Musical Beds & Unsafe Spaces....There will Be Some Introspection part 4 {official thing} (Patreon)

{public post - and note: all the photos in this post are by Gabrielle Motola, from the new piece just published on Medium today. link within}

Hello my loves.

I was lying in the dirt the other night, wondering whether or not I should crawl into the house and call the neighbors, or a hospital, when it occurred to me how very alone so many people are.

……………..

Allow me to wipe your blurry eyes, I have decided to write a very long post, and I have decided to use capitals. NO. yes. YES. 

I just re-read Jack and Gaby’s beautiful new medium piece - the last in a series of four pieces I hired them to create one ra year ago, m at the beginning of tour - and the re-reading itself made me feel shameful about my lack of capitalization when I’m trying to write about Big Things. So fuck it, twitter can remain capital-free, but I am going to try my best to put on my big girl pants and use the shift key every once in a while from now on.

This is going to be a very long read, so you may want to earmark it for a later date when you have an hour or so. Jack’s piece itself is about a half-hour dive, and mine may take as long to read, if not longer. Maybe…run a bath.

I also want to say, before beginning, that there is a meta-moment happening before my very eyes. I have been taking my patronage less and for granted with each passing week: as the economy falters, as the wheels fall off the bus in America, as friend after friend texts me to say “I’m so sorry, please don’t take it personally Amanda, but I have to put my patronage on hold because xx.” AS my indie musician colleagues sell their pianos, their guitars, furlough or fire their staff, get rid of their offices and rehearsal spaces, and in a few cases I know of, their apartments and houses in order to make it through the pandemic. I have had to do none of these things; because I had the very large and strong safety net of the patreon. Especially with the podcast coming out, which is going to provide a kind of regularity and dependable income for me and the whole staff (and again, a friendly reminder to you ALL to cap your pledges, so you don’t wind up charged for 6 things in a month unexpectedly…). 

I have had very little time to process what has happened to me over the last six months since the tour ended and crashed straight into lockdown. The two will never be separable, the way I’ll never be able to separate lockdown from Neil’s departure, and my descent into a sort of existential-survival gauntlet I’d never come close to facing before. The meta-beauty of this day is that I can sit down, having taken Ash to school, and get paid - paid? yes, technically PAID - to write for a full day about all sorts of things: my feelings about Jack and Gaby’s newest piece, my feelings about the tour, my impressions of this weird time here in Aotearoa. I’ve been trying to do it for months. I am not sure of how likely this moment - this sitting, this writing, this ability to carve out space to reflect - would have happened were it not for the fact that I’ll be paid to write. There is so much to do, so much to keep together, there’s a list of things to do a mile long. But the lights need to stay on, my staff needs to be paid, and therefore, I must sit down and write. I mean: how fucking lucky am I. And how lucky am I that I have no editor (well, many would argue with that, wouldn’t they, and you may find yourself chuckling at that line as you read Jack’s essay) and no middleman to approve this writing. It’s mid-morning. By mid-afternoon, this will be published. This is how I write best. I have never been great at waiting; it’s why the patreon is so dear to me, as a platform through which to make art. You can always make art NOW. I hated writing a book so much. I hated that I had to wait over a year for those written words to wind up in somebody’s hands. It felt stale and evil, like making a cake for someone to be delivered next March. But funny enough, the freshness is really only about me, me, me, and my desire to share now, now, now. Certainly, the freshness is in the eye of the beholder. 

…………….

But this happened a couple of nights ago.

I was in the chicken coop, in our backyard. It was about 8 pm, and Ash was in the living room, fiddling around…reading, I think. 

The chicken coop had just been moved from one side of they’d to another by Nick, our kind landlord who built the coop in the first place when we moved down here into the village from Up The Hill.

That was amazing to me, to begin with. That an Air BNB landlord would just…offer to make a chicken coop. The chickens had been my idea when we locked down in the house Up The Hill. The empty coop was there, and I looked at Neil at the day before Level 4 lockdown - we’d moved into the rental that day - and said, I mean, if we can fill it with chickens and the apolocalypse is coming, we’ll have eggs? If we can feed the Chickens? Maybe there won’t be eggs in lockdown? We knew nothing back then. That was the day we went to the grocery store and also bought ten pounds of rice. We just didn’t know what we didn’t know. Chickens seems like a good idea. Plus, Ash was going to be short on company and maybe he would like the chickens It was hard to know. 

Now the husband was gone, but the chickens remained, all six of them, and Xanthea - who’d flown over from Australia on a day’s notice with Neil to give a hand with emergency childcare, thinking she’d be here a week or so - and I agreed that the chickens could not just be left on their own now that we were downsizing into a more practical house. No Chickens Left Behind. It meant too much. So when Nick, the new landlord, offered to actually build a chicken coop with his bare hands for our refuge poultry, there were tears. Of strange gratitude. 

Nick built the fence around the coop into the slow slope of a hill that heads down towards the stream, the stream alongside which I walk Ash to school every day. The chickens were escaping. Nick and his wife Jude had tried clipping their wings, and pegging the fence down with more military precision, but those fucking chickens were getting out. Sit was fine enough when the weather was cold and the doors to the house were always tightly shut. But now spring was on the bloom, and I was starting to want to prop the doors open. I’d forget to close a door, and the chickens were hot-footing into the house at every opportunity, and pooping on the carpet. This was not good. Nick decided to settle this matter by moving the entire chicken coop and pen across the vast, flat, lawn, against a little mini-forest, to a place where he was certain he could make a foolproof chook-palace . We are surrounded by New Zealand staples here: to the right is an apple orchard, to the left is a sheep farm. Meat, not sweaters. I asked. Watching the lambs frolic and breastfeed from their mothers feels very complicated every time we pass them in the driveway.

So it was dark, and I hadn’t quite learned the layout of the new coop-yard, and I couldn’t find my flashlight, which I usually took with me to make sure the chickens were all nestled and safe and roosting before shutting them in for the night. And my phone was out of battery or not on hand or something, so I just grabbed a candle. How mediaeval tiktok of me, and how lovely it felt to walk across the yard with a candle, and head into the little coop, seeing those six, happy, sleepy chickens on their perch in the flickering glow of non-laser-light. I felt very wholesome and very happy. Then I locked up the coop and blew out the candle, figuring that I could navigate my way back to the house by the moonlight. I started trotting away from the coop when something sharp punched me in the leg and I doubled over in excruciating pain. Then I was facedown, in the dirt, in the shit on the floor of the chicken coop.

I couldn’t see what had hit me, or rather, what I had hit, because it was too dark. But I could see stars of all kinds: the blurry ones up in the sky, the ones flooding my vision with pain, the ones swirling around in my brain trying to determine if there was blood, or a broken bone. I stayed still for a moment, assessing the damage, and trying to use a kind of mind over matter. I’m fine. I’ll just get up. But I couldn’t get up, and I noticed with a kind of odd detachment that my pulse was through the roof and my body was shaking and in shock. Well, I thought. Here we are.

Ash was sixty feet away, behind a door. The neighbors were 600 feet away. If it was bad, could I crawl over there? Could I crawl to the house? Would it freak out Ash? Was my phone even charged? I couldn’t remember. Was it really that bad? Maybe I was okay. But maybe I wasn’t okay. For about two minutes, I just didn’t know. I thought about my stage show. I thought about the part where I tell the story about having a miscarriage all alone, and how the world does not teach you what you come equipped to deal with. I came equipped to deal with this, I thought, and I laughed to myself. For twenty seconds, I spun through all the possibilities.

Then I thought: maybe this is why people stay in terrible relationships and don’t want to be alone.

………………….

I rallied. It wasn’t that bad. I could barely walk on my leg, but there was no blood. Just a very dark bruise forming where the huge, sharp, pipe jutting out of the fence had struck my thigh. I was fine. I was still shaking, but I caught my breathe, lay there for a few minutes trying to slow my breath, and then limped to the house, where Ash was none the wiser. MAMA! I WANT TO PLAY THIS GAME! and I told him, very slowly and carefully, that mama had hurt her leg very badly and that he was going to need to hold on a second. We have no bathtub in this new rental. Ash has been bathing in a 15-gallon plastic storage container since he’s little, and hates showers. But I was still in shock, and cold, and shaking a little, and I watched him watch me, wide-eyed, as I ran myself a bath in the tiny plastic box and lowered myself in. My body didn’t fit, just my bum and a very small section of my torso, but it was enough to take the shakes away. Ash sat by the bathtub, chattering and happy, while I blew breathes out of my lungs and felt the throbbing in my leg, trying to figure out how bad it was going to feel in the morning.

………………….

When I read Jack’s piece the other day - it was about a week ago, and Gaby hadn’t yet added her photos - it brought forth a flood of feelings. Shame, vulnerability, anger, defensiveness, frustration, but mostly…pride. Jack is such a good fucking writer. And I hired him a year and change ago - with funds from you, the patrons - to do what I knew he did best: write about what he saw and felt, with no editorial changes from me unless there were facts out of whack. Jack was clearly anxious when he sent me the final piece, which was already past deadline. I think he was afraid I would push back against it, because of the unflattering sections. 

When I first started reading Jack’s writing, it was the unflattering nature of it that I loved. Jack wasn’t a published writer, but rather an autodidact who wrote long, honest and incredibly well-written blog posts to his extend family and friend circle. I had wound up on that email list as a matter of coincidence. I always found myself thinking: why is this writing not going further. I loved Jack’s ability to describe - with his decidedly cynical voice laced with a winking layer of self-deprecation - the things around him. His flat. His street. His housemates. His world. There was always a sense of hopefulness buried in the incredible critical hopelessness of his tone. That’s what I loved. In that sense, this piece if pure Jack Nicholls, the writer I wanted. There was no way I was going to get in the way of that, even if I was the subject of some of the critical hopelessness. I felt like I was reading a caricature of myself, but also, what Jack sees is true. There is no way I could have hired a writer - any writer - to write about me “totally honestly”. This is Jack’s total honesty. And I love it.

………………….

There were a few line in the piece that really stuck in my craw, and I thought it would be smart to stop, slow down and consider…well, why.

Having watched the presidential debates yesterday, I am reminded of what we are all sort of facing in this moment. The spotlight on a man who’s clearly an unapologetic narcissistic, a man who cannot take one ounce of criticism, a man who refuses to take any accountability but simple double, triple and quadruples down when he is wrong. Donald Trump cannot be wrong. Donald Trump cannot say Sorry. Donald Trump surrounds himself with people who create a narrative that he wants to hear. Donald Trump has a well-funded spin room that churns out propaganda to make him look fantastic. In a certain way, these are charges that have been leveled at me - in one sense or another - over the last ten or twelve years. One of the most painful things a good collaborator ever said to me, in jest, but only in half-jest was “Well, Amanda, you are sort of the Trump of your own art world”. It stung because, in a sense, it was true. With no label, no master, no publisher, no editor and nobody to tell me no, slow down, or “you can’t do that”, I am, in effect, the dictator of this little art-ship. If I change my mind - and I do often - the ship tilts to the right or the left, and my staff - or, sometimes, collaborator - careens with it. I have no boss. I tweet constantly. I crave attention, love, approval, connection, and what I often refer to as “the pats on the head”. 

Whenever I am discussing bad workaholic problems and tendencies with a fellow workaholic - and I’ve known, worked with, loved and been friends with many - the “pats of the head” metaphor is always apt. You have a little bit of attention and power, and you crave more. You desperately want to be seen, you crave validity, you will say yes to a project not only because it’s paying work, but because you get an actual dopamine hit of existential validation when you say YES, I will do this.

And it’s childish. Especially when the desire to say yes is in direct conflict with your ability to deliver. Many egotistical artists I’ve been close with - and I include myself there - are pretty to this problem. There is an unfillable emotional hole for so many writers, musicians, and artists, and the “flaky” artist moniker may be slightly misdirected in many cases: it isn’t that we forgot, or couldn’t deliver, it was that we were too lonely, so we said yes to everything and overcomiited, and then we got stuck. I’ve seen this so many times, been there, close up. 

The line that stung, that hurt, was this one: “Because, for most of you, the big lie of Amanda Palmer is that she is your friend.”

I felt my body literally tense up as I read that. But it’s not true, Jack! I wanted to reach through the screen and throttle him, I don’t claim to be everybody’s FRIEND!

But he’s got a point. Maybe I do. And the facts of the point - all million of them - is a chemical compound that I’ve been pondering, turning around, explaining, apologizing for, researching, and - honestly - as confused by as you probably are all my life.

I know, that like so many artists - and hey, let’s just admit it, human beings - I simply do not want to be alone.

I was musing about this to a friend the other night, talking about Jack’s piece and why it was so hard to read, and why I was so proud of myself (you can’t be THAT narcissistic, Amanda! You are not Trump! You are sharing an unflattering piece of wiring about yourself that you hired a writer to write!) for sharing it despite its fangs. 

We were talking about friendship, and its core meaning, and what I came to start calling “diversity in risk.”

This has been coming up a lot since I arrived in Aotearoa for what I thought was going to be one week. Then it turned into a few months. It’s now going on seven months, and I feel like my life here in this small, rural town has had a kind of a video game quality to it. I’ve never playes SIMS before, but it’s been explained to me, I get it. And I think that’s what it’s like. 

I hear a robotic, friendly voice, showing me a penology of digital options on a pull-down menu against a four-dimensional apple-orchard landscape with screaming lambs as the soundtrack.

THIS IS YOUR _NEW TOWN_!  

You are a _FOURY-FOUR YEAR OLD_.
You are a _SINGLE MOTHER.
You have _ONE LIFE_.
Please select _YOUR HOME_.
Please select _YOUR VEHICLE_.
Please select _YOUR CHILD’S SCHOOL_. 

Please select _YOUR FRIENDS_.

………………….

A terrible moment of my life, and I think about it often:

I was about 27 or so, and my band, The Dresden Dolls, were becoming more well known. We were kinda famous, at least locally.

I was at the Brattle Theater, a great little local indie cinema in Harvard Square, to see some movie or other. I was with some boyfriend, or a friend, I can’t remember (note that point, as well).

A woman came up to me after the film, as we were filing out, and said “Hi, Amanda.”

I didn’t recognize her, even a little. She looked vaguely familiar, maybe? She was my age. She was gothy. Was she a fan? A person I’d met at a party once? It didn’t seem to matter. She seemed nice! She was saying hello! 

“Hey!” I said brightly. 

She stood there, waiting for me to say more.

A moment went by.

“Don’t you know who I am?” She said, and I saw clouds and daggers gathering behind her eyes.

“Um…” I said “Errrr…I’m sorry. I, I don’t. Who…are you? Hi….” I furrowed my brow in lost acceptance, and kept smiling, hoping that my incredible charisma and look of lostness would be enough to win her over.

No.

“Amanda Palmer,” she said, and seriously, it was the use of those two words that I’ll never forget, “Amanda Palmer, I have met you three fucking times and you don’t remember me. Fuck. You.”

And she turned on her heels and walked away.

I stood there, feeling a combination of total shame and total rage:

How dare she shame me for not remembering her, goddammit. I meet so many people. 

And

…am I really horrible? Am I?

……..

In the few weeks after Level four lockdown, Xanthea and I reeled around, co-traumatized by the six weeks we’d just spent pretending that there was something perfectly normal about living in a rental house in rural New Zealand, having just barely gotten to know each other, turning into a kind of accidentally married couple raising a four-year old in an accidental house in an accidental country in an accidental global pandemic. 

As we emerged, Xanthea watched in awe/horror as I invited total strangers into the house, because I had only one friend in town, and that was Kya. 

I had been fully starved of society for six weeks, and long-term starved for society after twelve months on the road. Touring does not count as normal socializing, and this is something that I also thought about when I read Jack’s piece, and something that I’ve discussed with many musicians since lockdown.

Touring musicians develop a kind of wide-spread emotional diversity - or if you want to be mean about it, a sort of learned social sluttiness. We have to, because our social circles are ever-=shifting and alliances must be made fast and furious if we are to have anything resembling a social life as we wend through the world. We’ll be with a group of people for two nights, two weeks, six months - and then that group disbands. People in theater and war understand this well: you have a family, and they are your fucking family, and you tell each other everything and nurse each others’ wounds and see each other’s literal shit on a day-to-day basis…and then it’s over. You pack up and go to your new set of friends.

When I invited Jack and Gaby to come on the tour bus with me, I barely thought twice about their experience, and what it would be like, other than this: I knew I’d enjoy their company, touring can be brutal but thrilling and hopefully they’d like it and even if they didn’t, it wasn’t for too long, and then we’d have been friends for a while and hopefully we’d stay pals after the whole thing was over. This is always the way I feel about the touring crew.

But this is stupid, isn’t it. 

It reminds me a lot of the lover I once had who insisted we meet at the airport when I was on tour.

It was an emergency, he said.

We’d been lovers for weeks, not months, ten years before. It had been fun. I’d moved on, without giving it much thought.

Okay, I said.

We met. We stared at each other across a cafe table. 

It was nice to see him. I’d always liked him. I hadn’t talked to him in years.

I’m getting married, he said.

That’s great! I said. Tell me everything!

No, Amanda, I mean….it’s over. For Real. He said.

What’s….over? I said.

……………..

Sometimes people have relationships with your in their heads that you never know about.

“….without giving it much thought….” 

is clearly the ongoing theme here.

Who is supposed to think what, consider whom, when? This is where it all starts falling apart.

……………

So, define “total stranger”. It was fascinating, here, in my build-a-life, to see what I craved most in those first few weeks.

I wanted to find some locals, some people jus to say hello and make a meal with, just….company. 

I met a few people over instagram, patreon and twitter and just invited them over to the house for dinner.

Why not? 

Well, it’s this “why not” that’s often been the undoing and the updoing go my life.

I remember something Jamy Ian Swiss wrote in the post-script to “The Art of Asking”, he said (let me find it…): 

“In a culture that routinely sees creativity, art, and the human body as mere commodities, many find difficult to grasp that there might be another point of view. Those who live in a world of cynicism and marketing can’t quite wrap their heads around the idea that amanda can be who she claims to be.”

……………

When I toured South Africa for the first time, I was pregnant with Ash. But only a little pregnant, and I was still fooled by the silly cultural rule that you don’t talk about that sort of thing until you’re three months along (I think this is very silly, but that’s another blog). I was alone, on tour, with nary a friend. 

I remember being surrounded by rusks: these dry cookies that were apparently the token of welcoming friendship in Johannesburg. I’d been given 9 bags of rusks. I didn’t know what to do with them all.

I liked them, but I could only eat so many and I couldn’t fit them in my luggage.

I had lots of friends, and lots of rusks, and I I thought I couldn’t tell anyone what I was feeling. That I was pregnant. That I was excited, and scared, and sad, and nauseous all at the same time.

I broke down and told two people who’d ultra-befriended me - two local Joburgers who promised to keep my secret.

In a hotel room in Soweto, with the strage new sounds of South Africa blaring down below, I grimaced and wept happy-sad tears and told them my story. They listened and held me. I haven’t spoken to either of them for many moons. I wonder if they’re read this. 

But for that moment, they were my friends. Was it disingenuous? Was it authentic? Did I mean it? Did they mean it?

I can’t say I dunno. I do know. It meant the world…in that moment.

Just like it meant the world when I was in the confession booth in Tasmania, listening to people telling me about their abortions, rapes and other griefs. I would never see these people again. But for fifteen minutes, we were….friends? No. What would you call, it, then?

The best thing I can think of is 

connected.

……………

But connection comes and goes, right? Every time I’m in a signing line, every time I’m in a confessional booth on the couch listening to a story, every time I’m on the patreon reading a comment, I connect. But then I move on. What does it mean? I don’t know. What CAN it mean? 

……………

I recently had a conversation with a random new friend - here we go again, is he my friend? i mean kinda - named Derek. He’s an American who just moved back here after having lived here for a while but then deciding to head to the UK. Covid happened, and he hightailed it back to New Zealand. We were shopping for croissants for Ash’s birthday party and discussing how we felt about the Kiwis, and the way we can or can’t make friends with them.

Have you heard the theory about the French and Americans and the Coconut? He asked.

No.

He told me about the metaphor someone had come up with: that the French are like Coconuts. Hard shell, sweet center, and once you’re in, you’re in. It takes forever to be invited, to be befriended, but once they befriend you, you’re gold and you can swim around in that lovely coconut water all day. The Americans, on the other hand, are Avocados. All soft and squishy and invit-y and friend-y on the outside, and then BAM, you hit the pit of fuck-you-ness and you never rarely get inside.

I looked at him and scrunched up my face. Do you think that’s true? I asked him. He shrugged.

I wandered to the car with a dazed feeling in my stomach.

Am I an Avocado?

I was about to host a birthday party for Ash having been out of lockdown for about three months. I’d invited 50 people and their kids. I would have invited more, but it was level two, and the limits on gatherings, even outdoor ones like this party, were 100.

Now I was worried. Not hugely worried. But a little worried.

Do I NOT KNOW I’m an Avocado? Does everyone here in New Zealand THINK I’m an Avocado?

………………..

I’d found a few mothers - yes, mothers, because mothers are what I’m attracted to more than anything right now, I have a five-year-old and need a certain kind of company and help - who had space in their hearts and homes to welcome me. I tried to go slowly, to act like a normal person, to accept every other invitation, to not seem desperate for company. I failed, but in that, I succeeded. The first time I went to Rosheen’s house, with its four kids and rowdy dog and many cats and bohemian-explosion decor and piles of books and candlesticks, I burst into tears in her kitchen. 

She didn’t judge or look confused; she held me in her arms. I am so homesick, I whispered to her, and your house is like my house. Thank you for understanding.

………………..

This photo of me and Jack was taken at one of the most harrowing moments of my year. I had literally just seen a tweet bout 15 minutes before that started my slow descent into the hell of the night to come.

And yet there we were, in a nice cafe in Porto, with wine, and food. We should have been enjoying ourselves. What had I wrought?

When my kerfuffle in November happened - the one Jack writes about in his piece - a few extraordinary things happened.

First, a whole theater gave me a hug: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N93DIVbGy6c

Secondly, I became friends, true friends with Gaby. What does that even mean? We don’t know anymore. But here’s the story.

Gaby came along as a photographer, we’d met and liked each other and met a few times, but we were hardly “close”. Not NOT close….just sort of mutually fond allies.

That night Jack describes, when I woke looking ten years older, was certainly one of the low points of my life.

I had my first panic attack since being a teenager, and things went very, very dark in my head. I lost my appetite. And frighteningly, I couldn’t sleep at all: my thoughts were plagued with images of tweets and Guardian journalists and false claims that I’d murdered my boyfriend and so on. It wasn’t pretty in there. My head was a mess and I couldn’t unless it. And, like the moment in the chicken coop, my body had turned cold from emotional shock; it was shivering shaking and I couldn’t stop it shivering and shaking. I got out of bed every half hour or so and stood in the shower, to warn it back up again. At around nine A.M. on the day of that show in Porto, I did something I don’t often do: I asked for help.

I asked Gaby. I didn’t know her well, but I knew her well enough to know that she might be safe to ask.

I texted her something along the lines of “I am not OK, and I could use a hand.”

She said something along the lines of “I will be there in ten minutes”.

She came into the room, saw my shivering shaking body, and she….somehow, magically, knew what to do.

She asked if I had eaten. I said no. She asked if I needed to eat. I said I didn’t know. She said she would be back with food.

She made me eat part of an omelette. She told me to breathe. She sat like a steady sentinel by the side of the bed as I lie there, shivering.

My manager, Jordan, called, warning me that he thought my twitter account had been hacked.

She brought me water. She was very calm.

I asked her, the next day after things had steadied, how she’d known exactly what to do.

Because I’ve been there, she said. 

………………..

I remember that signing line in Portugal the next night. I was a blur.

I remember Portuguese person after Portuguese person holding me tight, and so many of them whispered the same thing.

They must have picked it up from somewhere.

They all kept saying: 

I got you, Amanda. 

We got you.

I was in a car with Xanthea about a month ago, and we were pulled over. She was breathalized, and legal, I’d had two glasses of wine and a large meal.

I’d offered to drive. I could have been driving. I doubt it, but it’s always possible, I could have been over.

What would have happened?

What would have happened to ASH?

………………..

Thee was something, in that moment in the dirt with the chickens, that really shocked me. I cast my mind, as I did as those flashing police lights faded away, to who would take care of Ash if I were stricken by lightening, or hit by a bus. 

I’m all alone, I thought.

But I’m not, I thought after a second. There is a general net of goodwill that protects me. Is there? 

That feeling of falling, that constantly rising nausea in my stomach in the hotel room in Portugal: this is what it all points too.

We do not want to be alone. It is the worst possible human feeling: that the worst will happen, and we will be caught, in the woods, on the savanna, with no allies.

How do you stay safe? Diversify? Charm the masses? Buy a tracking bracelet for yourself to send out constant messages to the universe?

In a way, I have never been more discriminating about my company since getting here, and I am only starting to puzzle-piece together the why.

Jack’s piece, in a strange sense, helped me to untangle it, and to even see my own insecurities in a new light. I am sure some of you will see yourselves reflected - in me - in the piece.

Or maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll feel like Orly, who Jack describes as feeling let down by actually meeting me. Distracted, slightly drunk, tired me. 

There’s a review of The Art of Asking that sits at the top of the ratings in Goodreads, and it says this:

I see you, Amanda Palmer constantly repeats, in this book and on her social media. I see you. We are exchanging. There is meaning to every interaction. There is meaning to the artist-fan relationship. I see you.

I was a massive Dresden Dolls fan ten years ago. I remember waiting in an autograph line with a friend after a Dolls show -- a line just like the ones she describes in The Art of Asking, with amazing people on either side of us, chatting about music and cheerfully clutching CDs to our chest. And then, it was my turn. Amanda Palmer & Brian Viglione sat in front of us. I held out my CD, said something admiring, eyes alight ----

and Amanda Palmer took the album out of my hand, turned to Brian, giggled, and stared at him the entire time.

When she gave me back a CD with silver scribbles on it, she clearly hadn't heard a word I'd said.

She didn't see me. She looked right through me.

I’ve read that review a few times, since it’s one of the most-starred. It always bugs me. The way Jack’s piece bugged me.

But… I want to say.

BUT I WAS PROBABLY TIRED. BUT I WAS PROBABLY DISTRACTED FOR A GOOD REASON!! MAYBE IT WAS ONE OF THE DAYS I FOUND OUT ABOUT ANTHONY’S CANCER.

My head fills up with defensive excuses. My hot shame, just like that moment in the movie theater.

BUT I AM YOUR FRIEND! I DO SEE YOU!!! I think. BELIEVE ME, KIM25635, I AM!! I DO!!!

But…wait. Am I? Do I? Do I want to be Kim25635’s friend? Do I see her?. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I don’t. Maybe I couldn’t deliver. 

Maybe I just sucked, and fucked up.

And maybe if she needs me when I can’t deliver, and can’t forgive me for being tired and stupid and human, maybe…

maybe fuck it. 

………………..

I think about this as a scroll through endless unread and un-replied-to patreon messages, instagram messages, facebook messages, and emails.

I think about this as I consider joined cameo to make video-messages for Total Strangers to raise money for the Biden campaign even though I haven’t finished my own work.

I think about this as I join TikTok and get 4,000 comments on one post and wonder why a piece I shared on twitter about self-harm was my first tweet of all time to get zero retweets, even thought I technically have one million followers. I think about how slutty I am, and how I will always go where the glitz and the head-pats and the attention and the juice are, and I wonder if I’ll ever, ever get it right.

………………..

And I think about how little I considerd the idea that pulling JAck and Gaby into the Amanda-Palmer Vortex could have a downside.

I think about how much pain Jack went through in those days.

I think about what I could have done differently.

I think I hope I learn.

………………..

Those who stay, forgive. 

That's the theme. 

………………..

A few weeks ago, Gaby reached out.

It was morning here, and nighttime in the UK, where she is living.

She asked for help.

I asked what she meant.

Remember when you were in the bed in Portugal? she said.

Yeah. I said. How could I forget?

I’m in the bed, Amanda.

Oh shit. I said. 

I stayed with her. 

I knew what to do. I think.

And mostly, I kept reminding her: she knew how to be on the other side of the bed. Sitting, not shivering.

She’d known what to do when I was in the bed. 

We keep trading off, don’t we. I said. Musical beds.

And I reminded her: if you knew what to do when I was in the bed, and know you’re in the bed, you just have to turn that kind of steadiness and love on yourself. 

You can do it.

………………..

Am I her friend?

Is she mine?

And the crux of the piece:

Am I yours?

I don't know, poeple.

I want to think so.

Not all the time, and never in a way that's perfect, or even, sometimes, wanted.

Yeah. Yeah I am.

I’m just a really, really weird kinda friend.

But I’m here.

As everybody that night in Portugal said to me after the show, people I will never, ever meet again beyond those 20 second exchanges….

I got you.

.......

if you missed Jack and Gaby's first three "There Will Be Some Introspection" pieces, don't ignore them...theyr'e also really, really good:

1. Part 1: Us and Them 

2. Part 2: Revolutions 

3. Part 3: The Art of Asking About Abortion 

and here, with a great drumroll, is.....

4. Part 4: Safe Spaces:

https://medium.com/we-are-the-media/safe-spaces-8b0b26bb1a6f

please enjoy, and please let jack know on twitter or on medium if you enjoy the piece.

jack is on twitter at @jackofninetales

and please, do support gaby's patreon at:

https://www.patreon.com/gmotophotos/

i'm sure she'd love to be on either side of the bed with you.

okay, folks.

6,000 words and a whole day later....

i fucking love you.

x

a

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

IF YOU'RE IN THE USA.....DON'T FORGET TO REGISTER TO VOTE IN THE NOVEMBER 2020 ELECTION. DO NOT BE CONFUSED!!! help is there: you can register to vote, find your local voter registration deadlines, update your voter registration, check that your registration is still on the books, find your polling place and other important election information HERE at http://headcount.org

..........

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. that's always nice for me to see, so i know who's reading. 

2. see All the Things (over 100 of them) i've made so far on patreon:
http://amandapalmer.net/things 

3. JOIN THE SHADOWBOX COMMUNITY FORUM, find your people, and discuss everything: https://forum.theshadowbox.net/

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