The Bigger Family. A Voiceramble, April 6th, 2021. (Patreon)

hallo loves.

i recorded this voiceramble for you this morning....it's about 16 minutes long. i what's-apped it over to alex, who's getting a whole new workout in the transcribing department. so many of you told me that you loved the voicerambles being text, and we love giving alex a job, so win win win win.

you can play the voiceramble here in this post, just click above, or you can download here on soundcloud (or go listen there):

https://soundcloud.com/amandapalmer/voiceramble-april-6-2021/s-zriQTzVgXMA

as always, i'm reading all comments. i've been super backed up, but slowly breaking free. i am here. i am reading you. tell me things.

me? 

i'm fried.....i spent the whole last week with ash on a car-roadtrip, going back to our old hood that we just left - havelock north, and greater hawke's bay - so he could touch his old things and places and see his old friends and playgrounds. we did only social things, and i ran around being a mom 24/7 for eight days. it was awesome. and weird. and it was bittersweet. ash wanted to stay there. he is homesick, for a home he just had for 10 months. he's also homesick for woodstock. and london. and melbourne. 

i think he's homesick for a home.

and me, i am homesick for so much more than that. i am mostly homesick for time to make art. what a strange home to miss. the haus of art has frozen.

i spent the whole day doing laundry and putting away food that's tuned into science experiments (both from the trip bags and the house-absence) and haven't even started cleaning the crumbs out of the car that we just lived out of for the past 8 days. there are lots of fucking crumbs. and pieces of lego and kinder surprise toys. this is my landscape right now. small pieces of thing i don't know what to do with. what do parents do with all these small things?

it's a small plastic wing. that belongs to.....something.  it's a wheel. it's a disc. it's a wand. it's a fucking mystery.

i also got my new piano tuned. a new, strange love affair in the offinf.

it is a strange piano. i'll post about that. 

i'm tired, and weary, and happy, and love you. lots of good news coming from the states over the last few weeks....more and more people getting vaccinated. but also, people at breaking point in their spirits. a mixed bag all around. i love you.

and as i write this, i just got a text from neil that the trans tasman bubble has opened. my heart is bursting. i miss my melbourne and sydney families. i would give anything to be able to go over there and taste australia. pray that it's true!!!!!

i love you all, 

more soon.

afp

.......

(as transcribed by alex, queen of merch and transcriptions)

Good morning,

It’s quarter to seven. And I don’t know what the date is. It’s early April. Something-th.

I just came back from a trip with Ash. I was gone for a week. And somewhere in there I posted the Althing, but I didn’t post anything to Patreon because I was just with Ash for a week. I was just a mom 24/7. And I know just a mom is not just a mom.

And I’ve been thinking about so many things.

Especially I’ve been thinking about my lifelong, or not lifelong, but since starting blogging, since The Dresden Dolls, my struggle between living life and documenting life… But also, why document life? Not why anyone document life, but why me document life? And why I feel this deep burning desire to synthesise and share my experiences. And I’ve been thinking about that in the context of what it meant to have a child.

I used to complain all the time to myself in my 20s that it was always feast or famine. The best and most relatable, worthy, story, blog-worthy weeks of my life, months of my life, were the most exhausting, and so I didn’t have time to tell the best stories when they were happening. And by the best stories, I don’t mean the brag-worthy party with the celebrities. I mean sometimes the hardest stories, about how life on the road was so difficult, or what it felt like to be in The Dresden Dolls, in Japan, or whatever the really shocking or soulful or really human experience was. I just didn’t have time to write.

And I also didn’t consider myself a writer. I considered the blogging that I was doing ‘extra credit’, or surplus to requirements. And I never had a manager or an agent who said, hey, your blogging is really important. We need to set aside time for that, Amanda. It was only ever me wanting, craving time and energy to explain what was happening.

And one of the things that’s been so notable about having a child is that there’s one more huge wrecking ball paradox, because I’m going through the most profound experiences, with the least amount of time I have ever had in my life to relate them.

But I still want to relate them.

My head goes there all day while I’m playing with Ash, while I’m doing the dishes, while I’m driving a car, while I’m swimming in the ocean, while I’m walking on the beach, while I’m chatting with a friend.

All I wanna do is connect the dots of life, and explain what I’ve found.

I cannot turn that part of my brain off.

And I used to take for granted that probably everyone had a brain like that, but I don’t any more. I don’t think everybody does.

I can’t stop writing songs, and I can’t stop writing words in my head.

I can’t stop doing it.

And I didn’t have a child until I was 39. Ash has been breaking my heart lately, especially because I’ve just become pudgy again, and the other day he grabbed my stomach, and he said, what’s this? 

And I said: I’m getting fat. 

And he said, I want you to have a baby! 

And I said, Oh Ash, why? 

And he said: 

Because I’m lonely.

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

I got to more or less live my life, between my early 20s when I got out of college and really started doing art as a lifestyle and a job, and around the time I had Ash, I basically balanced my life between gathering my own experiences at my own speed, and writing about them at my own speed. I didn’t have a child.

And when I think about the children I didn’t have - and I don’t just mean having abortions, but I just mean the big general umbrella choice in my 20s and 30s to not procreate - I start thinking about what I did create instead. And ‘instead’ is even a dangerous word. What I chose to give birth to in my 20s and 30s.

And I can do fabulous thought experiments, where I rewind the tape to my 20s, and The Dresden Dolls didn’t happen because I didn’t meet Brian, and I tried to start a mediocre band with mediocre band members and good songs, but my mediocre band doesn’t take off, and I try desperately to make it as a singer-songwriter in Boston, Massachusetts in the years 2000 through 2003, and I just don’t go anywhere, don’t make any money, don’t achieve any success. And I think… my mind probably would have turned towards having children.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Maybe I would have created some other huge artistic enterprise, and started a living statue company. I don’t know.

But The Dresden Dolls became my total occupation, leaving no consideration for adding a child. Especially because I didn’t have a partner.

My partner, even though he wasn’t my husband-traditional-boyfriend, my partner was Brian.

My children were the community.

My time spent, instead of being pregnant, painting baby rooms, changing diapers, figuring out how to use a baby car seat, and doing all the things that I didn’t do until I was 39, those moments were hugging fans. Hearing about rapes and abortions. Going to soundchecks. Driving in vans. Learning how to travel. Learning how to be a person on stage. Learning how to be a person on motion.

And still having all of this maternal energy to give, to share, to parent. But finding a place for it within a really different context than having a baby. Which is why I think I was so ambivalent about it when my biological clock started winding down, because I hadn’t spent all of this time ruminating about whether or not I wanted to have a child. I was so happy, touring around and connecting with people over the world, and feeling like I was nourishing something. Not just because I wrote songs and put them on CDs and got successful. 

That in itself didn’t really feel nourishing.

What felt nourishing to me was playing shows and having the conversation afterwards with a man in my arms crying on my shoulder, and feeling his scratchy beard against my face as he told me that he had just come out of the closet and his family had disowned him and he loved The Dresden Dolls and we would never understand how much we’d changed his life.

And I got to do that. Almost every fucking night I got to feel part of a bigger family. So I didn’t want a smaller family. I loved my big family.

Long sigh.

This is where I sing…

Non, rien de rien

Non, je ne regrette rien

It’s hard to sing first thing in the morning.

I could go on and on.

I’ve missed you all. I’ve missed posting.

I’m gonna be home for a few weeks, and then if you read the Althing I’m gonna be going on an 8 day silent (not me silent probably, but me pretty silent, and phone totally silent) yoga retreat, to try to nourish my own little soul.

But the next few weeks are gonna be good. I’m just gonna be here at home, taking care of Ash, with Neil, and trying to sort some things.

I’ve got a photoshoot coming up on Friday, for a newspaper that’s doing a piece on the writers festival.

I’m getting my piano tuned today. I don’t have a real piano. It’s kind of a real piano. It’s a 70 key old electric stage piano. I’ll take a video of it and show you.

I think this weird not-piano-piano and I are gonna become friends. I borrowed it from a friend of a friend. Long story. I’ll tell you later. But it’s been sitting here in my bedroom in Waiheke since I moved here. And it’s getting tuned today.

And since I live on an island that’s teeny, there’s no piano tuner on this island, so the piano tuner takes the ferry over to the island, and then there’s a consortium of five different people with pianos on the island. And since he doesn’t have a car, cos he comes over on the passenger ferry, it’s like a co-op. You get your piano tuned, and then you drive the tuner to the next person’s house, and he tunes that person’s piano, and then they drive him to the next person’s house, and he tunes that person’s piano, and the last person drives him to the fucking ferry, and he goes home. And you pay him in cash.

I’m kind of excited to meet this piano tuner.

You can’t talk to a piano tuner while they work, though. And I wonder if he’s gonna look at my weird not-piano-piano which is sort of a cross between an electric keyboard and a piano and tell me that he’s not gonna tune it cos he only works with real pianos, which will of course send my imposter syndrome through the fucking roof.

We’ll see.

I love you all.

Good morning. Good night. Good evening.

Wherever you are, I hope you’re feeling nourished in whatever way you need to. Whatever you need. It won’t look normal, I promise you. But I promise you that you are loved by me.

Bye....

xxxxx

AFP