Neil Gaiman Interview
from Sound & Spirit program "Dreams"
Sound & Spirit host Ellen Kushner : British writer Neil Gaiman, is a cult figure to iconoclasitic young intellectuals everywhere. His graphic novel (we used to call them comics) The Sandman, chronicles the myth-laden adventures of a Byronic, tortured immortal--who is not only named "Dream", he is Dream, the director of all human dreaming, progenitor of results beautiful, twisted and various. In addition to the family saga of the Dream Lord and his siblings, Death, Desire, Delirium and the rest, Neil Gaiman scripts stories of the dreamers of history from William Shakespeare and Haroun al Rashid, to you and me.
Neil Gaiman: People say to you, "Oh I bet you can turn your dreams into stories..." And it's very, very difficult to turn dreams into stories because what makes dreams interesting is not what makes a story interesting. Have you ever seen the way somebody's eyes glaze over when you try and tell them a really interesting dream that you had? And you're telling them, "Well, I was was walking round and round the kitchen, trying to find the toast because I knew it was there somewhere, and I moved the rubbish bin and there was a swimming pool I never knew we had; and I thought, "Why didn't anyone tell me that we had a swimming pool in our kitchen?" So I went off to change, but by the time I got back it was a train, and then I started getting really scared..." You're telling people this and their eyes are glazing over; and for you it was interesting and fascinating; But it's not a story. And dreams very, very rarely contain stories; but they will contain images. You can bring things back from dreams: Just like the strange fish that you see in very, very deep waters...in photographs in National Geographic of the things that live down in the depths. And you can hook them and snag them and bring them up and put them into stories. But you can't take them and make them stories, you can just sort of let them glitter and glimmer and shimmer...through something that is actually written with story logic.
S&S : What part of your mind do you think that "story logic" comes from...as opposed to "dream logic"?
NG: I think story logic is very much something that you can do in the waking world. Because you're imposing structure on things...It's like building a house. Story logic is like having to build a house in the real world; so your house actually has to have walls that go all the way around and windows and doors that connect and a roof on the top and a cellar underneath. Umm... Dream logic is like houses in dreams...in which any door can open onto anywhere. A lot of my dreams are set in houses; or...or rather that they're all in the same house. And I don't think I've ever been in...in any room in it twice.
NG: There's a period in the Fifties, where it seems like all of a sudden so many songs are about dreams. Mister Sandman, Dream Lover, you know, Dream A Little Dream, all about dreams. A dream is a kind of pun. "Dreams" mean two different things: They mean the thing you do when you close your eyes and you go off to far away lands...And they mean hopes, and they mean aspirations. You know, the thing that you really, really, really deep down want more than anything else, that's your dream...follow your dream.
S&S : What about nightmares?
NG: I started to treasure my nightmares... when I was writing Sandman... And I think anybody that writes anything that has a little bit of horror, or a little bit of strange or nastiness in it... There is a point where you wake up from a nightmare and you go, "Oh that was terrible! Oh that was awful!! Those thiiinngs and, and the way that... When I looked in the mirror and the worms coming out of my chest...and... Gee, that's good! I can use this!
S&S (laughing): Listen Neil... You were talking about music and dreams. And uh, is there any music that particularly sounds like dreaming to you?
NG: For me, the soundtrack to my dreams is, is probably Brian Eno music. These vast, cold intelligence, making these distant things that sound almost, but not quite like tunes that I once knew... And that's, that's dream music for me, is Eno.
S&S : Neil Gaiman's Sandman series includes the collections Preludes & Nocturnes, Death: The High Cost of Living, and The Kindly Ones, all from the DC Comics' Eclipse line.
This interview was part of the Sound & Spirit program "Dreams".
For more of Ellen's conversations check Interviews in the section Above and Beyond.
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