real love, a giant blue dick and other catch-up. (Patreon)

hallo loves

here's me in a bathroom in new york yesterday morning after a secret photo shoot. i won't say why, but it involved a museum and a bowler hat :D

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super-quickie-dorky: neil (gaiman, my babydaddy, That Guy) is going to be on THE BIG BANG THEORY tonight! he flew out to LA two weeks ago to film a funny sweet & ultra-dorky cameo. from their twitter: "Writing superstar @NeilHimself puts Stuart’s store on the map while Raj steals Penny’s credit for mapping a new star on an all-new The #BigBangTheory episode tonight at 8/7c on CBS & CBS All Access: http://bit.ly/2xsYwod".

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i have been loving reading your comments....especially when you include WHERE you're writing from, your offices, your cafes, your homes, hearing about your children, your hospitals and your parks and babies and dogs and the constant reminder that we're all just stardust attached to this spinning orb trying to make due day to day. please continue....even if i can't respond to every comment (i can't) i'm reading and nodding and knowing the landscape behind your comments makes this all feel so much realer.

as for me, i'm in bed in woodstock and it's afternoon and i'm so tired i think i may stay here until night and just maybe eat some toast if i can muster the energy....current listening, an old favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkSERbdl39Q 

because? i re-read this new yorker profile on leonard a few days ago when i was researching songwriting quotes for the podcast and just started weeping. maybe it was the PMS but maybe it was him saying: “I have no idea what I am doing,” he said. “It’s hard to describe. As I approach the end of my life, I have even less and less interest in examining what have got to be very superficial evaluations or opinions about the significance of one’s life or one’s work. I was never given to it when I was healthy, and I am less given to it now.”

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okay...FIRST a quickie for the new yorkers...i just said yes to doing a BENEFIT for a little children's schoolhouse/project this coming monday at symphony space. called "Peace of Mind: a Refuge from Trauma" it’s with some of my favorite people: susan cain (watch her TED talk about the power of introversion, it's amazing), dar williams (an incredible songwriter who i've admired for many years), and sharon salzburg (whose new book, "real love" i wrote an endorsement for, & it made it onto the back of the book, hoorah)....all for a great cause:

“Still Waters in a Storm is a one-room schoolhouse, a reading and writing sanctuary for children ages 5-17 in the neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn. The structure of our meetings is the same in English, Spanish, Latin and Musical Notation: children and grown-ups study a text together, each writes something inspired by the text, then they take turns reading their writings out loud while everyone listens in a sacred hush. The one rule is, ‘Everyone listens to everyone.’ The simple grace of this ritual changes lives for the better.”

beautiful, right??

i'll be playing a couple songs on the ukulele, nothing huge, but i imagine it will be a powerful evening with a powerful group of mindful people....it may be what you need in your life. sharon especially is one of my favorite teachers/buddhists/meditators and i've never shared a stage with her.

it's THIS Monday, April 23, 2018 at 7:00pm
@ Symphony Space (which is in manhattan, note, not brooklyn)

here's the ticket link:

https://www.symphonyspace.org/event/10065/Music/peace-of-mind-a-refuge-from-trauma?spektrix_bounce=true 

tickets are $75 and $50 for children/students/seniors. 

BUT, the venue offered me a large handful of about 50 free tickets since the space is far from full...SO i am about to post an email address to the $5+ patrons only and whoever emails first gets on the guestlist (and you can also donate any amount if you wanna when you get there). if you want a crack at them, up your pledge now and come and grab em. and $5 folks, watch for that post, i'll send it right after this one.

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while i'm talking about sharon's book, i'm not sure i ever gave it the proper plug it deserved. it's called REAL LOVE and it's a fantastic deep-dive into what separates real authentic love from superficial love.....

"You are a person worthy of love. You don’t have to do anything to deserve all the love in the world.

Real Love is a creative tool kit of mindfulness exercises and meditation techniques that help you to truly engage with your present experience and create deeper love relationships with yourself, your partner, friends and family, and with life itself."

believe me, i read it, and it's beautiful. 

here is my quote on the back (and do you see susan there? LOOK AT THE SMALL SMALL WORLD)

“This expert’s guidebook cuts deftly through layers of modern confusion to the core of what it means to love and be loved. Sharon Salzberg has penned a treasure-house of practical tools and rituals mined from her own tenure mending wounded hearts in the trenches of human relationships.” —Amanda Palmer

you can get it here.

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ALSO, for the world, even though this is happening in new york:

on APRIL 28th, i'm going to be a part of maria "brainpickings" popova's "universe in verse: a celebration of nature through poetry" at pioneerworks in brooklyn. this is the same benefit gig i did last year that gave birth to neil's feminism-science-manifesto "the mushroom hunters" and we may be treated to another neil-poem.

it's SUPER sold out, but it will be livestreamed on kickstarter ! so you can tune in to see me, maria, zoe keating, a.m. homes, john cameron mitchell (<3), sean ono lennon, jewel, and many others thrown down. and a secret for patrons: i'm going to be arranging a special cover song with zoe AND I WILL BE THINGING IT. it's a, er, goth surprise.

here's more about the gig, the line-up, and the livestream (which will be at 7 pm new york time on the 28th:

https://pioneerworks.org/programs/the-universe-in-verse-2018/ 

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NOW, life:

i was on tour with jason in the northwest; i went straight to the TED conference; i flew straight to new york city and dove into creating my first podcast. i haven't had a real day off and my brain is MUSH and it's even weirder because this upcoming podcast is all about BRAINS.

two nights ago, right after landing in NYC, i had the pleasure of sitting in the audience and watching neil in conversation with laurie anderson...one of my true musical (and personal) heroes. this is the 3rd time they've done a public talk together, and i'm like, can't we finally just have her over for dinner so you guys can make actual friends? it's weird like that, being an artist who's famous. you wind up making friends with people on stages and then you're all too busy to be friends. time to fix that.

here they are at the 92nd street Y...

when we were at TED, we were given a tour of "the void", which was a virtual reality demo. you're strapped up with 3 other people into vests and goggles and gloves and you more or less walk through a virtual set...but it was all star wars and guns and shooting and dying and i was like SERIOUSLY FUCK THIS. this is what we are going to do with the technology we create? i wound up spending most of the time in there staring at my gloved hand like a person tripping on acid while neil, oskar eustis from the public theater, and our friend taylor milsal all shot guns at storm troopers. oskar said the best part of being in the virtual reality game was looking over and seeing a storm-trooper standing still, being shot at and not caring, and staring at her hand.

that was me.

the conversation between neil and laurie was all over the place, but highlights included laurie talking about a new piece of virtual reality she's working on called "heart surgery", in which the user has the experience of being strapped to a gurney, raced down a hospital hall with all the beeps and yelling and stress, wheeled into a surgery, given anesthesia and then a SURGEON LITERALLY CUTS OUT YOUR HEART AND LEAVES IT ON YOUR CHEST and you feel it there going thump-thump thump-thump and then all of a sudden the surgeon looks at his watch and says OH SHIT, gotta go! and there you are, left on this surgery table with your heart on your chest, and laurie anderson walks in...and starts telling you a story...and i'm like

YESSSSSS. more of THAT please.

if you didn't notice, i set some goals on the patreon: when i hit 15,000 patrons i'm going to cover any song you guys vote on...naked. true, gonna do it. i also set a goal that when i hit 100,000 patrons i will make a video on the moon. 

i should set a goal on this patreon that's somewhere in-between (maybe 50,000 patrons) and when i hit THAT i'll probably have enough funding to make a truly incredible virtual reality song/video/piece of theater. i imagine it will involve me reading to you and weeping on you with virtual salt tears (tears not included).

ok gonna do that. ok just did it.

i have a huge draft of a blog about my tour with jason, and i have a draft of my experiences as TED, and i'm generally just behind as all get out.

i am also working in the background to unleash a short film that i've been working on for almost two years now and it's almost ready to send to you all. it's really exciting.

here's a still or two....LITTLE AMANDA....!!!! i am 23 here.

BIG AMANDA....i am 41 here.

....do we see a resonance with leonard?

ARE YOU EXCITED ?

i am. this film is something nobody will be expecting, it's so weird.

and now that i've realized that "blue penis" managed it's way into those screnshots, i may has well share that too.

DID YOU KNOW THERE IS A GIANT BLUE PENIS IN STOCKHOLM RIGHT NOW??? 

https://boingboing.net/2018/04/13/big-blue-penis-painted-legally.html 

please, stockholm patrons, we want selfies. apparently it's going to be taken down because even though it's legal people are like WHOA A DICK and as felix pointed out on my faceborg page when i posted it: this penis isn't circumcised, which seems unfair, and i think someone should go graffiti it.

GET ON IT PEOPLE.

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i think that's all for now. i can't top a giant blue dick so i'm gonna sign off

i love and appreciate all of you so much.

xxxx

AFP

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