Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I've got recordings of Neil talking about Good Omens at readings,
about how much fun he and Terry had writing it and how they probably
wouldn't write a sequel (even though they plotted it out in a hotel
room one night) because now they're both Big Cheese Authors and to do a
collaboration would involve lots of lawyers talking to each other.
     Which is to say: I've never heard any indication that either of
them disliked the book, quite the contrary in fact.
  

    
I seem to remember Neil saying that they'd call each other when they
wrote something they thought was really funny, usually waking the other
up with something like, "Wake up, you b@$+@%!, I've written a funny
bit!" or somesuch...
  

    
Drove home yesterday; took 26 hours to do 1300 miles. An interesting
experience I'd not want to repeat.

...

Terry and I are both very proud of Good Omens and love it very much.
It is our baby.  

It has however become public knowledge that we hate it because
sometimes we write "Burn this Book!" in the front of it, and people
think we're being serious...

...

Mary - I've never got into U2 musically (which may well be my own
blind spot) but I like Bono very much; intellectually involved, and he
understands things mythic (I remember spending one long and
increasingly drunken night chatting about Winter Kings and suchlike as
it related to rock and roll).
  

    
Thanks Neil.  :-)

-Kelly, who has 3 copies, all signed with nifty little scribbles,
images, and requests to burn the book...
  

    
Yay!  Neil's home!  Welcome home, Neil.  Rest well.

JaNell: What was it you were saying about how he knows them all? 
*sigh*
  

    
Pamela~ Neil does seem to know everyone, which is cool for us in the
one-degree-of-seperation way, but also begs the question of why he
bothers with the likes of us...
  

    
(Neil: I apologize for this ahead of time, and assure you that I own
my own projections.  Most of the time, anyway.)

Okay, following in the fine footsteps of DanGuy and JaNell, it’s my
turn on the dream thing.  This one happened last night.  (If you decide
that I'm completely nuts after this, be nice.)

   *

So my friend is taking me out to see friends of his.  Just who my
"friend" is I’m a little fuzzy on at this point.  But we head out to
this place in the country--great orchard trees, dirt road, funny little
homestead kind of place.  It’s fall, and the air has that electric
blue feeling in it (that I miss so badly out here in LA).  But the
leaves are golden and the dirt is reddish, and everything is all warm
and earthy-colored, like the sunset of the world.  

We get out of the car and we don’t seem to bother with a door; we’re
just suddenly sitting around at this scarred old round wooden kitchen
table, and my dream vision is panning in on the people assembled like a
Steadicam mounted on a drunk--sudden rushing focus, then jerky pull
back--which is making me feel kind of woozy.  The first person I see is
immediately to my left, and he’s this laughing Native American man
with this fabulous face, like a tree smiling.  And my mysterious
"friend" (who’s still off-camera) introduces him as so & so (he says
his name, which I can’t remember, but I seem to recognize it as a
musician).  And I think: Wow, hey it’s (that guy)!  (We’ll call him Guy
#1.)  And he seems really nice.  I like him immediately.  Then we
wobble visually around the table in a wide arc, and I realize that
we’re sitting there with maybe 5 or 6 guys, two or three of whom look
more or less of Native American descent and two or three of whom look
like 50-ish country-boy biker types, only they’re smiling easily.  (My
friend is at the table, but I still don’t see him.)

And everything seems to be going okay, except there’s a small voice in
the back of my head wondering what exactly we’re doing here, or maybe
it’s just me.  I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to do, like when
you don’t know what to do with your hands onstage.  I’m just winging
it.  Then Guy #1 gets out a couple of pictures from his daughter’s
wedding.  And there are two things that are odd about these.  One is
that the wedding is apparently already over, because the pictures are
actually of a man and a woman mostly unclothed in a *big* bed, draped
in golden cloth and flora, looking like a cross between a Klimt
painting and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  And the other is that they’re
not the same husbands.  When I attempt to clarify this tactfully, he
explains that one is from her first wedding, and the other is from her
second.  His daughter’s name is Judith.  Her husband’s name in one of
the pictures--I’m not quite sure which--is Holofernes.

Everyone at the table seems to think there’s something very funny
about this.  I decide that carefulness is the better part of dignity,
and attempt to ask an earnest question about the wedding--whatever
happened *before* the pictures.  (Well, ya know, I'm a girl; we ask
these things.)  This sets everyone off again.  And I’m starting to feel
really insecure and uncertain.

Then my friend says my name, and I look up from that internal place
that I’ve gone, away from the laughing boys, and he’s sitting right
across the table from me.  And he’s Neil.  Neil running an unlit
cigarette around in his fingers.  And my-friend-Neil says to me: "You’d
better lighten up around these guys.  Don’t take things so seriously
around them.  It’s bad for the mind and body."  And there’s something
in the way he says it that tells me he means this literally.

And I look back around the table, and realize that my-friend-Neil’s
friends are all actually Coyote Brothers.  That when I look around the
table quickly, I can just see out of the periphery of my vision, their
coyote heads all superimposed on their faces, laughing.

So I’m thinking about NeiLoki and feeling a little dubious about
meeting any of his friends, this morning.  And I’m still trying to
figure out what he was trying to tell me.
  

    
JaNell slipped.  I admit it.  It's cool.  Even second-hand.  But...
see above.  
  

    
OK, somebody *please* explain all the "slipped" references.
How did I slip?
I used to think it was leaving your real name on the post or something
like that...
  

    
I feel dubious about interacting with NeiLoki, let alone his
friends...

Like that dream I had a few months back, where I dreamt I was going
through an uncomfortable metamorphasis via modem, and Neil of course
was somewhere in it, assisting it or causing it or somesuch...
I'm not sure he appreciates how intense a catalyst he is, or maybe
he's just become blase' about it...
But the whole summer has been a rather overwhelming experience for me,
and I have transformed, and still am, a lot of it...
via modem?!

Oh, hey Neil, still hope you aren't laughing at me. With me is OK.
  

    
JaNell:  "Slipped" refers to continuity.  I posted #55.  While I was
composing what became #57, you posted #56.  I didn't see it until I
clicked "Post" at the bottom of the screen.  There's a tiny little
check-box there that says (at least on my screen): "Let me know if
another response slips in ahead of mine" which defaults to checked.

It displayed your #56 to me before I clicked "post" again to send my
#57.  

I think it's just there to allow you to choose whether or not you want
to change your current post to allow for the one somebody sent in
before you.  It's not such a big deal here, but it could get confusing
in some of the really fast-paced forums, I imagine.

JaNell said:

>I'm not sure he appreciates how intense a catalyst he is [...]

Um.  Yeah.  This hits rather too close to home for me to be flippant
about it.  I think you're braver than me.  But.  Yeah.

-Pam
"I’ve never felt that answers were the real province of the writer;
better questions, on the other hand, certainly are."
--Neil Gaiman
  

    
JaNell- You know how, when you start to post, it'll be the first new
post?  Like, you see the last post in your screen?  Well, slippage
occurs when, while you're writing your post, someone else posts just
ahead of you.  If you click the 'let me know if another response slips'
box, the slipped response is the one that shows up in the new window.

For instance, Pamela just posted while I was writing this one.  She
slipped.

Welcome back, Neil.  That's *a lot* of miles.  Wow.

Pamela- What are you on?  Where can I get me some <grin>?

I'm *so* envious of those who saw Tori, and more envious of those who
saw Tori and Neil at the same show.  Anyone pick up an extra copy of
the tour book?  I needs me a copy of one...
  

    
Pamela~
I don't know about braver...
maybe more foot-in-mouthier?
Or just, mouthier.

Um, the intense part...
maybe email me, if you want to talk about it but not here.
I wasn't being flippant, believe me. 
I know.
  

    

A little more on slippage- when you are posting in Engaged (through the
web), you get told when someone slips and get a chance to modify your
posting accordingly. Those of us who post through pico are only told of the
slippage after our post is done and sent. Which is why pico users tend to
report slippage in seperate posts, while engaged people mention it in the
slipped post.
It gets confusing when someone slips your announcement of slippage.

And you should have seen the amount of slippage in the election topics back
in November, or in the attack conference just after the 11th. Seeing "26
responses have slipped ahead of you" was not uncommon.
  

    
um.  so i was there.  i was there looking and no one was talking and i
didn't know what happened.  and then i looked and i realized that
everyone was somewhere else, namely here.  barking mad.  so i feel
better because for a while there it was beginning to feel like
dodgeball when teams are being chosen and you're standing in the corner
with your little purple velour sweatpants and big bird shirt and no
one picks you cause garbage pail kids are way, way cooler.  

that being said, i have two words for all of you:

mulholland drive.

please.  then come back and tell me your thoughts.  hurry.  
  

    
also, pamela, i am in need of an update.  i wonder.  i wander.  
  

    
oh one more thing.  what is the non-member url for this place?  i
don't understand how to find it...
  

    
Mulholland Drive?
Errol Flynn is the first thing that comes to mind...

Url?
http://engaged.well.com/engaged/engaged.cgi?c=inkwell.vue&f=0&t=125
  

    
Will... I'm going to the Tori show here, and am gathering the stuff
for picking up tourbooks for people; if you want one, eMail me and I'll
mail you the money-sending address...

-Kelly
  

    
Neil, welcome back!

Pamela - Wow, that was some dream.  I can never remember any of mine,
except for the one where I was on a show with sock puppets, but that's
another story. Tennessee tends to do weird things to you. 
  

    
Hey!!!
I heard that!
Watch it, you!
  

    
Neil--I was inordinately pleased that you liked Himself.  Then I
realized that the reason I was so tickled was that I trust your
opinion.  You are the only person I know who has met Bono.  And I know
that you will "call a spade a bloody shovel" to quote an old episode of
Rumpole.  Feel free to share as many of those recollections of that
evening as you like ;-)

The Eddie Izzard quote generator is the best stress relief on the Web,
for my money.

Hod-d-d-d.  Hod-d-d-d.

Mary (who is considering proposing to Caleb Carr)
  

    
Dream story:
Last night I had an embarrassing dream with Harlan Ellison in it. It
was a post-apocalyptic camping in the woods sort of thing. He kept
following me around telling me how<big blush here> curvy and juicy I
was...
Later I realized that he hit on everyone, in dreams, anyway.
Where is Neil when you need him?
  

    
I'm rather hoping to see Mulholland Drive, Adriana, but I fear I might
not be able to find the time to see it on the big screen.  The
previews look mah-velous, and I generally enjoy Lynch films.


"Stilgar, do we have wormsign?"
"Usul, we have wormsign the likes of which GOD has never seen."


JaNell slipped.  What is it with you and I having dreams in which Neil
and Harlan make appearances?  I guess it's because both are such
dynamic individuals.
  

    
It's happening to me because I want to go to MadCon so badly...