I'm going offline for my birfday! ALL-PATRON APRIL 2021 ALTHING WEBCAST in a few hours!! (Patreon)

{patrons only}

Hallo Loves.

The massive all-patron webcast HAPPENED and it’s now viewable here:

https://www.crowdcast.io/e/afpbday2021. 

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

Last month marked SIX YEARS on patreon. 

I started this platform in March of 2015, just a few months before Ash was born. I gave birth to a baby and a new way of working and living all at the same time.  

This is a new kinda althing. Instead of 4,000 words of text, we are going to keep the text to a bare(er) minimum and instead, as promised in a few posts over the past month, we are going to do a 3-HOUR ALL-PATRON webchat/webcast, with a ton of information, Q&A, check-ins & Q&A time from the core members of team AFP: Hayley & Michael in New York (Michael will be in the new - DOWNSIZED - office!), Jordan beaming in from Sydney, and Alex from a late-night in London-town. 

We can celebrate six years of patreon. 

How....weird.

SIX YEARS?

It's also my 45th BIRTHDAY in a few days - on April 30th - and I'll be way off grid on a yoga retreat. My gift to myself is not dealing with a birthday and all the work that traditionally goes with it. I just want to be alone...and around caring strangers.

 But before I go, I wanted to celebrate surviving this year, and I don't say that lightly. I survived. I'm proud of me. You survived. I'm proud of you.

I also invited some special-guest-friends to join and celebrate with us. It'll be....it'll be good. 

THE WEBCAST starts in about AN HOUR & change - at 11 am NZ time - and there's already almost 700 patrons RSVP'd, so go over and start chatting if you feel like it, or pop on when it's time to go live. Once you RSVP, crowdcast sends you a little ping when it's about 10 minutes to webcast time.

I will play music. I will read poetry. I will talk to you. I will probably cry a couple times.

HERE'S THE LINK! WHEN YOU CLICK, THE START TIME SHOWN IS LOCAL TO YOU!!

https://www.crowdcast.io/e/afpbday2021

**IT WILL BE PERMANENTLY ARCHIVED AND RE-WATCHABLE AT THIS LINK, FOREVER, FOR THOSE WHO CAN'T MAKE IT!!! Three hours is a, er, long time. Come for ten minutes, come for the whole thing, don't come at all...it'll be waiting for you in it's entirety when we wrap.**

...........

AND now, to the althing itself, and a few words about where my head is at, and where I plan to bring my head as I go offline.

I know I may be sounding like a broken record, but that is what I feel like.

I FEEL like a broken record. 

My life - right now, on an Island off The Coast of Auckland in New Zealand in April 2021 - is unrecognizable to the life I imagined I'd be living in so many ways.

I imagined I'd wrap my exhausting tour in which I Talked About The Dark every night, and I imagined I'd go home to New York, to my own house, and I imagined I'd live with Neil and raise a child in that house, and I imagined I would sometimes tour, and I imagined I'd make and build a beautiful community of friends in and around our house in Woodstock...and I imagined my patreon would flourish as I deftly continued to dance on the tightrope of getting paid a salary for my daring attempt at non-stop creation and reportage on the backstage workings of how to create non-stop.

It all changed with covid. 

This patreon kept me afloat, and my ability to crank out a minimum of content to keep you all in the loop kept Michael and Hayely in a job, and our expensive office-with-a-stage (sigh) in New York paid for....even though nobody was in it. 

I didn't do what I wish, in a way, I had done. What I did not have the balls to do.

I wrote a book on asking. You know my philosophy.

I wish I'd asked for a year off.

I wish I'd had the courage to do that.

I wish I'd had the bravery to face my staff and my patrons to say:

"I can't."

I can try to do that thought experiment. 

What would have happened in April 2020 - when Neil left the country two days before my birthday, and my life hit the hardest wall it's ever hit for multiple reasons, and a four year old was scared and grumpy and waiting for his mama time? - if, instead of making tearful hand gestures at you all saying "I am not allowed to tell you why, but Neil has left and I need your support more than ever and I don't know what that means?", I had simply sent a message saying:

"Dear Patrons, 

I have Broken Down for reasons that I cannot go into. I can explain in a few dozen years. Please continue to send monthly checks for as long as you are able. 

It is my time to take the donut. 

Love, Amanda"

I suppose a few thousand people would have freaked out and left, but I think the vast majority of you might have hung in there with me for a year.

I don't know. I'll never know.

I do know that the time has come, in my own life, for a reckoning of sorts.

Many, many of you have sent me the same message over and over: rest, Amanda. We got you. Take care of yourself. Take my money. Stop trying to please everybody and stop flailing and loudly apologizing, it's not becoming. Just grow up and allow your patrons to support you.

The irony that I wrote the best-selling book on asking is not lost on me.

Here in am, in my final examination.

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

I have needed this community more than I ever imagine possible, and I also find myself getting increasingly more defensive about what it IS, and how misunderstood things are.

There's a patron here named Danielle who wrote me an email yesterday. Months ago, she recommended an immigration specialist who undoubtedly is the reason Neil, Ash and I managed to stay in this country. When I didn't immediatly recognize her email and name, she lightly chided me and said, with a forgiving laugh that her "asymmetrical love" for me "goes waaaay back".

Asymmetrical love. I suppose. I mean, yes.

Isn't all love asymmetrical? It's the ETERNAL BITCH OF LOVE. Anyone who's ever been in love (or tried to be in love) knows this well. 

 But it's love. It's still love. It's just a scale issue, whether it's me and my husband, you and your mother, or me and 13,000 people.

My friends and family still often fear that "the strangers" I talk to on the internet are a kind of immanent threat and danger. I've had to learn how to protect myself and my loved ones from the porous and blurred lines of living a life online.

Someone recently came down on me for going to the patreon with my "personal problems"....saying something along the lines of "but it's a bunch of STRANGERS!!"

I just....beg to differ.

You are not a bunch of strangers. You do not feel like that to me.

You feel, collectively and individually, like the safest, most reliable and most trusting relationship I've ever had. Which is not to say we haven't had our ups and downs. People come, people go. People expect, I fall short. People go crazy. I block people. It's got all the shit parts of a one-on-one relationship.

But I keep showing up. And the Collective You does, too.

And that, in a very strange way, feels like love, even though many people cannot comprehend it. 

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

I think about Victoria in the UK, who tragically lost her twelve-week baby Aerandir a few weeks ago. We've been messaging. 

I think about Rae, in South Africa, whose university burned to the ground the other day. We check in and talk about how hard life is. 

I "barely" know these people. It's a asymmetrical love. 

Is it real?

Is it love?

Yes, it is.

I think about the dozens, hundreds, thousands of micro-connections that I've forged and tried to maintain over the last twenty years of running my life as an emailable person. I think of the 1,800 unanswered emails in my inbox, I think about the thousands of unanswered messages to the website, and I think about the thousands of unanswered patreon messages I've always cringed to see when I log on.

The other day, I did an early-morning (for me) interview with Libération, a bid daily newspaper in France. The journalist wanted to interview me about the patreon, since the sustainable life/art-funding phenomenon has taken off there, finally....and don't we even have a word for this yet? i don't even think there's a good word for WHAT patreon IS..."sustainable life/art-funding" just ins't that catchy...suggestions welcome, if we change the world I'll send you a cake. 

She was asking if I felt exhausted by how much these people EXPECTED from me.

"It eez laike, AAAmondaaa, you are marreeed tew theerteen thousand peeeple!!!"  

Well, yes. I said.

But does anyone ever ask my patrons whether THEY feel exhausted? By how much attention and care I NEED? Because, goddamit, that side of the story never gets told.

If you haven't picked up on the theme of this patreon over the last six years (it's been six years), it's that we are reciprocal.

I spent 2019 on the road, shoving songs and videos and streams out onto the internet t a dizzying pace. It exhausted me, and it exhausted my team. We were due for a rest. We didn't get it. 

2020 was about triage and survival.

We survived. 

2021 is going to be about recovering. 

We have to.

The recovery cannot happen quickly.

I've often mentioned Henry Rollins' concept of the Inhale Year / Exhale Year. One year to inhale and think about what he wants to say - without saying it - and then a year to go out and say it. Exhale. 

I feel like my inability to NOT SAY WHAT IS ON MY MIND RIGHT NOW NO I MEAN RIGHT RIGHT NOW has been the blessing and deep curse of my life. It's brought this community to me. But it's also left me handicapped in a certain department, as I metaphorically lie bleeding in the street, holding up my phone and flip the camera to take a selfie of my legs as they are crushed under a car with the knowledge that this moment MUST BE SHARED. 

Sometimes you just need to put the phone down and let your legs bleed, and wait for the ambulance to come, and breathe in. Inhale.

That is what I am doing this coming few weeks.

I am going offline, OFF. LINE. No phone. No texts, no email. No calls. No decisions. No commentary. No Thing. I am flying to the south island and I am going to a place in the mountains that has no cell service, and I am going to do yoga with a bunch of strangers - strangers who aren't you. 

But they'll do, and they are you, if you know what I mean.

We stand in for one another.

I may have 1,800 unanswered emails, some of them from dear friends. 

But answering Rae, with her burned-down universtiy, and answering Victoria, with her loss of a baby, feels like the relationship to tend to in the moment. It will change. It always changes. 

The people I will meet at this yoga retreat - which, by the way, your patronage is funding  - will stand in for them. 

I can't hug my old friends.

I can't hug you.

I can't hug my family.

But I can hug these people I'm about to meet on the south island (I mean, I don't mean to be presumptuous, but probably, knowing a few dozen people doing yoga for a week in the mountains, there'll be hugs).

Love the one you're with. 

If it sounds slutty, don't take it that way.

It means that whoever is there, whatever is there, it can work. 

We stand in for each other. We take care of each others' children. 

I think about the grapes of wrath.

I think about the viral story of the police officer breastfeeding a neglected baby.

I think about all the ways we have tried, through these SCREENS, with our tip-tapping fingers, to make sense of HOW we can stand in for what ISN'T and HASN'T BEEN there this year.

We have had to do a lot of standing in.

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

I know how fucking privileged I am to be able to afford to take a week off to go do yoga in the mountains with strangers, at every level, given what's going on in the world.

I do not take it for granted for a second.

All I feel right now is gratitude. 

Gratitude that Neil came back, and that he's the type of man who has my back, and he's taking Ask for the week so I can do this.

Gratitude to the whole community for sending me off like this.

Gratitude to all the people who carried and stumbled with me throughout this year...Marissa, Ash's old nanny who fled back to New York to be with her family for lockdown; Xanthea, who helped take care of Ash during lockdown and beyond; Kya, whose family embraced me like one of their own in Hawkes bay; all my new whānau in Hawkes bay who watched me careen through the toughest year of my life and offered me food, and friendship, and quiet kindess; and all the new people I've met on Waiheke who are doing the same.

All the people who are standing up, and standing in. 

Wherever we are in this circle....here we are.

I just remembered an old blog of mine - an ancient one from 2007 - Jason Webley were working on the Evelyn Evelyn record in Santa Cruz, California, and my beloved childhood cat, Govinda, died back at home. 

We were borrowing and recording in a house belonging to some friends, and there was a cat there. That cat came and cuddled me at night.

Jason and I came up with a name for this phenomenon, and I still use it to this day:

Cat Still Exists.

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

We do what we can, how we can, with what we got.

With WHO we got.

And today, I got you, babe.

Nobody - nothing - is replaceable. 

Nothing is like the embrace from your father, your mother, your sister, your dead beloved, your child.

But there is a transferable, circular energy that we can all feel; we know it exists.

Finding the code to unlocking the balance between the well-known and the lesser known; the stranger and the family; the here and the there; the relatioship  that is meant to endure and the relationship that's meant to teach and fade; this feels like its been my life's work lately.

And I've never been more graetful, my dear patrons, to be on this journey with you.

I bow to you, I hold you, and I hug you.

I'm not there.

But I'm there.

And somehow, maybe, somehow today, or tomorrow, someone will stand in for me and give you a hug, or a wink, or look at you from across a screen or a street and give you the heart-holding you need....to get to tomorrow.

And that - maybe that's me.

I love you so much.

I got no more words.

Thank you for being my patrons.

........

WHAT'S COMING DOWN THE PIKE.....

The dance of inhale and exhale is gonna be weird over the next few months. I'm trying to pare down and I'm trying to clean up and I'm trying to be forgiving and I'm trying to not kill myself and the team.

Many of the projects listed in last month's althing are still in ongong production with work happening slowwwwwwly behind the scenes. Most of these projects are films or video projects, which take slog-time to edit and complete the way me and my collaborators envision them to be. Throw in the pandemic and shifting schedules and life, and the timelines get extended longer and longer.

Here's a working list what's still on the burner:

• The Look Mummy No Hands music video & documentary (working on the edit)

• Tasmania Confession Booth documentary (working on the edit)

• Michael Dunaway documentary (working on edits and still shooting/deciding how to cut these multiple projects together)

• Jenessa Joffe's Toronto Backstage Interview Series film project (just needs a push out the door, with time I haven't had yet)

And now, something new to add to the list....

The Onion Cellar/the Glass Violin, a possibility?

A couple years ago, Jason Webley, Steve Bogart and I were workshopping a script we wrote for an original show that had a few working titles ("The Onion Cellar" or "the Glass Violin"). We did a script-read in New York  that some of you were able to sit in on, and from there we spent many days and nights - over a year - re-working the script and tightening it up. I'm not sure what, if anything, will come of it in terms of doing a full-fledged musical theatre production, but I think it may be in a good place over the next few months to share with you as a possible Thing. Why not thing a SCRIPT, with a long blog and photos and video of the behind-the-scenes about the project? It'd be epic, and weird. I mean, it's art. I've talked to BOgart and Jason about the idea of making this a project to breathe some life back in the project and put some money in their pockets. 

What do you think? Comment, please.

.....

WHAT I'M READING:

 "the year of magical thinking" by joan didion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Year_of_Magical_Thinking

I was so comforted by this book when I read it in 2006, and that was before Anthony died. 

I've noticed this year that I want to go back and re-read books that have moved me deeply, and this one called to me. I have been reading it 4-5 pages at a time, like a poem, and it's been giving me a new perspective on my grief - about Anthony, about miscarriage, about loss in general - and this pandemic moment.  

She is such a good goddamn writer. She writes her heart with a precision that's breathtaking. If you've experienced sudden loss....please. Just read this.

........

WHAT I'M LISTENING TO:

punisher - phoebe bridgers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punisher_(album)

Over and over and over and over again.

Over and over.

And Over.

Can't stop.

...

music for swinging lovers - frank sinatra

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_for_Swingin%27_Lovers!

This has been my comfort vinyl while I do the dishes every day.

In olden days, by the way, a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking.

But now, god knows,

....anything goes.

....

DISPATCHES FROM TEAM AFP

instead of writing up a summary of what they've been up to for the last month, i've asked the team to share something brief here and to join me on the webcast to share a deeper dive and tell us about what they do and what's been going on. i'm excited to have the team join us on the webcast.....

from hayley:

It seem's like Amanda's 2020 birthday webcast was only yesterday, wow! Here we go, 2021! I'm excited to celebrate Amanda and this very community together at our virtual party and I look forward to answering questions, sharing behind the scenes stories and learning more about how you've all been spending the last month, the last year, and the last few days.

...

from michael:

Hello from Brooklyn!  I’m looking forward to chatting with everyone tomorrow, it’s going to be great as always!  I’m also excited to give everyone a tour of the new office space where Hayley and I will be working for the foreseeable future (not pictured here to avoid spoilers!).

.....

from alex:

AHHHH HELLO FROM THE MIDST OF A CRAZY HECTIC MERCH SALE HAPPENING IN MY LOUNGE, I have so far packed 500 of these babies, and have another 400 (and counting!!!) to go, the webcast is gonna be at midnight in the UK so i will most likely either be slightly delirious or asleep on merch packages zzzzzz

....

from jordan:

It’s me! The “behind the scenes guy”, aka Amanda’s manager, aka Jordan (and many other pseudonyms). I’m looking forward to meeting and hopefully chatting with you fine Patrons on the crowdcast coming up!

......

I am so proud of my team, and this particular iteration of Team AFP is something I give thanks to every fucking day.

This webcast/athing is the first time the whole care team will be online ALL at the same time for the patrons, so bring QUESTIONS!!!!!!

.......

HOW THE PATREON ITSELF IS DOING...?

and now...NITTY GRITTY TIME. 

This text remains very similair every month, but it's good for new people to read.

As of this writing there are 13,241 patrons pledging about $44,125 for the first Thing each month.

I go over this stuff in every Althing, but if you're new to all this....patreon charges you monthly & retroactively, meaning that you get billed on the 1st of the month for all the Things released the month prior.

Because people have their pledges capped (HOW MANY TIMES CAN I SAY THIS....if you are on a budget, you should cap your pledge please: here's the tutorial again), the first "Thing" raises the most money by far, and anything released thereafter raises less and less. I LIKE THIS! THIS IS GOOD! It means i never feel too guilty!!!!!. really. do it. cap cap cap your pledge if you are on a budget.

The numbers below are gross. Not net. Meaning: it's the money raised before fees were deducted by patreon and is not the total deposited to me. patreon takes a 5% fee (which they use to build and sustain the platform, which is GOOD) and then there's a payment processing fee, which varies on a ton of factors and is usually between 5-9% of the total collected.

Also, none of this reflects the money I SPENT MAKING THE ART, running the business, paying the office rent, payong for crowdcast, getting myself around, getting the team around and fed and slept,....all the collaborators and my actual staff payroll, etc.

iI don't share that level of nitty-detail-stuff with you because I assume it would bore you to fucking tears. but you can trust me: paying for a full-time staff, office, manager, accountant, and massive team of art-collaborators ain't cheap. sometimes we barely break even, especially when we do a lot of charity projects.

Back in March, i Thanged 3 Things:

Did This Year Actually Happen? and 111 other things I want to write about was the first Thing and it earned about $48,898 from 13,277 patrons

The Art of Asking Everything: Dr. Rola Hallam was the second Thing and it earned about $19,786 from 7,352 patrons

The State of All Things: March 2021 was the third Thing and it earned about $11,241 from 4,476 patrons

(we say "about" because patreon may be still trying to process some pledges that have yet to go through...we never know, you know.)

Them's the numbers.

I believe in the ebb and flow. so the patreon has dropped a bit $$-wise, but the number of patrons has stayed pretty steady, which is really great. 

It means that people are adjusting but sticking around.

......

OTHER ARTISTS TO SUPPORT!!

Storm Large

I've said it and I'll say it again: Storm is now on patreon!!!

https://www.patreon.com/stormlarge

....

Contrapoints!

I've been following this patreon with gusto, and if you're into smart, cynical, intellectual video content, may i recommend. Natalie is one of my favorite new personalities. just so, so smart and dry and funny, and talking about all the right stuff.

https://www.patreon.com/contrapoints

...

Blocked and Reported:

https://www.patreon.com/blockedandreported

I found out about blocked & reported through several friends who've also been through "cancelations", and katie herzog is a new favorite person of mine. After a lot of people telling me I HAD TO HEAR THIS PODCAST I finally grumped over to see what everyone was talking about....and it's really good. Also, YAY patreon friends. if you're chatting with katie over there, send a hug from Ol' Amanda.

.....

ART BEGETTING ART....

Drawn in ballpoint pen by @jaamabeli....

BALL. POINT. PEN. I mean.

....

From @julija.cagalj on instagram....

I love everything about this.

....

Embroidery by @dagum_embroidery ...

I see you. 

...

A painting by @theartistwade....

I still see you. 

.....that's all for now loves.

SEE YOU ALL ON THE INTERNETZ.

I'll read as many of these comments as I can before heading offline, then pick up when I get back.

I'll be back online around May 6th.

xx

AFP

------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