they loved it; again, a standing ovation.
Now, we had a problem. The only people who had ever seen the show were in Australia. It seemed unfair, somehow. We needed an excuse to travel, to bring the FourPlay string quartet across the world (pop culture literate and brilliant musicians, they are: I fell in love with their work before I ever knew them).
Fortunately, Eddie Campbell had taken his paintings, and done many more, and then laid out the text into something halfway between an illustrated story and a graphic novel, and Harper Collins were publishing it in the US and Headline publishing it in the UK.
Mysterious promoter Jordan Verzar, who had put me and FourPlay together in the first place, saw his chance and struck, rather like and amiable Australian cobra, and before we knew it, everything was happening.
So we are doing the smallest tour in the world for this.
If you want to see me performing THE TRUTH IS A CAVE IN THE BLACK MOUNTAINS, with the amazing FourPlay string quartet, and see Eddie Campbell's art projected, the words and the music and the images combining in your head to make a movie that only you will ever experience in that way, a night with special guests, I wouldn't be surprised, and also surprises (including things nobody has every heard read), then the only places you can see it are San Francisco, at the Warfield, New York's Carnegie Hall on June 27th, then in London at The Barbican (two nights) and it ends in Edinburgh, in Usher Hall on July 6th. And then we'll be done.
Right now, the Warfield on June 25th is already SOLD OUT.
BUT the Carnegie Hall is by far the biggest venue we are doing, and there are still many seats available at the Carnegie Hall on June 27. (The Dress Circle's just sold out, though.)
If you've read down this far and you're interested in seeing a unique and amazing evening, and you are anywhere in the US, the Carnegie Hall is the one to come to (unless you want to fly to the UK). New York is nice in June.
The Carnegie Hall night will have special guests. It will be the only place I'm also going to read the whole of the new HANSEL AND GRETEL before it's published. There will be a LOT of signed books there, even if we can't work out a signing (we're trying to but logistics are hard). And it's going to be a night to remember...
The two Barbican concerts on July 4th and 5th are almost sold out (they have just released some seats, so there are a few seats left).
Usher Hall in Edinburgh was only just added, and tickets only just went on sale. There are lots of seats there, and very much hope the Scots are kind to my Scottish tale.
Do come. I know it may seem odd, an author and a string quartet. But trust me, you do not want to miss it.
...
I wanted to put in a huge plug here for the anti-bullying website, Bystander Revolution. They've done some amazing interviews with people, and have advice. Here are their films talking to me.
..........
On Saturday, if you are in the UK, you can get a free copy of STARDUST with your Guardian newspaper, if you buy it from Sainsbury's. This is a good thing if you like Stardust and read the Guardian. More info at this link, along with a way to win one of the limited edition beautiful special copies of OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE. http://www.theguardian.com/books/competition/2014/apr/26/neil-gaiman-competition
0 Comments on What are you doing on June the 27th and other vital questions as of 5/1/2014 4:09:00 PM
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By: Neil Gaiman,
on 1/30/2013
Blog: Neil Gaiman (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Tasmania, melbourne, Amanda, fourplay, Mona, Hobart, kate Miller-heidke, Is Tasmania Secretly Cool, David Byrne Yes Him, Dunalley, failing to sleep in on a Sunday morning, Polly J Rocket Adams, Mofo, Keep moving, Add a tag
posted by Neil Gaiman
I meant to blog in Australia. I really did.
I also meant to get more sleep, jog, write and be a bit of a tourist. Almost none of these things happened.
Lots of other things happened, though.
I flew to Hobart, Tasmania. I have been saying for years that Hobart is one of the planet's secretly cool places, and people used to mock me for saying this. (Australian people would mock me. Other people would just stare at me blankly.) Over the last few years, however, the world has caught up a little with my opinions, and the MONA museum and the MONAFOMA (aka MOFO) Festival has a lot to do with it.
I rehearsed. I read a fairy story in the Theatre Royal Hobart. (I did other things there too: I sang "Psycho", and I did a reading of one of Amanda's songs, "The Bed Song", because she wasn't there.) Here's a video. Jherek Bischoff, Amanda's bass player and string arranger, made all the music happen. The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra provided the lovely string quartet.
Somewhere shortly after arrival in Hobart, I joined forces with Polly Adams.
I'm a patron of Tasmania's Bookend Trust, and Polly has inherited her father's conservation mantle, if not his Rhino suit, and is a patron of Save the Rhino. We got up early the next morning, and were taken off on a journey by Niall Doran of the Bookend Trust. We saw the devastation of the bushfires on the Tasman peninsula, learned the natural history behind the bushfires (basically, Eucalypts like fires - they clear the brush and help the seeds to germinate), saw an echidna by the side of the road, went on a wonderful boat ride (thanks to http://www.tasmancruises.com.au/) and saw awe-inspiring cliffs, seals and penguins (and a dead weedy seadragon), not to mention a place where the sea tips on its side...
...or it feels like it has. (Photo by Polly Adams.)
And then we were shows some of the fire devastation in Dunalley, and presented books to the primary school.
The primary school at Dunalley is not there any more. It burned down in the bushfires. They are putting up temporary buildings to house a temporary school while they build a new one. (We were joined by lots of nice people, including Robert Pennicott and Andrew Hughes, Tasmanians of the Year in 2012 and 2013.)
My publishers gave the school lots of my books, and lots of other books that they could use to auction or sell or include in the library. Here I am with Chair of the School Association Elizabeth Knox, Principal Matt Kenny, and various students and community members.
I also meant to get more sleep, jog, write and be a bit of a tourist. Almost none of these things happened.
Lots of other things happened, though.
I flew to Hobart, Tasmania. I have been saying for years that Hobart is one of the planet's secretly cool places, and people used to mock me for saying this. (Australian people would mock me. Other people would just stare at me blankly.) Over the last few years, however, the world has caught up a little with my opinions, and the MONA museum and the MONAFOMA (aka MOFO) Festival has a lot to do with it.
I rehearsed. I read a fairy story in the Theatre Royal Hobart. (I did other things there too: I sang "Psycho", and I did a reading of one of Amanda's songs, "The Bed Song", because she wasn't there.) Here's a video. Jherek Bischoff, Amanda's bass player and string arranger, made all the music happen. The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra provided the lovely string quartet.
I'm a patron of Tasmania's Bookend Trust, and Polly has inherited her father's conservation mantle, if not his Rhino suit, and is a patron of Save the Rhino. We got up early the next morning, and were taken off on a journey by Niall Doran of the Bookend Trust. We saw the devastation of the bushfires on the Tasman peninsula, learned the natural history behind the bushfires (basically, Eucalypts like fires - they clear the brush and help the seeds to germinate), saw an echidna by the side of the road, went on a wonderful boat ride (thanks to http://www.tasmancruises.com.au/) and saw awe-inspiring cliffs, seals and penguins (and a dead weedy seadragon), not to mention a place where the sea tips on its side...
...or it feels like it has. (Photo by Polly Adams.)
And then we were shows some of the fire devastation in Dunalley, and presented books to the primary school.
The primary school at Dunalley is not there any more. It burned down in the bushfires. They are putting up temporary buildings to house a temporary school while they build a new one. (We were joined by lots of nice people, including Robert Pennicott and Andrew Hughes, Tasmanians of the Year in 2012 and 2013.)
My publishers gave the school lots of my books, and lots of other books that they could use to auction or sell or include in the library. Here I am with Chair of the School Association Elizabeth Knox, Principal Matt Kenny, and various students and community members.
(Photos taken from https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.10151236486214607&type=1 )
The school wrote about it at their blog entry at http://newdunalleyschool.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/a-visit-from-neil-gaiman/. It's a really inspiring blog, as they chart their recovery from the fires and chart the plans for the new school...
Time was tight, so we flew by seaplane to Hobart so I could do an interview with ABC's Helen Shield (you can read about it and listen to it here: http://blogs.abc.net.au/tasmania/2013/01/neil-gaiman.html). (And Helen's interview with Polly is at http://blogs.abc.net.au/tasmania/2013/01/douglas-adams-little-rocket.html).
A mad dash to a quick rehearsal/soundcheck with Jherek and a string quartet, along with our special guests David Byrne and St Vincent, and an even madder dash back to the ABC studios to do another interview, this time with Triple J's The Doctor (You can read about it/listen to it at http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/thedoctor/blog/s3673304.htm). Then back to the Mona Festival. I got there at 7 minutes to 6. We were due on at 6, so I found a dressing room, changed clothes and went on stage to read "Click-Clack the Rattlebag", sing Psycho, and, my favourite moment of all, read my "Australia Day" poem with Brian Ritchie playing didgeridoo, and David Byrne making animal sounds on the guitar.
I listened to Kate Miller-Heidke singing wonderfully immediately after us (her cover of David Byrne's Psycho Killer was unbelievable. It was a bit like this:)
And then came the best bit of the whole night as Jherek and I had a close encounter with a guide dog puppy named Quinnell.
.jpg)
I nearly forgot to mention, a couple of days earlier Amanda had asked me on Twitter to recreate her famous Map of Tasmania photo from the last time she was there. So, with the aid of a Map of Tasmania apron and photographer Dianna Graf, I did. And then Polly did too.
and here is Quinnell the guide dog puppy in training with his coat on (he's not allowed to play and lick you when he has his coat on) along with Dianna Graf, who took many of the the above photos and, with Mark, her partner, is training Quinnell. We're in Hobart harbour and it is very windy.
And then Polly and I were getting up at 6 am again and we headed to Melbourne, where we stayed with my friends Peter and Clare. They have the best house in the world.
I spent a day or so mostly being interviewed -- the photo is from the interview at http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/books/melbourne-in-authors-good-books-as-he-plans-next-fun-escapade-20130123-2d7e6.html.
I'd a talk at the Atheneum Theatre, under the auspices of the Wheeler Centre. I signed lots of books for people, and then stumbled off for a late drink and dinner with lots of Melbournian friends, including Sxip Shirey, Meow Meow, and someone named Knibbs who can, like me, raise both eyebrows individually or set them scurrying across her forehead like startled caterpillars. ("Did you teach yourself in front of a mirror when you were a kid too?" "Yup.")
Four hours of sleep and I said goodbye to Peter and to Clare, and to Polly too (I'd pretty much adopted her by the time I left, so it was a sad goodbye made happier in the knowledge that I'd introduced her to lots of people who would be fun for her to know in Australia) and flew to Sydney, where I was interviewed, had my photo taken by Tamara Dean (look at her beautiful photo art here and here) and then I had lunch with my Bloomsbury publishers and answered questions for them on video, and ran to the Sydney Recital Hall where I met FourPlay String Quartet for a rehearsal.
I really love the guys from FourPlay -- it's such a delight doing stuff with them. We ran through the Fireball XL5 theme. We took the first fifteen minutes of FORTUNATELY, THE MILK and they created music and sound effects on the fly. They made glorious bush sounds for the Australia Day poem. Working with them now is so comfortable and easy.
Photo stolen from http://capriciousnerd.tumblr.com/post/41897844603/agaimanevening because she posted on Twitter that she had photos from the night at the exact moment I thought I ought to look for some.
During the evening I read the first 2 chapters of THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE. I did a Q&A and explained why secrets do not leak out of the Doctor Who office in Cardiff. I sang the Fireball XL5 theme because I had FourPlay with me and I wanted to hear what they did to it...
I read the first fifteen minutes of FORTUNATELY, THE MILK... (it is so silly).
And then I gave an acknowledgment of country, and read the Australia Day poem, and we were done. No signing -- it was a long event, there were about 1100 people there, and I was knackered, but I scribbled on things for the people at the stage door on the way out.
Production entity Jordan Verzar and Festival boss Ben Strout, Jemma Birrell (artistic director of the festival) and festival PR Ainslee Lenehan and I, along with my old Whitgift school friend James Croll, stumbled off for an exhausted drink and conversation after the show, winding up in the bar of the hotel I was staying in, the somewhat O.T.T. but beautiful "QT", where the people were so nice and helpful. And then I was sleepily packing and it was daylight again, and I went to see the people at Animal Logic, who had given up some of their Australia Day to show me the beautiful film work they had done...
I proofread the UK edition of OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE on the plane back to the US, and read Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor. I breakfasted with my son and daughter in law and daughter in San Francisco airport. I got home to Amanda...
I slept. I slept for three whole hours, and then the furnace in the basement belched out soot and smoke, the smoke alarms went off, the fire brigade arrived, and my hopes of catching up on my sleep were dashed. (Nothing was damaged. Nothing burned. And the Cambridge MA fire department are fast.)
The first of my episodes of SELECTED SHORTS went up on the radio. I got to select and introduce stories I loved -- in this case Ray Bradbury's chilling "The Veldt" read by Stephen Colbert, and James Thurber's "The Catbird Seat" hilariously read by Leonard Nimoy.
You can listen to it HERE.
(I'll be hosting for the next few weeks. Why don't you subscribe to the podcast? Information and links at http://www.selectedshorts.org/podcast/. There are some great stories on the way.)
Then an interview with me went out on Morning Edition. You read about it and listen to it here: http://www.npr.org/2013/01/28/170085113/watch-this-neil-gaimans-imaginative-favorites It's about things I love, or things that influenced me.
No, I won't tell you what they are. Go and listen to it. It's fun.
(There were things on my list that we didn't have time to talk about: Doctor Who's Curse of the Fatal Death and the Magnetic Fields' Andrew In Drag video, for example...)
And I should stop writing this blog and go and write about weird stuff happening underneath London instead.
But if you've made it this far, the next week should be interesting. I'll be doing a really exciting (and quite goofy) Art Project, and you'll learn a bit about it in this film. (Along with seeing Cabal, alive and well and happy, three weeks ago.)
Labels: Is Tasmania Secretly Cool, fourplay, kate Miller-heidke, Dunalley, Amanda, Hobart, Tasmania, failing to sleep in on a Sunday morning, Polly J Rocket Adams, Mofo, Keep moving, melbourne, Mona, David Byrne Yes Him
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By: Neil Gaiman,
on 1/25/2011
Blog: Neil Gaiman (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Peter Cook, Is Tasmania Secretly Cool?, Blog titles that were just the words in my head when I titled the blog that are quotes from strange, fourplay, Add a tag
posted by Neil
(Photo taken on Monday afternoon, just before the studio recording of THE TRUTH IS A CAVE IN THE BLACK MOUNTAINS with FourPlay String Quartet. I am the one not holding a stringed instrument.)
I should be writing the thing that I'm going to read tonight at Sydney Opera House.
(You can, of course, point out, that I should have finished it before now. I will undoubtedly agree.)
So, because I am not yet posting anything, here is an account of what I did a week ago, with photos, from someone else's blog.
http://jacwabbit.blogspot.com/2011/01/neil-gaiman-amanda-palmer-some-tassie.html
And here's Amanda's blog entry on her last Wednesday in Tasmania: http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/2839942590/being-nick-cave-or-the-holy-prophecy-of-the
(No, the title of the blog doesn't actually have anything to do with anything. Although you can listen to the original here, and understand all.)
Labels: Blog titles that were just the words in my head when I titled the blog that are quotes from strange comedic routines, fourplay, Peter Cook, Is Tasmania Secretly Cool?
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