Neil Gaiman and Tori Amos: Comic Connections

[Music] welcome how nice to see everybody here I should be very brief I'm really Keating I'm chief executive here at the British Library and everyone guests and audience are extremely welcome to comic connections and we have an extraordinary program to accompany comics unmasked around the corner but secretly I think we think tonight may be the highlight of the whole season very lucky to be here and not just this bit but what's going to happen all over the building tonight I the exhibition doesn't need huge introduction you've either seen it or you're about to see it I hope it's called comic not just comics unmasked but art and anarchy in the UK and there is great art and great anarchy under the roof of the British Library I'm pleased to say tonight it's curators or two of them are with us tonight poultra vet and John Harris Dunning I'll be handing over to them in a minute they put the show together with my colleague here at the library Adrian Edwards our head of printed historical sources which gives you a clue I hope about the range of the exhibition we've put together here at the library everything that human culture tries to print and produce we try to collect and the glorious tradition of graphic novels comic art dating back not just decades but centuries is something we've always collected here but until now we've perhaps not brought it center stage and given it that scholarly obsessive care and attention we love to give to everything else and I hope we're remedying that with a vengeance this summer so we've drawn extensively on our own collections here with some fantastic loans everything from an extraordinary 15th century Illustrated apocalypse possibly the first comic strip we have right up to 20th century material remarkable manuscripts for kick-ass viva Vendetta a Tank Girl down the 20th century and 21st century classics and including of course fantastic exhibits from at least one of our speakers tonight accompanying that directly after this if you have the wristband you are in too late at the library where we have an evening of celebration and performance around the exhibition the artistic director of the exhibition the great Dave McKean is revealing his Renaissance skills by performing music as well also on stage will be Marc almond performing Alex Tucker Pam Hogg is guest DJ and they'll be free entry to the exhibition there that is to come but for the next hour hour and a half or so our theme is comic connections we have an encounter I think a unique encounter certainly here under this roof and it's a wonderful one between two very remarkable creative people Tori Amos who is wonderfully breaking all of her rare nights off from her current European tour we'll be here a little later breaking from basking in the glory of the the praise that's been heaped on unrepentant Geraldine's her new album to reflect on other connections between music comics and other kinds of creativity and her interlocutor and our first interviewee will be of course Neil Gaiman who I think needs very little introduction for anyone who cares at all about the fantasy imagination in literature and on the page and in the brain and the heart of the great British tradition and seeing how it continues under his the spells that he weaves whether it's on the pages of Coraline or the screens of Doctor Who my kids I know worship Neil and are thrilled that he's here tonight but he is here tonight in remarkable circumstances having just flown in from visiting the UNHCR refugee camps in Jordan home to thousands of people from Syria at the moment so the world of the imagination and the world of reality feed off each other all the time and I'm sure that will be one of the themes tonight it's wonderful to see you here tonight thank you for coming I am going to hand over now to our two curators and two hosts for the evening Paul Gravette and John Harris Dunning to take things from here thank you very much [Applause] please welcome Neil Gaiman so I'd like to have you here and an extrordinary circumstances just in terms of the British Library for one thing doing so much for comics which is perhaps a surprising thing too tough to find we're definitely in the future that I hoped for you seems like true doesn't it yeah yeah I mean I remember I've stormed about the the bastions went one of them at least there's that peculiar feeling that we may have one and now what now that we do yes I mean Paul and I have known each other now for about isn't about pushing 30 years 30 years yeah and he was actually my well that's my first comics publisher yeah that's I wear that with pride yes yes well almost cause he would have been published by that this magazine it never happened the hunter charmagne borderline yeah which live up to its name being a bit boiled it was borderline yes it did yeah that was your acting place with Nikhil it I think was not that was where Dave and I we went to the offices of this this Wimpole Street offices of this comic which turned out to be a telephone sales company from which he'd like them fire but still had the key so he could get in and it was very very smooth suited operator type stairwell very didn't this isn't really comics people it was very strange but you came down and you see you liked what I was writing you like what Dave was drawing and we came over to you and we said and I think you said to us would we like to do a you know five page scrap brisket special something short and we came back to Magazine for escape magazine here and we we came back to you that was escape and we came back about a week later and said you know that that five page trip you invited us to do would you mind if it was the 48 page graphic novel core basis and what do you say to that obviously uh no don't do it now it has to be five pages now of course you said yes obviously something in though in that period had really just ate it the two of you had really hit it off and things were clearly you're growing in a way that you hadn't expected perhaps I think a lot of it was we both there were there were comics that we wanted to show people that didn't exist and it was that thing where I'd realized that I would be talking to people about comics and they were not seeing what I was seeing in my head as far as I was concerned it was like comics was this huge shining city I remember I was working as a journalist at the time I was writing for a newspaper BRE short lead newspaper called today she was busy was yesterday incredibly quickly and I went to them and I think I think it was them but I went to and said you know I really want to do this we've got Mouse Dark Knight and Watchmen all happening I'm going to do a big piece on this thing and they said we can't and I said why not they said well it was desperate Dan's 50th birthday this year we've already done our comics piece yeah we don't comment we've done comics we've written about desperate down I don't know but there is this one giant and then I worry about the battle being one with all we're still battling that that same battle because it is the preset that you have to have a B no we have to go through the Beano to get beyond the V even yeah yeah this show yeah but was quite interesting was obviously one of the challenges of it was to try and decide how to narrow down all of this incredible creativity and I think the first thing we did was decided to focus on British craters but then you know that had to go down again and we thought sort of rebellion and you know and sedition which immediately sort of cut a lot of that children's material and I think it's been really interesting when we spoken to people about the exhibition it's the first thing they say so it's a kids it's nostalgia yeah um but of course it's not that anymore it hasn't been that for decades really but there is a sort of default what dogs might might a co-driver would say to me oh yeah I used to read the Beano and even if you said that I once read Enid Blyton I had read a single book since oh I once watched a Disney fell on my name's Snow White so I'd watch a single film since you've been looking a bit uptight as a laughingstock with new but people can say I used to be there being no and that's the end of the conversation you know what she's in kind of your cuz you cuz you've missed out on so much it's such a rich me I never understood that I mean I'm kind of I've had that on it I've always been fascinated by those conversations and you know being on American public radio in about 1990 promoting Good Omens and and having somebody say what Sonia you're also a you you write comic books I said yes so what do you think of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and I said well I don't actually write those kind of coming so I write I write comics for adults and they go oh oh okay and even though it's not bad I know it's it's in okay from I suppose for me the the key yardstick from where we were and from where we are now is is back then when I was a journalist I talked the Sunday Times Magazine into letting me do a giant feature on comics and they were there editor said yes and I went round and I got original Brian Bolland art there was some great that was just work on Killing Joke and Frank Miller was almost finished Dark Knight I think we've got some unpublished Dark Knight stuff and I did interviews with Alan with Frank Dave Gibbons Dave sim the Hernandez brothers and I handed this piece in and I was so proud of it and heard nothing and finally I let a week go by and I thought this is very peculiar and I phoned the Sunday Times and I said hello this is neil gaiman III send in that article then still are right yes um I'm afraid III read what you sent in and I'm afraid I I do have a bit of a problem with it I said what's the problem it is well III just don't think it really I think it lacks balance and I said okay whatever it is I'm sure I can put it in he's about I'm not sure you can you see these comics you seem to think they're a good thing and we immediately realized that the balance he needed could not be added by me and yeah yeah and they paid me actually the largest kill fee I'd ever received for that article and I would still I would rather have had the article published and receive nothing if I mentioned the Sunday Times and I will be provocative or instead of you we should all look at this Sunday Sunday Times because a good friend Valdemar journal check you know does fantastic documentaries about the arts etc has written a review of the exhibition comics on masked over two pages which is great but there might be need of an infinitive balance so get tweeting yeah buddy have a look at her we don't know what's going to say quite yet but we gather it's going to need some it'll it may score - we want to course bit of history we don't want us to be we've all got comics and it's all we won the packs we haven't my territory and I got got a crash course walking through the show backwards just now with this yeah oh yeah which was was a complete delight seeing the stuff there and seeing how well the comics in England fit into both the literary and the artistic English traditions I mean you know they I get very puzzled when people say well of course human books for adults never have illustrations and you got more Dickens always did exactly it was intrinsic in fact it was one of the things that set the tone Dickens you you knew if you were in a comedic or a serious and Dickens began his career commissioned do you think we have this huge have schism within to say that pictures and words really don't should not be mixing and shouldn't be do you cavort it you can working with each other boy hey do you think that's collapsing slightly with with a modern culture which is much more visually led and it becomes more I don't know I almost feel like comics should be coming more and more into their own now and and I think they are in a way you know that kids are reading them on tablets and phones and they're just I just don't think there's that same baseline judgment you know that playing gaming is in the same breath as filmmaking is in the same breath as TV I don't know that this will those divisions I think the divisions between media exist I think the ideas of what constitute valid media and why are breaking down as you get a generation that is absolutely prepared to say but that's and you know I remember being I think I was about 11 years old and I it was the first time I actually had the nerve to challenge a teacher and I took my English teacher aside I said look okay you have to explain this thing to me why a Comics band if we bring comics in they will get they'll get confiscated I would love to lend some of my friends my comics and tour comics but we can't and he said well it's obvious gaming you see the thing is if you it was doing them is obvious because it's like um it's rubbish if you know if you're in comics you won't read real literature I said I am I'm the only kid in this school who was read for school library I've read actor and and I love comics and that's obviously not true and expecting him to say ah you don't understand and to paint a suddenly to make me understand and he humped and looked away I realized that it didn't explain there was it was one of those things where that's a really key moment for you and it's and it's funny because when we're talking to Dave Gibbons who obviously drew Watchmen for Allen law and was his collaborator he said that his big lightbulb moment was when he went to school and the kids comic books were confiscated and burned in the schoolyard and when he saw that happening he thought this is a massively important medium and how do I sign up yes yeah if you don't like comics I do yes he decided that was that was definitely for me and they're gone i ting it was it was it was also the first point but I realized that the adult world was wrong up until that point you know adults would do things and you kind of take it on trust and the maulvis your job to tell me through things so I'm assuming that what you're telling me is probably true or true ish and it was the first time that I actually got to measure up what I was being told against my experience and what I knew and go this is not true and a lot of your work I think references literature and you interchange very very easily I mean you're I think your comics I don't know if you're doing it consciously but you you have a very literary bent in your in your comic book output as well well is that something that was conscious that you felt you wanted to fight that corner because I have to say funny enough with this show the reason I initially approached the British Library and basically that we decided to do this was because it felt like of all the cultural Institute's this would be the best one because it would unpack that side of storytelling because it's one of those funny things that people don't necessarily understand this but the process of making comic books and having written comic books myself when you say that to somebody they always say does that mean that you you sort of somebody hands you a page and then you write some words I mean a feeling the Blues I know actually it does have to be written first and that you know so it's Jesus but you know so it was so that was quite a conscious decision was that something you felt that you wanted to address with your work or was there just a natural process of I think I don't ever remember going I think I'm going to be literary I I remember an awful lot of I think I'll write the next panel and yeah I want this to be interesting but I also thought so it was important when he did he did violently subject McLean the key thing or was it on the back of it it didn't say superheroes or whatever all comedy I said general fiction yes I remember you did so happy about that because that was the point there's always other kinds of storytelling that don't sit in these trapped in these little genre formulas it was what was what was he what was important for us with violent cases was having a comic that we could show people where because what was frustrating for me that I would show people Mouse or dark night or Watchmen and they'd say well it's superheroes or it's Batman or it's it's Mike's and cats I mean spawn animals and going well okay then let's make a comic that you know has to the best of my whatever I was 26 year old ability has all of the values of mainstream fiction let it will get drawn by Dave with all the power of 23 year old Dave McKean just finishing art college and we will take it out to the world and and Dave's Dave's dedication was something like you know to my teacher Roley look this is what we meant by comics because he'd been having that argument too you'd show people comics and they couldn't see what we saw we saw the potential and we were perfectly willing you know I remember with Watchmen Alan Moore showing me the black-and-whites of Watchmen and not knowing what this was but just reading it and going okay everything's changed this is this is there is a line in the sand before this atomic and now I'm reading this but it was such a special moment though that all of you working in in that time what do you think created that I mean looking at this show one of the things that I'd suggest maybe is that for the first time there were quite a lot of regular weekly comics that were starting to support more interesting retell but there was still this massive leave that you all made what do you think I think the biggest thing arm was you had a bunch of particularly writers who had grown up loving comics as kids and teenagers outgrowing comics in the sense that there wasn't anything around for us by the time we were 16 or 17 but believing there should be and then going off and reading everything else and coming back to comics in our twenties having read all the novels having what I thought was most interesting is when you get me and grant morrison together or me and Alan Moore or me and me and Jamie Delano or any of the r.i.p million we weren't talkin superhero comics we probably weren't talking comics very much apart from the vet we would occasionally talk in our travails with artists but mostly what we will be talking was interesting poets we discovered interesting writers I remember giving Ian Sinclair to Alan Moore and say I think you should read his stuff I think this is interesting on that Grant Morrison gave me Lucy oh my god what's her name the new mother anybody out here know who wrote say it loudly if you know I just I'm just blanking a friend of friend of friend of Henry James's wrote Lucy Clifford wrote the strangest most peculiar arm rule-breaking odd disturbing Victorian children's fiction and one of her stories was a story called the new mother and Grant Morrison had discovered this book called anyhow Doris and I just remember him sort of telling me the plot of the new mother about how these two children named blue eyes in Turkey runned this wild child in the village who has an instrument called a pair drum a musical instrument and she explains to them that if they look inside they'll see little people dancing and when she plays the instrument and they say will you do it for us and she says I'll do it but you have to go home and be naughty first so they go home and they're naughty but then their mother says to them you can't do this you can't be wild children you have to be normal children if you're wild then I will have to go away and your new mother will come with her glass eyes and her would entail but the children do not listen and they and they go back and the wild child in the village square says no now you must you have to be more naughty and finally you'll get to see it they go back and they're naughty and this happens a couple of times and finally they go home and their mothers packing and she says I'm sorry I have to go now and she leaves and then they hear coming down the road from far away the swish swish of the would entail their new mother she approaches they see the Setting Sun glinting on her glass eyes and they run off into the forest where they live and the new mother moves into their house and sometimes they peek through the door and you know if anything inspired Coraline yeah yeah it was it was just a realization okay you know a Victorian writers for children could do that but I was showing you that that was the stuff underperforming who taught me the Dolly's revenge cannot be brought in in the exhibition which is just like a nightmare where this girl's been maltreating her dolls and they come to life and do the same thing to her and hammer nails into her head and cut a hair up and fantastic Staffing's all that kind of strong Peter cautionary tale just meant to make kids behave has a kind of inferior message of thing actually you should behave it's not is it subversive that story it was actually saying I think I think I hate otherwise you'll end up with this terrible situation I think maybe it has this glorious surface of we are telling you a cautionary tale for your own good behave or your parents will go away yet but actually what it says is the world is up and weird and cannot be understood or comprehended and there are pear drums that may or may not exist and other mothers and new mothers and your mother may leave yeah abandon uh and and and which i think is a much more interesting sort of version of reality yeah it's got levels I think we might want to invite our other guests yeah okay I think what do you put Tory next any movement there see like I sound noble you that one but um so do we please welcome Tori Amos [Applause] this is special thanks I mean have you done this a thing before with two of you this is a clumsy question but you do not normally appear on stage together we do not normally appear on stage together yes I don't know you question you know how to read huh no I mean weird it's the kind of thing where um have we ever done I don't think so Johnny hey can I can I just say that when we set the show up and we first got the gate two years ago this was one of the very first things that I was determined to do is put you guys together so we are really really pleased that both of you in your kind of mad lives have night cashy make this so join us yeah which is good magic we had our first one my god this is serious ever and the crazy bit is we have been friends now for 23 years and as far as I know there's one photo of us together okay this would get which gets wickets rolled out every time that you know somebody needs something this one photo of us taken in Minneapolis in 1996 it gets rolled out so finally more find out how you guys met what happened um it was ransoms Leesville it was uh I well from my I can tell you from my story which is um I was at the 1991 San Diego comic convention and I was doing a signing and back then I would have Oh eleven or possibly twelve people in my signing line and there was a very nice guy could Rance hoesley was in the line and when he got to the front I scientists whatever it was and he said um I've got something for you and he gave me a tape and a cassette tape and he said this is from my friend Tori she's a singer-songwriter and she sings about you on one of the songs please don't sue her [Music] and and I took it home with me I didn't play it or anything at the thing I took it home and it wasn't even the first one of the cassettes that I've been given that I played I remember the first one that I played was sort of Scandinavian harmonium death-metal it was like oh Lord Morpheus come down from the sky there was yeah people you think people used to give me especially it send a comic-con give me cassettes their interpretations and and it would and it was mostly really the double-edge comfortable you were up against and then and then Z this might have been something like that I said I had no idea I've never been given anything that was good and I put the chorus in archive of these somewhere we should we should be they actually many of them magically because blank cassettes were reused for other more we would use them yes but the tories what it wasn't little earthquakes it was about half of the sons on to earthquakes and half of things that wound up being b-sides in the Little Earthquakes days but I put it on and one song in I I was completely blown away I did that thing where you keep driving because you don't want the music to end and and there was a and there was an address in in the thing and it was a London address which I thought was a bit weird because I thought she was American and I sent some comics and a note off just saying I think you're wonderful and then a few days later I open it up on actually I think I wanted to find out what the songs were called because there was no information about song titles and see if there was more information and I realized there was a phone number so I dialed the phone number and Tory answered and I said I'm just listening to your music and you're wonderful and who are you and tell me about this so and and she did sing about me there was this line about me and they are hanging out with the dream King which I love the fact that we were hanging out before we'd ever met we were hanging out because Rance was how do we talk about Rance he's wonderful he was an art student and he needed a place to stay he had dated a gal that I used to babysit this is how crazy connections are and they had fallen out but he and I stayed friends he was like a little brother I'm Neal's big sister and Rance was like a little brother and what happened was I let him stay at the flat and he was behind a church in Hollywood and I would stay with my boyfriend so that he replaced this day and he was obsessed with metal music and comics and there were comics all over I would come in to this place and it was comics everywhere the wooden tops all kinds of music playing and I thought oh my goodness he's taken over the flat I don't know what's happening here and I would just started as as an older sister just you just start perusing oh what is he into yeah and so I started reading what was I reading the doll's house um yeah would have been doll's house back then and um and I think it was collect may have been Calliope was the one that he that I think was the first one he gave you did you immediately feel that rapport with his work because I'm you know we're showing a couple of slides which are completely random but one of the things that one of the things that it is well this is actually a man okay okay here we are here we are this is a good one to start on because that is mythology which is something they have a lot in common with and actually strangely enough that is the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet who you have you have felt quite close to and you refer to and you are really interested in the Egyptian goddess Bastet who is in welcome in Ocean at the end of the lane as well of course yeah and so that there are these parallels in your in your work um did you immediately feel that report what he was with what he was doing in his comics well because he had mythology through it [Music] again it's the only comic book I'd ever read so the first when I read what just included the world that I was interested in what I thought was interesting about that though was lots of people discovered Sandman back then um and it almost didn't occur to them that anybody was making this thing it was just a comic and what I loved was you were me and Neil hanging out with the dream king it was like going okay there's somebody writing this and this is this Anil says hi by the way and we didn't even know each other and now I get to write me all says hi by the way on Torre fans things they say oh you must have been such good friends it's like no that came later but having said that it was absolutely immediate I mean I remember we talking on the phone we would talk for hours and then I went up to see you play at the canal Brasserie oh my god do you remember that I did with somebody's birth it was the owners birthday and you had to play happy birthday to you in the middle and but in the middle of crucify and cheers it imagine I do and you came and they brought the Melody Makers somebody there was it was the gig existed as if if I remember correctly you explain it to me because the gig only existed because Melody Maker had to see you do something to write about it so your publicist had arranged this thing we're the only two people in that space to see you were me and the guy from Melody Maker you'd invited me and she was sitting with a guy from Melody Maker and I came in and you waved at me which I thought was quite impressive because he didn't know what I look like but I figure I must have looked like me by that point and then we went off and you acted out the silent all these years video honor yes you were going to be shooting it the next morning and so you acted out the entire thing on the tube station platform and you're going and then I'm this little girl and I'm in a box and the box is going - is cringing right now because she told you cannot act out things at the train station well that's not yeah - who do you think you get it problem no you were what you were doing the full thing and and I think we were you know we were definitely friends from that moment and I introduce you today packing who did a wonderful little cover but what was happening as we would exchange we were what just start talking and then busking and then sharing stories so Neil is a great talker he's a good listener to a wonderful listener but he would talk about mythology and that was that was really exciting because we would I don't even know what we talk about half the time but it would last for hours now as an hour would last for hours now is and we would and we would build things yeah I mean a lot of a lot of salmon and salmon in weird ways came out of being friends with you the the more or less the I don't thinking thing I've ever told you this pretty much the entire second half structure of Sandman was figured out during your gig it was down in Houston somewhere it was your first proper big gig sure or was it sure theater yeah the shore theater and today play the show theater you did it was your it was your first big London gig and and I just remember sitting there while you were playing and just going oh I know how this works and it was a sudden figuring out that okay I'm gonna have Lucifer playing piano in his nightclub but I'm gonna have and this will happen and it was like I had all the pieces in place and I had the the overall shape of Sandman but by the end of that gig I knew exactly how the kindly ones was gonna work that's what you say because that's how mediums crossed I think so there are times I'll be reading something of his even now I mean all the time but back then as well where I'll be reading something that some story and all of a sudden you start hearing combinations of melodic combinations or rhythms and it might only be a word or a phrase at a time and yeah of course I'm looking at the pictures but I'm hearing this it's the story and then the muses come and visit you because he it's stranger I mean we've all we've talked about this a long time we both believe in the muses and we we expressed in different ways but Calliope was a great story about the muses and the idea that if you don't acknowledge the muses and honor the muses then they stop coming to you and yet how they come sometimes is very much you go to other mediums so it makes sense that I don't always go to music to get music you go to different places I go to dance quite a bit the painter's a lot of the artists but it's the storytellers and mythology is a big place where story would come through you'll never want to get your inspiration from people doing the thing that you're doing that's not where you get your inspiration it's like the thing that I was talking about the fact that with the other comics writers we didn't talk comics we talked everything else um I was becomes a photocopy of a photocopy of the poem as you've said it's pleasing itself it feeds on itself and inspire you absolutely push you and you can look at something go oh I didn't realize you could do that I can do if you can do that then I'm gonna do something even cooler or yeah or die trying that's right that's which is really fun but you know the things if I wanted to point at things that inspired Sandman things like Sandman number six the dinosaur 24 hours came out of going and seeing Peter Greenaway film drowning by numbers which has gone on to become one of my favorite films and was pretty much one of my favorite forms and then but just going oh I didn't realize you could structure something like this he just stretches it counting one to 100 and when he reaches 100 you're done and then I thought I wonder if you can count your way through a comic I've got 24 pages what goes in 24 pages well I could do 24 hours I could do one hour per page and then that entire conceit fell apart because I thought well I can't actually need like five or six pages just to set up everything in the first hour so I'm going to have to go half pages later on but it was that idea of going beat for beat for beat through 24 hours inexorably because I had 24 pages that that took me into it and and it's not something that I would ever have got from a comic it was something that you get from going outside and Terry and I I think we do inspire each other I come away from conversations with her inspired I come away from her music inspired there's also something that I think the two of you share which is you're both really quite fierce and in terms of the work that you that you know that we're showing some of like Sandman I mean it was deeply controversial when you think that someone like Kevin O'Neill was banned by the comics code Authority for crucifying an alien like who cares and and uh and then and there in Kevin's defense the comics code Authority did say that he was the only artist his style was unacceptable to the comics what I did not agree he could have drawn anything and he wouldn't have been allowed to do that which I love what's awesome it's taking so kind of that isn't should be and you know and and you know they're controversial images that you had in your album line in there I mean you were being you know you were ready pushing the envelope as well and that's something I really admired about you guys and and continue to admire about you and it's something we're trying to really highlight in the show is that and it slightly concerns me that I don't see an awful lot of that really kind of pushing or attempting to change structure as much and that's something that worries me particularly in terms of spirituality or even a discussion of spirituality doesn't seem to that's funny you say that naturally up dude you're on it but the thing is somebody was asking me before about the sexuality in the music industry and hey whatever gets you off do you think that's the way I see but that but you've brought something that's very important to the table which is not all of it sometimes it's it's not so many times it's not subversive it's not as if the envelope user so your nurse said okay okay put your clothes on love you know that's you're not saying anything no I encourage everybody to express themselves the way they wanted to but you're a bunch of artists sitting here so what I think is important is you're talking about pushing the envelope now that is about intention isn't it because somebody we were walking through the sextant downstairs now what's interesting about this though as we were looking at it weren't we we were looking at things from the 18th century and we were talking about a material that had to go to France and to get back in here and when you think about some of the work that's downstairs and the intention behind it and what it was causing people to do in the art behind it that's what's so fascinating you're talking about pushing the envelope and that's what I think we've been committed to do and sometimes that's that is about spirituality because it is talking about the heart the hearts the most dangerous place we've talked about this for years and years and years that once you take your clothes off but that's the beginning now let's take the skin off now let's go underneath let's go into the cell structure into the DNA let's talk about the thoughts that are there inside your being that you don't even know we're there because you don't allow them to speak so this is we'll talk about allowing our other cells the other Neal the other Tory to tell us the story they want to talk about and sometimes the most dangerous things we talk about are not the shocking things or the subversive things but it's about the stuff that's um where we feel vulnerable I was it's been so strange for me coming in from the Syrian refugee camps in jeweled arms in Georgia because I've never I've never felt so vulnerable as by the end of it there was there was a point where I went through these three days talking to refugees realizing that the thing about Syrian refugees is they love Syria they want to go back this is their favorite place the world they think Syria is the best place and it's an awful lot nicer it's an awful lot nicer than what we're doing I was there for the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR and mostly because they discovered that when I when I tweaked and just amplified their message they were getting more people coming in then from anywhere else so they came to me and said would you like to be an ambassador would you like to go out and you know just just be a supporter and we will we will show you what it's like on the ground and I said yes absolutely um but I was you saw tell them you were telling me the story I think I'll find it fascinating you met somebody who works in one way by day and then is a volunteer and tell them you were there with all it was um well what was amazing for me over and over over those three days and I get there but yes over those three days what I kept experiencing was on the one hand deep despair at what human beings could do to other human beings at the fragility of civilization at the monstrous acts that people were capable of doing the awfulness after a while just of the fact that when people would tell me about how their houses were blown up one guy his house was blown up he wanted to run to he was on his motorbike he saw the house blow up he drove back to try and get his kids out of the rubble and was shot in the back by a trainee sniper who was just practicing on shooting things and other people had stories that were much much worse and whenever I would talk to these people that what I told who did this who blow up your house who shot you who cut off your cousin's head who did whatever the thing was they say we don't know I began was this was this Assad was this the rebels was this wards group like we don't know and you start to realize that there is his monstrousness but in there with this monstrousness over and over again I was I was elated and boid and held up and held together and got through it by watching people doing wonderful things the fact that they've thrown together a city of a hundred thousand refugees this camp it's a hundred thousand people and they've just built another one or that will take a hundred and thirty thousand in the desert and the kids and they're out there and they're doing it this guy I'm on who lovely lovely man who showed me pictures of his house in Syria that no longer exists because it was bombed and works all day for one of the as a sort of community mobilizer comes home at the end of a long day's work and goes out on his rounds as a volunteer nurse visiting people who need medical attention but can't get out the old people shut-ins and I went with him on his rounds and I watched you know was he a good-looking 22 year old young man who on his walk home trod on a landmine and has no foot left and for the last four months every two days aemon's been changing his dressings and then went to the tent arm where an 11 year old girl is beautiful 11 year old girl who had her mother was there her uncle her five sisters her father wasn't there because her father was killed in the same mortar attack that destroyed half her jaw and took out the bones in her upper arm and Amon was there unpeeling taking off the dressing and putting the cream on undressing this mess that was this child once his child's jaw and I look around and there's my and I've been asking these guys how how do you cope the unhcr people how do you how do you see every single person has a story of hell none of them wanted to leave it got bad enough that they had to leave the journey to Jordan was dangerous nightmarish people talked about passing chopped up body parts of there's been shooting at women and children crossing the border it's it's all monstrous I would be fascinated though to see not only how this is going to affect your writing because it will but you telling this story to these creators here how that will affect your process because you're going to be open to some of you already are I wasn't open to this story because I didn't know it and I haven't exposed myself but it will affect how I then investigate this story it's gonna have a big big wider impact of fact yeah it's and you know I felt like I was doing some good because I tweeted yesterday morning I can't believe was only yesterday morning you know just did a short tweet about the shape I was in listening to some of these stories an hour later the BBC World Service were on the phone asking if they can interview me and they do an interview and it goes out and it's heard by 70 million people and I'm talking to them about the people that I followed through the registration process the day before who were were stunned had not slept had not eaten real food in a long time they'd got to the point where they were eating cats and dogs and making soup from grass and tree leaves and things just to try and feed their children and and you know the nightmare that they went through getting into be able to communicate that is very powerful so don't tell that story abut but I think as Tory said that the ability to really you will tell that story answer the question but you will have to process that and it will take time it's still very very raw yeah but I'm also proud of you know you were asking where the cutting edges these days though I don't know was ever a point for me and I'm pretty sure there was never a point for Tory even at our weirdest even at our most outré and even at the points where we suddenly found ourselves in the press where it ever occurred to us that we were pushing the envelope or trying to be weird what we were doing was going I've got stuff to say and so you'd say it you'd say the stuff you had to say and most of the times what Tory was saying as well which is sometimes what that's doing is opening you up and allowing you to be vulnerable because you are aware that if you say something actually there will be a response and people will come for you so you better be absolutely sure of your intention so I think that's what you're saying is if you if you do something brave and you have the intention that's pure you can stand behind it whatever comes down on you but if you're just doing it for no reason Jenica chasing down a publication or something just before I met Tori I went through a long dark weekend of the soul wasn't an active we went it was Friday through to Monday because I got a phone call on the Friday from my editor Karen Berger letting me know that the a Philadelphia newspaper had been in touch because a guy had who was a Sandman fan had committed suicide and he'd left a suicide note signed the Sandman and there was a copy of Sandman on his body I had to go he did I did I do that did I did I do something that could have tipped somebody over what did I do what what was I doing how did that happen and and I remember phoning Clive Barker phoning Alan Moore phoning anybody that I could think of who might have had similar things and then talking through their their store isn't actually going okay I think I'm a responsible creator I haven't told any stories I cannot stand behind anybody who would have killed themselves after reading Sandman would have killed themselves after seeing the Bible or The Sound of Music or it's not I haven't particularly the sound of music on it only lasted till Monday because on Monday I discovered that actually what had happened was this guy this guy's boyfriend had murdered him and and had decided to make it look like a occult inspired comic killing and had written the suicide note and actually neither he nor the boyfriend had read Sam and they would be x-men fans see that was the real problem you were seeing by Congress glamour yeah he does get blamed yeah all kinds of things and those of us who are interested in different mmm well subjects I don't even know if you'd call it spiritualities but but sometimes things get boxed in don't they are you this or are you that and we've talked about this for years to that people's belief systems can be very complex and evolving and that it's okay for it to be evolving you don't have to say final wick in oh I'm with this I'm a eunuch or the glorious thing for me about Sam was that you had this magnificent anarchy of belief in which everything was true and and that was wonderful that was there was intensely liberating and the death was hot yes hahaha she was definitely and we all want it to be death yeah we all didn't ectopy death but it's also in sama is very very open to interpretation it wasn't sort of being in any way kind of prescriptive or specific or here's a message or here's a particular mythology or why it was what went wrong it was it was storytelling was celebrating storytelling Soliday to isolate explore things as much as you're exploring things and then writing from that or did you feel that it was pushing you to look at certain things it drove me to I mean for me Sam existed in this weird balancing act between everything that I had read between you know the point that I started to read and the point that I was writing whatever episode I was on and the need to find stuff out you know that I remember my my horror realizing that I was going to have to write a French Revolution story and that I had three weeks how to research the French Revolution I have you a history of school was that what was your proposal it was subject at school ah weakest history was my weakest subject parable teacher it's all just dates and accent I was gonna say I was I was thinking I didn't I didn't fall in love with history till I was writing salmon how do you not love fall in love with history amazed oh it's us it was because all you had it was dates of wars and occasional corn famines and things or corn laws which were even weirder than famines because at least I could I could so yeah I didn't suddenly get a Jenner on my profession evolution again yeah it's it's it's been really interesting how quickly I could research things what I needed to and because you'd go okay I need the nuggets I need those things and suddenly bring everything to life and they don't wispy like oh this is before a good home yeah just look but that made that made I'm in weird ways that would always make things easier because now with Wikipedia and Google and things there's always too much information what was great was have you'd have you'd go out and you would find one book on the French Revolution and you'd read I read Simon Shamas French Revolution and that was that was my research for you know for the augustus episode of sandman it was Suetonius --is lives of the twelve Caesars just the Julius Caesar and the August is chapters that was that was the entirety of what can I build this with I know there's a lot of other stuff without Augustus but I will use this because the clock is ticking and the heart is a quite a voracious reader this this is opting reading with with a viewpoint of I got to do this is this is where my story's going I must research it but what do you do you explore I'm rediscovering my voracious reader Ness migrations read Ernest went away for a little bit I couldn't figure out why until I realized I needed reading glasses because reading had stopped being fun and I couldn't figure out why why is reading which was always my salvation so much fun and now it's not fun and I've got books that aren't getting finished and I'm getting read and finally went out we put those do you know what's really important though I find is that I'm open to people suggesting to me what to read so you and I've had this chat today um you're always telling me what to do which is great but um you'll receive your reading he's gonna give me a list okay because I don't know about a lot that's going on downstairs I just don't so I know the Sandman and that's the end of it but um but I want to know and at 50 I can tell you I'm out of state maybe when I was 28 and maybe you remember this you wouldn't always cop to how stupid you felt because because sometimes you just feel that people it's that one one up on you or they make you feel um that you are stupid or you make yourself with with my friend Roz cave me I would have conversations with Roz and she would always talk about stuff that I didn't know as if I did and I would never come to I would simply run away and read the thing before the next time I saw Rose which meant that my reading are very often in very interesting I discovered these great things I would never have discovered just go yes Roz then Ryan read it so if you want to tell us something to read we'll go read it but but it's about balancing time so as a creator you're always having to balance input and output right so you have to figure guys sometimes you've got to push yourself on pilgrimage you've got to do it so when you stay in your safe place all the time you've got to break the routine sometimes in order for the different different muses to come you don't always have to experience everything yourself so you don't have to have seven divorces okay you know in order to write this fantastical stuff and I know you know that here but sometimes it's really about allowing yourself to experience things read things that maybe you weren't open to before so I'm waiting for my list from you you're going to bring me a list and I always loved that line huh I was I always loved that line about B be dull and bourgeois in your life so you can be wild unconstrained in your work which and what I've always loved about that is I've known people who were much wilder in their life than in their work and I've blown maybe people who were as wild in their life and their work and then I've known people who were genuinely you know you would assume talking to them that they were you know retired bank managers from some small provincial Bank which nothing ever happened and then you read their books and you go yeah should we open this up I think we must to do that yeah you want to ask some questions I'm sure you do we put a microphone running around I think having each of our first one here good girl boom go for it my daughter and Neal there's something about home that if I didn't know you I would immediately said it was my mother woman oh she's here well the blueberry girl is here - it's here where are you Tashi that is the blueberry girl here we go so I was writing American Gods and I know I wasn't the beach house I had checked into a hotel in Las Vegas it was September 2001 no September 2000 sorry not those ones that did that it was September 2000 and I was in the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas why John because I discovered that you could check into hotels for incredibly cheap and in Las Vegas at that time these days they sort of more they're no longer just trying to get you to go and stay there cheap so you could gamble um and I was finishing American goods and I was just in mad finishing American Gods mode and I got a phone call from Tori who said the date of Tasha's birth has been decided please will you write me a prayer will you write me a prayer for and she'd been and she been calling her the blueberry the bump became the blueberry and she said will you write some kind of prayer for the blueberry and I said yes of course and I wrote that for her and I phoned her back a day or so later I said this what I wrote and pan I said nah I will get it calligraphed and it will be on the wall you can even put it up because you have it in your room so uncle Neal so that was that was where the poem began it was it was simply written it was never written for publication it was written vataj house it prior is interesting and it it was very much a prayer because that was what Torre wanted she was a footling breech - so um I was high-risk I had a couple miscarriages already sir Neil knew this and it was with trepidation that um you know she was late and we knew she was a footling breech and they said we have we know we got a taker we got to bring her into the world and he knew that and so this was the prayer so that was the prayer that she turned up and that she get all that stuff and and it wasn't ever meant to be published but what would happen is sometimes I would do it at readings and before I did it readings I would always say look if anybody here is recording this please turn off your recording device just for this bit because this isn't for the public this was something that was just fitori but I'd love to read it and I would and then what would happen is afterwards people would come up to me and they'd say can I have a copy of that my friend is pregnant my friends just had a baby and I was a yes and I would give them copies and there was a point it wasn't I think until about 2003 2004 having I've been saying no to people for 14 years that finally I called Tory and said I want to do it as a book I want to give a bunch of the the profits to rain which is now what happens every year and because I'm tired of printing this out and Charles less and took Charles I think you know several years to do the art and then and then the book became in a very peculiar way my salvation because I was on my way to the only signing of the book which was in New York tales of wonder on March the 7th 2009 and I was um Charlie Charles Vess was waiting for me it tells him wonder I was a little bit early and I was in the cab and I got the phone call saying my father just died of an unexpected heart attack in the middle of a business meeting and went for a walk around Union Square phoned a few people that was the first time that the fact that the first person that I found was this this girl named Amanda Palmer that I just started going out with actually told me an awful lot about what I thought of Amanda and the fact that she offered immediately and sincerely to cancel her Australian tour and fly back told me a lot about how she felt about me and and I said no but then I went nice and red blueberry girl still reeling to a thousand people and signed from one o'clock in the afternoon till nine o'clock at night for about a thousand fourteen hundred people and that was my salvation that was I was I was completely shell-shocked and I got to hold on to that book and I got to say thank you one person at a time to each of the people who came up and most of them had children most of them many of them had babies they had stories about book and I held on to each of those stories so it that book gave back to me as well good magic yeah was the book dedicated to also to your mother I seem to remember no it was a whole another I know our Charles Vess dedicated Charlie dedicated it to his mother somebody I dedicated it to Tash because because it's it's her book okay I think I couldn't have dedicated it to anybody else it was hers beautiful any other question got one two back there I can see and we'll come to you now hi I'm Neil with your exploration of online literature with the interactive storytelling and Tori with your musical of a princess which was absolutely magical are you interested in exploring different creative avenues that you're not immediately comfortable with I I love exploring things that I'm not comfortable with and I love doing things that I haven't done yet that there's definitely that urge to go I need to do this because I haven't done one of these yet and it scares me we've been talking about working together now for 22 years I know you don't want to rush them but good things take time but I also think I mean one reason why we haven't is because because we're friends we're friends and we're still friends and we're still friends alright I mean I would be collaborating whom we have it's just not it's not exactly a collaboration that anybody can see I've been I mean I some of deliriums best lines for stolen from Tori absolutely an unabashedly stolen and it's a true saying it's really funny that you'd actually create delay before you met Tori but in a way you were kind of summoning her cuz she was just saying that actually she kind of really kind of grew into that as well and really loved that character and obviously gave back to it so we would steal from each other clearing a discomfort we have fun yeah and weird little things that would happen you know I do things that would wind up in her songs I remember when she was having a rough time once in Australia and she found me having had a rough time for various reasons and I couldn't think what else to do but I just finished writing a story called snow glass apples so I said right sit down I'm gonna read your story and I read her 6,000 word story I was to us for that phone yeah an Australian phone call right and hotel rates not just was worth it yes and it turned up in it it turned up in carbon yes yes I need you you've done the same thing for me or two I mean I this is what I'm really impresses me most is this that you're clearly there's a wonderful rapport between you and a connection and support for each other I think it's a fantastic example of friend love which I believe is a thermos being used but it's you come across the Islamic ideal of it's just where only you just connected immediately long before you met I think it's wonderful but it's but it really is um you know you're there for each other we're best friends and the thing is the thing is um we've always been best friends it seems like two guys together hanging out looking at chicks or two chicks together you know talking about shoes but because that's her that's just what it what it's always we were definitely best friends from we know we weren't best friend we were old friends from the moment that we met which was which was very peculiar and I don't I've ever done that with anybody else before or since just that feeling of oh I've known you forever and and and it was the same both ways and the weird bit about that is we can go we can ease we can we can go months and on a couple of occasions years and not talk until we need each other and then we're on the phone and we're there and it's I need you now yeah questions over here it sounds a microphone just here go ahead well give you have written about mythology in very unique ways and mythological characters especially Lucifer I was wondering if you both feel that your conceptions of those characters match up with each other and if that's thing you discuss we've almost never I don't think we are that we we try particularly to match things up mostly because we also change our minds and do different things so I mean I've done I definitely created at least three different lucifer's in my time with different motivations and different kinds of stories and may well do some more Tori's Lucifer was was something else again and and you know such a beautiful album different from Satan obviously Lucifer and like breathe yeah the the light bringer and we've talked about that a lot been fascinated about the angel story it was a simple is it for as well which i think is just lovely tell us about that nothing there well yeah I think he's disappeared in that great housecleaning but don't you say in a doji st. I love I'll but the weirdest things happen even to the real Saints I mean I mean there's just again there's a poem that I was I was thinking of reading tonight and now that I'm talking about this I suppose I probably either may or may not depending on the vet that I will give away the plot but st. Columba is one of my favorite Saints stories is how he murdered st. Orin he and here in st. are in Columbian Sindarin landed on the Isle of Iona they came over from from Ireland and they kept trying to build a church and the church kept collapsing and st. Columba had a vision that what was needed was obviously the kill st. are and bury him in the foundations and that would make it stay upright so he did and three days later feeling a bit guilty they figure they should probably dig him up and just sort of check on him and so they started digging him up and saying Aaron setup right and his eyes opened and he said oh my god I have I've seen it and I have had this huge and amazing revelation and let me tell you Columbo monks everybody hell is not what you think it is heaven is not what you think it is and God is nothing like what we have thought God is at which point st. Columba very sensibly said stone the heretic because obviously if you've been dead three days and you're coming back to life with information of a fusion important kind about death and reincarnation you just need to be stoned so they piled they piled mud on him and buried him and he's he's still there today and just kind of writings the writings of sin or as we want to read isn't it he's still there on the island of Iona and Columba was buried briefly on I honor but then they took him to Dan Patrick where he is buried with with some Patrick and some Bridget um but this is what's kind of weird to me because I didn't know this story and I was on Iona years ago and there was a wonderful fascinating woman there who was there in the Abbey and somehow I was convinced that she killed a man and I don't know how all that happened but she ended it that's song as twinkle and so our paths sometimes are crossing each other and we don't even know that they're crossing and I think that's how it works it isn't to answer someone's question it isn't always um it's not planned you're just following your muses it's the thing we're talking about sometimes you take a journey you take adventures you take a pilgrimage other people are taking that journey too just because somebody's work is what well known and yours isn't yet right yet you're still taking the journey we're all orbiting each other we're orbiting each other and part of this is you have to keep stirring it when I say stirring it that not in the pejorative way but in a you know sort of like a nature does and and the leaves that she breathes up breathes and and gives us makes a shape with the leaves that's what we have to do I don't know what the I'm talking about those are the conversations that we've been having 23 years and the extent is assessable you are like that that's true sounded pretty convincing to me [Music] Tory I really wish I could think of a brilliant question for you because I think you're amazing and it's taking me a lot of memories to take back to when I could even say that I was 17 yet but um Neil I have a really silly question for you that has kind of long time ago I went to discussion with you and you said you were waiting for Futurama so you could be ahead in a jar obviously you didn't wait you finally to take Simpsons is it because of Alan Moore why did you decide to find accept The Simpsons why did I well I I have been um not even slightly subtly going up to Matt Groening for at least the last decade and whenever Matt and I would be in the same place at the same time I'd say so would be ahead in the John Futurama and he'd say you know we were thinking maybe you could be a cameo on the Simpson I say yeah we'll go ahead in the John people so then it got kind of silly because there Matt Selman from The Simpsons is like we're going to do a Simpsons episode with you in I'm saying but I wanted to be in Futurama so no it's really good will you do it I guess maybe this is my stepping-stone to becoming a head Najjar on Futurama so I got the script and I've been expecting it to be a one-line gag because I'd seen the the you know the episode that Alan Moore and Art Spiegelman and Dan Clowes were in and they got one line each you know that was what they got so I figured what will probably happen is Homer would say something like not even Neil Gaiman would think of something this word and you cut across to me going you're right I wouldn't and that would be that would be my life and instead I'm reading it I'm going but I'm in here and I'm I've got more lines and I get to the end is that I'm the bad guy okay so so I was completely sold at that point and then ever since then when I've been seeing Matt and I last saw him in Vancouver in March he came to a midnight reading that I did a midnight ghost Joe and he came over at the end he said that was that was great a nice tear at the jar [Music] it'll happen what's weird is Pietra keeps getting canceled and then it keeps happening some more so I pass it round to me maybe just here yeah I was just wondering I have to admit that I'm a bit I haven't read that much the few things I read I was in love with it I just wonder if ok you also in good relationship or friends with someone like Tim Burton I'm sure I don't know Tim he's one of the very few people who know you oh I don't know I know everybody like romantic even though no I for some reason and we have friends in common I think we'd never work together probably because he is scared my hair it's my favorite competition but I love his work and and I I did get to work of course people a lot of people think I've worked with Tim Burton because they know that I have very obviously worked on Coraline with the director of Nightmare Before Christmas which was only renamed Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas about a week before it came out which was quite a surprise to Henry Selick who had directed it and spent the last previous four years of his life making this thing and taking it from these sketches by Tim and creating the entire creating the script creating the story creating the script tree and the songs creating the look the characters and which I only thought was a bit unfair when the Coraline posters came out and said from the director of Nightmare Before Christmas and people going it's an attempt to make us think that Tim Burton directed it you're going no it's not and to make you think that the director home like the business one great bass player Tony Levin was asked by a bass player magazine whether he would consider teaching aspiring musicians and he was all mean annoying that was not really what I do one but if I ever were to take on somebody I probably wouldn't teach them to play the bass so I would probably take them to the kitchen and teach them how to cook proper pasta you know I think you both get where I'm going with this if you were taken on an apprentice for a day what would you possibly teach them keep it clean I might teach them to keep it clean but your I definitely if I would take you on apprentice Verde I wouldn't try and teach them how to write but I might try and teach them how to read or I would love to go you know take them for a walk and show them what I'm thinking of what I'm seeing when I go for a walk um that would that might help my answers so much better than his that's because you had the I was doing the busting thing to give you tough I was giving you time thank you brother no you know on one hand what I'd say is I think to be honest with you it's going to sound weird but the creative side isn't always the one that challenges people why do you think in the music business besides people stealing records why do you think there aren't a lot of people that have long careers and I'll tell you why it is we were talking about this earlier with people today is that it's the it's the discipline and it's the I was told by journalists today and I know you hear this all the time that they have interviewed some musicians who are really rude and because they're tired and they're touring and did it if I hear one more person come up to me I'm so dead I you feel like giving them your sketch show and saying okay 1718 interviews a day almost six shows week there there's what I would want to walk somebody through is how much do you want to be an artist because part of being an artist is yes of course it's creating but as he well knows and the one of the reasons Neil has the career he has Andy and I have the career I have creativity is a part of it but the other part is that we travel we we do the interviews I'm having a blast being here I want to be here because I'm learning something you're giving something to us that's the truth I'm not just kissing your ass or not I'm not I'm learning something but you have to want to you have to want to learn something and if you think that oh man I could be doing this with this man in it I know I mean I I should be more of an American why should I be doing this I could be shopping you know whatever whatever it is I didn't mean to just target I'm any buddy who like shopping you're all kinds of people but it's really important that when you do get a little bit of success because that's how it might start is that you realize that it's a privilege for somebody to be asking you a question and what you might want to do is listen to what they have to say because being able to hear your story and somebody else's story I've heard a few people hear their story and their stories then change the show last night show was different because of the stories I heard in line but if all you're interested in is your own thing and we know our gig right now we're supposed to be talking but part of the gig is listening and everybody has a perspective that's worth hearing everybody and sometimes people think well I haven't it's almost like the Billboard charts of pain and we've talked about this if you haven't been through this this this and this and and a meat cleaver do then you then your story isn't worth telling and we all have to think for a minute wait a minute that's not that's not how inspiration happens and how we inspire each other everybody's experience is valid and some people come up to me and say well I don't really want to tell you this because I've heard the person's story in line before and then you think my god you're already positioning your experience in a pecking order and so once you start opening it up you know you open up and don't judge you don't start rating you know like like pop charts you can't do that with human experience and so yes Neal kind of trumps us all today because he's been to Syrian he's had that apparently however however but however then there's so many stories that I was hearing yesterday maybe of the personal nature that is completely humbling and sometimes it's just I came here I've lost my job and that's all I have to say but I need some inspiration and then you start asking questions and they begin to realize that they do have something to offer like like we put into the exhibition from Alan Moore from Watchmen which is simply there is no ordinary person no absolutely one of your ordinary I want to though we're actually done I'm out of time yeah and I kind of want to end it there too such a perfect place to end it on that and thank you so much all for coming and really thank you so much I guess as a dream computer have you thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: The British Library

Views: 51,947

Rating: 4.935185 out of 5

Keywords: Tori Amos (Record Producer), Neil Gaiman (Author), Comics Artist (Profession), Sandman (Comic Book Series)

Id: fzXU6RNeiI0

Length: 85min 37sec (5137 seconds)

Published: Fri May 30 2014