report from The North, a mind-squeegee, and an invitation to a swim in bexhill (& tickets!) (Patreon)

(public post)

**UPDATE, BEXHILL!!!!! the BRITISH COAST GUARD LITERALLY JUST CAME TO THE VENUE - bless them. they saw my TWEET. how? i don't know. they said that the swimming conditions are super-dangerous today, somebody died last week in an undertow. we ain't gonna go in, i do NOT want any of you to DIE. but we are going to do something FUN ON THE BEACH. so come prepared. see you there around 5:45!!!!****

ALSO: last call for guestlist! we are shutting it down in about two hours!!!

hallo loves!!!

i have hit the tour wall, slid down it, and am currently mired in the puddle beneath it!!!

all of the shows are going incredibly well … i've gotten it down to a mere three and a half hours and it's flowing out of me like so much blood and water. in a GOOD way i mean.

copenhagen and stockholm were OFF THE HOOK…but in-between the travel, the extra charity gigs, the climate meetings, the email inbox, organizing reproductive rights folks to represent their cities at the upcoming UK tour, podcast interviews, keeping and trying to spend at least an hour or two with my kid on the days that i’m home, i have to admit a certain level of defeat. there’s a lot i have to do that’s log jammed, especially in the communications department. 

i am over a week late getting out this month's State of All Things. oops.
i haven’t yet listened to all the demos (i have 150 to go) from the songwriting competition.  
i have over 1,000 emails in my inbox.
i have a couple important blogs to write about a few big community things.
i owe postcards to the $100 tier.
i have barely spent any time with my child; other things have toppled into the time i meant to spend with him.
i am, in a single word, VERY FUCKING BEHIND.  

........

and this should tell you how behind i am. i need three words to make one word. that’s how behind.

AND YET - i know this pattern so well, and i refuse to let the head weasels tell me that i am a bad person.

it is very hard to knit while sprinting, or sprint while eating a burrito, or eat a burrito while fighting a fire.

to everything: turn, turn, turn, and one of the things i appreciate most about this community is your patience….

it’s usually me who is hardest on myself.
i posted this on twitter the other day, and i meant it.
(obviously, if you ever see me posting anything inspirational on twitter, you can rest assured that i am the one who needs those words).

sometimes we get so upset by what we haven’t accomplished. 

our minds eye gets utterly fogged to the point that everything we have accomplished is no longer visible. 

here‘s a squeegee.

you are okay. don’t worry right now about what you didn’t do. 

you’ve done a lot of things.

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

i mean it.

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if you want to read something really nice, though, go check out this new interview in stereo stickman previewing the cardiff show:

https://stereostickman.com/interviews/amanda-palmer/?fbclid=IwAR3eGSHdCwousTi76Wx4nrnoajtrrksT3KusU9CQTRHydJjn8lGSnWFPVno

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onwards

here are some photos from the weekends' adventures:

OPEN PIANO FOR REFUGEES charity gig in copenhagen:

udo, who started the Open Piano for Refugees non-profit, found a beautiful dance studio to donate their space (thank you sceneindgangen!!) for the cause, then simply googled “pianos in copenhagen” and this was the first piano company that popped up.

and, without researching, he just cold-called them. they were like “sure we will loan you a piano .. er...do you know who we are?” udo was like “the first piano place that comes up on google?” the company was the legendary danish POUL HENNINGSEN - and they loaned us this €100k art deco piano designed by poul henningsen in 1931. 

crazy shit happens when you ask. 

i’ve kept their phone number. i am feeling a danish-inspired music video with this work of art...

it was like playing a VERY FANCY CAR.

i took requests, told stories, played "slide" by the dresden dolls for the first time in years, and "delilah" from the dolls' second record. it was a gorgeous day....

then to the venue, where i played the bremen theater, WHICH IS AN OLD PORN THEATER. the gig was stupendous and here's the copenhagen group-patron photo:

one of our patrons was in a wheelchair and couldn't get onto the stage, so we attempted a second photo!!!:

photo by mike (allblogger.net)

........

then we raced to stockholm, just in time to do refugee gig #2 at the MARTIME MUSEUM....

LOOK AT THIS PLACE, JESUS.

i posted this to instagram:

life goal to play “the ship song” by nick cave on a wickedly beautiful grand piano behind the stern of the worlds most gorgeous wooden ship for few hundred swedish people to raise money for refugees while literally 500 meters away from a giant protest against current erdogan’s invasion: achieved. i am now in a taxi to the venue and the old man swedish driver is literally humming along to an the ABBA song “i have a dream”. what is life?

on a more intimate note:

i love doing these daytime gigs, because i love having time to look at everybody's faces and take my time and take questions. i cried a lot in this room. i was tired. everything just felt so raw. the march outside felt timely. someone told a difficult story.

i cried during "the ship song" thinking about nick cave. i played "in harm's way". i played, by request, "strength through music". 

nothing like a good daytime cry.

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

then we raced to the nighttime venue for the stockholm show, which was a gorgeous cakebox of a venue, my god:

this is a beautiful shot from the show....the södra teatern:

see something missing? 

the venue was the smallest (and i daresay possibly most beautiful) of the entire THERE WILL BE NO INTERMISSION tour...it fit only 400 people. 

and for the first time on this tour, i got to play “bigger on the inside” without any amplification. 

i don’t know how everybody in the third balcony in the back felt (are you here? how did it feel?) but for me, there’s something very different when you know your voice is traveling straight from your throat to someone’s ears without a bunch of cables and rubber and dials and electricity in the middle. 

it’s the reason i love doing small spontaneous gigs and ninja gigs - there’s just something about it. it’s just you, making music, for people. last night's show was off the hook, and bittersweet. i wanted to play this type of venue across the whole tour - small, intimate venues of no more than 500 or 600 people. doing 2-5 shows per city, if necessary. the material just works better that way. but i had my kid to think about. 

neil certainly wasn’t going to move cities with me every week for a year, and dragging the kid around wasn’t a kind solution either. 

i also didn’t want to lock people out of seeing the show. i knew i was able to sell more than 500 tickets in these cities. so i did what i did: i booked venues of 1,000-2,200, knowing that some shows wouldn’t sell out and that we would just have to deal with the risk and the lack of intimacy. as i texted my manager jordan this morning: motherhood both fed and hurt the stage show’s integrity. what do you want. but last night, last night, last night in stockholm ... it was perfection. thank you to everyone who came. please stay in touch and join the patreon. i love you. 

ABBA forever. 

photo by @anni.are.u.okay via IG. (also, since people keep asking about these boots, they’re by john fluevog, i bought them in vancouver at the flagship shop a couple years ago).

here's the group-patron shot:

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next.....

ITS TIME FOR THE UNITED KINGDOM!!! 

BEXHILL, CARDIFF AND CAMBRIDGE, you’re up:

Wed Oct 16 – Bexhill – De La Warr Pavilion:
DOORS at 6:45, SHOW at 7:15 SHARP (stage curfew: 11pm)

Sat Oct 19 – Cardiff – St David's Hall:
DOORS at 6:15, SHOW at 7:45 SHARP (stage curfew: 11pm)

Sun Oct 20 – Cambridge –
Corn Exchange DOORS at at 7pm, SHOW at 7:30 SHARP (stage curfew 11pm)

there are TONS of tickets for all of these cities....on sale to public here:

http://amandapalmer.net/shows/

.........

I AM SUPER EXCITED FOR BEXHILL BECAUSE IT IS A PRETTY AND FAMOUS BUILDING FROM THE 1930s.....AND BY THE SEAAAAAA!!!!!!

LIKE RIGHT ON THE SEA!!!! 

LOOK!!!!! it's the De La Warr paviliion and everyone in the UK seems to fucking lvoe this venue. 

you can read the history of the amazing de la warr here. it IS pretty amazing:

DO YOU WANT TO GO FOR A SWIM WITH ME???

YEAH YOU DO.

I AM GOING IN THAT FREEZING FUCKING WATER, YES I AM.

let's give these australians a run for their money.

MEET ME DOWN ON THE BEACH at 5:30. it's right outside the venue.

i'll try to be there 5:45, 6 latest. BRING A TOWEL, and MAY I SUGGEST A HOT DRINK IN A THERMOS. 

if all goes well, david franklin will be with me and we can do some shintaido screaming at the sky and then go in the water. you are allowed to gawk at us crazy swimming people, but you will also be teased for not braving the water.

SEE YOU AT THE BEACH TOMORROW.

........

and yes, i have some free tickets/guest-list for bexhill!!!

PLEASE LET ME KNOW IN COMMENTS BY 4 PM TOMORROW (wednesday) !!!! FIRST COME FIRST SERVED! i'll let you know ASAP if you're in. i'll check this post at least 4-5 times between now and tomorrow at 4. your tickets will be at the box office. 

IN COMMENT, PLEASE INCLUDE:

-YOUR FULL NAME (as it is on your ID, they sometimes check!)
-NUMBER OF TICKETS (JUST YOU, OR +1?)

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AND....then we over to ireland for dublin, belfast, limerick and cork. then back for manchester, dunfermline, glasgow, york and newcastle. ALL FOUR LONDON SHOWS ARE SOLD OUT! i’m so tempted to add a fifth. goddammit, but i'm not gonna do it. 

i love you all.

xxx

AFP

p.s. thanks to hayley for helping organize the photos and links for this post. it's been a fucker of a week and she & michael (who's going to be on the road with us, HOORAY!) got my back hard right now. 

------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 (at least up until a few years ago, this desperately needs updating) on this lovely page: http://amandalanda.amandapalmer.net/

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

UPCOMING SHOWS:

Wed Oct 16 – UK – Bexhill – De La Warr Pavilion
Sat Oct 19 – UK – Cardiff – St David's Hall
Sun Oct 20 – UK – Cambridge – Corn Exchange
Wed Oct 23 – Ireland – Cork – Opera House
Thu Oct 24 – Ireland – Dublin – National Concert Hall
Sat Oct 26 – Ireland – Belfast – Ulster Hall
Sun Oct 27 – Ireland – Limerick – University Hall
Fri Nov 1 – UK – Dunfermline – Carnegie Hall
Sat Nov 2 – UK – Glasgow – City Halls
Sun Nov 3 – UK – Manchester – Albert Hall
Mon Nov 4 – UK – York – Opera House
Thu Nov 7 – UK – Newcastle – Tyne Theatre
Sun Nov 24 – Portugal – Braga – Theatro Circo
Thu Dec 5 – UK – London – Union Chapel (SOLD OUT)
Fri Dec 6 – UK – London – Union Chapel (SOLD OUT)
Fri Dec 13th - UK - London - Union Chapel (SOLD OUT)
Sat Dec 14th - UK - London - Union Chapel (SOLD OUT)

ALL TICKETS: https://nointermission.amandapalmer.net