You can take it with you. Well, so the Ancient Egyptians believed. "It" of course was everything. Clothes, food, jewelry, furniture — and if you were a member of the royal family: thrones, chariots, slaves. It was assumed that you needed in death what you needed in life. What then did you choose? Which food, which favourite chariot, etc.? What items mean so much to you in this world, you'd just have to have them in the next?
Nicholas Vince poses the questions to Dave McKean.
NICHOLAS VINCE: First question, as always: what do you think happens after life?
DAVE McKEAN: I don't know. I'd kind of imagined that God would turn out to be this vague father figure. He must get used to watching us pootle around his planet but we have this thing called Free Choice, so he can't really intervene too much.
I imagined that once we get up there all these frustrations come out and he'd be a sort of Harry Enfield character: "YOU don't want to be doing it like that. What're you doing it like that for? What? You planting a tree? What you doing it like that for? Plant them three feet apart. You don't want to do it like that."
Unfortunately, because I'm doing this Cages book at the moment and it deals with a lot of these themes, I obviously had to go there and find out.
NV: When you say "go there," you don't mean crossing the Great Divide and coming back again, I presume.
DM: A bit; I managed to book a Virgin flight, and unfortunately it's terrifyingly close to the Jeremy Beadle show! They sit you down with an audience of billions, and force you to watch the most embarrassing parts of your life, over and over again, with God saying: "Of course what he didn't know is that we arranged for lightning to hit his house and all his hair to fall out and his cat to get measles!" You just have to watch it over and over again. And it's quite horrible. So, no, I don't really know.
NV: I like the idea of it being like the Jeremy Beadle Show, or rather I don't: it sounds like hell to me. Which music would you take?
DM: One's an easy one, an album by Weather Report, called Heavy Weather which has my favourite song of all time on it, called "Birdland." I used to play in loads of jazz bands when I was in school and college, doing the circuit when Jazz Fusion was popular. So I played most of the tracks on that album — terribly.
NV: What instruments were you playing?
DM: Keyboards. We played a jazz festival and a few other bits and pieces. So, that would have to be one, another one would be A Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. Only because it started it all off. The Weather Report album was the first album where I heard — it must have been the equivalent of drinking Coke for most of my life and then one day suddenly having an amazing bottle of wine. You suddenly realise the quality and the imagination.
I can't really think of a third one. It would have to be something really languid and relaxing, like an Arvo Part album or Jan Garbarek album.
NV: These are performers?
DM: Arvo Part is an Estonian composer and I'd take... probably Tabula Rasa. Yes, make that the third one.
NV: What about films or videos?
DM: So how many can I take? Two or three hundred?
NV: No, I allowed Kim Newman to take eleven, but he didn't take anything else. You can take three.
DM: This is the most difficult one, because I am just such a fan, horribly so. I think one of them would have to be Stardust Memories [1980, directed by Woody Allen]. For some reason that sense of humour completely wipes me out. It's very much a thoughtful humour, it's not a quick gag or slapstick. But also he manages to crack me up completely, just the tiniest things. There is one scene in Stardust Memories where Woody Allen is [playing] this famous director trying to avoid the crowds and this great big, neolithic looking guy wearing an ill fitting t-shirt corners him. He thrusts this paper at him, "Can I have your autograph?" And Woody Allen is stumbled in to the corner and as he's signing it this guy says to him: "I was a caesarean." I just fell off the seat in the cinema and the scene leaves you with Woody Allen looking at this guy disappearing round the corner. Something about it just completely knocks me out, so that is number one.
Number two would be a film called The Last Battle by a French director, Luc Besson. He's since made Subway, which I thought was OK, and The Big Blue, which I thought was lovely, though everyone else in the world hated it, I think. The Last Battle has a wonderful sense of humour and it's just the most beautifully, intricately worked out, gentle film. And yet it's a science-fiction film, set in this horrific world, but it has this lightness of touch all the way through it. And the music is great as well — to score this science-fiction film with this great lilting jazz is wonderful.
NV: I remember it as being very low budget as well.
DM: Tiny budget, it was made in black and white. And there is only one word spoken in the whole film.
NV: I like the gag with the blow-up doll that farts as it deflates.
DM: And there is a rain of fish that works beautifully.
NV: OK. Number three?
DM: Oh, God, there are so many. I love Brazil. I love silent movies, because I love the fact there is no pretense of reality at all. These incredible images — I'd love to take something like Siegfried or Metropolis. I would probably take Wings of Desire (1988, directed by Wim Wenders) because it has the atmosphere of a silent film, with those black and white images. Again, I love anything that can deal very thoughtfully with a very profound subject, with a lightness to it. The humour in Wings of Desire is superb. Peter Falk is in it and plays an actor who used to be an angel, Bruno Ganz as the angel who becomes human. It's a film that is partly in colour and mostly in black and white; a beautiful, beautiful film and the music is gorgeous. So, probably that one. But, that's only three and I'm allowed how many?
NV: Three.
DM: Oh. 0K.
NV: Oh, I hate putting people through this, he said, lying. Books?
DM: Can I swap them for films?
NV: If you take no books I'll allow you two films.
DM: Oh, what the hell, I'll take a couple of books. There are just so many films, I'd take the whole library. So I'll take a book of Franz Kafka stories. The complete works and if it doesn't exist I'll get it bound. Just so long as The Trial is amongst them.
I've just realised, I can take a couple of art books. I'll take, not necessarily because they... well, one because he is my favourite; an artist called Jim Dine. He's American, New York-based artist, still working and he does the most amazing drawings I've ever seen. I saw a show of all his drawings in San Francisco, having been a fan of his work for ages and it just doubled that admiration.
What he does is to get models in to pose and these huge great pieces of water colour paper — which he has to get hand-made to his thickness because he just rips them — and he goes at it with charcoal and then he sends the models away and gets an industrial sand blaster and tears into this paper and it shreds all over the place. And he builds up these amazing dense deep textures and then brings the model in again to work it up and finally finish the piece off. They are just staggering pieces, and so I'd have a book of his.
NV: What sort of size are the originals then?
DM: Most of them are about five or six feet. And he's very famous for drawing hearts and bath towels and things like that. He did this great series of bath towels. But it's his drawings I like best.
I'd love to take an Egon Schiele book, but I think instead I'll take a book of a photographer called Joel-Peter Witkin. I think he's American, but I think he works in Mexico. He takes photographs of human oddities and his book Gods Of Heaven and Earth, not only has all these incredible photographs in it, it also has some wonderful writing and a great advert in the back. He says: "Five years ago I did a book and advertised for people to get in touch with me, most of the photographs in this book are due to the people I got then. So I'm doing the same." And he lists a great number of "Wanted: people with three arms, no faces," on and on and on. In the midst of all these general ones, you'll get extremely specific ones "A blond haired girl with a distorted back, one leg and a tattoo on the top right hand shoulder." So, he's obviously heard of this person and is trying to make contact. There's one in the middle; "Anyone who lives their life as a superhero," which I thought was quite funny. And the last two was "Anyone who believes themself to be God," and then, "God." That's kind of appropriate for this so I'll take those three books.
NV: Alright then, which food would you take?
DM: Truffles.
NV: You mean real truffles?
DM: No, boring old Belgian chocolate truffles and some peach schnapps, but mostly the truffles.
NV: I've not heard of peach schnapps.
DM: It's actually the best drink in the world and it comes in white bottles, very anonymously. It's nectar of the gods.
NV: You've got your books on art, which paintings would you take? Or perhaps a statue, something three-dimensional you wouldn't be able to get in a book?
DM: I'd probably still take a painting because you can't reproduce a painting in a book; to see the paint on the canvas is a completely different sensation to seeing it in a book. I'd love to take a Jim Dine drawing or an Egon Schiele painting, but since I've got the books, I'd probably take a painting by Marshal Arisman. The reason I'd take it would be because it was him that got me into drawing in the first place. Insomuch as I went to a lecture by him in London and was completely knocked out.
NV: How long ago was that?
DM: This was my last year of art college, which was 1986. I was floundering around doing little bits of nothing, had no idea of what I really wanted to do. I went to this lecture and walked out saying, "I want to do that." He's about fifty or so, he teaches at the School of Visual Art in New York and he's got this streak of silver hair and this manic laugh and he'd appear in silhouette in front of these huge great slides of his paintings — these powerful oil paintings. Apparently people only ever ring him to say: "Marshal, you're just going to love this: ten people killed in train disaster." Because everything is incredibly violent and angst-ridden, but very very beautiful as well.
He said that he went along and did this portrait of this guy with sixteen personalities, in an asylum. He had to do the piece for a magazine article about [the patient]. He did the drawing, rather a huge painting: these things are about six or seven feet and it's a staggering painting. He got a letter from this guy, who'd seen the article and the painting. The letter said things like "I'm going to peel your face" and the audience is sitting there going: "Jesus wept." Then Arisman just burst into this manic laugh. It was the wildest evening, the strangest evening. That has stayed with me ever since. There are plenty of other artists who I like as much, if not more, but just for the fact that he really started me off I'd take one of his.
NV: Any particular one?
DM: Well he's done a few of a Black Angel of Death, which sounds really morbid, to try and forget the fact that you've just died. But I'd take one of those. It's this dense black figure with these pieces of metal across the face and this red around the mouth. It sounds fairly horrific, but it's just the most amazing thing, so I'd take that.
NV: Fair enough. An item of furniture.
DM: Well, can I have some more truffles? I really don't have a favourite rocking chair at home so... no, I have thought of something, you can get these packing cases from Belgium, I think it says something about truffles on the side, so can I have that?
NV: That's fair enough.
DM: So long as it's full.
NV: I suppose by the time you've eaten all the truffles, you could use the wrappers to make a fairly comfortable chair, so, yes, you can have that one. What plays or musicals would you like to see performed by Celestial Repertory Company?
DM: Well, I went to see Sunday in the Park With George [by Stephen Sondheim] recently and was completely knocked out by that, so I would like to see them do that a few times, because that gets me every time. I can't think of any others. I'm just such a film addict everytime I'm in London, I wanted to see Pravda, there have been a few things recently, but I'm always stuck in the cinema.
NV: Costume you'd like to be buried in.
DM: Oh, I don't know... Father Christmas.
NV: That's fairly topical; it won't be by the time the interview comes out, but is now. Any objects of personal value?
DM: It's a big coffin, so a grand piano. And I'll smuggle some videos down the side.
NV: This is a Steinway you're after I presume.
DM: A full size, fourteen foot, concert grand.
NV: OK. There is a fire in the crypt, you're going to be saved but you can only manage to take one thing with you.
DM: I'm just going to go up in flames, because I'm just going: "I'll have this, no I'll have this, no this." I'll be staggering down the holy staircase with the grand piano and everything loaded on top of that.
NV: Which brings us to the fateful question: which comics would you take?
DM: Well, it's probably not that difficult, because there really aren't any comics that have come out so far that have affected me the way my favourite films have, with the possible exception of Fires by Lorenzo Mattotti, so I think that would be the one. Because I'm working so close to comics, I'm always trying to criticise them as much as possible — personally that is; I don't like writing reviews about them. But personally I like to be very critical of them, because what I've always been trying to do is keep steps ahead and try and do better if I can do better.
So, rather than have the things around frustrating me, I'll take a couple of videos instead — just short ones. One would be a short video called Street of Crocodiles adapted from short stories by Bruno Ganz. And it's by the Brothers Quay. It is a surreal puppet animated film, which has been a huge influence on me. The other one would be Wild About Hurry, which is a Road Runner cartoon. It is one of the finest animation put on film.
NV: I tend to agree with you. Wile E. Coyote and the products of the Acme Company are some of my favourite things. Right, we now put you up in front of a celestial court saying you either go up or down, tell us why it should be up?
DM: If my personal opinion of what actually happens when you die, which is nothing, is proved wrong and you do find yourself in front of a large gate with someone questioning you, they are just going to just have to accept that we all have good parts and bad parts. And if they look back over all that I've done and say no I'll just have to resort to mewling and begging.
NV: I'll probably be doing the same. What sort of monument would you like? Given all the tools, all the space or lack of space or whatever and it doesn't have to be a monument, just what would like people to remember you by?
DM: Unfortunately it's just going to be a small little gravestone with "Just one more panel to go" written on it.
But what I'd like is to be remembered as the man who got rid of all the computers in the world. So I'd like all the computers in the world just stacked up in this big blazing bonfire, because it's the Devil's instrument. In fact it's not, because when I was up there, on my day trip to the afterlife, I found they have teams of angels who were a bit redundant until forty years ago. Now they all have jobs looking down at people at computers, working away knowing that they've spent seven hours writing their novel, or a report, and they see them get to within three lines and think "Oh, I haven't saved anything yet, "and the angel goes 'ting' and the person thinks "I'll just get to the end and save it." Three words from the end, the angel snaps its fingers and the whole thing is wiped. And I know this happens now so I just want a whole burning monument of molten computers.