Neil Gaiman

I first heard of Neil Gaiman, when I was attending a three day workshop on cartooning more than ten years ago. Signing in for the cartooning workshop was one of those spur of the moment decisions I made when the summer days got really hot and working on things that had the words "nanometers" and "microseconds" in it got pretty boring. So I thought, "Why not do something totally refreshing and non-scientific (please!), like enroll in a cartooning workshop perhaps?" I don't exactly remember why I chose cartooning of all topics but I suspect it had more to do with the venue than anything else. The venue was at this pretty elusive museum/library, an old structure located in the middle of a small oasis of a park, which was in turn sitting in the middle of very tall, modern glassy buildings. The workshop was held in the dome shaped attic of that building, with glass windows surrounding it offering a 360 view of the park area. Pretty old and unique! But I am digressing. It turned out that our teacher in that class, was a very avid fan of Neil Gaiman (he says his name with a reverence akin to ancient priests praying to their gods) and he highly recommended Neil's graphic novel - The Sandman series. And so that was when I started to read Neil Gaiman's works.

I wouldn't say that I liked him at first "read". His works struck me as pretty 'out of this world', not exactly the frame of mind I had back then. But I found his ideas pretty unique and interesting - with characters such as "Dream" or "Death" portrayed by a young punkish looking lady or a punkish looking man. He sort of grows on you after you read the variety of written mediums he had produced. I specially liked his children's books, short stories and novels like Stardust and the Graveyard book. They are quite simple, fairytale like, almost feels like they were written for children/teens but I find that his stories tend to stretch my imagination. He sees and thinks of things quite differently and his perspective is contagious. With him, I feel like I am "given permission" to think of wierd things, or things that are totally out of this world or to truly explore what the answers might be if I ask myself, "What if?"

Most specially I liked him as a person. In a way I think of him as one of my role models. He's pretty down to earth, has a great sense of humor and a wonderful imagination. His honesty and truthfulness with himself and with the people around him is inspiring and quite endearing. With him, anything ordinary can become extraordinary. He has the calmness that could only have come from having the wisdom gained with age and experience, self knowledge, humility, and an openness or reverence to almost everything around him. He is very supportive of budding writers in a lot of countries too, including the Philippines which he is due to go back for another visit in a month or so. To top all that, he is such a great storyteller! I haven't seen any other famous author who reads his writings pretty darn well like he does. Here are videos of him reading all the chapters of his Graveyard Book. Listening to him, made me feel like a child again - back to when I was sitting on my father's lap, watching his face and listening to his voice, getting engrossed with the story and being impatient in knowing what happens next. I honestly think I've improved as a reader to Julia on her books after I've watched Neil read. I would highly recommend listening to his read on the first chapter (at least) till he gets to the part where he reads the lines coming from the different characters. He also has an online journal which I was quite happy to stumble upon last month. He updates it almost daily, which given his busy schedule, speaks a lot about himself. He is currently concerned with his cat, Zoe, who has a throat tumor and is dying (or may be put to sleep). Sometimes it feels quite strange to be this close to knowing the daily/weekly comings and goings of someone you admire from afar. That's how I feel when I read his journal. I consider myself lucky to be living in this age of blogs and twits and having someone like Neil Gaiman to inspire me in my night time web reads.