need, want & the swallowed solstice. (+ hear me & neil on BBC worldwide today, xmas & new years) (Patreon)

(public post)

my dearest ones

greetings from an amanda so jetlagged that she can barely type.

thank you so much for all your comments on the Althing. i'm reading them, slowly.

yesterday we arrived in australia, and we floated in a typical and predictable jetlagged spiral towards beds, and then awoke at 3 am, all three of us, in that space that i have actually come to love: the magical jetlag space. there you are at 4 am, fully awake, living in opposition to the entire society around you, wrong mammals, wrong place, wrong time, kind of existing in a liminal, unlikely moment where nobody knows where you are or what you're doing, and you don't even know.i napped until 7 pm yesterday, and then stole away from neil and ash (still conked out and dead to the world), and went for a walk down brunswick street in melbourne, where we are staying for christmas. 

i cannot really explain in words how much i love this place, these smells, this street, these shops, these tram-lines, dug into the streets, this particular angle of light, the wave of these treets....these people. but i can try. and i'm jetlagged even as i type.

i've come back to this neightborhood, again and again. i wrote the entire first draft of "the art of asking" in these cafes and bars. i lived here while recording "theatre is evil". this neighborhood is, to me, the closest thing i have to a spiritual home. it's done nothing but nurture me. i chose it, maybe it chose me, but it keeps calling me back. where neil feels at home and settles down in the UK, like a hen come home to roost in a little hut filled with like-hens, i feel this when i see australians ambling down the streets, drinking their beers and louding their louds, old women in wheelchairs with no leg, young punks asking for spare change, hipsters selling their wares, herb shops mixing their herbs, avocados that taste like meat, the fizz and energy of the air like an alcoholic elixir when you breathe it in, the tram dong-dong-donging, the same tram that almost killed me when i slipped off on my bicycle a few years ago,  this place. this place. it's a home to me.

i was just out on our air bnb porch, thinking about the difference between need and want, and what it all means. neil and i have been bumping in to each other, and every relationship i know of gets down to these fundamental building blocks, under every argument, under every tender caress, under every other gesture....

who needs who? who wants who? 

what is need? what is want?

i always felt wanted here, in this place. maybe not overtly, but maybe that was the point. gently wanted. accepted. taken into the fold. 

we were walking down the street a few hours ago, with a jetlagged ash in his stroller, and in the bustling sidewalk, his shoe fell off. the australian woman who picked up, smiling and joking as she handed it over. here you go, sweetie.

here you go, sweetie. 

there's a whole passage in the art of asking, where i talk about two conflicting experiences i had: one in edinburgh where three women turned their back on me and refused me help after i slipped and twisted my ankle badly on a rainy sidewalk. and one where i fell off my bike in melbourne where the entire block races to my rescue after seeing what had happened. and how those two emotional experiences impacted me. what it feels like to be wanted. what it feels like when you need. what a place does to you, how it makes you feel....what you do to it.

who wants you? who needs you?

i think about people in america. all sorts. i think about people in europe. i think about the massive population of refugees. i think about the growing racism....everywhere i've been lately. i think about the stories i've been told in the last few months. by people in london. by people effected by brexit. by the people leaving. by the people unwanted. had it. they've had it. unwanted. unneeded. too unloved. unseen. can't handle. 

i just pulled the plug on a tour i was going to do in america, in may.

i was going to do six or eight shows in the south. all cities in states impacted by the tightening and ever-more restrictive abortion laws. places losing ground, losing grip, places slowly losing power. 

i had the theaters picked out, the shows ready.

want. need.

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

i went off twitter for about a month. it started as an act of self-preservation, but then it became a kind of meditation. a look under the hood.

who? who needs? who needs what?

do i need it? does it need me? who needs me? who needs me doing what? saying what? what's helping? what's helping who?

do i just want it? do i need it? 

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

i look at ash. 

he needs me, and he wants me. this is the thing about children, it's so concrete. they need and want you. it's a course, callous need and want. there's no grace or class to it. they just reach out with simplicity. ash is even getting to that point where he just feels like a firestorm of ego. I WANT I WANT I WANT!!! I NEED IT I NEED IT! GET IT FOR ME! I WANT! are words that flowe from him every few minutes. 

we allow it, because we know he's allowed it, because he's furnishing his landscape with some fundamental chairs and tables (NEED! WANT!!!) before he can get to the subtler stuff. it's okay, we say, we know you want, we know you need. we'll try to explain the boundaries and know you'll mostly be confused. we will be patience. 

please don't punch your dada in the face. please don't rip mama's shirt. please don't run into traffic.

he needs me. he wants me. 

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

i decided to pull the plug on the may tour because i can see i'm trying to draw water from an empty well. 

there's that still, small voice going .... no. enough. rest. 

and those bigger questions, the ones that rise in me when i have time to stop and think.

whose land was this anyway, before the avocado toast came? don't you remember where you are? what happened here? what was stolen? what this cost?

do you think the aboriginal people of this area wanted? 

this?

there's a ring of fire - literally - burning around sydney.

people in the city are covering their mouths with rags.

you can't draw water from a dry well.

the well. 

as my british grandfather used to say.

"well, well, well. three holes in the ground."

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

neil and i raced to the finish line in england. packed up all our boxes, sent shit back to woodstock, gave away old shoes and clothes that didn't fit ash, sorted through books. sat in traffic for two hours on the way to heathrow airport, i was nauseous the entire time. i'll be out of here soon. this is the last leg, the final punishment. hang on. 

neil fell asleep on the plane and when he woke up, he was a stranger who spoke and frightened me. he says he doesn't remember. the whole thing feels like a nightmare we can discard. 

discardable nightmares. planned obsolescence. maybe we just learn from the dark.

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

i read the first half of "beloved" by toni morrison. lenny henry had piqued my interest, saying that he was wading through it, but that parts were just too much to handle. it jumped out at me in the bookstore i was visiting in london the very next day to buyt ash a copy of the polar express. poetry, that. go in for the polar fucking express and come out with a nightmare ghost story about murder, rape and slavery. good call, though. it screwed my head on right.

who wants. who needs.

.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

as i read it, below us, the solstice vanished. 

i didn't realize it until we landed and i looked at the date.

we took off the 20th, landed on the 22nd. 

the solstice was happening somewhere below me.

while i was wandering through hong kong airport, stewing and steaming from a diffcult flight full of strife with my husband, trying to find some noodles in the blazing, blinking internationa-airport-language moonglow of prada, mcdonalds, starbucks and sunglasses hut (even in hong king...this airport could have been swapped in the night for one in los angeles, munich, or glasgow).....

......somewhere in the world, there was a coven of women in a dim wood, burning some leaves, incanting to heaven, some crone in a cabin somewhere slaughtering some past season, lighting some candle she'd made with wax from her own goddamn bees.

and fuck, i'm in hong kong airport.

i didn't even MISS the solstice. i SKIPPED it. 

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

we went to clare's house, jack's mum, for tree-trimming.

we sat outside, me and jack and his brother luke, and talked about the climate crisis while ash made inroad with toby the dog. ash is terrfiied of dogs. a lot of healing happeend today; toby will befriend anyone who throws him a tennis ball. ash was in thrall of his own power and thre the tennis ball over and over again, amazed that anybody would actually be so obedient to a four-year old. other toddlers are erratic. a dog is like: i am yours, do to me. throw the ball, i will obey. ash was like: i'm in. you want me. i am IN.

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

the earth, and the vast, outnumbering collection of living things that aren't Human People on the earth....it's feeling like....it just doesn't need us.

it's getting beyond that. doesn't want us? knows the truth. knows we're ruiners. 

we need it. we want it.

we need it. 

to live, to breathe, to be.

we want so many things.

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

ash puts on an ornament

this is neil, feeding ash cherries.

i felt weird and guilty, going from one stark season of gloom and doom in the UK to a season so light and beautiful, all in one day of travel.

what things feel like. they feel so different. the light. the heat. the sound of people laughing in the street. 

the difference in feeling between seeing my husband cut up a sad apple from the cupboard and hand it to the grumpy toddler at the kitchen table in the dark, with silence all around, to the feeling of seeing a bag of cherries being considered, named, de-pitted in the sun, while dogs ran and birds cried.

i don't like being prejudiced.

there's also a thing about stubbornness.

i decided, last winter, that i would simply embrace the dark. the cold. all of it.

fuck it. i was living in upstate new york. i was going to have to. i would become a crone, i would become a woman who dealt with days that reached minus 5. i would be noble. i would plunge my try into the days that lasted six hours of daylight, eighteen hours of darkness. i would because i could because i could do anything i set my fucking mind to. i would because i dealt with a fucking miscarriage alone on a mountaintop on christmas night and if i could handle that, i could handle anything. i could defeat my own hatred of the cold and the winter. couldn't i?

not that fast, amanda.

you wanted to. what did you need?

i needed to feel like the weather couldn't control me. 

the weather controls me. it controls my moods. my happiness. my smile is a heliotrope. it points to the sun. i'm not in control, not completely.

you can't outrun everything. 

it wasn't until i was in my thirties that i learned that there are places on the globe (the equator, eh!) where there is no change.

sunrise at 7am, sunrise at 7 pm. all year. no change.

i hadn't know.

equanimity?

maybe. but also: stop trying to shove meaning into everything. you grew up where shit just got cold and miserable for whole months at a time and you couldn't ever, ever, ever get truly warm. you wanted to run from that like you wanted nothing else.

you still want it.

maybe just accept it. and accept that on top of that, you can withstand anything.

maybe it's time to join a coven.

maybe it's time to stop moving so fast. maybe i should just go to the woods and light a candle for a while.

who needs you. who wants you.

and an unusual question:

what do you need?

what do you want?

dare you ask?

we did it. (neil, clare, jack,ash, luke. in front: yuki. not pictured, me and toby the ball dog.)

i'm churning ... everything. 

i want to; i need to.

i need you.

i'm not sure i need twitter anymore.

but i know i need you.

i do.

thank you for being here. for wanting me. for needing me. for letting me need and want all of you.

really.

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

meanwhile.......

NEIL'S CHRISTAMS/NEW YEARS' SHOW WITH THE BBC ORCHESTRA, "PLAYING IN THE DARK", IS ABOUT TO GO LIVE on the BBC, streaming and live and all over the joint.....

i'm in it, reading a poem and singing an old-school song-song. along with david tennant (reading from good omens) and simon buttress (singing a song that neil picked from gilbert & sullivan).

neil curated the entire evening and it was just.....magical. i hope it works as well over broadcast as it did in the room when we performed it live for an audience at the barbican last month....(all photos by mark allan):

here's our estonian conductor, mihhail gerts:

neil:

david tennant:

david tennant getting louder:

want? need?

both. yes.

ALL THE DETAILS.....tune into your radio in the UK or on your satelite whatever, or stream live through the net:

Monday 23 December @ 19:30-21:35 GMT

BBC Radio 3

(listen live: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_radio_three)

Complete edited concert (see below)

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

Wednesday 25 December @ 07:00-07:57 GMT – Christmas Day

BBC Radio 4: Programme 1 of 2

(listen live: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_radio_fourfm)

Arnold: Good Omens titles

Introduction from Neil

Neil Gaiman reading: Ocean at the End of the Lane

Simon Buttress sings Gilbert & Sullivan's Nightmare Song

Amanda Palmer reading: The Mushroom Hunters (underscored with music by Jherek Bischoff)

Neil Gaiman reading: Vampire Sestina

Sibelius: Valse Triste

Neil Gaiman reading: Calendar of Tales: October 

Dukas: Sorcerer’s Apprentice 

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

Wednesday 1 January @ 15:00-16:00 GMT – New Year’s Day

BBC Radio 4: Programme 2 of 2

(listen live: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_radio_fourfm)

Wagner:  The Ride of the Valkyries

Neil Gaiman reading: Norse Mythology The Children of Loki  (shortened)

Bernard Herrmann: Prelude from Fahrenheit 451

Neil Gaiman reading: "The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury"

Britten Sinfonia da Requiem second movement

Reading by David Tennant : Good Omens "Drunk Scene"

Amanda Palmer: A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square

.....and....SURPRISE! we convinced the BBC to let me record the soundcheck and live performance of "a nightingale sang in berkeley square" for PATREON.

you'll get it soon as a Thing. it's so beautiful...... 

.

and to end on a high note

this is neil this afternoon....reading ash from a borrowed copy of james and the giant peach.

in the sun.

i love you.

xxx

AFP

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

THE "THERE WILL BE NO INTERMISSION" TOUR comes DOWN.

as always, all info and tickets can be found on our tour page:

http://amandapalmer.net/shows

AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND:

Mon. Dec 30 — Wed.. Jan 1 - WOODFORD, QLD - Woodford Folk Festival

Thurs. Jan 16 — Sat. Jan 18 - LAUNCESTON, TAS - Mona Foma Confessional

Mon. Jan 20 - LAUNCESTON, TAS - Princess Theatre, Mona Foma

Wed. Jan 22 - MELBOURNE, VIC - Hamer Hall (ALMOST SOLD OUT)

Fri. Jan 31 - BRISBANE, QLD - Brisbane Powerhouse

Sat. Feb 1 - BRISBANE, QLD - Brisbane Powerhouse

Fri. Feb 7 - CANBERRA, ACT - Canberra Theatre

Sat. Feb 8 - SPRINGWOOD, NSW - Blue Mountains Theatre (SOLD OUT!)

Fri. Feb 14 — Sat. Feb 15 - ADELAIDE, SA - Bonython Hall, Adelaide Fringe 

Thurs. Feb 20 - SYDNEY, NSW - Enmore Theatre (SELLING FAST)

Sat. Feb 22 - PERTH, WA - Perth Concert Hall, Perth Festival 

Sat. Feb 29 - DARWIN, NT - Darwin Entertainment Centre

Thurs. Mar 12 — Fri. Mar 13 - AUCKLAND, NZ - Auckland Arts Festival: Hollywood Avondale (FIRST NIGHT SELING FAST, SECOND NIGHT ALMOST SOLD OUT)

Sat. March 14th - CHRISTCHURCH, NZ - The Piano (**NEWLY ANNOUNCED**)

Mon. March 16th - WELLINGTON, NZ - St Peters Church, Wellington Fringe (**NEWLY ANNOUNCED**) 

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

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