(i'm here to talk for half an hour...) welcome to judith, and a note about patreon from a tired amanda (Patreon)

{patron-only post} 

hallo loves. 

i'm going to chat here in the comments for the next hour. please join me. about anything. i've got a glass o wine and a bath running. but the bath fills slowly. so come on over and chat. feel free to skip the post and just say hi, or read on.

greetings from a couch in london. neil and ash and i have all been fighting the same mystery illness for a week and it seems that ash may even have had a bout of minor chicken pox (!?) last week. i've had a weird night, some of you (if you've been on twitter) may have noticed. i'll get into that below. 

send a hug if you wanna, i need one.

i’ve had a strange and wonderful - albeit groggy-sicky- past week...i just hung out with  judith holofernes for three days. she came from berlin to stay nearby me while she built and launched her patreon, which she’s been thinking about doing for months. if you don’t know judith’s work, she was in a german indie band called Wir Sind Helden in germany who got big around the same time the dresden dolls did (but by a much larger factor). they toured for years and judith and the drummer, who became a couple, shacked up and had two babies on the rock and roll road. then judith went solo... and she’s also been frustrated with the major label system and rat race and punishing media landscape. 

she wrote an article about ”the art of asking“ after reading it, and she and i recently became much better friends. i stayed at her place in berlin when i did my show there, she interviewed me for her podcast, and we have talked a lot about patreon and what it means to do it. 

she was excited about the idea of using patreon, but it scared her. 

and, you know....it’s scary. 

now let me tell you, for a second, about my evening. 

after posting the medium article that jack and gaby made, i let it sit for a few days. i wanted the community to digest it, and i was also too busy to give it a good, considered push on social media.

then i posted it to instagram, and then facebook. 

everybody seemed really happy with it. we were doing a thing!

today i posted it to twitter, and the guardian was really grumpy (thats an understatement) with me that i’d talked about them, saying that i should know that i’m not “entitled“ to coverage, and we went back and forth....you can read the whole threads over on twitter if you dare to tread. it devolves into a bicker about feminism, and on and on.

well, of course i know that i'm not entitled to coverage.. i mean, that’s the point. nobody is entitled to ANYTHING, really (well ... i dunno, i could go on a tirade about health care and education but that’s another thread). 

but when you’re an artist you really do get caught in a double bind. i talk about this a lot in the book ... about how, as an artist, you sort of live life in fear of people saying these things to you. how dare you think your entitled to make money from art? entitled to people talking about your art? how dare you even think it's worth anyones time to look at or listen to your art? 

how dare you be that entitled?

SHUSH.

as an artist, this is what your head fears.

and "how dare you be that entitled" is one of the main bogeymen of crowdfunding...and why so many people don’t want to go direct to an audience but would prefer that other people handle the business transactions and the money. it just seems safer.

every time a twitter flame like this erupts there are plenty of people out there to pile on and tell me that i am a horrible, talentless person in general and blah blah blah. like clockwork i am told i have my narcissistic head up my ass and i am asked if i am still paying musicians in beers and hugs and like clockwork someone writes to tell me that they are doing whatever the modern equivalent is of burning all my records. 

every time this happens, i find myself desperately torn between reading and answering every tweet - wanting to explain everything from my personal philosophy to how patreon works -  and just shutting my phone down and making some soup. 

i'm sure i probably said some things that sounded too defensive, or too entitled. it's always hard for me to know, because as one who has been told for the majority of my career that i "sound entitled" or should otherwise shut up, simply because i crowdfund, or simply because i write songs about certain topics, i'm usually one to trust my gut and figure that entitlement can often be confused with frustration or bravery. and sometimes they possibly even intermingled. who knows. 

i do know that i could have just grumped about the guardian, and done nothing. but instead of simply complaining, i tried to come up with a creative solution that would benefit all. i think what we did is amazing. i think jack and gaby's piece is incredible, and a real contribution to the collected-word-mass that is the internet. i think it added real value to the world, and i'm proud that we used patreon money to do it. 

there will be those out there who may think it was self-serving, but i don't think any of those people actually read the article. anyway. who knows. if it was, we're here to learn. i've never done this before, and we're learning all the way.

i'd rather be learning that doing nothing, and i'd rather be in conversation over here than on twitter where people are throwing vases.

so right now, i’m comforting myself by getting off the darn tweet-deck and coming here to just talk straight to you, and also share the good news about judith’s patreon, because i don’t think all these things are, well, at all unconnected. 

judith and i went on a lot of walks and she told me about her fears regarding patreon. about what the press will think, about what the public will think, about what her fans will think. 

the truth is that it isn’t easy. being on patreon, doing things far outside the box, being weird and - more apropos, today - calling attention to your own world and your own machinery is just not...easy. 

it never has been. 

it is not only why i was so happy to take this artist by the hand and literally sit in at least 4 different cafes with her over the course of a month and go over her tiers and her text with her, but also...i don’t know. 

i‘m just ... really PROUD of her. i’m proud of every artist who jumps into this difficult process and tries to make a go of it. 

i’m especially proud of artists like judith who get told by some of the people in their life to stay away from patreon and DO IT ANYWAY. 

it’s brave. and there’s so little network of support to help artists who are trying to figure this stuff out.

i've taken three or four phone calls in the last month from artists (from all over the world) who are considering using patreon and want to know more about it. how does it work? what does it feel like? how do i use it?

i love helping all these people.

i also feel like it's a good karmic balance, due to the fact that i get so much grief, in so many other departments out there.

i've been walking in and out of fires - about how i do things, about what i say, about how i work, about what i believe - for two decades.

listen, you guys. i'll be honest. why be anything else.

i can often lose sleep over the fact that crowdfunding and kickstarter may have appeared a lot more appealing to musicians if they hadn't seen me get so publicly pilloried after using kickstarter - for whatever reason. the point wasn't that i did or didn't do anything right or wrong back in 2012 - the point is that i used kickstarter and then a lot of people saw me getting a lot of grief and i think possibly decided to keep their distance from the platform. why risk it? amanda palmer got super yelled at. maybe i'll get yelled at. maybe i should just stay over here where it's ... safe.

i wonder, of course, the same thing about patreon. 

about every how any and every negative stumble in my journey will make other artists that much less likely to want to do something like start a patreon, because they'll associate it with danger. 

and in a way, they're right. in a way, it's dangerous. 

and, in my opinion, it's still totally worth it.

the point isn't that it's perfect. it's not.

the point isn't that i'm perfect. i'm not.

the point is that we're all imperfect, and we're creating anyway.

and i hope that you all go over and take a gander at judith's patreon - especially you german lot! - and support her if you can.

here we are, last night, at a celebration dinner just after she went live....

clink.

truth: she's an incredibly gifted poet, writer, singer, songwriter....and who knows what else she's about to pull out of her magic art-sleeve.

it's here: https://www.patreon.com/judithholofernes/overview

i just joined at $5. 

and a note to all of you, who may be out there feeling slightly fragile, as i am tonight...

(i'm always fragile when people are yelling on the internet).

and i'm open for discussion here. about judith, about patreon, about the twitter flame, about salad. go for it.

say hi.

then bath and bed, and tomorrow is a new revolution.

i love and appreciate you all lots.

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

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