A Holly Jolly Birthday
And a very happy and special Birthday Post for Holly Gaiman, who turns 21 today. You'll notice there are some quotes in here I've used in part or in whole before on the blog, but I thought they were worth repeating on this occasion. (Oh, and try to ignore the fact that the first post, from Holly herself, is about Thanksgiving. It still fits.)
“Hello everybody around the world, this is Holly. Some people think that my father is smart, a good writer perhaps. But the truth of the matter is that he would be nobody without his amazing daughter to give him ideas and to tell him what jobs he should and should not take. I mean, what would he do without me? So really, it all comes back to me, and how wonderful I am. My father once said that I will make myself famous. But in my opinion, I already am, seeing as it is because of me that he has been such a wonderful success. So what we are to conclude from this, is that what my father has to be thankful for is me! Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and a happy day.”
– Holly Gaiman 11/22/01
"I'm now in a nice hotel in LA, and Holly's here, which made me a lot less cranky than I was. She was thrilled when we opened the door to the hotel room to find lots of people had sent flowers, champagne and faxes telling us that the New York Times List thing was a good thing, and she was astonished that journal-reading people came up to her at Vromans wishing her happy birthday and congratulating her on passing her driving test. (Her license has a photo of her with an ear to ear grin on it. It's astoundingly cute.)"
-- Neil Gaiman 06/26/01
"And last but not even a little bit least, Happy Birthday Holly! (She's 17 today.)"
-- Neil Gaiman 06/26/02
"There was something else important in the post-that-vanished, which I should repeat here. Happy 18th birthday to the very wonderful Holly Gaiman...."
-- Neil Gaiman 06/26/03
"Got to Venice, met by Holly and a friend who has elected not to be named in the journal (Miss X). Holly is nineteen. Holly turned nineteen in Italy about six weeks ago. Holly has observed that while I congratulated Mike on his birthday, hers didn't actually get a mention in this journal. Holly does not plan to let me forget this.
Ever."
-- Neil Gaiman 08/10/04
"For Holly's 18th birthday she asked me for a short story as a present, which she wanted delivered by her 19th birthday. It's been 960 words long for several months now, and is almost two months late, but I'm cheerfully finishing it for her, when I'm not dozing, eating, or being dragged around on walks.
("You like the walks! You're the one who drags people! That's not fair" says Holly, reading this over my shoulder.)
The story's called SUNBIRD. It just occurred to me that an awful lot of animals get eaten in it, which is a very odd sort of present for a vegetarian, but I expect she'll forgive me.
("You never told me that!" she just said, over my shoulder.)"
-- Neil and Holly Gaiman 08/13/04
"It was twenty one years ago that I was woken up at about eight-thirty one morning by Mary, my wife, letting me know that she was in labour and that she had already phoned the maternity hospital to let them know, and we were leaving now. And, possibly because I seemed rather agitated by all this information, she said she thought it might really be better if she drove and I timed the contractions. We owned an elderly, tiny yellow MG midget at the time, which she fitted herself into somehow, and she drove us like a maniac through tiny curving Sussex backroads to get to the Maternity Hospital, while I timed the contractions and worried.
I'd somehow got it into my head that the baby would be a girl, and, after the kind of long and protracted negotiations that normally result in the drawing up of borders in Eastern European principalities, we'd settled on "Gemma" as a name.
We pulled up in front of the hospital by nine, and by about ten I was amazed and delighted to find myself proudly holding a small, baldish, grey-eyed baby who seemed to be taking in everything that was going on and had a very sober look on her face, as if she wasn't quite sure whether she entirely approved of any of it.
"She doesn't really look like a Gemma," I thought. "Bugger." I checked. Mary didn't think she looked much like a Gemma either.
And I drove home pondering the naming issue, with Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side running through my head.
Somewhere in there twenty one years went by, and I continue to be amazed and delighted by her, and really most appallingly proud. Right now she's on a different continent beavering away...
Happy 21st Birthday Holly."
-- Neil Gaiman 06/26/06
"This evening I had a very pleasant time with Holly, which began with her mentioning how much she liked the song "Across the Universe" and me playing her the version of the song by Laibach, which has always been my favourite. "Dad," she said, happily, "This was the version of the song I knew as a little girl. You used to play it. I always wondered why the Beatles one sounded different from the way I expected. I mean you could understand the words for a start." Then we sat in front of the computer for a few hours and I made her a playlist of more songs she had loved as a small girl, the ones she'd remembered and the ones she'd forgotten, which led to our having The Conversation. You know, the one I've known was coming for the last almost-nineteen years.
I dragged songs from her childhood over to the playlist -- "Barcelona" and "Nothing Compares 2 U" and "I Don't Like Mondays" and "These Foolish Things" and then came Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side". "You named me from this song, didn't you?" said Holly as the first bass notes sang. "Yup," I said.
Lou started singing.
Holly listened to the first verse, and for the first time, actually heard the words.
"Shaved her legs and then he was a she...? He?"
"That's right," I said, and bit the bullet. We were having The Conversation. "You were named after a drag queen in a Lou Reed song."
She grinned like a light going on. "Oh dad. I do love you," she said. Then she picked up an envelope and wrote what I'd just said down on the back, in case she forgot it.
I'm not sure that I'd ever expected The Conversation to go quite like that."
-- Neil Gaiman 05/31/04
“Hello everybody around the world, this is Holly. Some people think that my father is smart, a good writer perhaps. But the truth of the matter is that he would be nobody without his amazing daughter to give him ideas and to tell him what jobs he should and should not take. I mean, what would he do without me? So really, it all comes back to me, and how wonderful I am. My father once said that I will make myself famous. But in my opinion, I already am, seeing as it is because of me that he has been such a wonderful success. So what we are to conclude from this, is that what my father has to be thankful for is me! Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and a happy day.”
– Holly Gaiman 11/22/01
"I'm now in a nice hotel in LA, and Holly's here, which made me a lot less cranky than I was. She was thrilled when we opened the door to the hotel room to find lots of people had sent flowers, champagne and faxes telling us that the New York Times List thing was a good thing, and she was astonished that journal-reading people came up to her at Vromans wishing her happy birthday and congratulating her on passing her driving test. (Her license has a photo of her with an ear to ear grin on it. It's astoundingly cute.)"
-- Neil Gaiman 06/26/01
"And last but not even a little bit least, Happy Birthday Holly! (She's 17 today.)"
-- Neil Gaiman 06/26/02
"There was something else important in the post-that-vanished, which I should repeat here. Happy 18th birthday to the very wonderful Holly Gaiman...."
-- Neil Gaiman 06/26/03
"Got to Venice, met by Holly and a friend who has elected not to be named in the journal (Miss X). Holly is nineteen. Holly turned nineteen in Italy about six weeks ago. Holly has observed that while I congratulated Mike on his birthday, hers didn't actually get a mention in this journal. Holly does not plan to let me forget this.
Ever."
-- Neil Gaiman 08/10/04
"For Holly's 18th birthday she asked me for a short story as a present, which she wanted delivered by her 19th birthday. It's been 960 words long for several months now, and is almost two months late, but I'm cheerfully finishing it for her, when I'm not dozing, eating, or being dragged around on walks.
("You like the walks! You're the one who drags people! That's not fair" says Holly, reading this over my shoulder.)
The story's called SUNBIRD. It just occurred to me that an awful lot of animals get eaten in it, which is a very odd sort of present for a vegetarian, but I expect she'll forgive me.
("You never told me that!" she just said, over my shoulder.)"
-- Neil and Holly Gaiman 08/13/04
"It was twenty one years ago that I was woken up at about eight-thirty one morning by Mary, my wife, letting me know that she was in labour and that she had already phoned the maternity hospital to let them know, and we were leaving now. And, possibly because I seemed rather agitated by all this information, she said she thought it might really be better if she drove and I timed the contractions. We owned an elderly, tiny yellow MG midget at the time, which she fitted herself into somehow, and she drove us like a maniac through tiny curving Sussex backroads to get to the Maternity Hospital, while I timed the contractions and worried.
I'd somehow got it into my head that the baby would be a girl, and, after the kind of long and protracted negotiations that normally result in the drawing up of borders in Eastern European principalities, we'd settled on "Gemma" as a name.
We pulled up in front of the hospital by nine, and by about ten I was amazed and delighted to find myself proudly holding a small, baldish, grey-eyed baby who seemed to be taking in everything that was going on and had a very sober look on her face, as if she wasn't quite sure whether she entirely approved of any of it.
"She doesn't really look like a Gemma," I thought. "Bugger." I checked. Mary didn't think she looked much like a Gemma either.
And I drove home pondering the naming issue, with Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side running through my head.
Somewhere in there twenty one years went by, and I continue to be amazed and delighted by her, and really most appallingly proud. Right now she's on a different continent beavering away...
Happy 21st Birthday Holly."
-- Neil Gaiman 06/26/06
"This evening I had a very pleasant time with Holly, which began with her mentioning how much she liked the song "Across the Universe" and me playing her the version of the song by Laibach, which has always been my favourite. "Dad," she said, happily, "This was the version of the song I knew as a little girl. You used to play it. I always wondered why the Beatles one sounded different from the way I expected. I mean you could understand the words for a start." Then we sat in front of the computer for a few hours and I made her a playlist of more songs she had loved as a small girl, the ones she'd remembered and the ones she'd forgotten, which led to our having The Conversation. You know, the one I've known was coming for the last almost-nineteen years.
I dragged songs from her childhood over to the playlist -- "Barcelona" and "Nothing Compares 2 U" and "I Don't Like Mondays" and "These Foolish Things" and then came Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side". "You named me from this song, didn't you?" said Holly as the first bass notes sang. "Yup," I said.
Lou started singing.
Holly listened to the first verse, and for the first time, actually heard the words.
"Shaved her legs and then he was a she...? He?"
"That's right," I said, and bit the bullet. We were having The Conversation. "You were named after a drag queen in a Lou Reed song."
She grinned like a light going on. "Oh dad. I do love you," she said. Then she picked up an envelope and wrote what I'd just said down on the back, in case she forgot it.
I'm not sure that I'd ever expected The Conversation to go quite like that."
-- Neil Gaiman 05/31/04
posted by Really_Rather_Not_Nice at 2:11 PM
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