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life without bars (Patreon)

Published:
2020-03-23 12:41:23
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

{public post}

my loves

greetings from a table at an air bnb in new zealand / aotearoa. it is 12:56 am. i am wiring this on  my phone. i am tired.

i am sad. 

and i am scared. and i am fine. and i am lonely. i am okay. 

i am worried. about michael. about neil. about my kid. about my old people. about my friends and family. about my country. about my future. about my heart. it’s going lub-dub, lub-dub. 

it’s doing it's thing and it's staying alive. it’s none the wiser. 

i am up in the middle of the night, writing this to you, feeling history groan under us like a sleeping giant with terrible breath. 

this is like watching a slow, slow car crash. the tractor trailer that is 3500 feet away. 

i am full of poetry and i am paralyzed. 

i have never felt like this. 

i was a german studies major with a concentration in the holocaust for fucks sake. 

i feel i know i feel i know i feel. 

i know how very little i know.

i know how much i am homesick.

ash wants every day to go home.

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

world on lockdown

like some backwards dr seuss book

OH! all the places you won't go!

........

no bars. no restaurants. no shared joys and sorrows. not that way, anyway.

.........

this afternoon, new zealand / aotearoa just announced that full lockdown is imminent. we have 36 hours - then in we go. level three is now. level four is wednesday. everybody locked inside, no fucking around. jacinda arden, the PM of this country, makes me want to cry. her bearing and ability to do adulting compared to donald trump is shocking. i want to tattoo jacinda across my heart. 

neil and i are going to move from temporary house #1 to temporary house #2 tomorrow. 

first world refugees, in our car with our coffee ground and bags of olive oil and toilet paper and sneakers and shampoos. 

the overstuffed boats. the trains at dawn. dachau. 

what our grandparents saw that we did not, that we do not. i know i feel i know i feel i knew they knew i know. 

we are fucking blessed. 

to have wound up here, to have found a house to move to, to have money for that house, to have a friend with a cat to help us move and race out to get money from the ATM for us, to be all together with nobody sick. 

i am thinking about what i am good at. 

what am i good at? am i any use?

i am thinking about how, when the boston marathon bombing happened, i went onto twitter for three days and barely stopped typing. i tweeted hundreds of times. thousands. i connected. i wept. i offered hugs. i said i know i know i know i feel i know. 

i do. i did. i am. 

today, i did not do that. made eggs and sat with a screaming four year old and explained why he really didn’t WANT his father to die, he was just saying that. 

BUT I WANT TO EAT HIS BLOOD says ash 

and it would usually be funny but today it’s not. 

my job has changed. 

my job today wasnt to tweet 900 times. 

it was to make eggs and lie with ash while he wept, after hitting izzy. he wept 

BUT I WANT TO BE BAD. I WANT TO BE BAD. I WAAAAANT TO, ash says.

I WANT TO BE A BULLY he pouts 

no you don't ash, i insist.

......

yesterday we held a hair cutting party on the lawn. kya cut my hair with ash’s help and i cut ash’s hair with izzy’s help (she’s seven). 

i was tempted to hack all my hair off like i did when i was 20 and had no control in college and that's all i could think of to do.

neil declined a haircut. 

tomorrow, he said. 

i posted this to instagram. 

then someone made this. 

this. 

what i’m good at?

surviving. through connection. 

my biggest fear?

that the internet will go down. 

that i will pick up my phone one day, and there will be no bars. 

no comforting set of wifi wiggles trailing up to the sky. 

no connection. a dead line. 

that is my fear. 

i don’t know a lot about how likely that is. 

but i didn’t know a lot about how likely it was that an illness would rampage through my earth, either. 

tomorrow we have to move. 

to be honest, y'all.... am not in a great place, neither is neil, and i would be amazed, frankly, if any of you were. 

how are you?

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

in positive news: the new temporary house has a piano. 

you can bet your asses that as long as the internet exists i’ll be doing a “it’s just a fucking ride cabaret“ as often as possible via crowdcast. 

let me get settled. mama is tired. mama is trying. 

heres a beautiful video of the beach....

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-D_IBhFqHW/?igshid=e0hoib0s6qs0

and if you follow me on instagram, i did a live stream of just ... the birds and the waves. who knew it could feel like that. it did. 

j went into the today and screamed into the oncoming surf. 

not a fear scream.

no. a true, deep, mother-of-a-four-year-old, OH MOTHER OCEAN-EARTH ARE YOU WITH ME OR ARE YOU FUCKING AGAINST ME scream of challenging aggression. 

no reply yet. i’ll keep checking my what’s app messages for her answer. . 

🌊

the times they are a fucking changing people. 

please check in. 

if you want to up to the minute shit, do make sure you’re following my twitter and IG. i am barely bothering with facebook. i don’t want to post here 10 times a day and clog your inboxes. 

i love you. 

i love you. 

and i love you. 

i am here. 

i feel. i know. 

x

a

ps. i also wrote down all essential phone numbers in my journal today. it made me feel better. and it also reminded me who to check in with that i hadn’t yet. it was a reminder of who and what was important. do it.  

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

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.

2. see All the Things i've made so far on patreon: http://amandapalmer.net/patreon-things

3. A NEW IMPROVED FORUM IS COMING BUT FOR NOW…..please join the official AFP-patron facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/afpland

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

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Comments

Adam Rowe

I don’t think I’ve ever been in a good space but whatever space it has been is now slowly becoming a scary place. A week ago I knew I was going to be stuck doing a job I don’t like in places I don’t want to live for the rest of my life. It was a job though and I had a place to live and I had money to go shows. I could buy paper and pencils and every few months maybe I would draw something and stare at it and be completely disappointed with my lot in life but I knew what that life was. Today I’ve woken up crying because I’m about to go into work for possibly the last time and don’t know what comes next or how to help anyone else. As someone who wasted far too much time in university learning the depressing ways of science, I know how needed this lockdown is. I scream it at all those who aren’t taking it seriously. While inside I’m screaming in terror because my world that was oh so stable is about to vanish.

Anonymous

All the feels. I am so scared of what’s happening. All I see is fear and panic and control. Who has the power and who has none. I see people floundering and crying and screaming. I see a world in torment and a big fat question mark over whether or not it will ever get better. Indefinite lockdown for all but a few. Incomes gone. Businesses gone. Homes lost. Lives lost. Not just from the virus but from the reaction. The chaos. The discrimination. The less valued. The less important. The choices that those in power make. I hear the Earth sighing with relief and surrender. And I feel guilt and shame and relief and desperation all at once. This is not a world I want to live in.

Anonymous

I left my Sydney warehouse home with a beautiful community of 6 others to stay on a little shack on a farm yesterday (mostly alone), in preparation for imminent lockdown in Australia. The city was too hard, too busy, too stressful, the warehouse too industrial, too much noise, too much chatter, I had no silence. My instincts told me to get into nature asap…. but upon leaving the pain that came up was acute; of abandoning the people I loved, everything I owned (and I had to keep reminding myself, I’d be back! This isn’t forever!), my ‘home’, feeling displaced. My mother came as a refugee here from El Salvador when she was pregnant with me, 34 years ago. I am experiencing her trauma, her fear. It’s guttural and comes from a deep place that is ancestral and written into my DNA. It’s such an opportunity to heal, but fuck, it hurts and feels so illogical. Instincts vs trauma responses are the biggest lesson I am learning during this time. Your reflections on first world refugees and WW2 prompted me to share this with you, it’s been on my mind.. I have been feeling so lucky but so afraid all at once. Perhaps we all, to some degree, have this fear built into our DNA… our illusions of control are collapsing as a collective. I’m both terrified and excited about what’s to come, and I believe those of us who have experienced trauma and have been working to heal it are more equipped to balance the yin and yang than anyone else. We’ve been training for this, I guess. Sending you and your family love and peace. xxxx

Jen

Love to you. Such struggle, such beauty, so much to be grateful for.

Ash Freed

I was doing ok until yesterday when I could not disassociate from the reality of our situation anymore. We're still not doing enough here in Australia and there are a lot of people not taking the measures we do have in place seriously. I keep wondering if this is the point I segue from the arts into a different career where I can be of a different use to society... something that could be more useful now. I don't know... you don't know... and there is some comfort in that at least.

Ian Dearden

And here's an excellent article explaining why you're doing what you're doing!!

Ian Dearden

https://theconversation.com/overjoyed-a-leading-health-expert-on-new-zealands-coronavirus-shutdown-and-the-challenging-weeks-ahead-134395?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20March%2025%202020%20-%201573015055&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20March%2025%202020%20-%201573015055+CID_b97636df20bda1b5818072435e44d83b&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=Overjoyed%20a%20leading%20health%20expert%20on%20New%20Zealands%20coronavirus%20shutdown%20and%20the%20challenging%20weeks%20ahead

Michelle

I love you I love you. I'm a nanny and did you know it's actually possible to do some of that virtually?! https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipNquoIt-OFp_dDf5x19x3mjTcclYtj0q_k-yAjI If Ash wants to do some virtual art projects, just let me know! It's hard when we already didn't want them having much screen time and now it's their only connection to the outside world... My throat keeps making a popping sound when I swallow because of the lump often living there. I'm an introvert so it's easy for me to hide inside. But it makes me even more scared of the outside world. And that's not good. I love nature. But I love to hide. Sometimes I wish I had an even smaller and darker place to hide. But that's not good for my mental health now, is it? So I try to keep a strict schedule and meditate and do yoga and do virtual nannying and finally cook some again and cuddle with my cats and my partner and be so grateful that I have all of that. But I still want to hide. If the walls all close in on me it will just be like a really tight hug, right?

Roger Matthews

Kia mau, kia ū, otirā kia haumaru Hold fast, stay strong, furthermore be safe.

Sonel Anatolyvnya Elpiner

I remember freshman year college arguing with friend of mine about modern times no longer creating miracles or events of biblical proportion. I would call this biblical proportion. I used to think Grandparents survived Leningrad Blockades. How? Siberia. How? But they did. And lived to movie to America and live comfortably and eat slices of pizza and go to movies and live life as normal. I feel so spoiled. I feel like I haven’t appreciated enough. Are we cocky as humans? WWI was called the war to end all wars and within yrs WWII happened? Sitting in self quarantine doing work from home. Remembering when I was little and had fears of everyone dying on me so I couldn’t sleep. And the doors in the house were always a little open for light at night. I feel like that now. In a way full of that never let go love. I love you. Even if it’s all just a ride. Thank you. Always.

Jerry Peckery

Love will keep us together - only as close as 6 feet though - I miss kissing my Covid girlfriend.