haters, hugs, and madonna. and, a new song (demo) called "bitter" (Patreon)

(patron only)

hi loves. 

i have a song for you. i warn, the content of the song is heavy. if you need a trigger warning, here ya go. 

https://soundcloud.com/amandapalmer/amanda-palmer/s-Rgi1K

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

it contains abuse, assault, reproductive stuff. tread carefully and take care of self. 

speaking of self-care,,,,well, i did the healthiest self-care thing i think i’ve done for myself in years.

i decided to leave twitter for a little while.

i was posting things over there on saturday night and was immediately getting hate-spammed after every tweet. i couldn't read the vile abuse anymore. it was making me physically sick. 

i don’t think i’ll be gone forever, but as long as the trolls are going to tell me that i’m a racist grifter bully who killed my ex-boyfriend every time i post something about tour dates, it’s gonna have to wait. 

hoo boy.

i have not been in great shape, gotta say.

this stuff is HARD.

i had a full panic attack yesterday morning. gabrielle motola, the photographer on tour with us, went into nurse mode. my blood pressure had dropped to nothing, i was sick and shivering, and she got me warm, talked to me in bed and told me stories, and kept me going until i got my breath back. we wondered if i was in okay enough shape to do the show. 

i hadn’t realized how deeply disorienting all of this twitter stuff would be until i went into a uncontrollable weeping fit telling gaby and my manager, jordan - who called urgently because he was afraid my twitter had just been hacked - about the time that hackers pulled a hardcore number on me. i started the story, and then my voice stopped. and i just found myself paralyzed, in bed, choking. it took me thirty seconds, but i got myself back.

i will never know who it was, but they hit me where and when it could hurt the most and the deepest. 

the very, very deepest. 

it was 2015. i was at anthony’s deathbed with neil, after racing there from london. 

i got a text message from a friend, warning me that it looked like someone had hacked my facebook. i left anthony's side, went outside, went to my facebook feed....and there were dozens of violent and pornography images. 

the worst stuff you can imagine. the bottom of the worst. the sort of stuff i never want to put words to.

i remember standing on anthony’s porch, feeling sick and dizzy. 

my friend was about to die and someone was doing this to me. 

WHY.

i give gold stars to my team that day. i called them, out of breath and weeping, and they all went into full fix mode and told me to walk away from my phone. they handled it. 

all of that facebook panic was still in my system while neil and i were holding anthony when he took his dying breath a few hours later. 

reading back what i just wrote, i still can’t believe what humanity is capable of sometimes. 

do i realize the paradox of all this? that calling out a journalist for not writing about me is, in a way, a sort of smaller version of the same thing, if it makes her afraid? of course. of course. the poetry is, as always, endless.

it’s a story i don’t think i’ve ever told, and i actually realized that if blacked it out until i heard the panic in jordan’s voice. 

it all came flooding back. 

i think i’m still carrying a lot of leftover bullshit. we all are, though, aren’t we. 

i got to the venue last night and zombie’d my way through soundcheck and then had two hours to kill. i didn’t want to have to use my brain or be on the internet. i’d found myself playing a pretty chord progression on the piano during soundcheck. it lingered in my head. 

it was cold and raining or i would have gone for a walk. 

i thought about my monologue from the show, about how the kickstarter and boston bombing kerfuffles of 2012/13 led to a total creative paralysis. 

there was a piano in the basement of the venue. 

and i thought, fuck it. ill make some art. it doesn’t even need to be good art. i just need to make SOMETHING. if i don’t, i may fall down the scary hole again. 

so i sat down, and in one sitting, i made this. then i recorded it on my iphone. gaby came down to get me for the show and i asked her to take a picture. 

that's the theatro circo basement.

here's the entrance (pulled from google, but still). 

i weote a song there. i will have always written a song there.

i think it might be the prettiest place i have EVER WRITTEN A SONG.

well....song?

it’s part poem, part song, part therapeutic offering. 

it’s called “bitter”. 

i wrote another song called “bitter” once, when i was 16. this one is so different. 

i also knew, while piecing it together, that i wasn’t going to be able to deliver the scripted show to the audience in braga last night. i needed to feel free to talk, and take requests, and answer questions. so parts of this song actually did some of the job for me, because they contain bits of the show that i knew the audience wouldn’t hear. so, spoiler: this song contains parts of the show. 

i can imagine this song not actually being a “song”, but more like a template, a mantra. the chorus can remain but the daily details will keep changing, like a jazz improv. 

there’s always new problems. 

take your pain. 

take your mistakes. 

take your anxiety. 

take your self. 

try to. 

make art. 

listen to it here.

https://soundcloud.com/amandapalmer/amanda-palmer/s-Rgi1K

........

i dunno guys. 

i feel so weird. 

this one's just for you, for now. i mentioned you the patrons last night that i would put it up for free, that it get wrong to charge for it. they encouraged me to. maybe i’ll do a better recording later and thing that. maybe it’ll just be this forever, a piece of my fucking heart left in braga on on iphone. 

i don’t mind terribly if you share it with trusted others but i’m not really sure it’s a good idea right now to put something like this out on the public internet. it’s too private and raw and would probably just be misinterpreted anyway. 

.......

the show? 

i did it. 

(in the elevator to stage, photo by gaby)

a thank you. i honestly made it to stage in one piece by the grace of gaby last night. 

this gal and i have been through a lot at this point. 

first a deathbed, with sinead, now a sick bed. me.

she’s becoming a close and trusted friend. 

someone took this of me hugging her on stage and thanking her last night ....

i was honest. 

i tried to be.

i told the audience about my twitter gaffe and about how our egos get the best of us (few of them knew about my twitterstorm, which was actually comforting), i told them that i hadn’t slept the night before and had spent my braga morning dealing with a panic attack, i told them about how gaby took care of me, i told them about writing in the basement of the theater. 

i took questions from the audience and played an all-request show. 

someone asked me how to make art out of grief.

hahahahaha.

hands down: it was the best show of the tour. 

and in its own way, it was the most triumphant show i’ve ever pulled off. 

the setlist, off the top of my head:

IN MY MIND  
FAKE PLASTIC TREES
ASTRONAUT
THE KILLING TYPE
DELILAH  
THE AARDVARK AONG (long story, ask me later)
COIN-OPERATED BOY
OASIS
THE THING ABOUT THINGS
BIGGER ON THE INSIDE
BITTER (new song, written in braga)
DROWNING IN THE SOUND
SING, with full braga singalong  
-encore-
THE RIDE 

at some point in the night, someday raised their hand and asked if i needed a hug. 

i said yes. 

then someone else offered a hug, and then someone else, and then i was in the middle of a spontaneous group hug given by 50 people in portugal. 

i cannot tell you how good it felt to be held so physically by my community. to feel everybody not just hugging me, but hugging each other. in the middle of this old, famous theater. it was something. 

subul races away from the lighting board and hopped on the stage and got a photo of the hug:

and gaby took these close-ups:

HUGGGGGGGGGGG

and then i sat down and played everyone my new song, preceded by a long monologue about how art isn’t trivial. about how i needed to write this song to keep from going into the dark of my head. about how it didn’t matter if it was any good or o never played it again after this one night in braga. it didn’t matter. it just mattered that it was real. 

here’s the aftershow patron photo:

a lot of people joined the patreon last night. that made me happy. 

if you’re one of them: 

WELCOME!!! welcome, welcome to this kind corner of the internet. 

i signed deep into the night. 

gaby took a ton of photos, including photos of the beautiful venue crew, who, when told they could go home, all volunteered to stay at the venue because they were enjoying it all so much. there were a lot of tears in all directions. someone gave me a necklace. lots of people gave me poems. almost everybody gave me hugs. i signed for over an hour. someone gave me a sandwich and an orange. someone gave me a hand made of plastic. someone gave me a stone egg that belonged to his dead father.

some of gaby’s signing photos;

and these ones from instragramland:

HUGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i finally slept last night for the first time in four days without waking up every three hours.

speaking as someone who has not been through a rough time in a while...it's been like visiting the dark past, but with a better flashlight.

this morning, my crew took a long walk through braga,,,,,

we walked through the churches of braga this morning, and we saw all these sculptures of madonna and christ. there was some really graphic art going on. lots of blood.  

and we ran into a dozen or so people who had been at the show. they were all taking in the scenery before flying or taking trains home to italy, russia, lisbon, porto, france, toronto, england.....

FUCK!

people came from all over the world to this show. i got to embrace them all, in leisure time, and thank them for holding me. 

this is what music is, does, can be. 

a haven. 

a two-way medicine machine. a real one.

if you were at the show in braga, this was a night i will never, ever forget. 

ever.

one for the books.

one of those rare nights where i needed you more than you could have known, and you literally held me. 

you held me. 

thank you. 

and? thanks for the song. it’s the first song i’ve ever written in portugal, and i hope it won’t be the last. i really like you guys. maybe i’ll move to portugal. 

didn’t madonna just do that? maybe we could be bocci ball partners. 

i was thinking about madonna last night. 

i think that’s how she crept into my song. 

....

now?

now.

i just found myself walking through gatwick airport feeling better than i have in months. i had a spring in my step and i was looking at all the faces in the airport and thinking how much i loved them. every one of them. every person yelling on twitter. every afraid person i think the world. every. one. 

and i thought 

because of COURSE. of course this would be happening to you right now, amanda. this is the DEAL. look at the poetry of your tour. if you don’t practice what you preach, the whole message is bullshit. 

so, you do it to. 

do it. 

go into the dark. 

make. 

light.

from the darkness.....

make. 

light.

x

afp

ps i want to give my touring crew a special shout out for being a true fucking team last night. i couldn’t have made a flash light without their batteries. 

from left to right: merch queen alex, me, subul, jack and gabrielle. photo by gaby who put her camera on a candlestick, no shit. 

what matters? friends. solid ones. the best ones. here they are.

------THE NEVER-ENDING AS ALWAYS---------

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