Long ago when I used to idolise writers and musicians

Some thoughts on recent allegations against Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer

Photo by Start Digital from Unsplash

A remnant of my old life pops up in my inbox. It’s an email from Amanda Palmer, about some ‘allegations.’ In case you don’t know, Palmer is a singer songwriter from the band the Dresden Dolls, and author of the book, The Art of Asking; about how she crowdfunded a million dollars to put an album together. I’ve been subscribed to Amanda for years, more now out of habit. I used to listen to her music, and I wrote an article about her book, inspired by my own attempts at crowdfunding. The article ended up getting pulled when my editor found out about some controversy involving Palmer due to a Tweet.

My crowdfunding campaign wasn’t successful in the end, but during that time working with a crowdfunding publisher, I connected with a group of fellow authors who were also crowdfunding their books. If we tagged Palmer in our tweets she would retweet for her audience, and I even got a few pledges that way. Even bigger and more exciting was to get retweeted by her husband Neil Gaiman.

It appeared they were nice people who genuinely had a heart for their fans. Too much it seems.

I wasn’t ever really into Neil Gaiman. When I was a teenager and used to go to a nightclub called the Dungeon, there were people into comic books, and I remember one night, at a friends house, reading through The Sandman, but it wasn’t really my thing. I’ve always thought of Gaiman as being famous in a niche, geeky way, and wasn’t really aware of how famous he’d become in later years.

Anyway, Amanda Palmer’s comment on ‘allegations,’ got me curious. What allegations? So after a Google search I realised that Gaiman is being sued for repeated rape, and sexual assault, by the couple’s former nanny Scarlett Pavlovich. Palmer has been accused of human trafficking because she hired the nanny.

I was shocked to hear the news. Not because I am a fan of Gaiman or invested in his books. But because of his image. He was the nice man. The feminist. The one who all the kind, sensitive men enjoyed reading. He was best pals with Tori Amos, one of my favourite singers in my teens and twenties.

I’m not usually someone who wants to keep up with the sex scandals of the rich and famous, but because it was a remnant of my old life I was curious. I binged listened to the podcast series from Tortoise, on the allegations.

It got me thinking, how murky the world of fame is. How Gaiman used his power to manipulate young, vulnerable women. How the outer image he presented to the world was but a tiny sliver of the full complex picture.

It always disturbs me when people think someone like Taylor Swift, for example, is a wonderful person. How can we possibly know, Taylor Swift? All we know is a carefully curated image. And even with the more ‘alternative’ stars, the kooky, indie ones. This image is still curated, so it seems.

Back in my teens and twenties I idolised writers and musicians. What I didn’t realise then, is that I was filling a God-shaped hole. We are born to worship. We worship in all the wrong places. As a non-believer, my worship was directed towards a writer I loved, or a musician, and there was nothing better than being in a crowd cheering and hearing their music real and in the flesh.

And with my own writing, I longed to be famous, I longed to taste that fame for myself. The briefest encounters with a mildly famous person were something I wore like a badge of honour.

Idols fall. They all will.

As Gaiman fans wonder if they can separate the art from the artist, I think of how lost we are without knowing God.

We seek comfort in books written by abusers. We hold up the famous as nice people, when we know nothing about them.

In the article ‘When The Light Goes Out’ Kat De Luca, reflects on how she used to read Gaiman for comfort during a traumatic childhood, it was somehow reassuring to ‘to feel as if the writer on the other side of the page is a friend. An ally. One of us. Someone else who knows the darkness and would fight the monsters alongside you.’

Yet she came to stop reading him, even before the allegations, because ‘As I return to tales that once felt like shelter within a storm as an adult, I find the boundaries have shifted. They are no longer a guiding light in the dark, but something murkier, unsettling in its own right.’

I find a lot that is unsettling in the books I used to read, the music I used to listen to, this dance in the darkness. The tunes still sound beautiful, but the references to Lucifer, in the songs of Tori Amos, or the ghosts in the songs of Nick Cave no longer appeal. Because there’s a revelling in the darkness, and an absence of God.

As someone who became a believer later in life, I feel like I’m playing catch-up, and I don’t have time to read much except the Bible. When I listen to music, I still like something indyish - a bit different to the mainstream, so my new favourite is Poor Bishop Hooper, have written a song for every Psalm from the Bible.

As I watch Gaiman and Palmer make statements, curating their image of niceness, I am reminded of what the Bible says, ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” Romans 3:10-12

We can’t find the light in the art of people in darkness. As beautiful as it might be, as true as it might be about the human condition, and what lies within it. We can’t find light in words of love and compassion, when the moral compass is arbitrary, murky and ever changing.

In my teens I fell for a lie, that sexual freedom was liberating, and now I understand that God’s ideal for sexuality is given out of love and for our own protection.

As I write these words I’ve just received an email from my child’s school that the middle schoolers are using VPN’s to access pornography, and in the UK there are epidemic levels of sexual violence.

We can point the finger at individual men like Gaiman.

But I do believe the root of the problem is that we have strayed far from God.

If you don’t know God, if you don’t like the idea of the Christian God, if you have objections, or think it’s all ridiculous, then I’ve been there, and I was surprised to find that he is real. That he loves us, and wants the best for us. And there is so much more joy to be found in him, than all the darkness of the writers, and musicians, the rebels and the dreamers.

If you would like to know more check out the film or The Case For Christ - which goes through the evidence for Jesus’s life, death and resurrection.

You can read my full story of how I found God here.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Phillipians 4.8