There are many roads, and all will take you there...
On Saturday night, thanks to a wonderful twitter angel, Michelle, whose spare-tickets tweet was RT'd by Neil, I got to see Neil Gaiman at the Sydney Opera House. In the Concert Hall, no less. With amazing art and beautful music, and bonus Kevin Smith!
The only bad thing about the night was that I decided to take the bike, so that husband could have the car at home with the kids. Middle of winter, at night, on a motorbike. All the warm and protective clothing in the world is not enough.
Anyway, I got into the city, praised the saints of bikes for free motorbike parking in Circular Quay, realised I was later than I said I'd be to meet Michelle, and defrosted myself by walking FAST with all my gear down to the Opera House. Called her and found her (after she said she was dressed all in black, I was like, um, this is a Neil Gaiman show? so she just looked out for me with my bike helmet) and hugged her stupidly. She was LOVELY, and flailed for a while about how much she loves Neil (she really really loves him!) before going off to have a smoke. I went in and oh man, the line for signed books was EPIC. Lucky I didn't have any money, I guess. :D
Praised the saints of, um, cloakrooms, for the Opera House's awesome free cloakroom service, and found my seat. It was the very front row, so I was expecting to see not much other than the front of the stage. Which, yeah, but I could still see the podium and the screen just fine, so I did a little happy dance about that. Couldn't see the string quartet really, but I didn't have to SEE them, did I?
Michelle found me again (she was in the 3rd row in a more expensive seat with a better view), and flailed and rambled some more. Did I mention how much she loves Neil? She was awfully excited. :D
ANYWAY, finally the lights go down, and a woman comes on stage to talk a bit about the GRAPHIC festival. You could feel the disappointment and boredom in the audience. We just wanted Neil, please, love. But then, she said they were going to be announcing the winner of an online animation competition, and who was going to be announcing it? Kevin Smith! WOAH. At that point my first thought was "Oh, husband is going to HATE me for seeing Kevin Smith without him. mwa ha ha!" My 2nd thought was "oooh Kevin Smith and Neil Gaiman are together, talking in real life instead of arguing over Amanda Palmer on twitter." I bet the laughs were good ones.
So, Kevin Smith and a woman from Screen NSW came on, and she was talking blah blah blah, and Kevin's looking at her being all polite and interested but the audience are totally just watching Kevin, and she and Kevin both realise this and everyone starts laughing. Kevin starts saying things like "no, she's talking! Hey, tell ME all about Screen NSW and the animation competition!" So she continues her speech to him, but he's doing this extremely *polite and interested* face, so it was just funny. I felt sorry for the poor woman but she took it very graciously. It would be bloody hard to share a stage with Kevin Smith. Kevin anounced the winner and made jokes about him being from Canada, and they played the winning short, and the dude said things like "G'day, eh?" and was very geeky and precious.
And FINALLY, it was time for Neil. The string quartet, FourPlay, came on and tuned up (I know, boring detail, but I love hearing strings tuning up!) and Neil walked on to enormous applause and he had to shush everybody. The applause stopped very quickly and he was like "oh, very good!" and then started chattering away. He said something about no longer being the half of a couple who hasn't performed at the Sydney Opera House "which is very important, you know", but then remembered "oh, um, I was suppsed to start with Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen, and do this all formally." So he said that, and introduced the quartet, and began.
The story was beautiful. It's called "The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains", and is, as the title suggests, about finding the truth. It's set in Scotland, in the highlands, and is a journey of two men who gradually find out the truth about each other and themselves, in sad/scary/tragic/mysterious ways. I felt like it had undertones of questioning religion.... but that might just be my state of mind right now. It's very Neil, with a very Neil twist and very Neil characters. ♥ And I don't know why I'm talking about Neil Gaiman as if I'm on some kind of first-name basis, but hey, there you go. He's that kind of person.
The paintings to go with the story were lovely. Fresh and simple and colourful and just right. The music was beautiful. One of the violinists sang as well as played in some parts, just 'aaaah" sounds, and my god it was gorgeous. Very evocative. There was travelling and fighting and loving, and there were storms and mornings and sunshine and children and men.
So the story ended, beautifully, and then Eddie Campbell, the artist, came on to ask a few "fan" questions which, as Neil said, sounded more like Eddie'd made up the questions himself. They've known each other for 25 years, apparently, so there was a bit of banter and then Neil dismissed him ("take your podium and get out of here!") and read another short poem. It was about two saints building a chapel on an island and one of them was buried alive and then dug up after three days, alive, but buried again... I don't really remember. More religious undertones, anyway!
Neil's voice sounded slightly different to me, in person. More, um... friendly than I was expecting, and a little lower than I thought. Lovely, though, and watching his face was entrancing. And he changed his voice for each character beautifully, without actually doing voices as such. His smiles are beautiful, he has a very smiley face.
I have such a crush.
And, oh, when he talks about Amanda his smile is radiant! His eyes light up and it's like he's squirming with joy. Ah, young love. lol.
So then, it was done, there was much bowing and many thank yous and an awful lot of applause and gracious smiles. Oh and Neil was wearing as awesome suit jacket, with like, shiny greyish fabric and pleats at the back. It was gorgeous.
So I rode home and froze more than I have ever frozen in my life, with a massively painful headache from not having eaten or drunk anything since lunch. Kept myself awake and alive all the way home by talking utter nonsense out loud and eventually saying things like "fucking hell. if gerard way can give up alcohol and change his life, I can fucking well survive another 20 minutes in the cold." But OH MY FUCK, I have never been so cold and sore. And then I got home and the heater was on and my fingers did that painful thawing-out thing and my head was THROBBING and I just wanted to pass out. But of course first I had to eat something and check twitter.
BUT IT WAS AWESOME. THANK YOU to Michelle the twitter angel. :D
The only bad thing about the night was that I decided to take the bike, so that husband could have the car at home with the kids. Middle of winter, at night, on a motorbike. All the warm and protective clothing in the world is not enough.
Anyway, I got into the city, praised the saints of bikes for free motorbike parking in Circular Quay, realised I was later than I said I'd be to meet Michelle, and defrosted myself by walking FAST with all my gear down to the Opera House. Called her and found her (after she said she was dressed all in black, I was like, um, this is a Neil Gaiman show? so she just looked out for me with my bike helmet) and hugged her stupidly. She was LOVELY, and flailed for a while about how much she loves Neil (she really really loves him!) before going off to have a smoke. I went in and oh man, the line for signed books was EPIC. Lucky I didn't have any money, I guess. :D
Praised the saints of, um, cloakrooms, for the Opera House's awesome free cloakroom service, and found my seat. It was the very front row, so I was expecting to see not much other than the front of the stage. Which, yeah, but I could still see the podium and the screen just fine, so I did a little happy dance about that. Couldn't see the string quartet really, but I didn't have to SEE them, did I?
Michelle found me again (she was in the 3rd row in a more expensive seat with a better view), and flailed and rambled some more. Did I mention how much she loves Neil? She was awfully excited. :D
ANYWAY, finally the lights go down, and a woman comes on stage to talk a bit about the GRAPHIC festival. You could feel the disappointment and boredom in the audience. We just wanted Neil, please, love. But then, she said they were going to be announcing the winner of an online animation competition, and who was going to be announcing it? Kevin Smith! WOAH. At that point my first thought was "Oh, husband is going to HATE me for seeing Kevin Smith without him. mwa ha ha!" My 2nd thought was "oooh Kevin Smith and Neil Gaiman are together, talking in real life instead of arguing over Amanda Palmer on twitter." I bet the laughs were good ones.
So, Kevin Smith and a woman from Screen NSW came on, and she was talking blah blah blah, and Kevin's looking at her being all polite and interested but the audience are totally just watching Kevin, and she and Kevin both realise this and everyone starts laughing. Kevin starts saying things like "no, she's talking! Hey, tell ME all about Screen NSW and the animation competition!" So she continues her speech to him, but he's doing this extremely *polite and interested* face, so it was just funny. I felt sorry for the poor woman but she took it very graciously. It would be bloody hard to share a stage with Kevin Smith. Kevin anounced the winner and made jokes about him being from Canada, and they played the winning short, and the dude said things like "G'day, eh?" and was very geeky and precious.
And FINALLY, it was time for Neil. The string quartet, FourPlay, came on and tuned up (I know, boring detail, but I love hearing strings tuning up!) and Neil walked on to enormous applause and he had to shush everybody. The applause stopped very quickly and he was like "oh, very good!" and then started chattering away. He said something about no longer being the half of a couple who hasn't performed at the Sydney Opera House "which is very important, you know", but then remembered "oh, um, I was suppsed to start with Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen, and do this all formally." So he said that, and introduced the quartet, and began.
The story was beautiful. It's called "The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains", and is, as the title suggests, about finding the truth. It's set in Scotland, in the highlands, and is a journey of two men who gradually find out the truth about each other and themselves, in sad/scary/tragic/mysterious ways. I felt like it had undertones of questioning religion.... but that might just be my state of mind right now. It's very Neil, with a very Neil twist and very Neil characters. ♥ And I don't know why I'm talking about Neil Gaiman as if I'm on some kind of first-name basis, but hey, there you go. He's that kind of person.
The paintings to go with the story were lovely. Fresh and simple and colourful and just right. The music was beautiful. One of the violinists sang as well as played in some parts, just 'aaaah" sounds, and my god it was gorgeous. Very evocative. There was travelling and fighting and loving, and there were storms and mornings and sunshine and children and men.
So the story ended, beautifully, and then Eddie Campbell, the artist, came on to ask a few "fan" questions which, as Neil said, sounded more like Eddie'd made up the questions himself. They've known each other for 25 years, apparently, so there was a bit of banter and then Neil dismissed him ("take your podium and get out of here!") and read another short poem. It was about two saints building a chapel on an island and one of them was buried alive and then dug up after three days, alive, but buried again... I don't really remember. More religious undertones, anyway!
Neil's voice sounded slightly different to me, in person. More, um... friendly than I was expecting, and a little lower than I thought. Lovely, though, and watching his face was entrancing. And he changed his voice for each character beautifully, without actually doing voices as such. His smiles are beautiful, he has a very smiley face.
I have such a crush.
And, oh, when he talks about Amanda his smile is radiant! His eyes light up and it's like he's squirming with joy. Ah, young love. lol.
So then, it was done, there was much bowing and many thank yous and an awful lot of applause and gracious smiles. Oh and Neil was wearing as awesome suit jacket, with like, shiny greyish fabric and pleats at the back. It was gorgeous.
So I rode home and froze more than I have ever frozen in my life, with a massively painful headache from not having eaten or drunk anything since lunch. Kept myself awake and alive all the way home by talking utter nonsense out loud and eventually saying things like "fucking hell. if gerard way can give up alcohol and change his life, I can fucking well survive another 20 minutes in the cold." But OH MY FUCK, I have never been so cold and sore. And then I got home and the heater was on and my fingers did that painful thawing-out thing and my head was THROBBING and I just wanted to pass out. But of course first I had to eat something and check twitter.
BUT IT WAS AWESOME. THANK YOU to Michelle the twitter angel. :D