A Return to Blissful Ignorance (My Final Blog)

In both the graphic novel and Netflix re-imagining of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, there are many moments that are quite poignant. In the graphic novel, a lot of them were 'woke' well beyond their time. In the TV series, the 'woke' manages to out-do itself considerably many times. The common denominator nonetheless is the same and that is it was intended to be 'woke' so creative liberty does not accord it much damage. What it did damage though is the writer himself. The more experimental the fantasy, the more insidiously it encroaches upon reality.

There is one scene in both versions which I find to be quite clairvoyant: it is when Morpheus, i.e. the Lord of Dreams (hereby to be referred to, in keeping with the book and TV tradition, as Dream) visits Lucifer i.e. the Devil, in Hell to enquire about his stolen helmet. A woman had confiscated it when he'd been accidentally imprisoned on Earth by a powerful magician, Roderick Burgess, who had wished to capture Dream's sister, Death to demand his favored son's resurrection. Upon his release, Dream finds himself deprived of his tools of office: a pouch of sand, a ruby and a helmet that would restore his power to full capacity. He proceeds to ask the Sisters of Fate for help, only to find out that his helmet has been pawned off to an unknown demon in Hell. There, using the freshly-recovered pouch, he discloses the identity of the demon to Lucifer who promptly summons it. The demon agrees to relinquish the helmet, on condition that Dream defeat it in contest, nominating its master as champion. Both Lucifer and Dream then engage in an epic battle of wits, a metaphysical gladiator match, which Dream ends up winning. Humiliated in front of his subjects, Lucifer denies Dream leave of Hell, taunting him by stating that  dreams had no power in Hell, with entire legions of demons standing arrayed against him should he make an attempt to depart. To this, the Dream Lord aptly replies that Hell would have no power left, if its inhabitants only were to start dreaming of Heaven which gives the other side significant pause.

The most deeply fascinating aspect of this whole affair is not the nature of the duel, or the taunt and its clapback, rather its translation into real life. Dream represents artists who make a habit out of egregiously indulging themselves in the 'profane joy' of creation. When they resultantly find themselves in their own Hell: self-alienation, inability to reconcile worldly inconsistencies with artistic absolution etc. they do find quite a host of demons, especially in other people ,who seek to keep them there. The cumulative toll of successive mockery gets deafening until human error comes to the fore and manifests itself in spectacular fashion, quashing all hope of atonement. It is excruciatingly difficult to pick up the pieces after that. The cost of indulging oneself in profane joy is barring all gates back to a life of overwhelmingly guilty, yet peaceful surrender. It would be pertinent to mention here that James Joyce, upon laying the respective groundwork for the terms 'guilt' and 'profane joy' by striking a contrast between a life spent in religious servitude and a life given to the pursuit of artistic purity in his seminal work of Modernist literature, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man implicitly claims the opposite to be practical: that by choosing the latter, one would actually be setting aside all the baggage of the former, which was most likely imposed upon them against their free will. But that's quite not what happens. 

Neil Gaiman was recently accused of sexually assaulting his own housemaid. More harrowing witness testimonies of his gross misconduct followed swiftly. By all accounts, he seemed a lonely writer, who on the one hand, engaged relentlessly in a scramble to check all the right political boxes, but on the other, became the very reason for their necessity. He also became his own character. In one story in The Sandman comics, entitled Calliope, a writer, Richard Madoc, chronically suffers from writer's block following the release of only a few novels. He proceeds to visit another famous writer for guidance, who 'gifts' him the Muse Calliope, the goddess of creativity, instructing him to use force on her should he ever have want for ideas. Initially horrified at the prospect, but soon finding himself more and more desperate, Madoc begins to lean more into his inner beast, which in turn culminates in the successful publication of another novel. Throughout the story, Calliope begs to be set free, even promising no consequences, but Madoc finds it more and more difficult to relent that is until he encounters the full wrath of the Dream Lord, his captive's former lover: ideas without barriers. This then catalyzes his horrifying downwards spiral.  

The above verbiage, if anything, illustrates for me that writers and artists, inadvertently hasten their own descent into Hell. Their delusions of grandeur which stem from knowing and habitual indulgence in documenting that knowledge can give rise to unforeseen complications that subtly eat away at any measure of control that they think they have. Neil Gaiman, for one, is a classic example, of the writer who accidentally ends up knowing too much for his own good insomuch that his own creation makes its creator come undone. The artist lands himself in Hell, comforted in the assumption that he'd conquered his demons by giving them shape and hue. The loneliness, the analysis paralysis, and all that whatever may eventually befall the flawed creator who tries to resist his own fate by getting way too ahead of the curve, leading him to become the very monster he once pretended to despise along with others. 

It is on this note that I bid adieu. To all who get to read, for they are blessed to remain in purgatory, as they do not yet possess the courage to write. I hereby retreat into blissful ignorance forsaking this profane role of the writer for others, much better-equipped than myself in spirit, verbosity and even mockery, to carry forward the mantle of the scribe, in all its disenchanting glory.

A few trifling observations left to make before we say goodbye:

1. The moral decay of the progressive, and borderline dystopian world is just harmless collateral, a known corollary to the theorem already memorized by all. It only comes into scrutiny once there is hard-and-fast evidence of crimes against humanity, until our brazen era of commodified tragedy and stylized decadence, takes it in stride once again.

2. Hell hath no fury than a lover, spurned.   

3. The delusions of the powerful shall ultimately be replaced by the pain of the innocent and the grief of the mournful, eventually culminating in remorse (Neil Gaiman's The Sandman).