 Welcome, how nice to see everybody here. I should be very brief, I'm Roli 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 suspect the exhibition doesn't need huge introduction. You've either seen it or you're about to see it, I hope. It's called 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. Paul Gravette 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 centre 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 Kickass, Viva Vendetta, Tankguld, other 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 Mark Allmond performing Alex Tucker, Pam Hogg's guest DJ, and there'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 on one of her rare nights off from her current European tour, will be here a little later, breaking from basking in the glory of 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. 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 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 to hosts for the evening, Paul Gravet and John Harris Dunning, to take things from here. Thank you very much. Please welcome Neil Gaiman. So I'd like to have you here and an extraordinary circumstances just in terms of the British Library for one thing, doing so much for comics, which is perhaps a surprising thing to find. We're definitely in the future that I hoped for. It seems to be coming true, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I remember... We've stormed the bastions, but one of them, at least. Is that peculiar feeling that we may have won? And now what? Now do we do, yes. I mean, Paul and I have known each other now for about... Is it about? ...pushing 30 years. About 30 years, yeah. And he was actually my... more or less my first comics publisher. Yeah, I like that. I wear that with pride, yes. Well, almost, because you would have been published by this magazine. It never happened, The Hunter Tremaine Borderline, which lived up to its name being a bit borderline. It was borderline. It didn't happen. But that was your connecting place with McKean, I think, wasn't it? That was where Dave and I... we went to the offices of this... Wimpoll Street offices of this comic, which turned out to be a telephone sales company from which he'd been fired but still had the keys so he could get in. Yeah. And it was very, very... There were some very smooth-suited operator types there, weren't there? This isn't really comics people, I didn't think. It was very strange. But you came down and you liked what I was writing and you liked what Dave was drawing and we came over to you and we said... I think you said to us, would we like to do a five-page strip for a skate? It's just a short something short. And we came back to you... For a skate magazine, actually. For a skate magazine. And we came back to you... That was a skate. And we came back about a week later and said, you know that five-page strip you invited us to do? Would you mind if it was the 48-page graphic novel called Violent Paces? And what did you say to that? Obviously, no, don't do it. No, it has to be five pages. No, of course. You said yes. But obviously something in that period had really just dated. The two of you and Dave had really hit it off and things were clearly growing in a way that you hadn't expected, perhaps. I think a lot of it was we both... There were comics that we wanted to show people that didn't exist. And it was that thing where I'd realised 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, a very short-lived newspaper called Today. Which was soon yesterday. Which was yesterday incredibly quickly. And I went to them and I think it was them that I went to and said, you know, I really want to do this. We've got Mouse, Dark Knight and Watchman all happening. I want to do a big piece on this thing. And they said, we can't. And I said, why not? And they said, well, it was Desperate Dan's 50th birthday this year and we've already done our comics piece. Yeah, we've done comics. We've done comics. We've written about Desperate Dan. I'm going, no, but there is this giant... If you're talking about the battle being won, we're still battling that same battle because it is the preset that you have to have it be known. You have to go through the be known to get beyond the be known. I mean, I think even with this show, I think what 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 creators. 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 out. And I think it's been really interesting when we spoke to people about the exhibition, it's the first thing they say. So it's a kid, it's nostalgia. But of course, it's not that anymore. And it hasn't been that for decades really, but there is a sort of default. I thought my taxi driver was saying to me, oh, I used to read The Beano. I mean, if you said that, I once read Enid Blighton, I haven't read a single book since, or I once watched a Disney film. I haven't watched a single film since. You'd be looked at as a laughing stock, wouldn't you? But people can say, I used to be The Beano, and that's the end of the conversation, you know? Which is incredible, because you've missed out on so much. It's such a rich thing. I've never understood that. I mean, I've always been fascinated by those conversations. And, you know, being on American public radio in about 1990, promoting Good Omens, and having somebody say it with Sunil, you write comic books. And I said, yes. So what do you think of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles then? And I said, well, I don't actually write those kind of comic books. I write comics for adults, and they're going, oh, oh, okay. I don't even know what's not that either. I suppose, for me, the key yardstick from where we were and from where we are now is back then, when I was a journalist, I talked the Sunday Times magazine into letting me do a giant feature on comics. And their editor said yes. And I went round and I got original Brian Bollandart. There was some great, he was just working on Killing Joke. And Frank Miller had almost finished Dark Knight, I think, and got some unpublished Dark Knight stuff. And I did interviews with Alan, with Frank, with Dave Gibbons, Dave Sin, 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. I send in that article and I said, ah, right, yes. I'm afraid I read what you sent in and I'm afraid I do have a bit of a problem with it. I said, well, what's the problem? And he said, well, I 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 said, well, 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 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 received nothing. Interesting you mentioned the Sunday Times, because I will be provocative and say that we should all look at this Sunday, Sunday Times, because our good friend, Valdemar Jenocek, you know, does fantastic documentaries about the arts, et cetera, has written a review of the exhibition comics unmasked over two pages, which is great. But there might be a need of balance. Yes, so get tweeting everybody. Have a look at it. I mean, we don't know what it's going to say quite yet, but we gather it's going to need some, it may cause, actually, we want to cause a bit of a story with this show. We don't want just to be, we've all got comics and it's all, we've won the battle because we really haven't. Tarot Torrey and I got a crash course walking through the show backwards just now. Which was a complete delight seeing the stuff there and seeing how well comics in England fit into both the literary and the artistic English traditions. I mean, you know, I get very puzzled when people say, well, of course, you know, books for adults never have illustrations. And you go, well, Dickens always did. Exactly. It was intrinsic. In fact, it was one of the things that set the tone of Dickens. You knew if you were in a comedic or a serious and Dickens began his career commissioned. Why? So why do you think we have this huge abschism within to say that pictures and words really don't shouldn't be mixing and shouldn't be cavorting? Cavorting with each other on the page. And do you think that's collapsing slightly 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 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 of sort of judgment. You know, they're playing gaming is in the same breath as film making is in the same breath as TV. I don't know that this all those divisions. I think the divisions between media exist. Um, I think the ideas of what constitute valid media and why are slowly breaking down as you get a generation that is absolutely prepared to say, but that's bullshit. And, um, 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 and I said, look, okay, you have to explain this thing to me. Um, why a comics band? If we bring comics in, they will get, um, they'll get confiscated. I would love to lend some of my friends my comics and talk comics, but we can't. And he said, well, it's obvious gaming. You see the thing is, if you it was gaming, it's obvious because it's like it's rubbish. If, you know, if you read comics, you won't read real literature. I said, I am. Hang on, I'm the only kid in this school who has read the school library. I've read it and I love comics and that's obviously not true. And expecting him to say, ah, but you don't understand. And a paint, a suddenly to make me understand and he harumpth and walked away and I realised 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 Watchman for Alan Moore and was his collaborator, he said that his big light bulb moment was when he went to school and the kids comic books were confiscated and burned in the school yard. And when he saw that happening, he thought, this is a massively important medium and how do I sign up? He said, if you don't like comics, I do. Yes, he decided that was his career. That was definitely for me at that point. It was, it was also the first point that I realised 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 your job to tell me true 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, I think your comics, I don't know whether you're doing it consciously, but you have a very literary bent in your comic book output as well. Was that something that was conscious that you felt you wanted to fight that corner? Cos 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 institutes, 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 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 sort of, somebody hands you a page and then you write some words out? You've been up in the balloons or something. No, actually it does have to be written first. And that, you know, so, Jesus. But, you know, so it was, so that was quite a conscious decision. Was that something that you felt that you wanted to address with your work or was that just a natural process of your work? I think, I don't ever remember going, I think I'm going to be literary. I remember an awful lot of, I think I'll write the next panel and I want this to be interesting. But I also thought- It was important that when you did Violent Cases of Dave McKeith, the key thing was that on the back of it, it didn't say superheroes or whatever, or comics, it had said general fiction. Do you remember that? Yes, I remember that. You and Dave were so happy about that because that was the point. There's all these other kinds of storytelling that don't sit in these, trapped in these little genre formulas. It was, what was important for us with Violent Cases was having a comic that we could show people where, because what was frustrating for me is that I would show people Mouse or Dark Knight or Watchman and they'd say, well, it's superheroes or it's Batman or it's mice and cats. I mean- It's funny animals. And they're going, well, okay, then let's make a comic that has to the best of my, whatever I was, 26-year-old ability has all of the values of mainstream fiction. It will get drawn by Dave with all the power of 23-year-old Dave McKeith just finishing art college. And we will take it out to the world. And Dave's dedication was something like, to my teacher, Rowley, look, this is what we meant by comics because he'd been having that argument too. He'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 Watchman, Alan Moore showing me the black and whites of Watchman and not knowing what this was, but just reading it and going, okay, everything's changed. There was a line in the sand before this comic and now I'm reading this. It was such a special moment, though, that all of you were working 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 material, but there was still this massive leap that you all made. What do you think? I think the biggest thing 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 that there should be, and then going off and reading everything else and coming back to comics in our 20s, having read all the novels, what I thought was most interesting is when you get me and Grant Morrison together or me and Alan Moore or me and Jamie Delano or any of the right people million, we weren't talking superhero comics. We probably weren't talking comics very much, apart from the fact that we would occasionally talk trafiles with artists. But mostly what we would be talking was interesting poets we discovered, interesting writers. I remember giving Ian Sinclair to Alan Moore and saying, I think you should read his stuff. I think this is interesting. Grant Morrison gave me Lucy, my God, what's her name? The new mother. Anybody out here know who wrote, say it loudly if you know. I've just blanked. Friend of Henry James's, Lucy Clifford, wrote the strangest, most peculiar 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 Stories. And I just remember him sort of telling me the plot of The New Mother, about how these two children named Blue Eyes and Turkey run to 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, well, 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 wooden tail. But the children do not listen. 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 mother's 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 wooden tail of their new mother as she approaches. And 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 if anything inspired Coraline, it was just the realisation that, OK, Victorian writers for children could do that shit. I could do that shit. I was showing you that wonderful comment that we've got in the exhibition. But she's just like a nightmare with this girl that'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 her hair up. And fantastic stuff. It's all that kind of straw Peter cautionary tale. It's meant to make kids behave. It has a kind of in theory a message of being, actually you should behave. It's not, is it subversive that story? Or is it actually saying you should behave otherwise you'll end up with this terrible situation? I think it has this glorious surface of we are telling you a cautionary tale for your own good, behave, or your parents will go away. But actually what it says is the world is fucked up and weird and cannot be understood or comprehended. And there are pair drums that may or may not exist and the mothers and new mothers and your mother may leave. Yes. They abandon you. And which I think is a much more interesting sort of version of reality. Well definitely, yeah. It's got levels to that. I think we might want to invite our other guest out at this point. Do you think he's sitting here, do you think? Yeah, okay, I think so. Why don't you put Torrie next to me and move out there? So you keep Flankers. I've won the seat down for you. That's not, okay. Could we please welcome Torrie Amos? Torrie Amos. This is special. Thanks. I mean have you done this a thing before but the two of you. This is a clumsy question but do you not normally appear on stage together? We do not normally appear on stage together, yes. I don't like your question. You know about that already. No, I mean we, it's the kind of thing where have we ever done? I don't think so, Johnny. Can I just say that when we set the show up and we first got the gig two years ago this was one of the very first things that I was determined to do was put you guys together. So we are really, really pleased that both of you in your kind of mad lives have managed to actually make this time. Yeah. We took our first selfie. We had our first selfie together. Oh my god, this is serious movie. 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 is great. Which gets rolled out every time that you know somebody needs something. This one photo of us taken in Minneapolis in 1996 gets rolled out. So finally there are more photos. Can we find out how you guys met? What happened? It was Rance Hemsley's fault. It was? Yeah it was. I can tell you from my story which is I was at the 1991 San Diego Comic Convention and I was doing a signing and back then I would have 11 or possibly 12 people in my signing line and there was a very nice guy called Rance Hemsley. It was in the line and when he got to the front I signed his 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. And I took it home with me I didn't play it or anything at the thing 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. It was sad man music it was actually sad music. There was yeah people used to people used to give me especially at San Diego Comic Con they would give me cassettes. They're interpretations of sound. And it would and it was mostly really mad. So this is double-edged Comfort Manor that's what you were up against. And then and then so you thought Torris might have been something like that. I had no idea. I'd never been given anything that was good. And I put Torris in an archive of these in some way we should have been many different. Actually many of them magically became blank cassettes and were reused for other more reused them. Yes. But Torris it wasn't Little Earthquakes it was about half of the songs done to Earthquakes and half of the things that wound up being B-sides in the Little Earthquakes days. But I put it on and one song in I was completely blown away. I did that thing where you keep driving because you don't want the music to end. And there was an address 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 in a note off just saying I think you're wonderful. And then a few days later I opened it up actually I think I wanted to find out what the songs were called because there was no information about song titles and to see if there was more information. And I realized there was a phone number. So I dialed the phone number and Torris 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 she did sing about me. There was this line about me and Neil 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 Neil's big sister and Rance was like a little brother. And what happened was I let him stay at the flat in it was behind a church in Hollywood and I would stay with my boyfriend so that he'd a place to stay. And he was obsessed with metal music and comics. And there were comics all over I would come into this place and there 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 start as as an older sister does you just start perusing. What is he into? And so I started reading what was I reading the Dolls House? Yeah it would have been Dolls House back then and I think it was may have been Calliope was the one that I think was the first one he gave you. Did you immediately feel that rapport with his work because we're showing a couple of slides which are completely random but one of the things that one of the things that I just well this is actually okay well okay hear me out hear me out this is a good one to start on because that is mythology which is something that have a lot in common with and actually strangely enough that is the Egyptian goddess Sekmet who you have you have felt quite close to and you've referred to and you are really interested in the Egyptian goddess Bastet who is in Sekmet turns up in in Ocean at the end of the Lane as well. Of course yeah and so there are these parallels in your work did you immediately feel that rapport with what he was with what he was doing in his comics. Well because he had mythology through it but again it's the only comic book I'd ever read so the first one I read just included a world that I was interested in. What I thought was interesting about that though was lots of people discovered Sandman. Back then 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 and Neil says hi by the way and we didn't even know each other and now I get to write Neil says hi by the way on Tory 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 it was somebody's birthday it was the owner's birthday and you had to play Happy Birthday to you in the middle of your day and but in the middle of Crucify and they were do you remember that and you came and they brought the melody maker somebody there there was a journalist the gig existed if I remember correctly you explained 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 where 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 the guy from melody maker and I came in and you waved at me which I thought was quite impressive because you didn't know what I looked like but I figured I must have looked like me by that point and then we went off and you acted out the Silent All These Years video did I? on 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 were going and then I'm this little girl and I'm in a box and then the box is coming up and then you know Tash is cringing right now because she has told you cannot act out things at the train station but that's not it's on yeah Tash who do you think you get it from no you were you were doing the full thing and and I think we were you know we were definitely friends from that moment and I introduced you to Dave McKean who did a that wonderful little cover but what was happening is we would exchange we were would just start talking and then busking and then sharing stories so Neil is a great talker he's a good listener too 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 an hour an hour it would last for hours an hour and we would and we would build things yeah build a lot of Sandman and Sandman in weird ways came out of being friends with you the more or less the I don't even think 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 and it was your first proper big gig shore was it shore theatre the shore theatre yeah the shore theatre and did I play the shore theatre you did it was your it was your first big London gig and um 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 going to have Lucifer playing piano in his nightclub and I'm going to have and this will happen and it was like I had all the pieces in place and I had the overall shape of Sandman but by the end of that gig I knew exactly how the kindly ones was going to work that's why you say that because that's how mediums cross 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 you're 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 see it's strange how I mean we've all we've talked about this a long time we both believe in the muses and we we expressed it in different ways but Calliope was a great story about the muses and the idea that if you don't acknowledge the muses and honour 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 painters a lot of the artists but it's the storyteller and mythology is a big place where story would come through You 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 oh it becomes a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy as you've said it just feeds on itself it feeds on itself and but they can inspire you absolutely they can push you and you can look at something and go oh I didn't realise 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 no that's right that's right 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 dinostory 24 hours came out of going and seeing the Peter Greenaway film drowning by numbers which has gone on to become one of my favourite films and was pretty much one of my favourite films from then but just going oh I didn't realise you could structure something like this he just structures it counting one to a hundred and when he reaches a hundred you're done and then I thought well I wonder if you can count your way through a comic I've got 24 pages what can I do 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 I need like five or six pages just to set up everything in the first hour so I'm gonna 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 took me into it and it's not something that I would ever have got from a comic it was something that you get from going outside and Torri and I I think of 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 that 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 uh and uh and then and then in Kevin's defence the comics code authority did say that he was the only artist whose style was unacceptable to the comics what it didn't matter he could have drawn anything and he wouldn't have been allowed to which I love what a compliment it's fantastic he was so proud of that as he should be um you know and and you know the the controversial images that you had in your album line in a I mean you were being you know you were really 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 well that's funny you say that not to interrupt you too brother but the thing is somebody was asking me before about sexuality in the music industry and hey whatever gets you off do you think that's the way I see it but the but you 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 you do some you're gonna say 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 want 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 sex tent 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 and 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 heart's the most dangerous place we've talked about this for years and years and years that once you take your clothes off 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 are there because you don't allow them to speak so this is we'll talk about allowing our other cells the other Neil 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 where we feel vulnerable I was it's been so strange for me coming in from these Syrian refugee camps in Georgia because I've never I've never felt so vulnerable as by the end of it there was a point where I went through these three days talking to refugees realising that the thing about Syrian refugees is they love Syria they want to go back this is their favourite place in the world they think Syria is the best place it's an awful lot nicer it's an awful lot nicer than what were you doing now I was there for the United Nations Refugee Agency UNHCR and mostly because they discovered that when I when I tweet and just amplified their message they were getting more people coming in than 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 tell them what you saw tell them you were telling me this story and I think they'll find it fascinating you met somebody who works one way by day and then is a volunteer and tell them you were there with the bandages it was what was amazing for me over and over over those three days and I will 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 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 about what I said well who did this who blew up your house who shot you who cut off your cousin's head who did whatever the thing was they'd say we don't know I began well was this was this Assad was this the rebels was this what's group they're like we don't know and you start to realise that there is this monstrousness but in there with this monstrousness over and over again I was I was elated and buoyed 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 100,000 refugees this camp it's 100,000 people and they've just built another one that will take 130,000 in the desert and they you know it's and they're out there and they're doing it this guy Aiman who lovely lovely man who 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 mobiliser 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 on his rounds and I watched you know as 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 Aiman's been changing his dressings and then went to the tent where an 11 year old girl this 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 Aiman was there unpealing taking off the dressing and putting the cream on and dressing this mess that was this child's once this child's jaw and I look around and there's my and I've been asking these guys how how do you cope the 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 you know there's people they've 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 the story it's going to have a big bit wider impact as it did in a fact yeah it's and you know I felt like I was doing some good because I tweeted yesterday morning I can't believe it 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 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 so to be able to communicate that is very powerful so that and then tell that story but but I think as Tori said that the ability to really you will tell that story in an extraordinary fashion but you will have to process that and it will take time it's still very very raw but I'm also proud of you know you are asking where the cutting edge is these days I don't think there was ever a point for me and I'm pretty sure there was never a point for Tori even at our weirdest even at our most du tray 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 what 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 time I suppose it comes back to what Tori 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 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 you're going to get taken down for publication or something just before I met Tori I went through a long dark weekend of the soul it wasn't a night it was Friday through to Monday because I got a phone call on the Friday from my editor Karen Berger letting me know that 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 and I had to go ok 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 Clyde Barker phoning Alan Moore phoning anybody that I could think of who might have had similar things and them talking through their stories and actually going ok 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 an occult inspired comic killing and had written the suicide note and actually neither he nor the boyfriend had read Sandman they were BX men fans see that was the real problem yeah but see the thing you were seeing before Chris Claremlock the occult does get blamed for all kinds of things and those of us who are interested in different well subjects I don't even know if you'd call it spiritualities but sometimes things get boxed in don't they argue this or argue that and we've talked about this for years too 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 I'm a wiccan or I'm a this I'm a unicorn the glorious thing for me about Sandman was that you had this magnificent anarchy of belief in which everything was true and um and that was wonderful that was that was intensely liberating and the death was hot she was definitely amazing and we all wanted to be death but we all didn't get to be death but it's also I mean Sandman 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 a right who has been wrong it was it was story telling it was celebrating story telling celebrating the possibility did it try to explore things as much as you were exploring things and then writing from that or did you feel that it was pushing you to look at certain things it it drove me to I mean for me 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 I remember my my horror at realising that I was going to have to write a french revolution story and that I had three weeks to research the french revolution How are you a history at school was that what was your what was your weakest subject at school weakest subject was one of my weakest subjects terrible teacher all it was all just dates and acts of power I was going to say I was I was nothing human at all I didn't I didn't fall in love with history till I was writing Sandman How did you not fall in love with history I mean it's us it was because all you had it was dates of wars and occasional corn famins and things or corn laws which were even weirder than famins because at least I could I could so yeah I didn't suddenly I had to gen up on the french revolution I guess yeah it's it's it's been really interesting how quickly I could research things when I needed to and because you'd you'd go okay I need the nuggets I need those things that suddenly bring everything to life and they'd always be there for you this is before a google I had to go but that made that made every in in a 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 you'd have you'd have you'd you'd go out and you would find one book on the french revolution and you'd read you know I read Simon Sharma's french revolution and that was that was my research for you know for the augustus episode of Sandman it was Suetonius's Lives of the Twelve Caesars just the Julius Caesar and the Augustus chapters that was that was the entirety of what can I build this with I know there's a lot of other stuff about augustus but I will use this because the clock is ticking and um the hardest are you still quite a voracious reader? I mean this is obviously reading with a with a viewpoint I've got to do this this is where my story is going I must research it but do you do you explore I'm rediscovering my voracious readingness my voracious readingness went away for a little bit and I couldn't figure out why until I realised I needed reading glasses because reading had stopped being fun and I couldn't figure out 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 aren't getting read and finally went out and got 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 you're always telling me what to do which is great I welcome you but um you'll receive your reading he's going to 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 at a 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 feel stupid but you know what I mean I I I with 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 cop to it I would simply run away and read the thing before the next time I saw Roz which meant that my reading are very often in very interesting I discovered these great things I would never have discovered I would just go yes Roz then run away and read it so if any of 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 muses to come and 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 um 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 you're going to send me a list I always loved that line I was I always loved that line about be be dull and bourgeois in your life so you can be wild and 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 known 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 in which nothing ever happened and then you read their books and you go you're wow why is it coming yeah exactly shall we open this up I think we should love to do that yeah you want to ask some questions I'm sure you do we've got a microphone running around I think can we have our first one here do a girl boom go for it um this is a Neil there's something about the home that if I didn't know you I would immediately have said it was with my mother and by a woman can you tell us a little bit more about it well she's here well the blueberry girl is here yeah Tashi's here where are you Tashi hello oh that is the blueberry girl so I was writing American Gods and I no I wasn't in the beach house I had checked into a hotel in Las Vegas it was September 2001 oh my goodness um he's got a good memory hasn't he no September 2000 sorry not 2001 September it was September 2000 and um I was in the tropicana hotel in Las Vegas where I'd gone because I discovered that you could check into hotels for incredibly cheap and um in Las Vegas at that time that these days they're sort of more they they're no longer just trying to get you to go and stay there cheap so you could gamble and I was finishing American Gods and I was just in mad finishing American Gods mode and I got a phone call from Tori who said the date of Tashi'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'd 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 day or so later and I said this is what I wrote and and I said and I will get it calligraphed and it will be on the wall you can you can put it up by the cut you have it in your room so my uncle Neil so that was that was where the poem began I it was it was simply written it was never written for publication it was written for Tashi as a prayer was interesting and it was very much a prayer because that was what Tori wanted she was a footling breach Tashi so I was high risk I had a couple of miscarriages already so Neil knew this and it was with trepidation that you know she was late and we knew she was a footling breach and they said we have we know we got to take her 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 got all that stuff 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 at 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 for Tori 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 could I have a copy of that my friend is pregnant my friend's just had a baby and I would say yes and I would give them copies and there was a point it wasn't I think until about 2003-2004 having I so I'd been saying no to people for 14 years that finally I called Tori and said I want to do it as a book I want to give a bunch of the profits to rain which is now what happens every year um and um because I'm tired of printing this out and and Charles Vess and it 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 at Tales of 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 the fact that the first person that I phoned 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 um but then I went nice and read 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 1400 people and um 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 the book and I held on to each of those stories so it the book gave back to me as well good magic good magic yeah was the book dedicated to also to your mother I seem to remember no but was it auto mother I no uh Charles Vest dedicated Charlie dedicated it to his mother I dedicated it to Tash I think of course because it's it's of course it's her book I I I I I couldn't have dedicated it to anybody else it was hers beautiful any other questions we've got one at the back there I can see and we'll come to you next if we can hi um Neil with your exploration of online literature with the interactive storytelling and Tori with your musical The Light 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 you don't want to rush these things and no don't want to rush you don't want to rush them 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 I don't know I don't know I don't know where you've been collaborating for we have it it's just not not exactly a collaboration that anybody can see I've been I mean I some of Delirium's best lines were stolen from Tori absolutely and unabashedly stolen and it's true I'm just saying it's really funny that you'd actually created Delirium before you met Tori but in a way you were kind of summoning her because 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 Delirium the greatest comfort we'd have fun over pizza and weird little things that would happen I do things that would wind up in her songs I remember one 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 Snowglass Apples so I said right sit down I'm going to read you a story and I read her 6,000 word story I was paying for that phone call right Johnny? I'm still paying for that phone call Bloody hell at Australian phone call rate at hotel rates not just but it was worth it isn't it? yes it was and it turned up and it turned up in carbon yes yes absolutely and you've done the same thing for Neil too I mean this is what I've really and what impresses me most is that you're clearly there's a wonderful rapport between you and a connection and a support for each other and I think it's a fantastic example of friend love which I believe is a term that's being used but it's have you come across it? it's lovely it's a thing where you just connected immediately even before you met honestly but it's I think it's wonderful but it's really is you know you're there for each other we're best friends and the thing is the thing is 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 our that's just what it's always been we were definitely best friends from we were no we weren't best friends we were old friends from the moment that we met which was which was very peculiar and I don't think I've ever done that with anybody else before or since just that feeling of oh I've known you forever 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 You're on Question just over here but it sounds a microphone just here go ahead Both of 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 something you discuss we've almost never I don't think we either 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've definitely created at least three different Lucifers 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 a light bringer yeah the light bringer and we've talked about that a lot been fascinated about the angel story it was the same Lucifer as well which I think is just lovely tell us about that there well yeah I think he's disappeared I think you may have disappeared in that great house cleaning the dodgy saints in a dodgy saints I love but the weirdest things happen even to the real saints I mean I mean there's 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 fact that I will give away the plot but Saint Columba is one of my favorite saint stories is how he murdered Saint Oren he and he and Saint Oren Columba and Saint Oren 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 Saint Columba had a vision that what was needed was obviously to kill Saint Oren 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 figured they should probably dig him up and just sort of check on him and so they started digging him up and Saint Oren sat upright 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 Columba 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 Saint Columba very sensibly said stone the heretic because obviously if you've been dead three days and you're coming back to life with with information of a huge and 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 um there's no undiscripted writings the writings that's in Oren that's what we want to read isn't it he's still there on the island of Iona and Columba was buried briefly on Iona but then they took him to down Patrick where he is buried with with Saint Patrick and Saint Bridget 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 um somehow I was convinced that she killed a man and um I don't know how all that happened but she did it that song is 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 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 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 a pejorative way but in a you know sort of like nature does 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 fuck I'm talking about and those are the conversations that we've been having now for 23 years and they're exactly like that that's true sounded pretty convincing to me the size of nature I don't think Tori, I really wish I could think of a brilliant question for you because I think you're amazing and it's taken me a lot of memories to take back to when I could even say that I was 17 yet but Neil, I have a really silly question for you that has kind of long time ago I went to a discussion with you and you said you were waiting for future Rama 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 finally accept the Simpsons why did I well I had been not even slightly subtly going up to Matt Greening for at least the last decade and whenever Matt and I would be in the same place at the same time I'd say sorry I want to be ahead in the jar on future Rama and he'd say you know we were thinking maybe you could be a cameo on the Simpsons and I'd say yeah I want to be ahead in the jar on future Rama so then it got kind of silly because then 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 future Rama he's like no it's really good will you do it and I said well I guess maybe this is my stepping stone to becoming ahead in a jar on future Rama so I got the script and I've been expecting it to be a one-line gag because I'd seen the you know the episode that Alan Moore and Art Spiegelman and Dan Klaus 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 weird and then you cut across to me going you're right I wouldn't and that would be that would be my line and instead I'm reading it I'm going well I'm in here and I've got more lines and and I get to the end it's like I'm the bad guy okay so so I was completely sold at that point and then I 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 join he came over at the end he said that was that was great and I said yeah head in a jar on future Rama it'll happen it'll happen oh sure what's weird is Peter Rama keeps getting cancelled and then it keeps happening some more so yeah they blast it round to it maybe just here 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 would just wonder if okay you also in good relationship or friends with someone like Tim Barton actually I don't know Tim he's one of the very few people who that you don't know who I don't know I know everybody like three million people no I for some reason and we have friends in common I think we've never worked together probably because he is scared of my hair it's my favorite but I love his work and 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 creating the songs creating the look of 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 were going it's an attempt to make us think that Tim Burton directed it you're going no it's not an attempt to make you think that the director of Nightmare Before Christmas You've got a question just here thank you One great bass player Tony Levin was asked by a bass player magazine whether he would consider teaching aspiring musicians and he was omming and eyeing so it was not really what I do but if I ever were to take on somebody I probably wouldn't teach them to play the bass so this I would probably take them to the kitchen and teach them how to cook proper pasta I think you both get where I'm going with this if you were taking on an apprentice for a day what would you possibly teach them? Keep it clean I might teach them to keep it clean but you're I definitely if I were taking on an apprentice for a day 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 take them for a walk and show them what I'm thinking and what I'm seeing when I go for a walk that would that might help My answer is so much better than his That's because you had the I was doing the busting thing to give you time 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 this is 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 if I hear one more person come up to me and I'm so tired I you feel like giving them your schedule and saying okay 17 18 interviews a day almost six shows a 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 is he well knows and one of the reasons and he'll has the career he has and 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 I'm 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 shit man in it I know I mean I I should be more of American why should I be doing this I could be shopping you know whatever whatever it is I didn't mean to just target anybody even people who like shopping 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's 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 too 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 Neil kind of trumps us all today because he's been to Syrian and he's had that experience 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 realise that they do have something to offer as a great quote we put into the exhibition from Alan Moore from Watchmen which is simply there is no ordinary person no there are absolutely so none of you are ordinary I want to I have more questions to be held no we're actually done and I have time yeah and I kind of want to end it there it's just such a perfect place to end it on that and thank you so much all for coming and really thank you so much to our guests it's a dream come true to have you guys here thank you