I remember when I met Morpheus. I remember where I met Morpheus. I remember how I met Morpheus. Dream, of the Endless.
I'd been interested in joining the Forum Library for a while. The UEA book bunker doesn't to graphic novels, but thankfully their sheet music collection is pretty good. There's an eight shelf island just past the borrowing machines in the Millenium library that's full of graphic novels, trade paperbacks, one-shots and so on. There's also a six shelf island that's full of Manga. Thanks to the library, I've been able to read the entire works of Nemesis the Warlock, several Batman series, Transformers Spotlights and so on and so forth.
One day, I was getting the train. I'd misread the timing and ended up in town an hour early. I don't know how, but I did. This was my second year, mind you, so I was probably just trying to get out of the house. I pulled into the library, and wandered up to the graphic novel island. Skimming across the shelves, I thought it was time to step up to the plate, and picked up Preludes and Nocturnes. This is the first collected volume of Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic. I say comic. I have difficulty in imagining buying Sandman in a monthly format, having never been a big comics buyer anyway. I'd always been afraid of the Sandman series, due to Dave McKean's artwork on the cover. There's nothing really frightening about it all. It's...how do you say, very primal. Raw and genuine. It is fully in control of its own mesmeric power. Anyway. As a child I was scared and intimidated by it, so I stayed well away. Having polished off Grant Morrison's Batman Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, illustrated completely by McKean, I felt more confident, and took the plunge.
As the entire world already knows, Neil Gaiman is one of the most incredible writers ever. As you progress through the narrative, the entire mythology of the Endless is built from the ground up, appearing out of nowhere, an immacualte conception of fantasy. The Endless are...well, they are the personifications of universal ideas. Death, of course, being the most obvious, the end of all things, and Destruction, the personification of energy. The others are immaterial in aspect; Destiny, Despair, Desire and Delerium (formerly Delight). And of course, Dream.
Dream of the Endless, in his guise as Morpheus, the eponymous Sandman. Reading his character description on the most ubiquitous of all internet resources, passages like these leap of the page: "He is sometimes slow when dealing with humor, occasionally insensitive, often self-obsessed, and is very slow to forgive or forget a slight. He has a long history of failed romances...", "...defeated by his most tragic flaw, his inability to accept change..." and from Season of Mists, "accumulating names to himself as others make friends, but he permits himself few friends." I feel very close to dream. I too have more names than I will ever have friends. The only thing that reall seems to change about me is my weight and my appearance. Nothing in my wardrobe screams summer more than my current new taste in Cravats, but seeing as they're just archaic ties, where's the real difference anyway?
Ultimately, Dream is the most human of all the Endless, he is like an everyman. He makes mistakes, he condemns jilted lovers (I mean, who hasn't wanted the other party in an unsuccessful love affair to go to hell? Just sayin'), he has a house and grounds to tend to...kind of like normal people, if normal people were near-omnipotent spectral personifications of concepts. The Sandman series is a journey that we take with Morpheus, hand in hand, where we see these things happen. Where we see him consider the important things. Ultimately he makes a choice, whether to change or not. As he cannot, will not, must not, or crucially chooses not to change, he dies instead. What? Sorry, but I am a living spoiler. Morpheus ceases to be, but Dream does not. You must, dear reader, peruse the 10th book, The Wake, in order to discover what really happens in the end.
I'm sure there are times when anyone who's read Sandman can see a little bit of themselves reflected back at them in the shape of Morpheus; maybe, sometimes its something they don't want to see, and sometimes that's important. Criticism, especially when it comes from within is one of the most important and powerful forces of personal development.
The Wake touches me. It makes me cry. You heard me. It makes me sad in a way that I can't deal with. Maybe it makes me think about my death. But I'm not really worried about dying. I don't particularly wish to die, that much is true, but it comes to us all, and when my time is then my time is up. Like the Big Man, I'm not going until I'm done. But you read Morpheus' Wake and see for yourself. There's a copy in Derby Central, I'm sure they don't have it in Norfolk at all because it's too beautiful.
So go and meet Morpheus for yourself. Make your own mind up. Find him, and maybe he'll find you. Sweet dreams.
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