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NEIL GAIMAN: Thank you so much for having us.
It's always fun to do these Google things.
It's always particular fun for me
when I'm out at Mountain View because my little boy-- who
is not actually a little boy, he's 6 foot 2 and 30,
but in my head, he's my little boy--
is actually one of you, which is terrifying.
So, right.
We figured out the running order,
and tossed dice to see who goes first, and it's me.
So I'm going to begin with a poem,
and it's about an awful lot of things.
I love the fact that this poem is now--
people send me messages on Twitter saying that they read
it at weddings, and other people seem
to regard it as a poem about upset and ignorance.
And I think, probably, it's about a lot of things,
including getting off your phone some time.
But it's called "The Day The Saucers Came."
That day the saucers landed, hundreds of them,
golden, silent, coming down from the sky like great snowflakes.
And the people of Earth stood and stared as they descended,
waiting, dry-mouthed to find what waited inside for us,
and none of us knowing if we would be here tomorrow.
But you didn't notice it because that day,
the day the saucers came, by some coincidence was the day
that the graves gave up their dead
and the zombies pushed up through soft earth, or erupted,
shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable,
came towards us, the living, and we screamed and ran.
But you did not notice this, because, on the saucer
day, which was the zombie day, it was Ragnarok also.
And the television screens showed us
a ship built of dead men's nails, a serpent, a wolf,
all bigger than the mind could hold,
and the cameraman could not get far enough away.
And then the gods came out.
But you did not see them coming because, on the
saucer-zombie-battling-gods day, the floodgates broke and each
of us was engulfed by genies and sprites offering us wishes
and wonders and eternities and charm and cleverness and true,
brave hearts and pots of gold, while giants feefofummed across
the land, and killer bees.
But you had no idea of any of this,
because that day, the saucer day, the zombie day,
the Ragnarok and fairies day, the day the great winds
came, and snows, and the cities turned to crystal,
the day all plants died, plastics dissolved,
the day the computers turned, the screens telling us we
would obey, the day angels, drunk and muddled,
stumbled from the bars and all the bells of London
were sounded, the day animals spoke to us in Assyrian,
the Yeti day, the fluttering capes and arrival
of the time machine day.
You didn't notice any of this because you
were sitting in your room not doing anything, not
even reading, not really, just looking at your telephone,
wondering if I was going to call.
So, the next thing that's going to happen
is Amanda is going to play a song.
AMANDA PALMER: Yeah, and you should intro it,
but we should tell them about the recording
and why this all happened, maybe.
Or should we just not bother with that?
We made a record, kind of by accident.
We went on a tour and decided to record it
and that's what this record is.
And--
NEIL GAIMAN: Yeah, there is a record
called, "An Evening With Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer."
Three discs-- one of me, one of her, one of us.
And this is a song that's actually
on the "us" one, because on the record I sing it,
but Amanda's going to be singing it now because--
AMANDA PALMER: He's nervous!
NEIL GAIMAN: She has a much, much prettier voice than I do.
AMANDA PALMER: I think your voice is beautiful.
NEIL GAIMAN: And it was a song that, actually,
is kind of relevant to everybody here.
And it began when I started thinking about torch songs,
because classic torch songs are, basically, conversations
that you have with a bartender at 3 o'clock in the morning,
smoking a cigarette, not wanting to go home
with your heart broken.
And I thought-- that doesn't happen anymore.
You can't smoke in bars.
And if your heart is broken, you're
not going to be in a bar at 3 o'clock in the morning.
You're going to be doing something else entirely.
[MUSIC - AMANDA PALMER, "I GOOGLE YOU"]
AMANDA PALMER: Thank you.
So that song was actually written by Neil,
and I heard it in the best way.
It was the first week that we actually met and hung out.
We weren't dating yet, this was, like, five years ago.
And he came to stay at my house for a week
while we were working on this book project together.
And I don't remember how it came up, but we started chatting
and he mentioned that he'd written
a song for a cabaret singer to sing,
and I said, well, just sing it for me.
And he went, I can't, I can't sing.
And then he opened his mouth and just sang it a cappella,
and I couldn't believe what a beautiful voice he had.
And he's a pretty clever writer, too.
Anyway, so I put some chords under it
and that was sort of like our first weird little thing
that we did together.
And I'm going to play you one of mine now,
and then Neil's going to read.
I was thinking about maybe taking requests from you guys,
but I thought that that might just get really weird.
Because, also, I'm only going to play one song.
So I was just standing back there,
wondering what would actually work.
There's a song I was practicing for the show
tonight that I think would be good.
It might be a little sloppy, but it's on the record
so-- I thought that would be relevant.
And it's a song that I wrote a couple years
ago about all these journalists asking me
who my influences are.
And especially-- I get asked a lot, who
are your female influences.
And I realized I'd been thinking about it really
narrowly, and especially the more you
give the answer to the question, you're like,
OK-- Laurie Anderson, and Madonna,
and la di di di di-- all this ***
that I listened to when I was a kid.
And you start just having a *** laundry list of people.
And it occurred to me, actually, in the middle of the night
one night, that I was leaving out this giant one,
and it struck me as actually so important
I decided to write a song about it.
So this is it.
[MUSIC - AMANDA PALMER, "JUDY BLUME"]
AMANDA PALMER: Thank you.
NEIL GAIMAN: So at the beginning of this year,
I tried an experiment, with BlackBerry sponsoring me.
I went to Twitter, threw out 12 questions on Twitter,
and got hundreds and thousands of replies back.
And then picked the replies-- picked 12 replies pretty much
at random, and used them as yogurt starter
for 12 short stories, one for each month of the year.
And I made a calendar of tales.
And this is last month's tale.
"That feels good," I said, and I stretched my neck
to get out the last of the cramp.
It didn't just feel good, it felt great, actually.
I'd been squashed up inside that lamp for so long.
You start to think that nobody's ever going to run it again.
"You're a genie," said the young lady
with the polishing-cloth in her hand.
"I am.
You're a smart girl, ***.
What gave me away?" "The arriving in a puff of smoke,"
she said. "And you look like a genie.
You've got the turban and the pointy shoes. "
I folded my arms and blinked.
Now I was wearing blue jeans, gray sneakers,
and a faded gray sweater-- the male uniform
of this time and this place.
I raised my hand to my forehead, and I bowed deeply.
"I am the genie of the lamp, " I told her.
"Rejoice, O fortunate one.
I have it in my power to grant you three wishes.
And don't try the 'wish for more wishes' thing- I won't play
and you'll lose a wish.
Right.
Go for it. " I folded my arms again.
"No," she said. "I mean thanks and all that, but it's fine.
I'm good." "Honey," I said. "***.
Sweetie.
Perhaps you misheard me.
I'm a genie And the three wishes?
We're talking anything you want.
You ever dreamed of flying?
I can give you wings.
You want to be wealthy, richer than Croesus?
You want power?
Say it.
Three wishes.
Whatever you want."
"Like I said," she said, "Thanks.
I'm fine." "Would you like something to drink?
You must be parched after spending
so much time in that lamp.
Wine?
Water?
Tea?"
"Uh..."
Actually, now she came to mention it, I was thirsty.
"Do you have any mint tea?"
She made me some mint tea in a teapot that
was almost a twin to the lamp in which I'd spent the greater
part of the last thousand years.
"Thank you for the tea." "No problem." "But I don't get it.
Everyone I've ever met, they start asking for things.
A fancy house.
A harem of gorgeous women-- not that you'd
want that, of course.
"I might," she said.
"You can't just make assumptions about people.
Oh, and don't call me ***, or sweetie,
or any of those things.
My name's Hazel."
"Ah!"
I understood.
"You want a beautiful woman then?
My apologies.
You have but to wish."
I folded my arms.
"No," she said. "I'm good.
No wishes.
How's the tea?"
I told her that the mint tea was the finest I had ever tasted.
She asked me when I'd started feeling a need
to grant people's wishes, and whether I
felt a desperate need to please.
She asked about my mother, and I told her
that she could not judge me as you would judge mortals,
for I was a djinn, powerful and wise, magical and mysterious.
She asked me if I liked hummus, and when I said that I did,
she toasted a pita bread and sliced it up
for me to dip into the hummus.
I dipped my bread slices into the hummus
and ate it with delight.
The hummus gave me an idea.
"Just make a wish," I said helpfully,
"And I could have a meal fit for a sultan brought in to you.
Each dish would be finer than the one before,
and all served upon golden plates.
And you could keep the plates afterwards."
"It's good," she said, with a smile.
"Would you like to go for a walk?"
We walked together through the town.
It felt good to stretch my legs after so many years
in the lamp.
We wound up in a public park, sitting on a bench by a lake.
It was warm, but gusty, and the autumn leaves fell in flurries
each time the wind blew.
I told Hazel about my youth as a djinn,
of how we used to eavesdrop on the angels
and how they would throw comets at as
if they spied us listening.
I told her of the bad days of the djinn wars,
and how King Suleiman had imprisoned us
inside hollow objects-- bottles, lamps,
clay pots, that kind of thing.
She told me of her parents, who were both killed
in the same plane crash, and who'd left her the house.
She told me of the job, illustrating children's books,
a job she'd backed into accidentally, at the point
she realized she would never be a really
competent medical Illustrator.
And of how happy she became whenever
she was sent a new book to illustrate.
She told me she taught life drawing
to adults at the local community college one evening a week.
I saw no obvious flaw in her life,
no hole she could fill by wishing, save one.
"Your life is good," I told her. "But you
have no one to share it with.
Wish, and I will bring you the perfect man.
Or woman.
A film star.
A rich-- person--" "No need.
I'm good," she said.
We walked back to her house, past houses
dressed for Halloween.
"This is not right," I told her. "People always want things."
"Not me.
I've got everything I need." "Then what do I do?"
She thought for a moment.
Then she pointed at her front yard.
"Can you rake the leaves?"
"Is that your wish?" "No.
Just something you could do while I'm
getting our dinner ready."
I raked the leaves into a heap by the hedge,
to stop the wind from blowing it apart.
After dinner, I washed up the dishes.
I spent the night in Hazel's spare bedroom.
It wasn't that she didn't want help.
She let me help.
I ran errands for her, picked up art supplies and groceries.
On days she'd been painting for a long time,
she let me rub her neck and shoulders.
I have good, firm hands.
Shortly before Thanksgiving, I moved out of the spare bedroom,
across the hall, into the main bedroom, and Hazel's bed.
I watched her face this morning as she slept.
I stared at the shapes her lips make when she sleeps.
The creeping sunlight touched her face,
and she opened her eyes and stared at me, and she smiled.
"You know what I never asked, she said, "is what about you?"
"What would you wish for if I asked
what your three wishes were?"
I thought for moment.
I put my arm around her, and she snuggled her head
into my shoulder.
"It's OK," I told her.
"I'm good."
AMANDA PALMER: So, one last tune for you guys, and then
and then we'll do questions and talking and stuff.
And this is also-- all the stuff we've done here today
is actually on the record.
Isn't it?
Or no, except for the Calendar of Tales.
Yeah, but everything else is.
And so, as you can see, I play the piano and the ukulele--
the ukulele not really as good as the piano.
I'm a real fan recently of-- well, it's not a new idea,
but I think it's great to play an instrument that you're
*** at.
It's very liberating.
This is sort of a song about that,
and it's called "The Ukulele Anthem."
[MUSIC - AMANDA PALMER, "THE UKULELE ANTHEM"]
AMANDA PALMER: Thank you.
ALAN LIGHT: So let's talk a little bit about these shows,
these shows you're playing and these
shows that you've recorded onto this "Evening With" record.
Is it more interesting for you guys to combine your work
or to combine your audiences?
NEIL GAIMAN: Actually, the reason
why we did them was a little bit of both.
We never get free time.
We're both strangely busy people.
But, in 2011, we suddenly found ourselves with 11 days
where we had to start out in LA, and we
had to finish in Seattle, and we didn't have anything to do.
And it was amazing.
And so, immediately we decided to fill it by hiring a car
and just driving up the west coast.
And we thought, well we'll have a vacation.
And then we thought, well, if we're going to have a vacation,
we'll get on each other's nerves by day two,
so we need something to do.
And so that was the idea of taking little theaters as we
went and just doing "An Evening With."
And that, of course, embiggened ridiculously very,
very quickly.
But what became fun was the mingling the audiences.
It was like a wedding.
It was like that sort of -- "are you on the bride's side
or the groom's side" thing.
And we'd meet people afterwards at the signings,
and we'd hang around and say hello.
And there would be people who would just ignore me
completely, head over to Amanda with their Dresden Dolls CDs.
Then there'd be people who'd ignore her and come over
to me with their Sandmans.
And then there'd be the people who'd just come up and go,
can't believe you two-- my favorite writer.
Like, aw, this is just the best.
ALAN LIGHT: Given that you've both
constructed these lives that sort of enable
you to do whatever you want, whenever
you want-- it's the remarkable thing about it-- what is it
that these shows have enabled you to do,
have brought out that's different than any other forum?
AMANDA PALMER: That's a good question.
It's fresh in my mind right now--
we did a Reddit-- was that two days ago?
Yeah, two days ago, thanks.
We did a Reddit two days ago--
NEIL GAIMAN: Several years ago in out of internet time, but--
AMANDA PALMER: And someone asked--
I've been talking a lot publicly, nowadays, and writing
a lot, about internet nastiness.
And it's actually a hot topic in general.
Not because I think there's necessarily,
particularly any more of it today than there
was last week or last year.
But it's so pervasive that people
seem to be trying to figure out, OK, well, clearly it's
not going away.
How the *** do we deal with it?
Especially as artists, and as women or whatever.
And we talked on Reddit about how
Neil and I had our own particular relationship
with our fans and with our haters
before we met each other.
And then, we sort of inherited new forms of hate when--
ALAN LIGHT: They're still making new forms of hate.
AMANDA PALMER: I think, maybe, subconsciously, it
was also a way of going out in public and saying,
we're two people who are going to do things together.
And, in a way, kind of like the wedding, it was like,
you guys are going to have to meet my husband.
He's a really, really nice guy.
And vice versa.
And I wanted them to see him.
I wanted them to know him.
NEIL GAIMAN: It was really interesting,
I think, for us also because we have both been getting up
on stage is in front of audiences doing
the thing that we do for years and years and years.
And if there's one thing that we are both completely certain of,
it is that the buck stops with us, with each individual.
You know, if it's my reading or whatever,
anyone else can have input, but I'm
the one that gets to decide what I read, what happens.
And Amanda, gigging, it all ends up with her.
And so, you suddenly had these two people
who are completely used to being the last authority-- questions
could be raised, ideas could be had,
but, finally, it would get to me or get to Amanda
and we'd say, well, actually we'll do it like this.
And suddenly, we'd get to the point
where Amanda would say, well, we're going to do it like this.
And I'd say, no, we're not.
Or vice versa.
And--
AMANDA PALMER: Oh my god, it's like being married.
NEIL GAIMAN: It was.
It was the most, sort of, married,
bumping into each other, and I think
it taught both of us humility, especially me.
AMANDA PALMER: Oh, both of us.
NEIL GAIMAN: And actually taught us
to cooperate in ways that, I think-- it was nice,
it was like a pressure cooker, because it was the one
area of our lives in which we both reigned supreme,
and suddenly we had to give that up.
AMANDA PALMER: Yeah, and also I had a chip on my shoulder,
maybe, about, well, I'm the stage person.
So I even thought that, maybe, when
we would get into these arguments about, like,
the chair should go here or the chair should go there--
NEIL GAIMAN: We had those arguments.
AMANDA PALMER: And we did have those arguments.
That's one of the weird things about being married
to an artist, or a person who is used to doing big public events
or whatever, is that I felt like the expert,
and Neil felt like the expert, and we would sort of
be there going like, but, but but,
but but-- You could look at so many parts of the tour
and the recording and the decisions
as a total marriage metaphor, because a lot of it
was actually-- not the arguments we would get into,
but just how we would actually smooth things out and not
actually get angry at each other and kind of learn
how to do the dance.
NEIL GAIMAN: Even doing the Kickstarter video.
When we decided we were actually going to do this properly,
we suddenly went, we might as well record it.
And if we're going to record it, we
may as well record it properly, and why not go to Kickstarter?
This was in the relatively early days of Kickstarter.
So we tried recording a serious video in which we explained
what we were doing, and why we needed
the money, and stuff like that.
And we did that about three or four times,
and all we knew is that, by the end of it,
we hated it and each other.
AMANDA PALMER: And Neil had a terrible cold.
NEIL GAIMAN: But then, time was running out,
and then we had to do one suddenly.
We'd realized it was our only chance together,
and I'd lost my voice, and had this horrible cold,
and was sick.
And we were in Brighton, where Amanda was about to do a gig,
so I grabbed a banana from the dressing room,
we walked down onto the beach, and Amanda
explained to the world what we were
going to do in this Kickstarter while I ate a banana.
AMANDA PALMER: It was perfect.
NEIL GAIMAN: And I think--
AMANDA PALMER: It was a performance art Kickstarter
video.
NEIL GAIMAN: As Kickstarter videos, it was the best.
AMANDA PALMER: And also very much
in keeping with our stage personas, which is-- he's
really good at being the straight guy,
and I'm the obnoxious, ridiculous one.
And we sort of balance each other.
NEIL GAIMAN: I like to think of it as English and American.
AMANDA PALMER: Ow.
Ow!
ALAN LIGHT: All right.
Well, coming off the ropes from that one--
I inevitably will want to come back to the Kickstarter stuff,
but I want to ask you a little bit
about these modes of creativity.
And, I guess, Neil, even within recent months
there's been the novel, the comic book,
the Twitter stories-- all of these different mechanisms
or constructions that you use to get these stories out
in the world.
How do you determine, and when do you
determine, what goes where, what idea is then
going to manifest in which way?
NEIL GAIMAN: A lot of the times I
have a vague idea going into it.
The medium actually defines what goes into it a lot of the time.
A lot of the time I'm wrong.
I had two actual books come out this year-- "The Ocean
at the End of the Lane" and "Fortunately, the Milk,"
my children's book.
And both of them started off as something else.
"Ocean at the End of the Lane" was a short story
that I was writing to send Amanda when she was recording
"Theater Is Evil," because I missed her, and I thought,
I'll send her a short story.
It'll show her I love her.
She'll be impressed.
Better than flowers.
Except that it just kept going, and by the time
I finished it, she'd returned from Australia,
was mixing the album in Dallas, and I did a word count
and discovered I'd written a novel, accidentally.
"Fortunately, the Milk" started out in my head
as a picture book.
And I just started writing it.
And I was writing it in a notebook.
And whenever I felt like I needed cheering up I'd
go to the notebook and I'd write about 1,000 words
of "Fortunately, the Milk," it would
make me smile, and then I'd put it away and forget about it.
And when I got to the end, again,
I typed it up, looked at it, went--
this is much, much, much, too long to ever be a picture book.
It's actually a book.
So in those cases I was just wrong.
Sometimes there are things where you sort of go, well,
look, if it's in your head and it's got pictures in,
it's probably not a novel.
If the pictures actually move and make
sounds, then maybe it's television or a movie.
If you can keep them kind of static,
then maybe it's going to be a comic.
And sometimes I'll try something in several different ways.
I'll have an idea that I know works,
and I'll try it as a poem and watch it fail as a poem
and go, OK, well, if you're not a poem,
then maybe you're a short story-- maybe
you're a comic, whatever.
I'll come back and sometimes play
with things in two or three different times
until I feel like I've got it right.
ALAN LIGHT: I don't know if this is the Amanda
version of that question, but it seems related.
You've told the story onstage and offstage
about writing "The Bed Song" and the process and transformation
that came at the end of making that song happen.
Can you tell that story and talk about that a little bit,
which seems to me also about, where
does the creativity take you?
AMANDA PALMER: Yeah.
"The Bed Song" is interesting for me.
I wish I'd played it for you guys,
because you'd have some context, but it's
a solo piano song on the new record.
And it's pretty simple to explain, actually.
It's almost like a fictional narrative of a couple
told in the first person, basically,
starting at the beginning of the relationship.
And it chronicles, with each verse,
the way the beds change in the relationship.
And it starts out, and it's this crazy couple
at a party sleeping in a sleeping bag at their friends'
house, and through the *** futon at college,
and through getting married and getting
a proper bed in a condo.
And while this is all happening, the relationship's--
NEIL GAIMAN:Dying.
AMANDA PALMER: Dying.
Encoldening.
I don't know, becoming more distant.
And the bed just becomes this metaphor of space.
And I don't usually write songs like that.
But I'm so impressed by Neil because he's
such a great fiction thinker.
And usually when I think about ideas and songs,
it's always so personal.
And even my sort of fictional work in the past
has always been like some very, very close reflection
of myself.
But very close, so close that you look at it,
and you see the ingredients, and you see that it's not quite me,
but it might as well be.
NEIL GAIMAN: Close enough that your mother can get irritated.
AMANDA PALMER: Exactly.
But "The Bed Song," actually, I haven't experienced all of
those stages.
I've definitely been in relationships
where distance happened, but this
was like writing an epic poem of all painful relationships ever.
And I was really proud of having written it, because I was like,
actually I'm proud that it's a good song,
but I'm actually proud that I managed
to write a good work of fiction.
ALAN LIGHT: Which you also sort of webcast,
Twitter-cast, the writing of, right?
AMANDA PALMER: Yeah, and so that's
another thing about the song.
So, another thing that happened while writing the song.
And I got the idea for the song probably a week or so before I
wrote it.
The idea popped in and the idea of using the bed as a metaphor.
And I thought, aw, that'll be a great song.
If I get that right, that'll be a great song.
And I sat myself down at the piano one day to write it.
And up until that point, I had had a real hangup
about what it meant to be a good, disciplined creator.
Which is, at the moment of creation, and at the moment
where I'm really going to sit down and write a song,
I need to turn my phone off, not be distracted, shut my computer
down, put all the *** away, and write,
which is what real writers do.
And I have a huge Twitter following
that I have a constant, ongoing communication
relationship with.
And just this time, I decided, you know,
*** it, I'm going to actually, instead of closing down,
I'm going to open up.
And I'm going to announce to my Twitter feed
that I'm writing a song.
And actually, by doing that, I feel
like I'm going to have to be more
disciplined because they're all going to kind of keep me
on task.
And they did.
And it's not like I set up a webcasting station
at the piano.
They didn't watch my process.
But they knew, and they were there.
And every 20 minutes or so-- probably
took me three hours to write the song, and every 20 minutes
or so I'd take a picture of all my scratched
out words and the piano and my fan base is great that way.
They were like a bunch of cheerleaders
who were just sitting there on Twitter saying,
this sounds amazing.
We're so glad you're writing.
We can't wait to hear the song.
And I realized I could do both.
And I could tap into the enthusiasm of the internet
without letting it destroy my creative process,
and that was a huge revelation.
And the song wound up being one of the best I'd ever written,
I thought, and so I didn't take that lesson lightly.
ALAN LIGHT: So one more for each and then
we'll go to questions for you guys,
so start organizing your thoughts.
Inevitably, I must ask about the famous, infamous, celebrated,
Earth-shattering Kickstarter campaign,
and all of the attention that it received,
more so than anything else.
That there was so much talk and so many responses,
from-- we have seen the future of the industry,
to she's a total hustler, to every response you could have.
From this vantage point now, what
do you take as the biggest lessons from the $1 million
Kickstarter experience?
NEIL GAIMAN: Don't give them free postage.
AMANDA PALMER:Yeah, don't do free internet postage,
that's the big one.
I learned so many things in so many departments,
and I could talk about it for half an hour, so I won't.
And actually, my brain is sort of prepped on this.
I was in Vienna last week and doing a panel like this
on crowd funding and we got into really dark, interesting talks
about social capital.
And a lot of the conversation, lately,
that I've been involved in and wondering about,
and what everyone's wondering about
is-- what if you're not like me?
And I can say it's the future of music, but it's my future.
I'm good at this, and I'm good at communicating,
and I like hanging out with my fans,
and I love tweeting all day and I love blogging,
and I love using platforms like Kickstarter.
That doesn't necessarily mean it's
for everyone or for every project.
And I think one of the biggest-- not mistakes,
but sort of misguided things, maybe, about the Kickstarter,
was that I drank the Kool-Aid that my Kickstarter
success would translate into commercial success.
And so I found myself thinking that, in a weird way,
I wish I had just taken my fan base for granted and done it
with them, instead of thinking that I could use them as a step
to get to whatever that next magical place was.
I had already learned that lesson
six times over with the record label,
and I thought it was going to be different with Kickstarter,
that every time I would walk into the office at Roadrunner
Records-- not very far from here, and now nonexistent.
But they would say, this is going to be the one,
this is the moment.
This is going to be the project that is going to actually bring
you to the next place, which is the place you want to be.
And I would go, oh, wow, great, and an office of 30 people
seem to believe it, and seem to believe that we should
be putting our energy not into where we feel safe
and into those we love but into foreign structures
so that we can go out and conquer and be
an imperial band.
And actually, if I've learned any lesson
it's that even those closely around me,
very well-intentioned, shouldn't be telling me
what my instincts are.
And I am very gullible.
So that was the biggest one, because if I
had just done the Kickstarter and delivered the record,
and not also paid for giant videos
and not paid for huge marketing campaigns
and not tried to reach for the mainstream success
that my team all just flat assumed that the record would
have, I think I would have been happier.
NEIL GAIMAN: And richer.
AMANDA PALMER: And richer.
Yeah, but richer-- I don't really care about richer,
but happier I do care--
NEIL GAIMAN: I know, but there was
all of those people seem to be assuming that you,
having had the Kickstarter, you were now Uncle Scrooge-ing.
You had a swimming pool.
It was filled with dollars.
And you would take off all your clothes
and plunge into it like a dolphin.
AMANDA PALMER: That's a wonderful image, Neil.
ALAN LIGHT: Maybe a song.
AMANDA PALMER: But yeah, and if nothing else,
it also lifted the rug up on how amazed I
was that really intelligent people didn't understand
how business worked.
Like, it really amazed me that smart journalists
at smart magazines would be like, well, now
that you have $1.2 million in the bank, what
are you going to do?
And I'd be like, have you seen the Kickstarter and the fact
that I have to manufacture $800,000 worth of ***
and mail it to people-- and that it's a business?
And that has brought--
NEIL GAIMAN: I love the guy on Reddit who asked,
you say you spent over $100,000 manufacturing CDs,
yet you only asked for $100,000 to start out with.
How can you explain that?
And I'm going, well if only 3,000 people had signed up,
and she'd only had $100,000, then
she wouldn't have had to manufacture--
it was a sort of strange thing.
AMANDA PALMER: Yeah, and I fielded a lot.
And so the bigger question-- and I'm about to write a book,
and the book is going to be centered
around these weird new questions that
have come flooding into my life, which is-- why do people think
art is so much different from running a business?
And why is making a vinyl album, in people's heads, so much
different than making an iPhone?
And why do artists get *** for things that business people
don't?
And I can understand why.
And artists are weird.
And the way we feel about commerce over here,
and just like, I will make you this thing and it costs $19.95.
And the way people feel about paintings or music
is definitely different.
But watching them collide is fascinating.
ALAN LIGHT: And is where the action is.
I mean that's where we're living right now,
is in those questions.
Which brings me beautifully to the final question
I was going to ask Neil and not hog the microphone.
The other thing that came out this year
was the publication of the "Make Great Art"--
NEIL GAIMAN: My speech.
ALAN LIGHT: Commencement lecture, yes.
So I'm curious.
We have a roomful here, maybe of artists, but maybe
technology visionaries and wizards and whatever
it is that they do within these walls.
And I'm curious, without asking you to deliver a speech that
will go viral around the world and cause people to quote
from at numerous occasions-- would you modify,
or how would you modify the ideas
that you spoke about in that celebrated speech
for a room that's like this one?
NEIL GAIMAN: You know, I wouldn't.
What was fascinating for me about that speech was,
I gave a commencement speech because I
was asked to give a commencement speech--
I'd never given one before.
And I'd write it and I'd show it to Amanda,
and she'd read it through and she'd say, you can't say that.
And I'd say why not?
And she'd well that's the kind of thing
they say in commencement speeches.
And I wouldn't know.
So what I did was simply take everything
I've learned in 30 years of being a writer
and stick it into a speech, like-- that was easy.
And there is a bit at the end where
I started explaining that what you
do as an artist-- because it was to the University of the Arts
and a graduating class of artists-- is,
you make good art.
And that actually should be your response
to all of the *** you're going to run into.
You know-- husband leaves you, make good art.
House burns down-- make good art.
Something wonderful happens-- make good art.
That's what you do.
And what I loved, once it went out there
and went viral, which is the kind of unpredictable thing
that sometimes happens, and happens in this case.
I'd see people on Twitter, and on the web,
and on comments saying, well I'm an architect.
Actually, it works if you just cross out "art"
and make "architecture."
And someone else is going, physics--
you can make good physics.
So, speaking as the proud parent of somebody at Google who,
when I say to him, so, Mike, explain to me what it is you're
doing again?
And he'll say, well leaving aside
all of the secrecy agreements, there
are a few things I can tell you.
And I say, OK, so tell me.
And he'll go, right, so-- waa waa waa waa waa waa waa waa
waa.
It's like the adults in Charlie Brown.
And after a while he will realize
that my eyes have completely glazed over,
and I'll say, well, could you just give that to me
in terms that I understand.
He'll say, oh, Dad.
Well, you know what a programming language is.
And I'll say well yeah, I know what a programing language is.
He says, well,waa waa waa waa waa waa--
So, I would, for this gathered audience,
I would say make good waa waa waa waa waa waa waa waa.
ALAN LIGHT: So if you guys have questions and want
to go to the microphones, that's why they're there.
In the meantime, just quickly because somebody
will ask from the fans for the news
hook is what's latest on "American Gods'" progress
with HBO, and in the last few hours
there's been lots of Sandman movie talk, so--
NEIL GAIMAN: So, "American Gods" is not
going to be-- there is going to be a TV series.
It's not going to be with HBO.
I'm not yet at liberty to say where it is going to be,
but it's awesome.
I can say that.
The "Sandman" movie rumors are "Sandman" movie rumors.
And there was a saying when I grew up in Sussex which
you would occasionally hear old men say--
theoretically old women could have said it too,
but I never heard them But I did actually
hear our gardener say it.
He said, I've lived too near the woods too long
to be frightened by an owl.
And "Sandman" and is now in its 25th year and rounds
of internet rumors every couple of years.
People say, what do you think of the new "Sandman" rumors?
And I say, yeah, they're "Sandman" rumors.
But haven't you seen them, they're on the web.
And it's like, yes I've seen them, and they're on the web.
And you know, 18 months ago it was definite that Eric
Kripke's people were making the "Sandman" TV series,
and it was definitely happening, except that it wasn't.
As far as I can tell, watching this-- loving
the mechanics of an internet rumor--
The incredibly tentative rumor that somebody nervously put up,
saying that they thought that maybe David Goyer was thinking
about pitching a "Sandman" take to Warners
and had possibly spoken to or thought about Joseph
Gordon-Levitt being in some way connected, which as far as I
can tell is the one-- is actually what went up--
has transmuted like this cosmic game of telephone
into people on Twitter saying, well,
what are you doing about the David Goyer Joseph
Gordon-Levitt movie?
And I'm going, nothing, because it's all in your head.
I will believe the "Sandman" movie when I'm actually
sitting in the audience eating popcorn.
People saying things on the internet is lovely,
but it's what they do on the internet.
ALAN LIGHT: Lovely or not.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
I loved the Judy Blume song, that was awesome.
AMANDA PALMER: Thank you.
AUDIENCE: And I know there's lots
of tired questions you guys get from doing interviews--
certainly none of them were today.
Thank you for the awesome interview.
Are there any subjects that you guys
wish that people would ask you about?
NEIL GAIMAN: I sometimes wish they'd
ask more about the actual mechanics of writing,
because there's all this stuff that I know and love.
And most people don't come up and say,
so let's talk about adverbs.
Stephen King says you don't use adverbs,
but I've read your stuff and you use adverbs all the time.
What do you-- what's with that?
You know that kind of thing, where you sort of feel
like, oh, I can get into the mechanics of my craft.
And nobody ever wants to know that.
They just want to know who was the forgotten god
in "American Gods," or whatever. which
is a different kind of thing.
AMANDA PALMER: Yeah, mine's similar.
Especially given this last year, even when
I would try to nudge journalists or interviewers towards the,
you do know I made a record?
And we've spent 45 minutes talking about Kickstarter,
and I know you think it's fascinating,
and I find it fascinating, but I really,
especially in this day and age and being who I am,
it does get painful to see the point-- which
is the music-- getting obscured by the tech and the tools
and the house around it.
Because I'm really much more proud of the record
I made than I am of the Kickstarter.
But people forget that, because the Kickstarter
is really big and shiny.
And sometimes I wish that people would talk to me about actually
what it's like to do this weird job, that doesn't really
have a name, that's like part artist, part traveling person,
part talker to other people, part Twitter curator, part
blogger.
And the only person I actually get to talk about those details
to is him.
And I'm really lucky, because, even though he's a writer
and I'm a musician, if you look at hours clocked and the stuff
we do, the Venn diagram's pretty-- we're very similar.
But it's funny, some of my favorite conversations
lately have been with other artists-- or reading articles.
I read an article in The Guardian
by a young British musician who's
in a band called Chvrches, and she
was talking about how it feels to be backstage
before a show on the toilet with your phone,
crying, reading the comments under some article
that she just wrote about how people
are being sexist towards her band.
And I was like, that's a very real moment that I recognize,
which is that artists are now having
to do jobs and communicate in ways and deal
with stuff they didn't used to.
And that, in itself, isn't really discussed,
how we juggle that.
And I think that's interesting stuff to talk about.
And usually it doesn't get that deep.
ALAN LIGHT: It's a remarkable piece.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
ALAN LIGHT: The Chvrches piece, yeah.
AMANDA PALMER: Yeah.
Let's go to this side.
AUDIENCE: Question for both.
Actually, first a comment.
With the "Sandman" movie, I remember a number of years
ago you actually--
AMANDA PALMER: And they're off.
AUDIENCE: Oh, no no no no.
You actually made the comment onstage
when someone asked you about it.
You used the words, you don't want
to be the one boiling your own baby.
NEIL GAIMAN: Barbecuing.
AUDIENCE: Barbecuing.
NEIL GAIMAN: I said I don't want to barbecue my own baby.
I remember that, yes.
AUDIENCE: So, I just want to say,
I've been reading your work for, like, 20 years now
and it's still wonderful and amazing and-- even
when I go back.
That said, I try to sell a book to everybody
who reads your work and I was wondering
if you might be able to pitch it as well.
Why should people read Gene Wolfe's "Peace"?
NEIL GAIMAN: Why should people read Gene Wolfe's "Peace"?
Because it is smarter and trickier than they are.
"Peace" is a beautiful novel by Gene Wolfe, who
I think is one of the greatest living American novelists.
Probably one of the greatest living human novelists.
And "Peace" is an early book of his,
and it's a book which, the first time I read it,
I read as a beautiful, bucolic set of memoirs,
heartwarming and sweet.
And then I went back to a few years later and suddenly went,
this is not that book.
I completely misread it.
There is a dark, evil, very, very nasty book hiding
inside this book.
That is so cool.
And the trouble is, you don't want
to say any more than that, because you
don't want to give too much away.
You just want to say like, read it.
And trust me.
AUDIENCE:Yeah.
NEIL GAIMAN: And it's tricky and it's nasty.
AUDIENCE: I don't think there's any book that I've ever
read and then immediately reread,
because there's just like-- oh wait.
NEIL GAIMAN:Yes.
AUDIENCE: And then for Amanda-- my wife, who also attended
Wesleyan, is an artist and does kind
of a lot of design and art-related stuff
to pay the bills.
But she feels weird about that, especially since it's
hard to tell people what she does.
Anyway, but she specifically wanted
me to ask you when she should be expecting the fraud
police to show up, because she's been expecting them for a while
now.
AMANDA PALMER: Yeah, so he's referencing something
that I actually-- I gave a commencement
speech the graduation year before Neil did,
and I talked about the fraud police, which
is this phenomenon that-- I think it was actually
a friend of mine and I came up with the term,
but it was that idea that there really
are people who are going to come knocking on your door
in the middle of the night saying like, we know you don't
know what the *** you're doing.
We're here to take you away.
That job
NEIL GAIMAN:In my head, they were always going to knock
on my door and say, you're going to have to get a real job now.
And I would.
I would go quietly and get a real job.
AMANDA PALMER:Yeah, I mean, it's funny in talking about all
of this stuff, about art and business,
the idea that artists have of themselves is usually so ***
up, because of the main cultural idea that everyone has
of artists.
And also in a weird-- not to get to meta,
but-- the way that everyone thinks that artists have
this passionate relationship with their art,
or this total purity, or this-- pick an adjective.
And it's been great for me, now, as an artist-- I'm going on 40.
And there are as many kinds of artists as there are people.
They're just as insecure, they're just as good
at, or bad at, business, good at, or bad at, communicating.
And sure, there's some things about artists
that you can see that are similar,
but it was incredibly liberating for me in my late 20s
to go like, oh I don't have to act like this just because I'm
an artist.
I don't have to think about myself this way,
or about my work, or about my life.
And that "Bed Song" thing is a perfect example.
I realized I had kind of been buying into the idea
that artists do this and I'm up in the garret with my wine
and my cigarettes creating my-- and actually, it's
not like that.
It's work like anything else-- you sit your *** down
and you do it.
And it's not romantic, and it's not necessarily fun,
and you might not even feel passionate about it.
And so once you can do enough work on yourself as a human,
in the forgiveness department, that you're not fitting
the picture that you had, the fraud
police just-- You still always fear
that, I think, in a little way.
But the more you work and the more other people take you
seriously, the easier it gets.
NEIL GAIMAN: I was actually in the audience
at her commencement speech, and I misheard her.
And I went through the entirety of her speech
thinking she was talking about the "frog police."
Which were still doing the same thing that the fraud
police did, they were just these 6 foot high frogs who--
AMANDA PALMER: Knocked on your door
in the middle of the night telling you
that you had to get a real *** job.
ALAN LIGHT: You would listen to them.
All right, I hate to do it.
I got the signal saying I can take one more question,
so that would come back to this side,
so, sorry to the other guys.
AUDIENCE: So, let's talk about adverbs.
AMANDA PALMER: ***.
AUDIENCE: Seriously, no, really.
So Neil, you write a lot of imaginative, really interesting
worlds and settings, but you rarely
reuse them, or come back to them.
Do you ever miss the worlds that you created and wish
you could come back to them, and what
specific settings do you miss the most?
NEIL GAIMAN: Absolutely, I do.
People think that I have some kind
of weird moral high ground, and that I'm not
the kind of writer who does sequels,
and the truth is I'm always the kind of writer who
plans to do sequels, and would love to go back.
I just get sort of-- if, on the one hand
I have the choice between something that I've done,
and I know how to do it, and I can do it well,
and it now has an audience who are waiting for more,
and a publisher who will give me more money to do it--
and, on the other hand, I have something
that I have no idea if anybody wants,
that I don't know how to do, I will always go, oh, shiny.
That's what I do.
Recently BBC Radio did an audio adaptation of "Neverwhere"--
BBC Radio 4.
And I got to act in it, which was amazing.
Much more amazing than that was that James McAvoy, Natalie
Dormer, Sir Christopher Lee, Bernard Cribbins, Anthony
Stewart Head.
The cast list is just a who's who of amazing actors.
And it goes on and on and on.
And all of these people were in it.
And I got to listen to it when they'd finished it.
And I listened to the whole six hours of BBC "Neverwhere."
And I went, this is great!
Why isn't there any more of this?
And then I thought, oh, it's because I never did any more.
So I went and dug out the first page of a short story called
"Hoe the Marquis Got His Coat Back" that I started in 2002
and abandoned, not because it was bad,
but because I was writing it in a notebook
that a fan had given me with rose
petals bound into the paper.
And I discovered that if you have
rose petals bound into the paper, they clog your pen.
So I'd written a page and a half and put it away.
It's true.
And so I finished that story and it's 10,000, 11,000 words long.
And I gave it to George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois
for an anthology called "Rogues," which'll
be coming out next September.
And having done that, I went, hang on,
I have an entire other "Neverwhere" novel plotted,
I just never quite got round to it.
I should definitely do that.
So, I really should It's honestly
not because I don't mean to.
It's just, I get distracted.
ALAN LIGHT: Ladies and gentleman of Google,
thank you for your time.
Everybody have a lovely weekend.
NEIL GAIMAN: Thank you so much.
ALAN LIGHT: Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer.
NEIL GAIMAN: Thank you very much.
AMANDA PALMER: Thanks, Alan.