Everyone geeks out over someone, particularly those whom others geek out over.
John Lennon, introduced to Jerry Lee Lewis, fell to the ground and kissed the Killer’s shoes.
Even Charles Dickens wrote fan letters to George Eliot so barely contained he could have been writing to One Direction: “(You) have impressed me in a manner that I should find it very difficult to describe to you …”
And so it is with Neil Gaiman’s affinity for David Bowie.
So much so that there couldn’t be a better artist to close out the last day of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s “David Bowie Is” exhibit than Gaiman, who has an intense following himself, for his comics (“Sandman”), children’s books (“Coraline”) and fantasies (“American Gods”).
On Sunday at the MCA, he’ll read from “Trigger Warning,” his new book of short stories.
Yes, the event sold out in less than an hour. And yes, the story he’s reading is all about David Bowie.
The following is an edited version of a longer conversation.
Q: So, this short story about David Bowie …
A: It’s an old piece of fiction, started around 2004, “The Return of the Thin White Duke.” It was written in two parts. I finished it for this book, but the first part was with artist Yoshitaka Amano, who was commissioned to do pictures for a magazine called V. His images were Bowie and (Bowie’s wife, the model) Iman as sci-fi characters. Then I was asked to write a story, so it became about Bowie and Iman in this future New York.
But the choice of Bowie was perfect — he has been so important to me ever since I was a child. I remember “Space Oddity” at 11, running to buy “Hunky Dory,” getting so excited about this “Diamond Dogs” record …
Q: He is one of those artists, though, who people fall in and out of love with.
A: And never for me. The iconography of Bowie, the look of Bowie, to a teenage Neil, was absolutely magical, and as I have gotten older, and appreciate him as an artist, and a creation, he still seems weird and powerful. I owe him so much. I have always become interested in what he’s interested in. He has this song, “Queen Bitch,” and in the liner notes it thanks “VU.”
I found out that meant Velvet Underground, so I bought Velvet Underground records, then discovered Lou Reed. Bowie described himself as a human photocopier, and yes, I found so much music and art I wouldn’t have found if he hadn’t been a photocopier.
Q: Was he the inspiration for the Lucifer character in “Sandman”?
A: He was. Definitely. But, by the time Lucifer got his own comic, that was rejigged a little. … But yes, the young, folk singer-period Bowie was the inspiration. I imagined Lucifer as a junkie angel, and young Bowie was the closest we got.
Q: There’s also this funny video of you circulating online where you play Bowie with your wife (artist Amanda Palmer). You’re wearing a mullet that makes you look like Bowie from “Labyrinth” …
A: Oh my God. Yes, it was long before we were married. I just got off a plane from America to see my then-girlfriend Amanda. She said, “Neil, I am so glad you are here, and also there’s this lane I go jogging through every day that reminds me of ‘Labyrinth’ so I’m going to film my version with some friends who are puppeteers and we have a Bowie wig and you’ll play Bowie.” I remember saying no. But she is persuasive.
Q: Have you ever met him?
A: This will sound stupid because David’s son Duncan is a good friend of mine, and Bowie himself has said some lovely things about my books in the past, but I have gone out of my way to avoid him. I don’t have that many heroes left. Sondheim, Elvis Costello, Bowie: I have to put a small effort into not meeting them now.
Q: Yet you’re a superfan.
A: A weird kind, though. One of my great sorrows is, when I was in my late teens I was talking to my father for some reason about Bowie and he carefully explained to me that, in fact, years earlier, someone gave him tickets to Bowie’s last show as Ziggy Stardust at (London’s) Hammersmith Odeon and he decided not to take me — it was a school night. There’s nothing quite so strange as discovering you might have been cool.
