These past couple of weeks may actually prove the best time for me have bailed on my deal with that famous woman. I wonder if anything that transpires with her, or with me for that matter, will negate the things I've thought about these past seven months or so. Was any of that real? Was any of that more real than I can even appreciate at this particular time?
For such an ambiguous, hazily defined situation as this one, I think about Neil Gaiman's DC Comics superhero, the Sandman. The Sandman's other name is Dream, and in Gaiman's universe, he is so elemental to human existence that he goes beyond the mere god status of a Thor or a Zeus. Gods come and go with the ages in Gaiman's universe, but Dream, and his sister, Death, they go deeper than that.
The Sandman has a unique set of superpowers that I'll try to outline below. He can influence or persuade humans by getting in their heads and influencing the way they think about things. He can haunt their dreams, and their waking life. For example: In one story, a mortal human kidnaps Dream's ex-wife, Calliope, and holds her prisoner. The villain is a writer who feels his own inspiration for his writing inadequate, so he rapes Calliope on a regular basis in order to get ideas for stories. He becomes a bestselling author this way, top of the heap.
Calliope beseeches Dream to free her from this bondage this mortal has subjected her to, and so Dream appears before the writer. The writer tells Dream that he has Calliope in bondage to have ideas for his stories. Dream says, contemptuously, "If it's ideas you want, I can give you ideas." in the proceeding days and weeks, ideas for stories start to manifest themselves in the author's head. The author likes this development at first. There's all sorts of ideas that feature variations on mythology and history and literary figures, in all kinds of twists and combinations, and they seem really cool.
But soon enough, the great ideas flood the author's every conscious moment, waking and asleep, until he can't stand it anymore. He begs Sandman to release him from this burden, and the author frees Calliope in exchange. The final scenes of the author show him washed up, with no more muse to guide him.
I wonder if I'm like the Sandman to this famous woman. She may carry on running her life just the way she sees fit, but what do you know; two years from now, or four years from now, she comes up with another album that has the theme of her staying up at all hours of the night thinking about how she's run her life. This time the album alludes to the two o'clock hour, or the four o'clock hour. Maybe I'm wrong about all of this. Maybe all of this was in my head. Then again, maybe not.
For such an ambiguous, hazily defined situation as this one, I think about Neil Gaiman's DC Comics superhero, the Sandman. The Sandman's other name is Dream, and in Gaiman's universe, he is so elemental to human existence that he goes beyond the mere god status of a Thor or a Zeus. Gods come and go with the ages in Gaiman's universe, but Dream, and his sister, Death, they go deeper than that.
The Sandman has a unique set of superpowers that I'll try to outline below. He can influence or persuade humans by getting in their heads and influencing the way they think about things. He can haunt their dreams, and their waking life. For example: In one story, a mortal human kidnaps Dream's ex-wife, Calliope, and holds her prisoner. The villain is a writer who feels his own inspiration for his writing inadequate, so he rapes Calliope on a regular basis in order to get ideas for stories. He becomes a bestselling author this way, top of the heap.
Calliope beseeches Dream to free her from this bondage this mortal has subjected her to, and so Dream appears before the writer. The writer tells Dream that he has Calliope in bondage to have ideas for his stories. Dream says, contemptuously, "If it's ideas you want, I can give you ideas." in the proceeding days and weeks, ideas for stories start to manifest themselves in the author's head. The author likes this development at first. There's all sorts of ideas that feature variations on mythology and history and literary figures, in all kinds of twists and combinations, and they seem really cool.
But soon enough, the great ideas flood the author's every conscious moment, waking and asleep, until he can't stand it anymore. He begs Sandman to release him from this burden, and the author frees Calliope in exchange. The final scenes of the author show him washed up, with no more muse to guide him.
I wonder if I'm like the Sandman to this famous woman. She may carry on running her life just the way she sees fit, but what do you know; two years from now, or four years from now, she comes up with another album that has the theme of her staying up at all hours of the night thinking about how she's run her life. This time the album alludes to the two o'clock hour, or the four o'clock hour. Maybe I'm wrong about all of this. Maybe all of this was in my head. Then again, maybe not.
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