>> I am going to be reading
a story at Sydney Opera House
and it's a story that I've
never read before and I'm going
to be reading it and
doing it in a way
that I've not only
never read it before
but never read anything
before as a result
of which I'm absolutely
terrified and it's kind of fun.
This is an experiment and The
Opera House came to me and said,
"Would you be willing
to do something
in association with music.
It's The Opera House
and we would love,
it's the graphic festival
and we'd love to do something
that intersects words
and pictures and music?"
And I said, well I
have a story that's
at that time was published and
had never been read in public,
still hasn't called
"The Truth is a Cave
in the Black Mountains" and it's
a very dark revenge-driven story
set in a slightly skewed version
of Scotland a few
hundred years ago.
And the idea of reading
that accompanied
by the FourPlay string quartet.
They sent me some
music by FourPlay
and they had me at
the Dr. Who Theme.
I just listening to it and
going this is brilliant
and then listening to everything
else and then I bought all of,
I went on to iTunes and
bought everything by them
and just started
listening to it obsessively
and going this is just perfect.
And then we wanted
it illustrated.
We loved the idea that while I
was reading because I'm going
to be a tiny little figure
on The Opera House stage
that there would be
pictures happening
to take the graphic
end of things
and The Opera House
commissioned Eddie Campbell
who is best known
probably as the illustrator
of the graphic novel "From Hell"
the ultimate Jack the Ripper
story and he just did, he's done
about 40 beautiful colour
paintings of moments
of the story and if
this works we're going
to be doing something
nobody's ever done before.
We're going to be, I will be
reading a story, a new story.
It's going to be
like 70 minutes long.
The FourPlay string quartet
will be accompanying me
and the illustrations are
did going to be projected up
and if it works it's going to be
absolutely special and fabulous
and unique and if it doesn't
work it's still going to be
like nothing anybody's
ever seen before
and I'm happy with either way.
I think it is unique
and I love that
and the truth is my
instincts are probably,
we will probably never do it
again whether it works or not
because I love the idea that
it's unique and I love the idea
that it's The Opera House.
