I stole that title from somewhere. Just not sure where.
I saw Neil Gaiman speak tonight, to a crowd of some 800 or so, in a church next to the UW bookstore. There's a comment to be made about seeing Neil speak from the veritable pulpit and religious experiences, but I'll leave that for other people.
Me, I'll just say that it was pretty cool. Neil continues to be funny and witty and kind. Neil continues, too, to have a totally awesome voice, though it was a little ill-served by the accoustics of the church and the nature of what he was reading; the characters in that particular section of Anansi Boys have accents that stray a bit far from Neil's normal English one. Stray almost to the Carribean, in fact.
Neil looked a bit haggard, though. Not a surprise, I guess, given that he's been on a signing tour for a few weeks now. That's the sort of thing that'll run a person down; cramped fingers, bags under the eyes, a general diassociation with where you currently are. I've been there (only minus the being famous and the name-dropping and the having people want my signature, of course). It's not much a situation I envy (and the way I've been sleeping lately, it's not a situation I'm far from), but the Neil I saw tonight certainly cut a different picture from the, let's face it, dead sexy shot on the dust jacket of the new book.
Also, I noticed something a little funny tonight. I couldn't help but feeling, as Neil was talking, that I'd heard it all before. What he read from the book, yes, of course, but his questions in the Q&A session, too. I'd read them on his blog. It's the strange and almost awkward power of the internet; I don't need to hear him speak, because I already know what he's going to say. His own words have become a digital oracle, and now he's only echoing himself. Signal edges dangerously close to noise, and the signing itself, the sheer size of which makes more meaningful connection impossible, becomes almost redundant.
The beginning of that last paragraph is true. The first 4 sentences, say. Where I get by the end of that paragraph, though, I'm not sure that I agree with what I wrote. But I don't take any of it back.