Lifey Death Dances Again

I'm in an Atlanta airport lounge, and the time is 6:30am, but my body is convinced it's only 3:30 am because I got on a plane in San Francisco a few hours ago. I'm here because of the thing that Eddie Campbell calls, in his book of the same name, The Dance of Lifey Death.

A month ago I became a grandfather. My son Michael and his wife Courtney had their first child, a small boy called Everett. I've been counting down the days until I could go and see him, but first had to survive a Florida hurricane (it was fine as things turned out: didn't even lose power) and then drive home across country and so on.

I spent time working as a rickshaw driver for a one-year-old with his own tiny rickshaw (found abandoned on the streets of Boston by Lee, Amanda's Cloud Club landlord, and painted up and repaired). And then I waved goodbye to Amanda and Ash as they went off for a short European tour.

Which reminds me: here is a beautiful, and genuinely sweet time-lapse video starring Ash (he plays the sleeping baby in the cradle) for the Jack and Amanda Palmer cover of "Wynken, Blynken and Nod". Amanda is in it, and so is Maddy and so are the Welcome to Night Vale crew and so many of our friends. (I was writing in Scotland the night when it was made. I am not in it.) Watch it on full screen, if you can, as so much is happening.

I went to Toronto to attend the American Gods TV series first season wrap party, because I wanted to thank the cast and crew for the amazing job they had done and the hard hard work it had involved. I went to Los Angeles, where I did something cool and secret (you'll know in a year), and was interviewed for the Electronic Press Kit for American Gods.  (It will be out in the spring. I'm really excited.)

And then, finally, I went to San Francisco to be a grandfather.

Everett is the sweetest baby. He looks like he was drawn by Crockett Johnson on a day that he was feeling particularly impish. He looks a little like Barnaby and a little like Mr O'Malley, Barnaby's fairy godfather. I spent a happy couple of days changing nappies and dandling him. Lots and lots of dandling.

I tried to explain what being a grandparent was like on Twitter. I said, "It is a very comfortable thing to wear. Like a brand-new favourite old coat." And it is. You don't need instructions, you just fit right in, and the love just grows and your heart grows with it, in the same sort of way it does when your children are born.

This is a photo I took of Michael and Everett. My son and his son. I am so proud of Courtney and Michael: such good parents. I feel like I must have done something very right, somewhere along the way.

I had planned to stay with them in San Francisco for four days, but as I was leaving LA I heard that my cousin Sidney had died.

Sidney was married to my cousin Helen. She's 98, he was 94. They were married 68 years. Sidney was funny, impish even, smart, and in all my dealings with him, unflappable. He was a building contractor, and when he retired he became a sculptor and he made wonderful sculptures, realistic and abstract, but always things you wanted to touch and run your fingers over. Over the last decade he's been getting slowly more and more deaf, and more distant, but when he would show you his art his eyes would light up and he'd seem to hear everything you said, and he'd be perfectly present.

Here's a photo of Sidney and Amanda in 2013: I took her to Sarasota to meet them, and we put on an impromptu ukulele concert (Amanda) and reading (me) for Helen and Sidney and several hundred people who had learned about it from Twitter.

Here's Sidney's obituary. The bit where it says that he was loved and admired by all who knew him? That's true. It's not just something said in an obituary.

So I'm in Atlanta on a layover on my way to Sidney's funeral. 

I'm going to be attending it for Sidney, because I loved him, and for the family, and for my late father, who was the first person on the British side of the family to meet the American side; and I'm thinking about Everett and Ash, and I'm watching the circle of life in action. Eddie Campbell got it right. The Dance of Lifey Death. It's not a bad thing. Somebody enters, somebody leaves, the dance continues and the love remains.

Speaking of love, I have not congratulated Eddie here for marrying the wonderful Audrey Niffenegger, nor congratulated Audrey for marrying the wonderful Eddie Campbell. I like it when my friends marry each other.

(And I just checked. The Dance of Lifey Death is in Eddie's huge book Alec: The Years Have Pants, a book I cannot praise too highly: http://bit.ly/yearshavepants. You should get it. You can thank me later.)

Labels: ...the love you take is equal to the love you make, audrey niffenegger, Dandlage, Eddie Campbell, Everett Gaiman, Sidney Fagin, wynken blynken and nod

Waiting, and Cinnamon

I'm in Florida, and I'm typing this on Wednesday night and setting it to post on Thursday because tomorrow I may not have power, or Internet. I'm slightly nervous: I bought water to drink, and just filled the bath with more water, have lots of food in tins and packets, and the house I'm in has stormproof windows. But still, if the hurricane comes and does its stuff things are going to be less than fun. And according to Snopes, the candles I bought because there were no more flashlights or batteries should be left unlit.

Um. I was impelled to get a haircut before the hurricane. I'm not sure why. It just seemed to make sense that if serious weather was coming I should be able to see out. The hairdressers had closed up shop and fled further inland, but there was a barber still working. Normally I can work with barbers to get a haircut that isn't too bad, but this time I had encountered a barber who obviously only did one haircut, and was going to give it to me no matter what I asked for. I should have shouted "PUT THOSE DOWN AND STEP AWAY FROM ME NOW" when he picked up the electric clippers as his first thing. Instead I thought "I wonder what he is going to do with those?" and then it was too late as half my hair had fallen to the tiles. So now I have the kind of haircut that means I feel like someone else whenever I pass a mirror or touch my hair. Perhaps the someone else I am now wears hats. I must find out.

As of a couple of days ago, there is a new book for sale in the US: it's the gorgeous hardback Chris Riddell illustrated edition of Odd and the Frost Giants; http://bit.ly/OddFrostRiddell Lots of Silver ink and gorgeousness. I'm very fond of the story, too.

IT IS THE MOST HANDSOME OF BOOKS. Silver ink and lots of Chris Riddell art makes it so. http://www.harpercollinschildrens.com/books/Odd-Frost-Giants/

And here is a book that won't be out until May of 2017. It's a story I wrote about 20 years ago, inspired by a Lisa Snellings carousel sculpture of a girl called Cinnamon, with pearlescent eyes, riding on a Tiger.

For the last 12 years or thereabouts, it's been available on the Audiobook The Neil Gaiman Audio Collection. Now it's finally going to be available as something you can touch and hold.

It's beautifully illustrated by Divya Srinivasan. (Divya lives in Austin, Texas. Her illustrations have appeared in the New Yorker magazine. She is the author and illustrator of the picture books Little Owl's Night, Little Owl's Day, and Octopus Alone.  You can see more of her work  at www.pupae.com.)

Right. I'm going to go to bed now, and worry, and then, I hope, take all the worry and give it to the people in my book...

Labels: chris Riddell, cinnamon, Divya Srinivasan, haircuts, hurricane, Odd and the Frost Giants, secret identities, storm warning