and now...a conversation with someone who hates me. {official thing} (Patreon)

(patron-only)

hallo loves. 

love from the woods, where i've been holed up for a few weeks now. chop wood, carry water, drop off child at nursery, pick child up from nursery, try to figure out tour and album promo in the hours in-between, cook soup, contemplate existence. i'm working away on my end-of-month State-O-Althings for you, i'll go in deeper about what this month has been all about.

meanwhile, as promised....i have quite a Thing for you today. 

this is a real tweet from four years ago.

.... recently, i talked to this person. 

and it was....well, a Thing worth thinging.

i'm really really proud of moments like this: things that didn't have to exist and came into being through a wonderful synchronicity...and to me, things like this (deep dives into important subjects with no commercial $$ potential) are exactly WHY this patreon is a god-send. it used to be that i was really drawn to doing things like this, and many team and life-hours would be spent making them.....with time & money out of pocket. now i don't have to lose money to make art & have conversations that are important. 

so...thank you for being my patrons and making it happen. it's amazing.

and....i also like this work because it's HARD. sitting down to a long conversation with someone who actually tweeted: "i don't think there's a celebrity i hate more than amanda palmer" was not an easy thing to do. 

but it's something i really love doing: i consider the jujitsu of love and hater-disarmament one of my main accidental jobs, it's an education that i didn't expect to be working at fulltime when i first decided to become a professional musician.

i thought it would just be about, y'know, music and making it for people.

i never thought or considered that a huge part of my life would be about dealing with people who hate me, openly.

if you've read my book, you know how difficult 2012 and 2013 was for me. in the wake of my kickstarter and "theatre is evil" coming out, with the boston bombing poem on top of that, there were days when i literally couldn't keep up with how many people were openly airing their deep hatred of me. it really rocked my little world, emotionally and physically, to open my browsers in the morning and see literally hundreds of tweets about what a talentless, hairy, greedy cunt i was. if that sentence made you squirm, imagine seeing that written about YOU. all day, every day, for weeks. that was my life in 2012.

i stopped my life and stopped being a musician for a while. the hate had gotten too hard to handle and i had to do something to heal. i also felt so deeply misunderstood, to the point where i would walk into a coffee shop in my hometown and wonder if the people serving me my coffee were secretly thinking "there's that talentless, greedy cunt". it was unhealthy.

so i followed the bouncing ball of opportunity....i gave a TED talk explaining myself and trying to get the world to understand that wasn't a bad person....and then i wrote a book. the hate wasn't just this accidental annoyance i had to deal with for a few days: it literally changed my life, set my creativity on a totally new course for a matter of years, and galvanized me into being an entirely different kind of person. a bigger person, i like to think, a kinder person, a more empathetic person, and a person who's done down to the bottom of the barrel of hate and seen what caused it and how to deal with it. it gave me a kind of infinite patience, and a set of compassionate shields and swords that i didn't own back in 2012, when i thought life was just pretty dandy and everyone was pretty nice and whatever and whatever amen.

i really love this new person i have become, covered in scars, covered in the battle-wounds of all that hatred.

i first heard about dylan's podcast on twitter a few years ago - somebody kind and helpful probably pointed it out. with a title like "conversations with people who hate me" i was not going to turn away, and i took a poke around what he was doing, saw that it was absolutely amazing, and congratulated him over the twitter-verse. that was the first time we had any contact.

then, last march, i was at the main TED conference in vancouver and i saw dylan deliver THIS TED talk called "how i turn online comments into positive offline conversations".
i gotta say, i think TED bungled the title. TED editorial makes up the titles for these talks, FYI, not the speakers. i know that because i was LITERALLY in the TED editing room the day after i delivered "the art of asking" and they were like, "we're thinking of calling it How A Street Performer Learned About Giving and Receiving" and i was like that's a fucking terrible title how about something short and punchy and general, like, i dunno, "the art of asking". i think they should have called dylan's TED talk "how to learn to love a hater by calling them up."

but i digress.

it's rare for me to see someone and immediately jump up and down going: TRIBE MEMBER! FRIEND!!! FRIEND!!!! but in dylan's case, that was my reaction, and i ambushed him in the halls of TED going: "you are my soul and you are my hero. thank you for doing this". and we hugged and we exchanged emails and i put it on the top of my list of things to do to try to join forces with him for a good old-fashioned hater-talk.

one note: some Official Things are public, most of them, actually, and a few select things are patron-only. this post and Thing Itself is patron-only for a few very deliberate reasons, and i wanna explain why so you understand.

this is one of the few Official Things that i've put out that's a true co-production. i hitched my star to the back of dylan's amazing podcast for this one...and for that, i'm very grateful. but with my time at an all-time low nowadays, i am really trying to get the most bang for the hour and buck, and so i told dylan i would do his podcast if we could Thing it here on patreon AND do our own little internal dialogue for the patrons...and about the process. so that's what we did. and in order to feel TOTALLY open during that extra-conversation with dylan....i enjoyed knowing that it was going to go out to patrons only. so, in a nutshell, that's why this post (and content) is patron-only. i wanted it to feel private, in-community, and special.

.......

so....it went like this:

dylan spent a few months researching the right Hater Candidate. this meant searching through old tweets (we discuss this in the patron-only intro/outro part of the podcast). he then reached out to people until he found someone willing to talk to me.

then we scheduled the talk (this took AGES) and we actually packed it into one of the days that i was in brooklyn on the TV set of "happy" doing my little cameo (remember that?)

we set up across from one another in my office in greenpoint and The Hater was beamed in over the phone. we actually talked to TWO people, for about an hour each, but one phone call was just kind of bunk, so we didn't include it (there was very little reflection, and it was a pretty boring conversation).

(photo by hayley rosenblum, in our brooklyn office)

i'll give you a little spoiler: i play a sorta witch-type-persona in "happy".

i had to head back to set and wasn't allowed to change my hair or make-up during my off time in the afternoon, since the TV crew for "happy" had spent the whole morning getting me ready.

dudes...

the fact that i was LITERALLY COSTUMED AS A WITCH during this "conversation with someone who hates me" was not lost on me.

photo by hayley rosenblum, in our brooklyn office)

i was actually nervous to talk to this person.
i figured it would probably go fine, but there was something VISCERALLY UNCOMFORTABLE about talking with someone who's openly stated they hate me.
i didn't know just how uncomfortable it would be until the phone started ringing.
i also felt this weird responsibility to make the person on the other end of the line feel okay...like, we weren't setting them up for some massive humiliation or take-down.
i wish, in retrospect, we'd been able to sit on two chairs and look at each other. the phone is so impersonal, there's no body language, there's no face, there's no expressions, there's no...goddamit. there's no HUGGING AT THE END IF IT ALL WORKS OUT.

anyway. we did it. you will hear how it went. it went deep, people.

one note, and something i would have loved to dive into in the patron-only conversation with dylan:

listening to myself choke up about my dead boyfriend was an interetsing meta-experience.

i found myself wondering whether i was letting myself "go there", but not quite "go there" because i had this person on the other end of the line whose sympathy i deeply desired. i was partly proud of myself for allowing myself to get emotional, and party suspicious of myself that the moment was a performance.

i cry easily. i'm getting better and better at it. at letting it happen, and then being done when i'm done.

and this sometimes feels like the work of my life: sometimes i wonder if my own suspicion of my own emotional-performance is actually holding me back from being as emotional as i actually am. because truth be told: i think, at that moment of the phone call, i probably would have gone into full-bawl-mode if i hadn't felt the professional need to keep the train on the tracks.

and isn't that always the way? it's like: a dramatic sniffle is allowed in many moments, but a full-break down would be considered annoying. i always wonder and why we decide what to show, and how, and for who.

......

then dylan spent a while editing it together. then we met up at my house in upstate new york and dylan spent the night and had a nice dinner with me, and we sat down and listened to the WHOLE THING. before we sat down to listen, i interviewed him a little about the whole process of how he started doing this podcast. and then, after we had a chance to listen to the final product, we spend a while in reflection, doing a kind of emotional postmortem on the podcast itself, which was actually quite emotional to listen back to.

here's dylan in my living room, hanging. note bob dylan fireplace to the left. dylan, dylan, everywhere.

so this podcast actually has two versions, a public and a patron-only version for y'all.

dylan's public version, which is now available today everywhere all over the world and internet, and a special patron-only edition, which includes a 30-minute intro with me and dylan talking, and a 30-minute outro where we reflect on everything that happened.

i had asked dylan if he wanted to be PAID for this project, since i felt like it was only ethical if i was gonna Thing this on the back of his hard work. he said he didn't feel comfortable doing that, and that he was really happy for me to thing this on my own patreon and reach all these people here....so i struck a perfect compromise and asked him if he'd like to pick a charity for the money to go to instead.

and he did, so i'm VERY happy to announce that $4k of the profit from This Thing is going to go to the trevor project....

....a charity i was already familiar with and pretty enthused about. from their site:

"Founded in 1998 by the creators of the Academy Award-winning short film TREVOR, The Trevor Project is the leading national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer & questioning (LGBTQ) young people under 25."

to give you all some insight, here are some stats from their site, as well:

• Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death among young people ages 10 to 24.
  
• LGB youth seriously contemplate suicide at almost three times the rate of heterosexual youth.
  
• LGB youth are almost five times as likely to have attempted suicide compared to heterosexual youth.
  
• Of all the suicide attempts made by youth, LGB youth suicide attempts were almost five times as likely to require medical treatment than those of heterosexual youth.
  
• Suicide attempts by LGB youth and questioning youth are 4 to 6 times more likely to result in injury, poisoning, or overdose that requires treatment from a doctor or nurse, compared to their straight peers.
  
• In a national study, 40% of transgender adults reported having made a suicide attempt. 92% of these individuals reported having attempted suicide before the age of 25.3
  
• LGB youth who come from highly rejecting families are 8.4 times as likely to have attempted suicide as LGB peers who reported no or low levels of family rejection.
  
• 1 out of 6 students nationwide (grades 9–12) seriously considered suicide in the past year.
  
• Each episode of LGBT victimization, such as physical or verbal harassment or abuse, increases the likelihood of self-harming behavior by 2.5 times on average.

if that doesn't sober you the fuck up and want to fix everything, i don't know what will. 

anyway...that's where we are sending our overage and help from this project, and it feels very very very very good.

here are some words from dylan: 

I always wanted to make an episode of Conversations with People Who Hate Me with Amanda Palmer. She lives and breathes empathy so she felt like a perfect fit for a podcast that practices a radical form of empathy. I imagined that our episode would be good... I didn't know it would be this good. Amanda's community will be proud to see how AFP handles this conversation that hits on issues like shouting into the ether, the specific ways women tear each other down, and whether or not artists are beholden to their detractors. To complicate matters, I think they'll come to also love Colleen.  

Since this episode will be simultaneously released on both my podcast feed and Amanda's patreon, Amanda kindly insisted that she pay me for my work on this episode. But because this is an interview show I politely declined, noting that it would feel unethical to take money from a guest so instead she will donate some of her earnings from this "thing" to The Trevor Project, an amazing organization that provides a lifeline to at-risk LGBTQ folks.  

photo by hayley rosenblum

as far as sharing this podcast, you sort of have two options, and i'll leave it up to you.

you can send people to dylan's public podcast, OR you can encourage people to join the patreon to access to the insider long-cut version. or you can try to have a teaching moment with your internet friends and explain to them that there is this ONE GREAT PODCAST but by golly if they want the deep, juicy cuts, they better haul ass and get on this patreon. as you wish. just tell people to listen to it.

the public version of the dylan's podcast is titled "episode 27: i hate amanda palmer" and it's available to stream and listen to wherever you listen to podcasts under the show title, "conversations with people who hate me". dylan has it up for stream and all the podcast player links on his website:
http://www.dylanmarron.com/podcast/#listen

to listen to the patron-only edition of the podcast, which i'm calling Dylan and Amanda Discuss Their Episode of "Conversations With People Who Hate Me”

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO:

here is the private link below to the whole stream, which includes the patron-only intro, dylans full podcast, and the patron-only outro in one giant file:

https://soundcloud.com/amandapalmer/dylan-and-amanda-discuss-their-episode-of-conversations-with-people-who-hate-me/s-ZJEeH
.....

$3+/download patrons, you'll be getting this as a download (watch for next email).

..........

there's quite a few people to thank on this one....

first of all, dylan himself, who is a huge force of good in this world and i am so happy we did this together and that he took so much time out of his life to create this very strange moment.

my team: michael, hayley and jordan, all had a hand in making sure this got made, and made well. my own podcast producer, fannie, did a great job cleaning up our internal edit. nick, brittney and braxton at fame house have been helpful as usual getting everything up online for y'all.

and last but not least, i'd like to thank colleen, my hater/not-hater. maybe she's even joined the patreon and is reading this.

colleen: if you're reading this....i love you. i do. thank you. i see you.

and everyone else:

i love you, too.

x

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/

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