Dreaming and the Sandman

It’s common, I’ve been told, for people to dream about celebrities. I don’t do it very often, but when I do, I dream about Neil Gaiman. 

I don’t really know why my subconscious has picked Gaiman as my archetype for fame, though he is the first celebrity that I have ever spent any “quality” time with. My partner, when she worked for The Book House in Dinkytown sold (and shipped to his London address) a complete set of the The Book of One Thousand and One Nights. We were fans of his Sandman comicbooks at the time (yes, we read them pre-collection into graphic novels) and were thrilled when his Arabian Night themed issue came out. Later, when I interviewed Gaiman for Science Fiction Chronicle, I asked him to sign that one to Shawn. Later, when I became a writer in my own right, I hitched along with some more famous friends (thank you Pam Keesey and Rachel Pollack) to one of his in/famous Guy Fawkes parties at his house in Wisconsin. I was also on a panel with Gaiman and Will Shettery at Convergence 1, in which I spent much of the time gazing into his chestnut brown eyes wondering why anyone on earth wanted to do anything other than just listen to him talk (This later caused me problems when he turned to me and said, “What do you think, Lyda?” and all I could think to say was, “My god your eyes are pretty! You wouldn’t happen to have a lesbian sister would you?” Luckily, I said something other than the first thing that came to my mind…) And, I’ve dreamt of Gaiman before….I don’t want to repeat the most memorable one I’ve had, but catch me at a con and I’ll tell all.

As I said, he tends to stand in for “celebrity” or “fame” in my subconscious (or sometimes just “hot,” but, as I said, that’s another story), and I’m terribly embarrassed about it, but there it is.

Last night, I dreamt about being at some kind of gigantic lecture hall where people were talking about something – in retrospect, it might have been a keynote speech at a con, like WisCON, but the crowd was large enough to be the Hugo ceremony. At any rate, the speaker, who wasn’t anyone I knew, was talking about how dreams can manifest into real life or the nature of will and magic. She said, “Of course, we all know how Neil Gaiman can conjure bald eagles.” Upon hearing this, I was furious. I turned to whoever I was standing next to and mutter, “Seriously? Now he’s magic?” Then, I proceeded to spend much of the rest of the dream cranky because absolutely everyone else at the con(? party? conference?) was dead certain that Gaiman could conjure eagles by merely thinking about them.

Why this pissed me off so much, I have no idea. I know that a large part of it is weirdly misplaced professional jealousy (or more accurately, envy) I have for Neil Gaiman. I WISH I was as successful with my writing career as he is, and apparently some part of my subconscious thinks Gaiman’s fame is undeserved, even though I am probably just as big a fan grrl as the next Gaiman reader.

It doesn’t help matters that somehow, at an early age, Mason imprinted on Gaiman. See Her blog about Mason at two http://tatehallaway.blogspot.com/2005/09/cute-writing-related-stories.html

And, he hasn’t forgotten. Mason has recently asked me if we can invite Neil Gaiman to his birthday party.

Sheesh.