hi i love you - and I NEED YOUR FULL NAME FOR THE ARTBOOK. give it to me please. (Patreon)

hello loves.....

i have a lot for you tonight. 

i am beside myself with glee that there are so many new patrons here. new folks: i hope this barrage doesn't disorient you. 

i have things. i need things. you have things. you need things.

let's do this.

**MOST IMPORTANT: I'D LIKE TO INCLUDE ALL YOUR ACTUAL NAMES IN THE BACK OF THE ARTBOOK. I AM TRYING TO PUT EVERY SINGLE CURRENT PATRON'S NAME - YES, ALL ALMOST 14,000 OF YOU! - IN BOTH PRINT EDITIONS.

I NEED YOUR NAME BY DECEMBER 22ND AT 5PM EST! please use this form and follow instructions. YOUR NAME WILL NOT BE PRINTED IN THE BOOK UNLESS YOU FILL IN THE GOOGLE FORM, and we'll be using your emails to cross-check that you're actually a patron!**

fill in the form/add your name HERE:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd5ruc0IoOMgd3YE7gVbT6JJJndSXuRFoF-81eV622-jV6GWg/viewform?usp=sf_link 

i'll be checking comments to make sure this form is working, first few people to successfully fill it out, let me know!!! i'm readin' comments.

......

SECOND...lots of people have been asking, sorry if it wasn't clear: YOU HAVE UNTIL DECEMBER 31st TO ORDER THE PATRON-ONLY EDITION OF THE BOOK, AND THE PATRON-ONLY VINYL. the patron-only link to get all that is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/patron-only-will-23250701

more below.

....

OKAY 

breath

greetings from woodstock. i gave ash an early birthday present tonight. it was a "best of the monkees" vinyl i found last week in catskill in a used record shop. 

he looked at it and said: "that's george. and paul. and john. and ringo." 

i said: "no, that's the monkees. that's, er, peter. and davey jones. and i don't remember the name of the other two." 

"no", he insisted, "that's the beatles". 

"okay. that's the beatles. but it's not the beatles. it's the monkees."

"it is not the monkees. it is the beatles. is it the monkees?"

"yes, it is the monkees".

"no it is the beatles."

and so we listened to the beatles play "last train to clarksville" on his fisher price record player.

i'm sorry it's been a few days since i've written. so so so much has happened and i've also been under the gun of the book deadline. yes: the very book i'm selling, I AM ACTUALLY IN THE PROCESS OF WRITING IT....or at least editing all the text. it's so good. and it feels so weird to be writing it while seeing the finished (faux) book in images on my website. but these are the times we live in. fake news abounds.

before i say anything else.....

i wanted to WELCOME about a thousand (wtf!!!) new people to the patreon...WELCOME!!! 

WELCOME!!!! WELCOME!!!!

it's nice here! people comment and don't yell at each other! there's cake! there's hugs! there's art! there's boobs! there's cogent conversation! WHO KNEW? you knew. that's why you came here. anyway...please introduce yourself int he comments below. we like meeting you. where are you from? why did you join? WHO ARE YOU HIDING FROM? all that. talk to us.

it's 11 pm here...i have two days left of solo parenthood before neil gets back from england. i've been writing all day every day for about four days straight in order to try to get this text in on time, and it's all been taking be down the dark / light memory lane of the past few years...

i've been reading old patreon posts, looking at old comments that some of you left on post for "the ride" and "drowning in the sound", and i've been getting positively weepy and tearful in my little writing cave...looking at everything we've done....thinking about how profoundly the patreon has changed the course of my art, my life, my songs, my understanding of humanity.

the test for the book is almost 20,000 words, which, strangely, is over a quarter of the length of "the art of asking". 

it's long. i had a lot to say, and i spent half the introduction talking about how i didn't have time to say what i actually wanted to say.

and i thought i'd post a little tidbit of the book here for you. 

mind you, this isn't finished-finished, it's still being copy-edited. my dear, dear friend, jamy ian  swiss, who also helped me slog through many (MANY) drafts of The Art of Asking, is lending his hand as we speak to the text i've written for this book. he's making it 75% better. he's a fucking champion editor, and he understands my brain. 

here, for you to read. 

i really loved this little bit of the intro:

John Lennon was right: Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans. And for an artist, art is what happens when you let your bizarre, unbidden, unpredictable life steer you into creating things that you weren’t expecting to make.

Art is what happens if you’re able to hold fast – with one angry, trembling, hand – to your art-mirror, the one that reflects you, your trials, your thoughts, your audience, your insights, your attempts to try to figure out and express What It All Might Fucking Mean. In that art-mirror, all of the blurry, strikingly-similar self-portraits you have ever drawn of yourself merge into one constantly-shifting image – you – and, as an artist, you gaze into it and alternate between being horrified and fascinated with this image as you stumble down the un-illuminated road of Planlessness. 

In your other hand, you try to hang onto Real Life. You clutch a wailing baby and an overstuffed suitcase and a copy of the New York Times that you haven’t had time to read (because, dammit, you’re a Good Citizen and Must Be Informed) and a pot of burning rice and a cell phone that is buzzing with unbidden text messages: your friend is dying, your Facebook account has been hacked, your pregnancy must be terminated, your chickens have been slaughtered by coyotes in the night, your marriage is collapsing, your connecting flight has been canceled, your ex just shot himself in the head, the right wing has read your stupid blog-poem about the Boston bomber and is emailing murder threats, the fetus you’re finally happy about hosting may or may not be deformed, your mother is pissed you haven't called in so long.

You read these text messages in one hand while trying to hold your well-polished but increasingly heavy and irritating art-mirror in the other, with a growing sense of resentful detachment – as if the text messages are somebody else’s newsfeed, as if the art-mirror is a heavy curse that you never asked to carry in the first place.

And you keep running down the road. If you’re lucky, you don’t drop the mirror. Sometimes you look at the mirror and you’re like: Why the fuck am I carrying you when I have all this other shit to carry? And sometimes you drop the mirror in exhaustion, and fall to your knees. And you drop the suitcase, and the child, and the phone, and the pot of burned rice, and you simply have a cry, knowing that you’re just too goddamn tired to do life, much less make any artful sense out of what’s happening.

Then you get up and start running again. 

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

yep. that's mah book.

...........

this quartet of photos is in the fold-out centerfold of the book.

(all these photos by kahn and selesnick, also below)

i mean....this is the book, and the music.

everything is here, all the themes of the album: attachment, grief,  release, motherhood, miscarriage, abortion...joy....

freedom manifest. 

i just finished writing a long section of the introduction where i delve into this shoot day in particular, and how incredibly therapeutic and healing it was - because i had the right collaborators. 

..........

i've also been posting some of the other book photos on social media (mostly twitter/instagram, because fuck facebook)...

here's everything that's up so far:

so much of this album and the accompanying photo series grew out of the  winding ropes of newly-connected sisterhood. coco & i both went  through our own adventures in miscarriage while i was writing these  songs. we took turns mourning for one another, we took turns guiding the  other one through the dark and back  into the light. the same thing happened when i started discussing  abortion more openly: so many women in my life drew closer to me in  those moments, as if we were part of an underground railroad of  information. those who came closer to me were deeply held. the tables  were often turned quickly. 

recently, i’ve watched so many women separate; driven from one another  by competition, comparison, scarcity. but also, i’ve watched the  reaction: vines growing deeper & higher as we communicate more  deeply about the real shit we've experienced. sharing the truth is  unwinding us. 

i’m learning a lot, through the writing, about how therapeutic this whole album has been..the writing, the recording, photoshoots, the  collaborating. all of the photos tell a story, and the complete album +  book feels like a small open-book personal revolution of mine.

........

..."you don't need me here to cut you free".

this above shot was going to be the cover of the album...until i decided it was better to be naked. 

and this is the image for the public soft-cover edition of the book....this was also a contender for the record cover, but i coudn't handle the idea of it being so SMALL online and on CDs (WAIT UNTIL YOU SEE IT BIG, there is SO MUCH DETAIL) and so i figured the book was the best place to put it. at least that way it'll be twelve inches of glory. :)

and......

THIS IS WHAT THE PATRON-EDITION BOOK IS GOING TO LOOK LIKE WHEN IT IS FINITO. the copy-editors are now doing their things and i'm spending all day tomorrow at andrew nelson (the designer)'s house...doing layout. i'll take some pictures....

it's all the things. all the things you sent to be burned. all the things have not been burned yet. we are planning a video shoot. so i can capture the burning of all the things.

and i saw this tweet today, which made me so fucking happy:

WHY YES

.....

okay now....

YOU HAVE HAD QUESTIONS...

and i'm here to answer.

the biggest question i forgot to address in the last post to patrons was about DEADLINE TO ORDER THE PATRON-ONLY HARDCOVER EDITION.

THANK YOU FOR ASKING!

the patron-only hardcover edition of the artbook is available for pre-order until DECEMBER 31st. at that point we HAVE TO PRINT those copies if we want them to be in your hands by the time the album comes out...which is important to me. this book is basically extended liner notes. i want you to have everything at once.

this hardback patron-only edition will have a unique cover image (alllll the thingsssss) and the image will sit atop a beautiful cloth-border on the cover. it'll also come with a special print and letter from (and signed by) yours truly. it's beautiful.

that's it, mio patrons.....you have up until december 31st to order it, THEN WE PRINT. so far about 1,000 of you have ordered it (which is amazing). we are PRINTING TO ORDER. if 1,400 order it, we print only 1,4000. that's it. once the hardcover is gone, it's gone. the soft-cover version will be available online (probably in early jan) and on tour once i'm out there.

to the other pressing question:

YES, ALL PATRONS WILL GET THE BOOK AS A PDF. when it's time, sometime this spring, i will "thing" and email all the patrons a beautiful PDF of the book. i'm going to work for the rest f the winter on a special PDF version will shit-tons of extra content (many, many more photos can fit in a PDF than can fit in a physical book ).
i think you're gonna love this fuckin book.

and reminder: GO TO THE GOOGLE FORM AND FILL YOUR NAME IN.

i don't care if you're buying the hardback book or softcover or not. you helped me make it, and you helped fund it and i want your name in there.

here's the form link again. deadline: DEC 22nd, 5 pm EST. i beg of you.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd5ruc0IoOMgd3YE7gVbT6JJJndSXuRFoF-81eV622-jV6GWg/viewform?usp=sf_link 

..........

MEANWHILE, VINYL...

you also still have time to get the patron-only edition of the vinyl record - which will be pressed on midnight blue vinyl and come with a signed 12" poster insert. THE DEADLINE TO ORDER VINYL IS ALSO DECEMBER 31st.

i'll send you all a pokey post on the 30th or so to remind you of the final deadline.

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

OKAY???

especially if you are NEW and you've been wondering HOW TO GET ALL THIS SHIT, DO NOT WORRY, again, THE LINK IS HERE:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/patron-only-will-23250701

ALL THE OTHER SHIT, for the public.....

the tour dates, the regular vinyl, the shirts and CDs and bundles and all that...is all on my website. here:

https://nointermission.amandapalmer.net/ 

.......

everyone....i fucking love you. thank you.

i am so tired. it's been a week.

everything else is going smashingly except that i havent slept much since last tuesday...and i had to play hookey from writing book text today to go and buy (literally) 34 christmas presents. thank you, local bookstore. you saved my life.

and the tour tickets are off to a rollicking start, many of the shows are heading towards sell-out and i'm thinking hard about what to play, how to play it, and how to figure out some patron-only events around the shows...

i'm also trying to figure out how to do some sick patron-only listening parties for the record (bring your own sleeping bag and kleenex) ... more on that soon.

this is the christmas tree that attacked me the other day. we chopped it down in the forest and then it bit my cornea. i couldn't see for about an hour. 

my eye is healing, thank you. it all felt very david lynch-y for a second there.

i love you and the tree loves you

xx
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. new to my music and TOTALLY OVERWHELMED? TAKE A WALK THROUGH AMANDALANDA….we made a basic list of my greatest hits n stuff on this lovely page: http://amandalanda.amandapalmer.net/

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