Where I am, what I'm doing, how I'm doing and how I got here

Hullo from Scotland, where I am in rural lockdown on my own.  I'm half a world away from Amanda and Ash, and missing both of them a lot. We check in on screens and phones twice a day, when I get up and before I sleep (which is when they go to sleep and when they get up) but it's not the same.

I was in New Zealand with them until two weeks ago, when New Zealand went from the Level 4 lockdown it had been on for the previous 5 weeks down to Level 3. I flew, masked and gloved, from empty Auckland airport to LAX, an empty international terminal with only one check in counter open -- the one for the BA flight from LAX to London. Both flights were surreal, especially the flight to London. Empty airports, mostly empty planes. It reminded me of flying a week after 9/11: everything's changed.

I landed in London about ten in the morning, got a masked car service to a friend's house. He had a spare car (bought many years ago as a birthday present for his daughter, but she had never learned to drive), with some groceries for me in a box in the back, waiting in the drive, with the key in the lock. I drove north, on empty motorways and then on empty roads, and got in about midnight, and I've been here ever since.

The journey was, as I said,  surreal. It was also emotionally hard. Amanda and I had found ourselves in a rough place immediately before I left (my fault, I'm afraid, I'd hurt her feelings very badly, and... actually beyond that it's none of anyone else's business). We agreed that we needed to give each other some space, which had been in very short supply in lockdown in New Zealand. So it was a sad sort of flight, even without the world in lockdown, and a sad sort of drive.

(You can read all about how we got to New Zealand and why we were there at all at  http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2020/03/on-beach.html. And, for the curious, the song that's currently stuck in my head is mostly Al Stewart's “Warren Gamaliel Harding”.) 

I needed to be somewhere I could talk to people in the UK while they and I were awake, not just before breakfast and after dinner. And I needed to be somewhere I could continue to isolate easily, which definitely isn't our house in Woodstock, currently at capacity with five families who have fled Manhattan and Brooklyn and Boston. 

Once the world opens up and travel gets easier Amanda and Ash and I are looking forward to being together again in Woodstock. (Yes, I've seen the newsfeed headlines saying I've moved to the UK, and even that we're divorcing. No, I haven't moved the UK, and yes, Amanda and I are still very much together, even with half a world between us.) 

Thank you to everyone who's been kind and nice and helpful, while Amanda and my problems got rather more public than either of us is comfortable with. We love each other, and we love Ash, and we will sort ourselves out, in private, which is much the best place for things like this.

It's rough for almost everyone right now – some people are crammed together and wish they weren't, some are alone and crave companionship, pretty much all of us are hurting in one way or another. So be kind. Be kind to each other, be kind to Amanda (who is getting a huge amount of undeserved internet flack for this, some of it really cruel),  and if you ever meet him (he will tell you very seriously everything he thinks about zombies, or his latest zombie-supplanting discovery, Richard Scarry's detectives), be kind to Ash.

Neil

PS: Amanda and I wrote a letter together, for the curious and for the bits of the world that is wondering what's going on, and whether they should worry about it. Feel free to send anyone who wants to know how we are and what's happening to read it.

Dear Everybody.

This has been a hard few weeks for us.  We are not getting divorced. It’s not that exciting.

We love each other very deeply. As sometimes happens during the course of a long marriage, we have hurt each other. We have lived our lives individually, and then as a couple, very publicly (and right now, too publicly).  

We have been trying to figure out how best to love each other for twelve years.  It is fair to say that this relationship has been the hardest, but also the most rewarding, collaboration of our lives. 

Living in lockdown is hard. Working on a marriage, as everyone married knows, is also hard. And we are very aware there are thousands, probably millions of people who have been dealing with their own versions of problems like ours over the last few months – and many face situations that are far worse.

We will sort out our marriage in private, which is where things like this are best sorted. We're working together to try and do this better. We care about  each other so much, and we have a small boy we love and delight in, and those are reasons enough to work together to fix things. 

So that's what's going on. It's not as much fun or as interesting as the newsfeed headlines made it seem.

For anyone who felt the urge to choose sides on this, trust us, there really aren't any sides to be  taken: we are on our side, and we're on Ash's side, and we hope you are too.

None of us know what the future is going to look and feel like, right now, and that's scary. We need to be able to have each other’s backs.  So please, if you can, have our backs, and we will do our best to have yours. 

And to the vast majority of people out there who have been kind and sane and supportive to both of us, and to each other,  thank you, we love you and appreciate it, and you, so very much.

Peace, and definitely love,

Neil and Amanda

Labels: amanda palmer, Ash, Life in lockdown, married life

The Moon over the Corn Field

The moon is full.

There's a storm coming, with a cool breeze blowing across the warm evening, and the cornfield is alive with rustles and whispers. The white dogs in the moonlight slip in and out of the corn like ghosts, and I cannot stop my head building nightmarish scenarios no matter how hard I try.

I went for a longish bike ride with Maddy today and we watched Doctor Who (we're almost caught up). She put up with me feeding her interesting salads for dinner. ("How is it?" "Well... it's.. interesting, dad.")

Life is quiet right now. I'm home in the midwest, Amanda's in Boston, we won't see each other again for two weeks. I miss her, but I'm enjoying being on my own and getting work done without regard to anyone else's schedule or needs, and I would be willing to bet an enormous pie that she's having a wonderful time catching up on work without having any attention on me. I dunno. It works for us.

We had a long phone conversation today about the tour we're doing in Oct/November, during which we decided 1) How long the show would be and thus 2) how long we'd each take for solo bits. I've decided to read different stories at every venue. We also decided that the LA Hallowe'en Neil and Amanda show would have a costume competition of some kind. (Here's a video of me walking the line to get into the costume competiton last Hallowe'en at the House on the Rock. It will be a shorter, less formal affair than that was.)

Astonishingly, over $100,000 has now been pledged to the Kickstarter project, and we talked about what that lets us do for the CD package, for the "surprise" thank you gifts (we decided what they are going to be today - something special that Amanda had wanted to do for Who Killed Amanda Palmer, but which she couldn't afford), how we're going to keep people informed of what's happening and what we're doing and making with that.

I really like pre-selling things as a way of bringing them into the world - it means we're making enough for the people who want them, we can afford to make them as well as we want, and it means that people are getting something real. We aren't worrying about marketing costs. We don't have to get a record label, and then try and persuade them to make the thing we want. We just do it.

If you are thinking of doing a Kickstarter (or an Indiegogo or similar, for those outside the US), can I point you at former Web Elf Olga Nunes' excellent essay at http://olganunes.com/2011/01/on-lamp-kickstarter-and.php? Everything that Olga suggested, we put into practice. Garrett Gibbons's blog at http://garrettgibbons.com/blog/successful-kickstarter-campaigns is also really useful and wise.

And make your video interesting, watchable, and clear. A goofy song about baby hamsters and time machines may get your Kickstarter funded. I just watched a Kickstarter video from a good friend which was very beautiful and artistic, but didn't actually tell anyone what the project was or why it should be supported, and I do not think it will get its funding, which will be a shame.

...

I'm a huge fan of Public Radio International's "Selected Shorts". I subscribe to their podcast. I loved their Sherman Alexie show a couple of weeks ago, am looking forward to listening to this week's Stephen King story that my phone just downloaded.

So it is with pride that I cut and paste from an email from Jennifer Brennan at Symphony Space letting me know (and now letting you know) when the two shows that they made from the evening we did earlier this year will be broadcast:

Show 3. Love in Real Life

October 13 2011

“A Life in Fictions,” by Kat Howard, performed by Marin Ireland

“The Thing About Cassandra,” by Neil Gaiman, performed by Josh Hamilton

Show 12. The Magical Imagination of Neil Gaiman

December 15 2011

“Troll Bridge,” by Neil Gaiman, performed by Neil Gaiman

“The Circular Ruins,” by Jorge Luis Borges, performed by Boyd Gaines

(I was particularly happy about all this because Kat Howard's story was picked by the producers from the STORIES anthology I edited with Al Sarrantonio, and I had nothing to do with its selection - although I'd been smart enough to notice it was good when Kat (whom I had taught at Clarion) emailed it to me to read when she'd finished it, and I read it, loved it, and sent it to Al with the suggestion that that we bought it.)

...

I called Dave McKean a pornographer on Twitter. He asked me not to do it again, because, he said, he suddenly found himself followed on Twitter by some very shady bots. But I am proud to say that he has now added pornographer (or eroticist, perhaps) to his CV.

When I stayed at his place, two weeks ago, he gave me a book called Celluloid. It's his newest graphic novel, a wordless Dave Mckeany book-length sexual fantasia. It's being published all over the world - in the US it's out from Fantagraphics, in France by Delcourt. It's really human and beautiful and fantastic (in the literal sense of the word). A woman gets frustrated waiting for her man to come home, finds a projector and enters a world of sexual fantasies. (I think my favourite is when she has an encounter with someone who I assume was Diana of the Ephesians.) Lots of different art styles, all of them very much Dave Mckean.

You should buy it from your local comic shop. Or, if they're out (or if you're too embarrassed to ask them for it) get it online. Lots of places sell it. Here's an Amazon link if you want to check it out.

...

And finally, a mysterious mystery of great mysteriosity from Edinburgh. Paper book-sculptures that support libraries have been appearing. Ian Rankin has been drawn into their web. (Can book-sculptures make webs?)

http://community.thisiscentralstation.com/_Mysterious-paper-sculptures/blog/4991767/126249.html

It's been suggested that this artist might have had something to do with them. I have no idea whether she did or not, but her book sculptures are wonderful either way.

You should follow both links. They will do your heart good.

Labels: an enormous pie, Celluloid, dogs in the moonlight, Kickstarter, married life, moon, Selected Shorts, whether or not Dave McKean is a pornographer