this was supposed to be a post about the future (or: dear patrons, feedback time). (Patreon)

hallo loves. 

($10/webchat tier: warning! there's a webchat coming this weekend, so watch your email for times.)

i'm asking you some big things, see below. and i'm reading comments here until you're done talking.

if you're one of those people who always reads but never comments, now would be a really nice time for you to comment, even if it's to say "nice job, no comment, all good, love from texas/brazil/germany."

as for me: greetings from cape town, south africa, where i've started to recover from a hellish week of evil-stomach-bug and jetlag only to be thrown into the disorienting blender of the present moment. life is not terrible down here, the sun is out and that always helps, but it isn't easy, and i miss things making sense. 

this trip has really thrown me to the mat, and most of it has to do with the fact that i wasn't planning a miscarriage to send me on my way. we don't plan these things.

as with an abortion, a miscarriage begs and craves instant erasure. unlike the months-long, gauzy haze of forgiveness that is allowed and encouraged to surround you after childbirth, people sort of look at you one week after "it" happens and expect you to be fine and dandy and back at work with your wounds all licked, healed and nicely disappeared.

would that it were so. 

these life/work choices, man...i've been trying to balance them my whole career like spinning plastic take-out plates. how fast to go, what to pick, how to dodge and bend. have friends? not bother? spend time on non-paying projects? travel to family? stay put? work on self? care about body? have child? smell roses? blog about rose smell? blog about melancholy nostaligia of rose smell? blog about the fact that the rose smell is delicious but roses were planted in the fenced-off garden of the patriarchy? just tweet a haiku? rose emoji? throw phone in river? go to ashram in india?

sadly, there is never anybody to tell you what to do.

i know the truth most of the time, and i knew it when i got on the plane to come here: i needed time to heal and quiet down, and i probably should have bowed out of this fucking trip to south africa. but i didn't. it was easier to take the path of least resistance. things were pre-arranged. i had shows booked. i don't like to cancel things.

then i got here and karma gave me a wry wink. i got really sick. and ash got really sick. justine and michael both got really sick. nobody chose any of that. i'd planned to have time to recover, to write, to heal. i'd wanted to write about my miscarriage. i'd wanted to write about judy blume. i'd wanted to write about a lot of things. i haven't. i've been too busy recovering, too busy living, too busy adjusting, too busy trying to support my poor beliegaured husband who is trying to pull a hundred-hour work week because he's even more workaholically ambitious than i am. it's better than the alternative, i suppose. we could be dead. 

none of this is what this post is actually about.

but i'm not going to bullshit you, nor should i. i'm having a rough, unbalanced week. you're here and i'm here and life is always happening in real time. that's what makes this patreon beautiful.

no art happens in a vacuum.

my studio time starts on wednesday and i'm about five days behind. i'm still going into the studio, because that's what i fucking promised myself i would do.

and that is the beauty of this here patreon.

...........

and that is a nice segue. 

this was supposed to be a post about the future.

i'm about the make some changes - don't worry, none of them drastic - to the patreon.

i'm going to be launching a new join-my-patreon pitch video to the main page (it's TIME, the old one has been there for two effing years) and it's really beautiful...i made it with jim batt (who else) over the summer. 

i'm going to be adding (and adding back) some patronage tiers for people who want to contribute more than $10 per thing/month...it's taken me forever to decide how to do that and not go crazy with extra work while also feeling like i'm really showing gratitude to those who'd like to support me.

and i'm going to re-write all the text on the front page. it's been there forever and it's outdated.

...........

i didn't know, two years ago, where the patreon was going to take me, what was going to happen, how it would feel, how it would work. my mind has been pretty blown by the step-by-step explosion of creativity it's opened up in me. it's also been messy and sloppy sometimes. 

sometimes i've tried to do too many projects at once. sometimes i've let go of the creative direction of a project and let it run away from me. sometimes i wonder if i should be doing less, working less, making less, making more, making slower, making faster. i didn't expect it to be this confusing. 

...........

i also didn't expect it to be this intimate, and this loving. sometimes i feel like crying - like, it's so unfair that all these thousands of people really do believe in me this much that they're just throwing me their support and their money. like: who the fuck am i? but those days are rare. mostly i feel like i've matured and i know it ebbs and flows...and something like "the ride" happens, and i go: 

holy shit. 

this is everything. 

this is an entirely new way of making really good art. not alone. with a community. this would not have happened without the patreon. it's literally (in my opinion, at least) the best song i've written in years, and it grew directly out of a comment on this blog. that's not fucking nothing. that's everything.

..............

i've got a lot of projects on the back-burner and a ton of ideas for stuff coming up.

if all goes according to plan, there is going to be one gigantic solo-jewel of a record sometime in 2019 that includes re-worked and professionally recorded versions of some of these patreon demos plus a whole lot of new stuff that i've either been hiding or i plan to write in the next 4-6 months, and i hope to be able to put that album out in 2019 and tour to the extent that i'm able with a two year old. i was already planning on doing that when i had baby #2 coming, but now i can spend a little more time and energy on it and really attack the record as a real, new recording, not just a collection of past demos. i'm excited about that. 

i have some ideas, too, about the structure of the patreon and per thing/per month, but i'll chat about that later in a different post so we aren't having too many conversations at once.

i want to make videos for some of the great songs on that record - not fast, cheap ones, but ones that take time and money and vision. i want to work with some new filmmakers and give visuals to songs like "the ride" and "bigger on the inside" in a way that will breathe new life into the songs. that takes time and money.

and i want to podcast more. i feel like that's an untapped goldmine of content.

i still love the idea of making videos to older songs that never got videos.

i want to keep finding creative ways to webcast so i can play for the people i can't tour in front of.

and i want to write more. deeper things. i don't have another book deal right now and i don't want one. i don't have one big thing to say. i have a lot of littler things to say, and i don't feel like working on a book-book while i've got a two year old. my brain would melt.

and i want to keep doing the strange, unexpected things that have come to mean so much to me (like the weird "judy blume" video i'm going to be putting out in a week - on her 80th birthday - that has absolutely no right to exist other than the fact that we wanted to make it and so we did).

.....................

all of this, and now i'm coming to you....you're going to fund this all, and fund my life, staff payroll, and office and life costs while i work for the next year.

i'm going to read all of the comments, so please be as honest and long-winded as you'd like. i expect it'll take me the better part of the day to read the comments. it's part of my job. don't worry. 

• what has grabbed you/moved you the most? the least?
  
• what have you spent the most time with? what have you not bothered with? 
  
• do you dig the live concert webcasts? watch them live? watch them later? 
  
• do you like my weird animation collaborations? do you hate them? what about my documentary-type things (like cuba)?
  
• do you get irritated when there are too many cover songs...or do you wait for people to die just so jherek and i can weep over string arrangements for our fallen mentors?
  
• do you wish i would just work on music and songwriting and post demos? what about something that's new and old, like Piano is Evil - where i covered MYSELF?
  
• or, do you really - at the core of your being - not care whether i record and post a ukulele song about heartbreak, write a blog about vagina politics, edit together a podcast/interview about songwriting....or post a handheld iphone video tutorial about how to tie-dye everyday fabrics (okay, i swear i won't do that) as long as it's some kind of creation from the bottom of my dark-light soul?

talk to me. i always assume the latter is mostly true, but i also like to know what blows your dress up. you don't need to answer any of these questions specifically....they're just to get you thinking and talking to me about how you've felt about The Whole Thing.

while we're at it....it'd be great if you could browse EVERYTHING that i've put out via the patreon since the very start....

here is a list of ALL THE THINGS:

http://amandapalmer.net/patreon-things/

if you can believe it, i've put out FORTY-THREE. (what).

read/scan....it'll refresh your brain. (and for you brand-new patrons, you'll see everything you've missed in the past two years).

..........

i just went to re-draft this post as a poll, but it felt stupid to say "do you like x, y, or  z?" 

i'm not an art machine. i'm a artist-person here behind a computer, reading a bunch of comments. 

i make a lot of different things. just talk to me as if i'm a person, and tell me the truth.

...........

mind you, i'll probably ignore anybody who tells me what to do.

that's who i am.

but like most multitude-containing beings, i need to know what you think so i can ignore it and keep working. i'm weird that way.

and...some things really do make a difference. if the majority of people here are annoyed by something i'd probably take that critical feedback to heart. or do more of it. who knows.

so tell me, i'm all ears, and i'm plotting out the next year.

above all else: i appreciate so much that you are here and that you are supporting me so fervently. 

you cannot know how much it means, especially when things are hard and i'm somewhere faraway feeling delicate and alone.

i really love you all. 

i'm readin'. go.

xxx

a

---------THE NEVER-ENDING AS ALWAYS---------

1. if you’re a patron, please click through to comment on this post. at the very least, if you’ve read it, indicate that by using the heart symbol.

2. see All the Things i've made so far on patreon: http://amandapalmer.net/patreon-things

3. join the official AFP-patron facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/afpland

4. AFP-patreon-related questions? ask away, someone will answer:
patronhelp@amandapalmer.net