Home
Creators
Search Recent Missing Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

gratitude, 2018. (Patreon)

Published:
2018-11-22 22:07:43
Imported:
2026-06
haven't archived this post yet. have a subscription? use the importer!

Content

(patron-only post)

hello my loves

i’ve stolen upstairs and am typing out a small letter of gratitude as 25+ human beings mill downstairs, filling themselves with olives and hummus and wine as we all do the thanksgiving ballet of cooking, wine, music and love. potatoes are on. glasses are being washed. all our friends who are here are helping in one giant improvised and collaborative meal. the vegans have vegan gravy. ash is about to wake up from a nap. 

i moved through the house this morning and took a little collection of pictures. i’m in the middle of getting this album out and trying to write this impossible-to-get-in-on-deadline book text ... but today, none of that. today, just people and food and connection...and a stolen moment up here from the bedroom to send you all this message:

i love you all. 

so much of my life begins and ends here on this patreon...the art i’ve made, the friends and collaborators i have danced with, the life-directions in which i’ve been able to run, and spin, and fall. 

my gratitude for everything lately is immense (i said to a friend a few days ago: “i’m amazing! nothing actively horrible is happening! nobody is dying!”)...but my gratitude for this patreon and you all, you who are supporting me so deeply, is of a different quality than anything i’ve encountered before. 

i cannot express it deeply enough. every one of you is making my strange journey possible and i feel so safe, so strong, and so unstoppable in your wide, interlocked, flexed and global arms. 

mans so grateful to my team...jordan, hayley, michael, nick, alex...all the other oft-unsung heroes who keep this all happening. 

thank you. 

wherever you are right now - know that i am giving thanks...for you, for this, for everything. 



onwards and forever. 


xxx


a


Files

Previews only

Comments

Isabel Vogt

Thank you Amanda. For all the music and the love.

Michelle Bukowski

Thank you for sharing so much of yourself and for all the inspiration. I love being part of this community!

Anna McCotter

Happy Thanksgiving Amanda (& the entire AFP team) My family and I are grateful to be part of something so special. We love you.

Susannah Marshall

Whilst walking through the streets of Brighton to the train station this evening, gazing up at the fat moon, I was filled with this same sense of gratitude, and happily muttered that I was a funny little monkey like all the other funny little monkeys on a strangely beautiful planet, and that this fact was a miracle, a miracle! This sense of gratitude came, I know, because I had just spent an hour in the company of compassionate and caring little monkeys, sharing our thoughts and fears, hopes and laughter. Your post sent shivers up my spine as I recognised your feeling, andfrom knowing it comes simply, and naturally, from pure connection. Thankyou. x

Allison McKnight

Sitting in the dining room at my in-laws oversized house in DC. Heading towards late afternoon. They have two tiny dogs here--one of which I just figured out how to pick up without distressing him--and an eighteen year old cat who is almost deaf, almost blind, has no teeth, and communicates her needs by wandering around the house screaming at the top of her kitty lungs. She's great. I continue to be thankful that you have a patreon for me, and so many others, to contribute to, that you're out in the words doing what you do. The NYC post-vote event was amazing, the dance party in the woods also so. Wonderful experiences that you put together for us. As an aside, I just finished reading "A Guidebook to Relative Strangers" by Camille T. Dungy. It's a collection of essays on traveling with a small child while arting (not a misspelling), examining the history of race America, and interacting with relative strangers (hence the title) while on the road. I think you'd like it.

Anonymous

I believe I now need candle clocks in my life...

Katt

I am grateful to see so many small and beautiful slices of time through your eyes.

Steve Miles

Thank You Amanda! I look forward to your posts. It's great watching Ash grow up. Your Art is worth every penny I give and more. It's great to have a platform that allows an artist to create art at their discretion, not being tied to the pressures of a label. I hope to catch one of your shows again soon. It's been too long (2008) since I have seen you live. The midwest forrest folks miss you!

The Pleasure Mechanics

yes! let us savor these stretches of time where personal intimate grief is being held at bay, when we are surrounded by friends and family who are home - may these seasons fuel us, fill our bodies with strength and deepen our connections so we can continue to love and rage through life. bless your home and all those in it.

Mary Hill

2018. What a fucking year. I've had the worst episode of depression in a long time. I got a new kitty and love her to pieces. Lots of hills and valleys. Not enough plains. I've fallen behind and had 10 emails in my inbox of AFP Patreon things, feeling guilty for not reading them. I just finally got the chance to watch the 'Rewired' video. It was lovely. But that's more on me than you because humans are messy emotion meat bags. And also. Your music definitely has sustained me during some really rough shit. This year in early December I suddenly had to come to terms that a man who acted as my father figure for 10+ years in one of my most sustaining communities sexually harassed/assaulted me over 8+ years (along with at this point, countless others) and that's been. That's been a hell of a lot of shit to unpack. One night after finding out he was out of the community and after sending in my 'formal complaint/report' I lay in bed and couldn't sleep and pulled up 'Bigger on the Inside,' and was listening to it as I shared it to my community saying it was helping me and I went "no. no I need to actually listen to it." and started it over, and great heaving sobs took over. It's been a real shitty capper to a hard hard hard hard year. But every year during my folk New Years Camp I go to a 'Significant Song' workshop. I have sung 'My Life' at it multiple times, and this year I read a poem that came out of me while I was trying to vaguebook what was going on with me (logistic reasons, not fear of sharing reasons. And reading the poem to this group of active listeners lanced the wound once again. And that hurt but it's good. If you're still going, good on you. The poem is here: <a href="https://bit.ly/2GSf55B" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://bit.ly/2GSf55B</a> I'm pretty fucking proud of it. Thank you for being able to reach out to us. I completely 100% agree with Wendy Ice's post about patrons and the way the support works, and how it can help more because it's not got the same pressure. It has a format and a distance and that's important. (sent her an email with well wishes and an “just fyi if no one else explained what's up, AFP sent waves of folks to you) I'm so glad that her words spoke to your heart. I'm sorry it's been next to impossible to find something that resonates with you so deeply. The dangers of being mired on the inside? I have a playlist of “My Life” songs which are those described songs. Not surprisingly, many of your songs are on it. I switch them around depending on what's going on. Her post and your comments about the formatted distance between patron and artist reaaaally resonated with me with podcast story that Invisibilia did about this this town in Belgium that takes in strangers with mental illness and how they get better a lot of the time (npr article: <a href="https://n.pr/2BroIkK," rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://n.pr/2BroIkK,</a> podcast episode: <a href="https://n.pr/2jjPI15)" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://n.pr/2jjPI15)</a> It was noticed that while the townspeople are great at taking care of strangers in mental distress, they couldn't take care of their close friends and family in the same way. There was that unconscious pressure of 'get well get well become who you used to be,' which would exacerbate the issue. I'm exploring that in relation to my relation with my mom who sort of gets depression? She also doesn't. And gets impatient. And wants me to be better. Hell, I want to get better. I digress. Your rambles made me rambly. *shakes fist* I look forward to the album. I look forward to lancing the wound more. I look forward to kitty snuggles. I look forward to seeing you in SF with my boyfriend in the 4th row with some card thing on my head and the patreon button Alex sent over. We are bigger on the inside.