you, my love, are a precious renegade. (Patreon)

hi my dear patrons - (and to all the new people, WELCOME! WELCOME!!!!)

greetings from bearsville, new york.

i am home.

home home home.

home.

it's a lot.

the althing/monthy news-letter-thing is coming soon. it's gonna be a real short one, because everything is ... wonky. i know you understand and forgive. consider this post the "how things are going" section of the althing :)

...........

i'm about to go off-off-offline for a big family reunion til the end of june.

after that, i'm gonna start truly picking up the pieces. 

to the webcast-tier patrons....i'll schedule something for the start of july. i'll probably cry when i play you songs on my own piano. 

to the $100+ patrons...i bought some beautiful postcards on waiheke island and am not at all shocked that i never got to post them from the island. i wanted to. there was too much to do. i failed. it's fine. i'm going to spend the summer slowly writing to all of you. it seems dumb to do it in a hurry.

we all know where we're at. i'm an exhausted heap and i'm not gonna lie or try to do anything i can't do at the moment. 

just...this. just now. 

just recover.

just unpack, on all levels.

it's been a disorienting week since i landed, to say the least, but in the eternal words of elton john, i'm still standing.

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

i recorded this little voice memo for you a few days ago, i'm only just getting to a quiet enough moment to post it.

there are a few things that have shocked me about america, my post-NZ self, and the collision of my worlds.

one is the smells. i really missed the smells of old new england woods, old houses and new york street trash. i missed the sounds of creaky steps. i missed the upstate new york swimming holes. everything is exploding here.

another is the color, and the size of the trees. i didn't quite realize how used to new zealand flora i had gotten until i went to my hometown  of lexington, MA, and felt physically and emotionally in awe of the towering oak trees, the boring old trees i used to gaze at and wander under every day as a child. they seemed giant to me. towering giants. the broad leaves, the exploding green. a different kind of green. summer neon. 

i didn't know how sharp the ground on waiheke was until i felt the soft, pliant, mossy earth under my bare feet here on a way to a swim. the ground is like a feather compared to the volcanic rock of new zealand.

i am cranky wearing shoes everywhere.

i see the world here through new kaleidoscopic eyes.

coming home has been a funfair ride of emotions and sensations i can't really put into words, but i'll try. 

the mundane colliding with the gigantic;

both my heart and the world a moving target;

the past and the future melting into a strange timelessness.

definitions of home, place, self, country, covid all turning from rainbow paint jars into a brown smear in my head, like my thoughts are being created by a six-year old who doesn't quite know how to mix their colors.

people here in america are also bigger, louder, and much quicker to public anger. people seem tired and cranky. i got yelled at by a guy in a shop just for being accidentally in his way. there's a....bitchiness. i feel quieter and more reserved. kiwis don't snap at each other like this in public; not so quickly. 

but also, there's the good bigness of things. there's more color. there's more diversity. there's more give-no-fuckness in the good way. it's brasher, and bolder, and more eccentric. 

i drove back to my ol' town to see my folks after over two years, and while i was there i stole a very quick (we are talking....an hour) visit with one of my old friends, rachel jayson (you can listen to our patron-funded podcast "i want the thing", which was recorded pre-pandemic and released after i landed in new zealand and had been waylaid there for a few months here.)

she has a beautiful ritual of photographing herself in a brick alleyway near the high school where i was formatted as a teen - she teaches music there. a few minutes after this was taken, i walked her to her 10:30 music class with a dozen of her students and she asked if i'd play something, so i banged out "runs in the family" on the school piano. the kids seemed confused (?) and happy. i was happy. i barely play music anymore, lately. 

the joy i felt in seeing my old friend - especially after three years of only catching up on the phone - was immeasurable. i posted it to social media.

there were hundreds of beautiful comments, and also this one:

i responded, on IG and FB:

re: this comment, from my last post celebrating reuniting with my boston pal @musykchyk. maybe it’s because all my pals are currently getting internet-bullied but i occasionally gotta answer these.

dear mark,
i love you. i just withstood and arguably slaughtered
…a year-long tour away from my home country during which i talked and sang on 80 stages around the globe every night for four hours about my three abortions, my miscarriage and my experiences with sexual assault and death
…followed by two years waylaid in a foreign country where i had no friends until i made them
…while winding up a solo mother of a confused kid for a year and change while my friends all lost their minds back home
….while not getting to hug anyone i loved except my son and the people i had just met in new zealand
…while managing to run a small crowdfunded business and managing to keep all the art made and the lights on and the bills paid
….while managing to miraculously maintain my core friendships, which came to mean absolutely everything to me.

this photo is literally precious. this moment in time, getting to see this friend after three years of separation and phone calls and tears and hardship, is as precious as it gets. we have kids the same age. we went through a lot together, long distance.

if you no longer think i am a renegade because i am posting a joyful photo of me and my friend, that’s cool. i don’t think we share the same definition of “renegade” either.

i know who i am, mate. do you?

♥️

.......

cue lots of beautiful comments, but this one is my fave:

Lacie Forde

I think it’s pretty “renegade” to show vulnerability. The society we live in constantly tells us to buck up and move on without processing. It doesn’t allow for us to do things like recover when we are sick or take the time with our loved ones to do what we need to for us.

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

to take the time.

to take the time.

i am taking the time.

.......

we are all precious renegades.

to joy in the face of darkness is punk.

to love open-heartedly when when your heart is broken is bold.

to show weakness is strength.

love the one with you're with.

broadcast it if and when needed.

to openly celebrate in the rubble of life is truly renegade.

......

here i am, in new york the night i landed...

.........

and here i am front of my alma mater, lexington high, the other day.

for those here from lexington, yes, i am EXACTLY beside the old smoking corner, where we all used to go to be delinquents.

everything does seem smaller and bigger at the same time.

i know who i am, mate. do you?  ♥

...........️

do you?

do you know who i am?

do you know who you are?

DOES ANYONE KNOW WHO THEY ARE?

anything's possible at the moment.

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

so, yep. 

i'm gonna post the althing soon, and i'm going to TRY to get one issue of "ask amanda" written this monbth so i have a second thing to thing - and i really want to WRITE.

and....i am going to be taking a lot of time over the next few months to just digest, to land, to reflect, to get myself ready for what is coming next. for the dresden dolls, for writing some more long-form stuff, for fondling and releasing the stuff i wrote in new zealand.

my to-do list is a million miles long, my head and house is clutter of boxes from the before-time, there are a million emails to answer and decisions to make.

but i pause.

i pause for myself, and for ash; i am not giving anything more attention than it needs. 

everything can wait.

you can wait.

i can wait.

first, friends, family, collapse....time to recover. time to heal.

then...the rest.

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

posted to FB and IG:

call me weird and sentimental but my god i finally felt like i was home in america when i had my first hazelnut coffee from dunkin’ on the mass goddamn pike. i didn’t even want it. it wasn’t even good. it was the coffee i liked when i was 23. 🤷🏻‍♀️☕️🛣😭

..........

ash - who will be SEVEN in september, pinch me - at the cloud club - my beloved old apartment, which i still haven't moved out of....with uncle lee...

......

ash at the lexington public libaray...be still my nostalgic heart....

......

in the yard in front of one of the little churches in woodstock, where we live, there is this covid memorial.

i have never seen anything like this in new zealand, because only about 1,000 people have died of covid in the whole country.

it was sobering.

i stood there, holding hands with ash.

i explained it to ash.

ash said he wanted to take the crosses home with him, to make traps.

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

a few days ago, i got the news that bron, who ran blackbarn vineyard in hawke's bay, near where i lived, just passed away.

she was one of the incredible power-women i got to know in my brief (if you can call 10 covid months BRIEF) time in hawke's bay. part māori, huge community leader. she was coping with her illness back then, and while i didn't know exactly what was happening, i felt the grace that was following her around. 

someone sent me this photo of us together - this was taken the week before i moved to waiheke, in janurary 2021 - and all of a sudden.....my past, new zealand, bron, this story, all of it, just took my breath away.

in the time that i landed in and left new zealand, i met people who came and went.

i met new people who had just gotten born. i met people who were about to die. i met people who committed suicide while i was there. 

i went to funerals. 

this will keep happening.

my life is now cleaved into a certain before and a certain after. 

..........

it is so strange to me, trying to understand what has happened. i don't even think i will try.

to all of us, to all of you....

all the precious renegades....

oh please, live like you know you're gonna die.

live, my friends, live!!!! and sing while you may....you never know anything.

i love you all so, so, so much.

more, and althing, very soon.

i'm reading comments here, hit me.

xx

AFP

———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.

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http://amandapalmer.net/things

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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/

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