Thanks-Giving, the patron-only BURNING-THINGS-PUZZLE, and a huge merch sale.... (Patreon)

Hello my loves.

TL;DR...with a much longer post below:

-I love you and am grateful to all of you. But you knew that.

- There's a sale running across both the US AFP store and the UK AFP store, we've discounted a whole bunch of stuff from 15% off up to 30% off. (both stores ship worldwide, but shipping costs vary!)

- There's an EXTRA 10% discount code for patrons - the discount code is NOVEMBERPATRONS in ALL CAPS. You enter this code when you get to checkout, and BOOM another 10% - on tiop of the discounted merch - will magically come off your order!! :)

- We have a brand-new PATRON-ONLY puzzle for sale - featuring the "All The Things" image from the "There Will Be No Intermission" book cover....dark things that once belonged to many of you (...they have yet to be burned. pandemic. See Below.) The puzzle is $25 / £20, and available exclusively to patrons. You will once again need to use the access code NOVEMBERPATRONS (all caps again) to access it. (note: the 10% discount code will not be valid for the puzzle, since it's only available to patrons we just priced it fairly cheap for you, hooray :)) Find the puzzle here in the US, and here in the UK.

......

AND NOW.

Hello loves....

If you're in the US, happy early Thanks-Giving Day. 

I know I just threw up my "basic bitch" post, but I also have some business to attend to today before I totally clock off and break bread & veg with all my ex-pats and kiwis. 

I'm feeling very strange and nostalgic...this is my SECOND thanksgiving (and soon-to-be-christmas) away from home. I even miss my OLD home-away-from-home-family in Hawke's Bay (hi, Kya). 

So many facets and levels of displacement and homesickness...I know a lot of you may be going through that too, right now, as well. 

I'm also feeling deeply calm. I've accepted it all. We do what we gotta do with what we got. Then we do it.

Meanwhile....the kitchen is full throttle:

I hope that .wherever you are, and whoever you're with, whether you're American, European, African, Australian....WHATEVER....I hope you're able to step back for a moment of gratitude every once in a while. 

Maybe even...right now. I am feeling it in spades. And, as usual, extremely grateful to all of you for making my life possible.

I love you.

Thank you. 

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

AND NOW....in the FUN ANNOUNCEMENTS DEPARTMENT.....

THE PUZZLE....it's a rare, odd piece of beautiful merch that I envisioned, made available several months ago to the Art-In-The-Mail patrons.

The full story....

If you've been paying attention to the cadence of my posts and work lately, you've probably noticed that I'm s l o w i n ggggg down. 

I'm tired. Y'all....I'm really, really, really tired. I am not BAD, I am just, like many of you, I think...depleted. 

Exhausted. 

But I am also trying to savor the sweetness of being able to "be" exhausted....without terror. There is no terror; my staff is safe, my bills are covered by this patreon, my kid is not in danger....all that.

I was supposed to retreat and rest after the epic-as-anything 2019 tour. The tour was supposed to end in Mid-March 2020. In New Zealand.

Eighty shows. A four-hour stage show. Signings. Non-stop traveling. Campaigning for abortion rights every night. Patron gigs. I was so, so, so ready to go home. Then I was thrown from the frying pan of tour into the fire of a  relationship meltdown amidst a pandemic lockdown, single-mothering with no clue as to when the reprieve would come, all whuile navigating a foreign country where I knew almost nobody. 

All at once. 

I'm so tired.

You may notice that a lot of the work coming out over the next few months is "CATCH-UP" work.

I've been working on the "Look Mummy No Hands" video for SO LONG NOW....and the Tasmnai Documantary. And now the Abortion Podcast....which is actually a Frankenstein Art Project that grew out of interviews I put in the shoebox over three years ago..

I am piecing it all together.

A lot of things in my life  - and our lives - need piecing back together.

My relationships, my family, my body.

My community.

That last one is hard. I wanted so badly to spend the last year and half nurturing this community. Nurturing the friendships that got undernourished while I toured.

It just wasn't on the cards.

And in a roundabout way....that's why this piece of art-that's-also-merchandise means so much to me, poetically.

I've wanted to make a puzzle - ANY PUZZLE - for over TEN YEARS. 

It's always been a puzzle (ba-doom) to me WHAT image to use, and when to do it.

With the help of the whole team, especially Alex in the UK, well.....we've finally made it:

Alex's photo of the puzzle pieced it together completely.....

Now..

You may be thinking that I have just always wanted the opportunity to be stark nekkid on a puzzle. And while that really is a lovely side-effect of this puzzle, it's about a lot more.

This photo was taken as a possible album cover during the shoots for There Will Be No Intermission - and it wound up being the cover of the hardcover patron edition of the Artbook that went along with the album. It was taken by Kahn & Selesnick featuring me sprawled out among all the little things/possessions that were mailed to me by patrons (you can read that post HERE). I promised to burn all the things that were sent. People sent hundreds of things: letters, books, clothes, wedding rings, adoption papers, dolls, necklaces....everything you could imagine. Things to burn.

Here are some photos I took the day of that shoot.....

Here's Coco, standing (lying?) in for me:

Oh my loves....

I still haven't burned it. 

It's waiting, at my house. Memories to release. Pain to vanish.

All our pain.

My life still isn't pieced together.....far from it. 

That's about to happen. It's on the docket.

The Great-Thing Burning was meant to happen before I left for tour. There was a moment there where it was even a scripted scene in the Drowning in the Sound video, but that didn't happen. I didn't want to burn the Things without a grand ceremony, at least a bonfire that I could record.

Tour called. I put it off. 

And then....you know what happened, the pandemic, New Zealand. Time, stuckness. I'm here.

The Things are neatly stored in New York, and when the time is ripe and I am back in the states, the Great Thing Burning will happen.

And the Great Piecing Back Together of my life will happen.

I want you all there with me.

I've become almost superstitious.

Maybe the pandemic happened because I didn't make time to burn the past?

Maybe not.

At any rate....you can help me now.

If I can't burn it, I can make it into a goddam puzzle. So that's what I did.

You may recognize some of your past here.

I promise, I PROMISE!!!!!!!!! I'll burn it.

But first, it's a puzzle.

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

Again: The puzzle is ONLY available to patrons. Since it's kind of a weird thing, we wanted to make it limited edition. And since the items are so personal, and have so many stories attached, and came directly FROM YOU GUYS, we wanted this to be a special thing just for you.

The link to access the puzzle is here:

US STORE 

UK STORE 

And the password to access it in both stores is 'NOVEMBERPATRONS' (in all-caps), and don't forget you can also use this same code at the checkout to get 10% off anything else in the store (excluding the puzzle!) (NOTE: this code is *only* valid for the AFP stores, not the Dresden Dolls stores!)

I hope that the puzzle gets into the hands of some of the people whose objects are pictured here. It feels like it will mean something.

To me.

To you.

To us.

I love you.

And thank you all, for supporting me through the hardest year of my life. 

I'm only just starting to understand.

xxxx

A

P.S. WHEN YOU GET YOUR PUZZLE....please feel free to USE IT CREATIVELY!!! Make something out of the pieces. MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF YOUR PIECE, if you can find your piece. Make a time-lapse. Make Jewelry out of the puzzle. GO NUTS. I LOVE YOU

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

1. if you are a patron and new to my work, don’t forget your patronage allows you access to ALL of my patreon releases to date. HERE is the link to download my latest big solo record, “There Will Be No Intermission”, and HERE is a link to download the PDF of the art/essay book that goes with it.

2. if you’re a patron reading this post via an email notification, 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.

3. see All the Things (over 150 of them) i've made so far on patreon:

http://amandapalmer.net/things

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

5. 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/

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