The dream of the new year

[kaberett]

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

... says Neil Gaiman, at intervals, and I know that he is dreadful, and I take issue with the idea of good madness (at least for myself); and yet - and yet, this.

Because: the days are getting longer, and light is seeping back into the world. Because I've made it halfway through winter. Because it reminds me to find other people wonderful, and to trust that others might feel similarly about me; because it reminds me to dare to make art.

And: yes, I don't think a changing number in the Gregorian calendar makes a huge difference to What Things Will Be Like, but - it's a useful milestone; a useful waymarker at which to lay down one's load and consider the path ahead. So that's the dream, maybe, but I don't think it's an unrealistic one: that I might have choice, and the space to choose wisely.

Comments

[raze]

Lovely quote; thank you for sharing.

[wild_irises]

He is dreadful, but he is surely not just dreadful. He's a mix.

[kaberett]

As are we all, yeah, and - the things that are glorious and golden I can take and I can grow.

[pipisafoat]

yes yes yes. you. ♥.

also that, perhaps similar to you, I see "good madness" and think of the things my brain has drugs for. (all the things, which is perhaps a slightly wide definition of "madness", but it is my definition for me, so.) and in the "good madness" wish, I can actually find a lot of hope: that my anxiety stops being crippling but doesn't disappear entirely, because it also helps me to stay organized and in touch with people and able to focus on things; that my depression doesn't keep me isolated but still reminds me to appreciate the good, because nothing lasts forever and nothing should be taken for granted; that my emotion-based seizures will stop being fear-driven and give me more unexpected joy (okay, so maybe it's more like mania, technically speaking, but i'm okay with that too); that I appreciate the ways in which my brain works correctly, because brains are intensely complex and it is nothing short of a miracle that they work at all, much less as well as they do for as many people as they do.

but I agree with your assessment of what he was actually trying to say and your potential word choices for that idea.

woooo time for a shower, I'm gonna have an awesome shower. (the little things can become bigger if only you will let them: my current "say it until you believe it" thing. and then i will flip it backwards after and teach myself that big things can become smaller.)

hello. i love you.

[jesse_the_k]

And: yes, I don't think a changing number in the Gregorian calendar makes a huge difference to What Things Will Be Like

and I've just decided that the new year begins on 22 December, or whenever the Winter Solstice is over.

Thanks for a nice quote, contextualized.

Yes.

[syntaxofthings]

This. And a wonderful quotation.

[nonny]

That's a brilliant quote.

I only know a little about Gaiman; most of the stuff I'm aware of is involving Amanda Palmer. Would you be able to elaborate on the dreadfulness, and the "good madness"? That's not something I have run across. If you are not able to, that is fine, I totally understand.

There are some people, I find, who can say and do some incredibly fucked up things, but also pop out with bits of wisdom. I don't tend to think those should be ignored just because the person is also an asshat.

[kaberett]

Absolutely, but I still don't want to give uncritical praise, being as:

- he fucked up big-time wrt saying that The Graveyard Book couldn't possibly have been set in the USA rather than in England, because there isn't the history, which is just... gross
- I actually massively dislike the way he handled Wanda's arc in The Sandman
- also he was kinda racist in Sandman IIRC
- also I haven't reread American Gods since getting a better understanding of racism but suspect he's fucked up there too
- Anansi Boys, while it made me more aware of my own racism, is also kind of really appropriative?

... so er yes most of my issues with him boil down to "wow that thing you just did with other people's gods/culture was not okay". And -- yeah, I think acknowledging that when sharing stuff he has written with an audience containing people he has harmed is important.

[nonny]

Oh, not to disagree about letting people know! I wasn't aware of most of these (I think the only thing I have read from him is part of Sandman, and yeah, I really disliked Wanda's arc too), but I have a few too many friends who feel massively awful for liking something that somebody who has done problematic things has said, so that's where I was coming from with my comment. :)

[swaldman]

Hmm, interesting. Never thought of those things in those ways before. I just had to look up the bits of Sandman with Wanda to remind myself... Yeah, she's a caricature... But then again, perhaps a fairly progressive one for when that was written (eighties?). I'm not meaning to be fan-boy-defending-the-author, but I am curious as to how he would have written her today...

[kaberett]

It doesn't help that I know the person Wanda is based on, & she is delighted by the story arc, and she is someone who I've taken an intense dislike to for other reasons!

Don't get me wrong, I adore Sandman (and all his other work, to first approximation) -- in that reading my way through the entirety of Sandman is one of the things that got me through my first term at university -- but. But. And so on.

[kaberett]

-- & on "good madness":

I identify very strongly with "mad" and "crazy" as terms, but they relate to my depression and my PTSD rather than to - well. Mm, I think I know what he is getting at, and I think I would be inclined to describe it as "joyful recklessness" or "dispersing inhibitions" or something about "risk-taking" and "bravery" and "trusting oneself", which - feels like very different things, to me. Them's me thoughts, but I am drugged up to the gills and the rate of typos I'm having to correct is rapidly increasing, so -- sleep now, more later maybe :-)

[nonny]

I've bipolar, and when I get hypomanic -- I get insanely (using this word for a reason) creative. I will be unable to sleep because the characters won't shut up until I write them. The high from that is -- honestly, I haven't a way to explain it. It's euphoric, and addictive, in its way. That said, it's dysfunctional, and not without issues (like the insomnia), but when you made the comment of "good madness", this is where my mind went to.

But the downswings that happen afterward... ugh. I am then convinced that everything I have wrote is crap, or that I have somehow been offensive and I will hurt someone (this is a particularly bad fear of mine, and I think my brain takes it beyond the point of being reasonable), and it's just awful. But with bipolar, you can't have one without the other, really.

So because the downswings were too much, I am on meds, and while I still get some amount of mood fluctuations, I don't get the high so much. I will be honest that I miss that. But at the same point, I don't miss the destructive downswing.

IDK if that's what he's even talking about by "good madness". It's just what my mind goes to because of my experiences. I think I need to talk to the psych about fiddling with my meds again, because I have just felt very "meh" towards anything creative, and I think that's a symptom of low-level depression for me (along with the wanting to sleeeeep, sleeeeep, sleeeeep). The med I was on previously didn't do this.

My bipolar, at least the mania, is so wrapped around my writing that it's been hard for me to learn how to write without it. That's something I'm working on. I don't know if Gaiman has had any mental health issues himself, but for me with bipolar, that is what I thought of first. I can't see it applying to many other types of mental health issues (like my anxiety, holy shit; you've read my journal, you have some idea of how badly I worry and overthink things and it ends up stopping me from writing altogether), which I think defeats the purpose of the idea, if he is in fact talking about mental health.

[carthaginians]

Dreaming and hoping for a good post-milestone time for you as well my dear.

[silveradept]

That is a nice quote. I hope your dream comes true.