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coming right up: a live-cast piano improv song....and i'll need you. (Patreon)

Published:
2021-12-07 10:19:34
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

hallo loves.

TL;DR, i'm going to webcast A LONG-ASS PIANO IMPROV SONG to SOOTHE YOU TO DEATH and MAYBE MAKE YOU CRY this friday morning my time, at 11:11am, which is 6:11 on thurs in NYC and 11:11pm thursday night in london. here's the link (it will magically adjust to your time zone!!)

https://www.crowdcast.io/e/t873q9h7 (i'm in the live chat now, til i delete this!)

i'll be streaming the whole thing live from my mac but recording the actual sonic beast onto tape at roundhead studios. all patrons will get an mp3 download. (i'll try to record something extra for you $5 folks).

here we go.

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

greetings from waiheke island. 

i am godamn so tired. exhausted in that way that you don't feel until you've been running a marathon and you collapse and feel your skin want to sink into the asphalt. i've handed ash over to neil for a few days, and this is the first time in 60 days that i am not alone in a house putting a child to bed. lockdown is easing. i could be out. i don't want to go out.

you know what i'm doing? ANSWERING ALL THE TEXT MESSAGES I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO ANSWER FOR TWO MONTHS. it is so daring. it is so sexy. it is so SATISFYING. 

if you have texted me in the last two months....you may get an answer tonight!!!! which reminds me: i'm trying to get into a groove of answering my patreon messages. it was a habit i wish i'd started at the beginning of the patreon, and i'm working through the backlog (verrrry slowly, there are a lotta messages in there). but it seems to me ridiculous that i'd answer random people on instrgram or facebook or twitter about some random shit before i'd tend to my own patrons. but that's what i've done. i am terrible. i am not terrible. i am learning. i am changing. i am growing. i am tired.

i am so, so tired.

okay, here's the news from the very fucking tired lady.

first of all...over the last few days, i've read through all 300+ of your comments on this last post about what to do with my studio time on friday. your comments are works of art in themselves, as usual.

i've thought about it.

i've mulled. reading the comments was an interesting practice of inspiration and deep listening in itself. i had a confirmation bias going on. i really wanted you - i realized - to pick option #3....the idea of just improvising something out of thin air....because I AM SO TIRED. i have nothing in me - no desire to learn, to practice, to spend a day writing. i'm too fucking tired. did i mention i am tired?

but if you know how this works...nothing really comes out of THIN air. i mean, i suppose it could, but it's more fun to go into a long improv with a prompt, a shape.

i've been thinking, in my bone tiredness today, as i raced around doing errands and buying water for the house and finally deep-cleaning the kitchen and getting ash some fish and chips....i've been thinking about that shape. that feeling. i've been thinking about all of your comments. the pain. the tiredness that many of you seem to feel too. the call for something soothing. the call to be seen.

i sat down at the piano at around 4:30 pm today, and i started playing.

i found us a theme, a shape. a leitmotif. it's sitting there now, in my heart-radio, playing itself to me. 

it's funny, it's beautiful, it's under-rated, how just an idea can be soothing.

i was talking to gaba about this lately (hi gaba).

we had a chat about a year ago, while i was in havelock north and she was locked down in poland. we both have little kids, and are songwriters.

and i was telling her that since neil had left, and i lost pretty much all childcare and was just letting it ALL GO and mothering and grocery shopping and not doing fuck all else....i had changed my relationship with the song-radio that plays in my head.

instead of trying to capture all the ideas, i just started listening to them. enjoying them. not having to write them, or capture them, or finish them.

just enjoying them, as they whizzed past.

goodbye, good idea. i loved listening to you.

goodbye.

damn, i am a good songwriter, i would say to myself, as i waved goodbye to my ideas...in my half-sleeping state, in the car, doing the dishes.

enjoying my own personal radiohead, and the end.

.......

today, i basked in the juices of this music in my head, because i will hold it, i will keep it, i will nourish it, i will let it steep and compost there until friday, at which point it will be some nice degree of ready-ish un-bakedness, delicious but not quite edible. like sugary cookie dough. and i will stick it into the final oven of the studio moment. 

and maybe not burn it?

and maybe burn it.

a controlled burn.

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

the day before studio day. i have a piano to play on at somebody's house in auckland. i gotta get off this island. there, i will practice.

i recorded about fifteen minutes of the ideas into my phone.....and i'll spend the entire day on thursday working on this cookie-dough-song-shape, without letting myself get too specific. like a jazz player polishing her sax, or like a modern improv dancer washing her grey tights. 

or like an abstract painter just laying out her 60 foot canvas and lining up 20 buckets of paint.

i do not know; but i know.

thank you all for letting me do this.

thank you for letting me be free.

thank you for letting me be tired.

thank you for letting me just play piano. for me. for you.

so here we go: 

it's open to ALL PATRONS (you need to be signed into patreon to access the cast):

https://www.crowdcast.io/e/t873q9h7

so....RSVP now and you can start using the chat ANYTIME. the nice thing about the chats in crowdcast are that they're open the minute the cast is created. so i'll duck in and out of the chat from NOW until the time i go live.

what else....?

i think i'll try to go to 1:11. two hours is a long time to play piano non-stop....so i'll just set that as a goal and see what fucking happens.

i've never tried this before.

i'll webcast the entire recording, but the live feed will be from my computer mic (i'll TRY to set the computer up to grab the board recording, but i'm not sure we'll have the wherewithal to do that). either way: i'll be in a fancy-ass recording studio....so the entire imrpov will be captured with insanely fancy mics....we will mix it....we will thing it.

it, therefore, has to be perfect. or perfectly imperfect.

that's:

FRIDAY, DEC 10th, 11:11 am in auckland.

FRIDAY, DEC 10th, 9:11 am in sydney and melbs

THURSDAY, DEC 9th, 10:11 in london

THURSDAY, DEC 9th, 11:11 in berlin

THURSDAY, DEC 9th, 5:11 in new york

THURSDAY, DEC 9th, 2:11 in LA.

i just realized....this is on my dad'd birthday (that's jack...it's on the 9th).

this one will be for him. he's had a tough couple of months.

what do i need from you?

your support, your love, and....

your stories.

i'm going to send you a prompt tomorrow or early thursday (my time). i'd send it now but i wanna keep it clean and beautiful. i'll read every answer to the prompt before i head in. 

your voices ewill all be with me, in my head, as i play. i'll explain.

that'll be thursday. thursday i am giving to myself, and as i said....i'll be in the city at a friend's house. i plan to be alone, read about all of your lives, drink some tea and wine, and play the piano all day, getting ready to splash my buckets of piano paint onto the recording studio canvas. 

i still can't believe i get to do this as a job and get paid for it.

yes, i can.

see you over on the chat. i'm gonna go there RIGHT NOW - so come say hi to me. it's 10:52pm here in NZ....i'll be on the chat there for at least another 30 min.

here's the link again:

https://www.crowdcast.io/e/t873q9h7

let us burn.....

xxx

AFP

p.s. OH!!!! $10+ patrons: i have not forgotten you. i'm also setting up a webchat (christmas themed! let's drink and read poetry and cry) for just us next thursday morning (a week from today) - dec 16th, 10am my time....which is gonan be wednesday night for a lot of you. i'll send you your own post reminding you! but if you wanna get ahead of the game you an RSVP here: vhttps://www.crowdcast.io/e/frw50tbn

———THE STUFF I SAY AT THE END OF EVERY POST———

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. are you 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

Files

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Comments

Peta Tauchmann

The world feels a bit different. Time is different. There’s pre-covid time which was full of stuff. Stuff to do, people to see, places to go. Then there’s covid time which is cautious, slow and strange. Forever I will thing of stuff that happened as pre-covid or during covid. My Dad died this year in June. As the only child of parent who are only children we were close. MUM met dad when she was 15, and 62 years later they were separated. He didn’t die from covid but I felt like it robbed me of time with my Dad. Before covid I would meet him at the farmers market every Saturday. We would shop and then meet for lunch and talk about everything and nothing. The Formula 1 racing, politics, the mundane day to day things. But that stopped in 2020 because the markets weren’t allowed to offer seating for us to hang out. Early this year Dad got a chest infection. He was going into hospital for treatment in April. Then we had another lockdown and they decided not to do it. In May he got really sick. My lovely strong Dad who held my hand through life could barely walk and the infection took hold. In June he wasn’t able to breathe any more and he died. Covid robbed me of two years of lunches with my Dad at the markets. Now Mum and I are two and we miss him so much. Hug your Dad, tag the photos, listen to his stories while you can. One day he won’t be there. I am 54. Not a child. My life is forever changed. Now I have to go and blow my nose. 😭

Anonymous

How am I? It’s a very good question and one I find hard to answer. Right now, I’m living in Dunedin, NZ, but I, too, am not from here. I’m from Sydney and have lived in the SF Bay Area with my husband and his kin for a decade or so before this sojourn down here. Day to day, I am well enough, getting by in a Covid-less (though we know that will probably change in the next month). My wee son has started to going to Montessori preschool this year and loves it. He’s thriving here. But I’m… kinda not, and my husband is not adjusting at all. We feel like light years away from family and friends in Australia and the US. We haven’t seen anyone for two years, and are still not sure when it’ll be possible. But… we’ve managed. My kiwi life may be much smaller than I was hoping, but it’s still a lovely place. Whilst it sounds super privileged (and it is), I mourn the loss of the ease with which I was able to get around the world. When I moved to the US, my mother hugged me tight at the airport and told me that she was only a day away if anything happened, and that I was only a day away if I needed to return home. I’ve always held on to that: that the opportunity to get home is always accessible. Only now, it’s not. I think this forced estrangement from my family and friends on the other side of the borders has really hurt in a way that I’ve not experienced before. I see the world differently now. But I mourn for the years of my child’s life that our family has missed out on. I mourn for the years I feel we’ve lived in suspended animation. But I know how fortunate I am that my day-to-day life has been pretty unimpeded during this time of great global uncertainty and change. I don’t take it for granted for a second. I feel I’m moving into a transitional phase and am trying to learn and grow in ways that alter and change me for the better. I don’t know what the world’s ‘new normal’ will look like but I’ll continue to send everyone aroha from here.

Anonymous

Fellow Kiwi here, in bed at 5.30pm with the curtains open and the sun shining in. I spilled avocado on my sheets 3 days ago and it's turned brown. I don't care enough to wash them. I managed to get to the beach with the dog, so I'm telling myself "that's enough work for today". I listened to a pod cast about you and the Dresden dolls and it sent me down a rabbit hole of some of your music I've never even heard. At the risk of sounding like a brown noser, that was probably the highlight of my day. Hope my fellow melancholy fam have found something today that reminds you you're alive xx going to make dinner for my partner and pretend I haven't been in bed all day. Love you xx

Kerry-Ann Adamson

Hello from the Highlands of Scotland at very early o'clock. How am I? Exhausted and trying to work out how to make this whole thing work. There is no going back to a pre-Covid for me. I moved in with my partner and his kids at the start of lock-down, did a midnight flit upto the highlands in the middle to move past a very bad situation and now learning the day to day with two teenage girls and a partner. For the first time in my life I have other people who demand to be let in and demand to have a say in everything - including my career. I'm tired as I don't know how to say I am drowning a bit in all of this. And overall I feel guilty that reading how tired you are makes me feel a bit better. Guilty that I am so glad I am not alone. Guilty for wanting something else, but not knowing what and guilty for wanting more even when I know what I have is so much more than others. But today is another day. The deer are at the office window. The dog is curled up at my feet and I have paid work and people who love me. So today is going to be a good day and the tired can stay at the edges and not overwhelm me. One tiny step at a time. I don't know the map I am following anymore and I need to learn to live with that. Love you and thank you xx

Kerry-Ann Adamson
>>73363729

Hi Rebecca, first sending hugs from Scotland. I read you post and I hear you. I hear the sense of having wings clipped through no choice of your own, and that is not something to feel guilty about. Our transition years aren't going to stop anytime soon so please take heart from knowing that at some point we will look back on this and go "ah! I get it now". Might be a few lifetimes down the road, or it might be next Wednesday but at somepoint the you you are becoming will be more you. Sorry, it is early here and trying to articulate something deep inside me as well is hard. Before Covid the world was small, and we were fortunate to feel connected by our ability to get on a plane and be where we wanted and when. I think the hardest thing we have to do now is work out how to feel connected again but in a different way. And that's going to be hard. But worth it. Love from Scotland.

Anonymous

Feeling all sorts of ups and downs like nobody’s business. Last time I felt like this was when my alma Mayer REJECTED my Master’s application to their program. I graduated from their university with a degree in Piano Performance. It all worked out after years of wandering in the wilderness. This time, covid and all, I have no idea how long this exodus may be. Can’t wait for your live. Love you Amanda!

Amy SoapBox

Hey Friends. How am I? All of the things and none depending on the day the time how much sleep I get and what stage of the pandemic our shitty disgraceful British government decided we are now in, whilst they hold parties and mock us. Feel lucky I have such a good job. Feel angry my country is run by a knob. Turkey's voting for Christmas. The Tories mock and despise us and still most vote them in. Yeah. Angry about our shitty government holding parties during lockdown whilst people die alone cos families are refused visitation. Anyway. Politics aside. I love my husband. Have a roof over my head. A good job. And I am loved. I am really done with the pandemic. I miss festivals and gigs and sweaty armpits in my face and spit on my neck. Once joyful things. Now I have to suppress anxiety and panic attacks when the bus to work is busy. Who the fuck am I anymore.

Amy SoapBox
>>73379209

Love to you. Remember many of those feelings when I first became a step mother. It gets better. X

Anonymous

Can’t wait to listen to the recording post stream. I’m feeling tired yet energized and very much in love with the ride. Realizing lately I’m the only one responsible for my happiness. The thought is scary and seriously liberating ✨

KJ Hawkwood

I'm in Seattle, after a lifetime of Colorado and Northern CA. I'm totally completely unpartnered after a lifetime of partners, often more than one. I have fewer human people than ever before in my life, but they're several grades more luxe than the many that were there before. I have many more non-human people in my life, now that I know how to see them, than ever before. That part is glorious. I have built my work in the world to a level I'm so proud of, so nourished by. I have a Very Old Dog I love like the moon and the stars, and spending all the time I can with her before it's her time to go. I am learning to live with "looming but unformed threat" in a way I never thought I could, or would have to. I hate it so much. I have creative work like a balloon filling inside me, and it's going to burst for the first time since I was a very small child. Being in my 50s now, this is no small thing. Hanging out with artistic daredevils has catalyzed this in profound ways and I'm so grateful to all of you for that among many things. I want to create what's inside me before I die. I want to be in love in a fucking *healthy functional relationship* with a *healthy functional adult human* before I die. I want to live in a world that doesn't feel like it's poised to crush me, with malice or without, body mind and soul, before I die. I think this is the least-likely one of them, but real is real. It's what I want. I have no idea about most anything except that I love my dog, I love my work and who I do it with and for, and that am fully me for the first time in my entire life. And those 3 things that I want. Today, it's enough. So looking forward to what you have for us!

Anonymous

Looking forward to a new experience. This week I am mostly tired. Long hours. Work seems to be constant stream of cases with no reprive. I can’t work out if I am inefficient or it is the workload. Missing my partner who lives in another city But tomorrow is another day. We are going dancing in Manchester and spending a weekend in London. Hoping to avoid the virus and relax with friends. Sending love all around the world.

Jozias

I read all posts till here. It's weird how you all put a stamp on my days. Though we're not on speaking terms. You're getting under my skin as a collective. I see, this started Wednesday. I jump through my life with Amanda's posting days to feel this connection I miss. I do some things like pool, walking and errands and some cooking and all the other things to keep fit, clean and rested. Though resting isn't very effective anymore. I feel much like a misplaced parasite in this last place and period of my life. Completely irrelevant. With no urge to lie or buy attitudes forced on me. I'm still me but floating. I notice I live from post to post because all I really need these days is love and understanding. Honest s..t that sticks. I think it's the best I can get. She does it. The hours with music and her voice or even more of her, are the only things coming close to useful life. I guess that's close to sick? I know it's like a fragile balance, it's like life to hold on to. Like images in my dreams of a kayak I lost with nothing but sea around me. I don't know tf what else can ever come in this place, this precious void within. I would be drowning, right? Where else can I say pip or blink and already feel understood. It's not exactly like this, but it works for me.

Brent

This sucks. I have my doubts about the previous posters like I think they probably had something to say