Spiritual Currency

December 21, 2004 - Tuesday

"Stories are like spiritual currency"

For all you Neil Gaiman fans. The man is a genius, and I reserve that word for very few, very select individuals. I'm not the type to be inspired by another's work...but his is an exception.

In this particular case I'm reading the "Book of Dreams", a collection of shorts by various authors who were, themselves, inspired by Gaiman's telling of Morpheus, the Endless, and the Dreaming.

The story I'm reading, "An Extra Smidgen of Eternity", has a character on the edge of dying. He's being told a story, and as the story is being told he's being given drugs to ease his pain. He's being visited by both Delirium and Dream, slipping from the one state of subsconsciousness to the other state of unconsciousness. To quote Dream/Morpheus: "Little man, one foot in your own kingdom, another in mine, and ever resisting the inevitable pull of the next."

How deep is that?

And when the inevitable happens and the alluring Death arrives to escort his spirit onward, he refuses to go - because he wants to wait until the person sitting beside him finishes her story. His argument:

"Try to see this from my point of view. Stories are important. They're all that we've got, really. Growing up, I was spat on, ridiculed, beaten, ostracized - and the only thing that kept me going was stories. Stories are hope. They take you out of yourself for a bit, and when you get dropped back in, you're different - you're stronger, you've seen more, you've felt more. Stories are like spiritual currency."

Ain't that some shit?

What's even more...fascinating, or inspiring, to me about this is that these are works which are themselves inspired by Gaiman's work, and even getting this input through a literary version of second-hand smoke I'm still getting a serious contact high.

That takes a certain kind of genius, doesn't it?