hate, blogging, and other realizations of the day. (Patreon)

dearly beloved. (patron-only post) happy monday, greetings from the pregnant lady in the cafe, stieg larsson's little-known tome about impending motherhood. here i go down the rabbit hole. FIRST OFF: (must i always say that?), holy shit, thank you to the 400 or so of you who've already answered my question about webcasting/closed/open. what's most thrilling is that there does seem to be a majority, but some of you have VERY different opinions. i feel like a goddam congressman. and i love it. mostly because, while it WILL be impossible to make everybody 100% happy, i think everything is willing to see this system create itself under the collective wisdom and that's just groovy as fuck. biggest takeaways: -ALL of you are okay with making Things open to public. MOST of you would like some content to be exclusive/pre-visible-hearable to the patrons. check. -ALL of you seem enthused about webcasting the UK/london show (which just sold out and we are adding a second one!!!) -however, MANY of you don't want webcasting to become the Main Thing released here. don't worry. that is not my plan. i asked about london because it'll probably be my last live concert webcast for a WHILE. breathe out. -MANY OF YOU, esp on twitter, have asked that we use survery monkey/a polling service so that you don't need to write long comments (and for those who are shy, don't want to comment at all). this is doable and the next time i have a YES/NO? question, i'll use a polling service - easy. although in these early days its REALLY NICE being able to read the 400 comments and get a more intimate, nuances sense of WHAT YOU THINK AND WHY. we can always do both.... and lastly: -YOU ALL SEEM VERY AWESOME. i'm, again, impressed and astounded that all y'all are so fucking articulate and smart and kind. i feel blessed to be doing this experiment with you guys. call me crazy but i don't think your average pop star would get this level of considered, intellectual and deliberate response, and i don't take it for granted. MEANWHILE, if you want some deep thoughts.... this is the sort of thing that i would have blogged about back in the days of 2005, before social media turned everything into more of a circus shitshow. it's been interesting, using this as a closed blogging platform, seeing as i finally starting using facebook (on what other platform can i post an article from the guardian and IMMEDIATELY see 100+ people yelling at each other about rape?) about a year and change ago. the abilty to post whatever whenever on facebook was THRILLING - not having to format a blog! having a bizarre built-on audience who were more likely to comment! and all that. but again - the loss of being able to blog just to the fanbase, without having to edit my thoughts, has kind of been lost. as you may know if you read the book (or know because you've' been there), the dresden dolls had a "hate mail" section of our website (not shit - the most trafficked page for years) where we would post our bad reviews and the nasty emailes that came in...pre twitter and FB. that being said.....i'd like to share this. i'm not linking it, because i don't want to give the author the satisfaction of the clicks. i'm a cutting and pasting bastard. this review came out in the washington post from the FIRST show of the US tour. here's the thing: i deliberately didn't hire a publicist for this tour. we didn't send a press release out about the dates, we decided to keep everything underground and just use the blog, mailer, twitter and facebook to sell the shows. it also means we didn't invite any reviewers to the shows. so unless someone BOUGHT a ticket to the show or got in through the venue, there were no magazines, no newspapers at the show. i did that on purpose. i was happy to keep these shows in the south in the family and not do a publicity blitz. it also means that this woman from the washington post had to find out about the show, buy a ticket, and come review it of her own volition. the show in DC (our first night of tour) was STELLAR. my voice was (in my estimation, and i'm a harsh critic of my own vocals) was in top form because i hadn't been ravaging it on the road, and the the crowd was fantastic. i signed for about 500 people after the show. all of them said it was one of their favorites. there was nothing that felt off, and believe me, sometimes things can feel off. this show felt magnificent. and this is, to date, one of the nastiest reviews i've EVER gotten. read away, and then i have some reflections i would love to share. breathe in....! ............ Amanda Palmer is an expert storyteller who’s less skilled at singing By Ally Schweitzer April 5 Musician Amanda Palmer is gifted at many things: She’s a thoughtful writer, a mesmerizing storyteller, an innovative businesswoman and an expert (if unintentional) stoker of Internet controversy. So, does it matter that she’s a lousy singer? Palmer stumbled into infamy in 2012, when the former member of cabaret-rock duo Dresden Dolls raised $1.2 million in a Kickstarter campaign to pay for her artistic endeavors, then asked her fans to play with her onstage for free. Journalists and musicians assailed her online for months. Yet Palmer managed to turn her concept of fan-driven patronage into a popular TED talk and a book that critics called well intentioned but a little tone-deaf. In such an unequal society, some asked, why should white ladies married to wealthy celebrities — Palmer wed author Neil Gaiman in 2011 — be entitled to ask regular folks for anything? Palmer is entitled to nothing, of course, but her supporters seem giddy to help her anyway. The truth is, she could bottle her urine and sell it to her fans for airfare, so enamored they are of her work. But are they rubes or allies? Saturday at the District’s Lincoln Theatre, on the first stop of Palmer’s wryly named “Barefoot in the Kitchen” solo tour (she’s pregnant), it didn’t seem as if Palmer was fleecing anyone. No, she can’t sing. She never could. She made two studio albums with Dresden Dolls and two solid, albeit self-indulgent, solo records without singing well. Palmer’s fans probably hit more potholes on their way to the show than Palmer hit notes all night — and few cared. What they love is Palmer’s frank and witty self, and she gave them hours of it in a show so intimate that I wondered if tickets had been released to the public or slipped under her fans’ doors in hand-stamped envelopes. To an outsider, a haircut by tweezers would have been more enjoyable than many of Palmer’s songs Saturday. They sounded lyrically overwritten and musically unfinished, more like essays set to piano battery — or worse, ukulele strumming. But the audience members awarded the songs with whoops and hollers. They’re not suckers. They’re just like anybody in love: a little crazy. If Palmer is going to win over her critics, it will be with her personality, not her ukulele. She took requests and slung zingers, usually making herself the punch line: She called her one-woman routine a harbinger of the “next boring phase” of her career and ’fessed up to her mistakes on stage (“I had all these plans to practice, but then I didn’t”). She delivered her best lyrics with chuckles that seemed unscripted, even if she has played those numbers a zillion times before. Palmer’s detractors might call her act overpraised, and they’re not completely wrong; many of her songs need more time in the oven. But for a few hours on Saturday, she didn’t force anyone in the room to listen to her. They sat there, smiling, waiting to soak up the work of art they paid to see: Palmer herself. ..................................... ....breathe out!!! so. i turned off my google alerts during the book release blitz and never turned them back on. in general 80% of the press i get is great, 20% is critical, and if i'm on tour or sensitive or unable to cope with extra baggage, it's not worth the 80% love-hug to deal with the trauma of the 20% hate-bomb, so i avoid it all completely. i made a DEAL with my book editor jamy that i wouldn't read ANY book reviews, and i stuck to it. i have to say, it was liberating. i stumbled across this two nights after it came out, in bed with whitney late one night after one of the next stops on tour. the inevitable happened: i got pissed. i told whitney i'd been slammed, and she made sad sounds. i texted neil. (he had, of course, already read it. i don't know HOW he manages to read EVERYTHING ON THE INTERNET but basically he fits it in. anytime in teh past week i've been like "did you hear...?" "did you read about...." "did you see..." he's like yep. yep. yep. and i'm like HOW DO YOU HAVE TIME TO KNOW EVERYTHING ON THE INTERNET and he shrugs. i think he has gnomes working in his brain). i texted jamy. they made sad sounds back at me and made me feel a little better by pointing out how insanely angry and jealous the article sounded - not to mention not terribly well-written. i harumphed my way to sleep. why did this woman - who clearly hated me before writing this slam - want to come review my show? what was the motivation? it pained me, actually, imagining her sitting there for the entirety of the concert, pen in hand, looking around at the fanbase, hating them, looking at me, hating me, and basically being unwilling to enjoy what everybody else seemed to able to enjoy. it was just....weird. it hurt the most to see her slamming the fanbase. i felt this way when the kickstarter happened. the articles that opined "TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND PEOPLE ARE FUCKING STUPID ENOUGH TO GIVE AMANDA PALMER MONEY", etc. it was like: wait, *i* don't think they're stupid. they're smart. they're buying a record they want. what makes them stupid? and why are you coming into our house and yelling at us in our own kitchen? this killed me: "They sounded lyrically overwritten and musically unfinished, more like essays set to piano battery — or worse, ukulele strumming. But the audience members awarded the songs with whoops and hollers. They’re not suckers. They’re just like anybody in love: a little crazy." it's like this woman was looking around the room going "HOW COULD ALL THESE PEOPLE BE LIKING THIS MUSIC WHEN I DO NOT? THEY MUST BE CRAZY, BECAUSE I AM NOT CRAZY." i couldn't sleep, and so i looked the journalist up on twitter. she was the angry angry type. that made me feel better. she didn't just hate me, she hated everybody. i noticed that her headline was actually a great book jacker quote, and i sent off a note to "the art of asking" publishers, who were thrilled to be able to put "amanda palmer is an expert storyteller" - the washington post ... on future editions the book jacket. that made me feel better. i tweeted the angsty journalist to thank her for the quote. that was probably a stupid idea. poor gal. but still. i played a show that night. it was still bugging the shit out of me. so i talked about it on stage, to get it off my chest. it was, i said, indeed like someone coming into your house for a party and marching around declaring "I DONT LIKE THE FOOD HERE. I DONT LIKE THE GUESTS. EW. AND I DONT LIKE MUSIC YOU'RE PLAYING. AND I DONT LIKE YOUR COUCH OR YOUR DRAPES!!! WHY WOULD YOU HAVE DRAPES LIKE THAT!?? AND I REALLY REALLY DONT LIKE YOU YOU DESIGNED YOUR KITCHEN." and you're like....wait....ok. that's fine. but then why are you here? why don't you leave this house and this party so you don't have to be offended by the drapes and the kitchen, yo? and sharing that onstage, i have to say, made me feel better. and then something really extraordinary happened. it was the next morning, and i was still letting this review eat me. whitney was grabbing the car so we could leave for the next city, and i was crossing the street to get morning coffee and snacks for the three hour drive we had ahead. and i was harumphing in my mind ("should i call this journalist out for being a troll? can i make her life miserable somehow? should i blog? should i ignore her? no, amanda, that's bad. she's an asshole, but she's in pain. man, why would someone be such an asshole? don't be an asshole yourself, pity her assholeness. why are you spending your morning thinking about this?...etc)....and waiting at this huge divider in the road, jaywalking, and i thought about how i've been more careful about crossing the street since i've been pregnant. not THAT much more careful, but you know, i feel this sense of protectiveness about my body that i haven't felt before. it's fascinating me. and it's hard to say how much of it is intellectual and how much of it is just biology kicking in and going PROTECT WOMB PROTECT WOMB CARRY ON THE SPECIES PROTECT WOMB but it's real, and it's there. and i realized that this thinking, this swarm and swirl of negative thinking and fantasy revenge-thoughts was all, actually, defining my existence at that moment. if i was going to soak my brain in a bath of angst and fear, like the poor journalist herself, it was actually going to somehow trickle down the fetus. and in that moment i made this weird connection: it wasn't much different from not wanting to jaywalk without looking. if i wanted this kid to be okay, if i wanted them to not be bathed in the wrong way of thinking, i was going to have to let it go. i was going to have to forget about playing the angst-and-revenge game in my head and just get on with the actual work of life, the positive. and that was the only way out, if i wanted to be a good fetus-carrier. evolution, or nothing. so i (mostly) let it go. letting things go is hard. even now, re-reading that article, i bristle. and i think about the woman who wrote it, and i want to give her a fucking hug. not just because she sounds miserable, but because she actually forced me into a corner that made me a better person..i think. so thank you, ally schweizer. onwards and upwards, we all. funny coda: as i exited the coffee shop having had all these realizations, a woman came up to me in the street. she had no idea i was in town, she hadn't known about the show, but she had just finished reading "the art of asking". she told me she was about to get married, that the book changed her life, and she asked if i could hug her. we embraced, and i gave her an extra squeeze on behalf of ally schweizer. it was a perfect day. love x a