The State of All Things: April 2023 {official Thing} (Patreon)

• THE BASIC LIFE 'N' DEATH UPDATE
• WHAT ELSE HAPPENED & WENT OUT THIS MONTH
• WHAT'S COMIN' DOWN THE PIKE
• UPCOMING EVENTS
• DISPATCHES FROM TEAM AFP
• HOW THE PATREON ITSELF IS DOING
• ARTISTS TO SUPPORT & OTHER STUFF TO CHECK OUT
• ART BEGETTING ART
• THE PATRON COMMUNITY BULLETIN BOARD

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THE BASIC LIFE 'N' DEATH UPDATE

Hello My dears.

Watch the video. It feels like this right now. Special thanks to Lance and the Doggo.

Quick Tour/Public service announcement first!!!

Since many people have asked. I will NOT be doing any patron meet-ups before or after the Poughkeepsie and Boston shows. I apologize about this...I would have loved to, but this is one of those moments where I have to prioritize the stage work.

And while Sunday morning would have been a perfect hangover brunch moment for patrons, it's my 47th birthday, and I plan to celebrate it by chucking my phone in a drawer late Saturday night, doing absolutely nothing, and turning my phone on again on Monday morning. I found that lately, that is the greatest gift I can give to myself. Freedom from the phone, from expectation. For those of you in the area....I promise there will be THINGS galore for us all to do together in Boston and Upstate New York. Just gimme a few more seconds to get my shit together. The weather is warming! We will gather.

How are you all doing? I'm reading comments and, as usual. I wanna know.

How I'm doing? Short story: fairly exhausted, confused, happy that spring is here, unsure of many things, and more grateful than ever to be supported by a group of people who resonate with my work. (Yes, that's you). I poured my current state-of-mind-and-heart out pretty deeply in the TED piece that I published a few days ago (called "What it feels like to get divorced—and possibly remarried—at TED 2023: An offering from your emotional-reporter-at-large)......and I was so happy to get back to writing. Fast, furious, full-hearted writing.

And my god, I am so glad the piece resonated with so many people. Some of my new unofficial writing-group friends told me it's the best thing I've written in years. I needed to say so many of the things in that piece - and in many cases, I thought it was just me. No, no, no. Which is what I always learn, and why I love writing fast and putting things out fast. The writing is now.

And dar god, I love being self-published, and having this patreon, and living in a world where I can feel and write and publish all in one moment - one month, one week, one day sometimes -  instead of working with a huge publisher and waiting 18 months for a piece like that to reach its intended audience in a hardback book. Someday I'll collect all of this and release it. Someday I'll write another book. Maybe someday soon. But.

On that note, I'm going to do something unusual at the top of this Althing and ask you - if you read it, if you liked it - to share the TED piece on social media. Since I'm self-published, you are my publicists. I rely on your to share my work for it to make its way out into the world. Here are my posts. Send my dandelion seeds into the field:

It's HERE on FaceBook, if you can share the post.

It's HERE on twitter if you can retweet

and it's HERE on Instagram if you wanna share it there.

Thanking you.

I've got my shows in Poughkeepsie and Boston tonight and tomorrow, then....

the next month is going to be ALL DRESDEN DOLLS.

I've got about two weeks to get new and old material rehearsed - and hopefully new songs worked over and written, with your help....don't you leave me, people - and then the dolls hit the American Road and play Colorado and New Mexico.

Then I come back in early June for a break and then the Dolls head down south to Florida and New Orleans.

I feel disoriented by all of this, but I'm slowly piecing together a way to live, and trying to find a groove. It's difficult, but I know I am not alone.

Many of my friends and loved ones - and many of you here, from what I can read and feel - are feeling ungrooved.

I love you all so much.

Hang in there.

See many of you - from the stage - tonight and tomorrow in Poughkeepsie and Boston.

xxx

AFP

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WHAT ELSE HAPPENED & WENT OUT THIS MONTH

On the way to TED, I went to Tacoma...

(Photo by roam.tacoma)

(Photo by mermaider_adventures)

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And while I was in Tacoma... Julie Samms an amazing patron, helped put together this beautiful PATRON GATHERING.

We gathered in the WW Seymour Botanical Conservatory, I played a few songs, we talked... we connected.

And as a sidenote - this ALMOST DIDN'T HAPPEN. It was really only due to Julie....who put her hand up and volunteered to organize it.

Julie, you are a hero. This community is everything.

I'm hoping to do lots of gatherings like this.

I really miss it.

I need it.

I think we all do.

Slowly.

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And then.... NINJATED:

(Photo by Laura Harvey)

As usual, my annual gathering in Vancouver was messy, chaotic, and absolutely beautiful.

We live-streamed the entire thing (thanks to you patrons), and the stream is still up and available to rewatch here: https://www.crowdcast.io/c/ninjated

I'm going to be posting/THINGING up a WHOLE BIG ROUND-UP of the show and the stream, featuring a bazillion beautiful photos, and the time=stamps (in case you wanna just watch certain performers) in the next day or so, boom boom bam, so many things in a row.....so keep an eye on your inboxes for now.

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EARTH DAY SHIRT DROP:

In collaboration with Everpress, we created a new shirt based on the music video for Drowning In The Sound, in honor of Earth Day.

All profits from the shirt are going towards Earth Percent, which is a great charity trying to combat the music industry's effects on climate change.

There's me and pregnant Coco, as photographed by Krys Fox.

The shirt is available for pre-order for the next couple of weeks ONLY, and once the pre-order period is finished, the shirts will be printed exactly to demand, and shipped out.

VOILA:

https://everpress.com/amanda-palmer-x-earthpercent

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CHRONOGRAM INTERVIEW....

I also gave one of my very few interviews in recent times - to local Hudson Valley magazine Chronogram. You can read the interview here:

https://www.chronogram.com/arts/amanda-palmer-cult-heroine-17807987

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And....here's a great long interview that I just did for WBUR (which is Boston's NPR station):

https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/04/27/amanda-palmer-dresden-dolls-divorce-neil-gaiman

And a final piece of press from Inside and Out:

Which goes more into my feelings about local stuff....including:

You live in one of the most famous homes in the Hudson Valley, the former home of the late Albert Grossman, Dylan’s manager who was the man who singlehandedly made Woodstock home to rockers. What’s it like living in such a great home. And any ghosts of rockers lurking about?

I think it’s hilarious that a glittery punk is living in hippie-lore central. Ghosts are just stories, and there are plenty of those. But I’m mostly so preoccupied with weaving my own life story that I don’t spend too much time dissecting Bob, Albert and his widow Sally’s stories. They float around.

There was a massive lightning storm the day Sally died that split a huge tree on the property. We all had a chuckle about that one; she went out with a bang. I think all those old-timers would be amused by the fact that the house is now occupied by a single woman and her child, playing host to a whole new generation of irreverent art-makers from a very different lineage.

You’re the mother of a young child, your seven-year-old son Ash. Why do you think the Hudson Valley, and Woodstock in particular, are an ideal venue to raise a child?

Every venue has its costs and benefits. I love the vastness, the streams, the animals and the fact that we are small visitors in a larger nature preserve. I love the small-town simplicity for his little kind. Ash adores his school and that community really stabilizes him. There is also a post-Covid sadness, exhaustion and anxiety in America right now that I don’t think is unique to the Hudson Valley. People are feeling fragile everywhere.

I am really not a fan of guns. Don’t like them one bit, don’t like that they’re all over the place, don’t like that my kid has to do active shooter drills in school. I miss many things about New Zealand and the lack of guns is right up there.

More at:

https://insideandoutupstateny.com/upstate-grooves/we-are-upstate-ny-with-upstate-groover-amanda-palmer/

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And, obviously, there was the TED piece:

https://amandapalmer.substack.com/p/what-it-feels-like-to-get-divorcedand

With its very click-baity, and yet honest, title.

It's going gangbusters on the internet, which makes me happy.

Like I said, I've missed writing true things.

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UPCOMING EVENTS....

The solo tour continues, through Poughkeepsie and Boston this weekend...

The very last few balcony tickets are still available to snap up here:

https://amandapalmer.net/events

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And then we roll straight into DRESDEN DOLLS TIME.....

The first couple of cities are right around the corner, and I cannot wait.....

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DISPATCHES FROM TEAM AFP

From Alex:

This has been a fun little month for merch projects.

The first thing was the Earth Day shirt (which you can see above) - after getting the email from EVerpress asking us if we wanted to collaborate, Amanda and I talked through some ideas about what could be fun to create based on the Drowning In The Sound video - we looked at a few ideas based on fan art, but then for simplicity we settled on using the powerful image of Amanda and Coco from the video.

We batted a few ideas back and forth between just using the image, adding lyric in various forms...

This was an interesting experience for me - I've had some pretty rudimentary experience using Photoshop, but this was a fun experience to teach myself a little bit more.

Here are a few rough conceptual ideas we tossed around before settling on the above...

And then in other fun news..... I spent a little bit of time researching and image-editing to create a nice little piece of merch for the upcoming Dolls shows - and here is a metal pendant featuring the gorgeous artwork by Niki McQueen!

They're made from stainless steel that's made from up to 63% recycled materials (yay!), and with all fingers crossed should be available at all the upcoming shows.

And in non-AFP news, I wanted to recommend a book this month - Our Wives Under The Sea, by Julia Armfield

It's the story of a woman who returns from an exploratory voyage under the sea, who has come back irrevocably affected and changed, and it's about her wife trying to care for her, and grapple with her own feelings of grief and transformation...

There's a lot going on, but it's also a pretty short read (just over 200 pages), but it's a really beautiful story about queer identity, love, grief, trauma, and truly one of the best things I've read in a long time.

And that'll do us for this month I think.

Until next time - take care of yourselves and each other

-Alex

xoxox

{I love you Queen. Steadier and Steadier as we go!!! = AFP

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HOW THE PATREON ITSELF IS DOING

As of this writing there are about 10,200 patrons pledging about $33,000 for the first Thing each month.

A VERY IMPORTANT NOTE FOR NEWCOMERS: you are welcome to (and encouraged to) CAP YOUR PLEDGE. CAP CAP CAP CAP!!!!!

I sometime release one thing a month; sometimes three. We know this can create financial insecurity and uncertainty - so Patreon allows you to cap your pledge. This is, essentially, setting a MAXIMUM amount that you want to pay per month.

YOU CAN BUDGET. Say for example, you're happy to pay $3 per Thing, but you don't want to pay more than $10 a month. In that's the case, you can "cap" your pledge at $10, and whether I release 4 Things or 4,400 Things, you won't be charged more than $10. But MOST IMPORTANTLY, you will still have access to ALL the things/posts/links, even if you cap your pledge!!! It doesn't effect your access.

You can read all about capping your pledge here.

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 (SEE ABOVE), 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 guilty about releasing TOO MUCH!!

So really. Please, cap your pledge.

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In March, I Thanged TWO Things:

The Living Room Livestream, which earned about $37,248 from 10,211 patrons

Lube and Church Bells (A Piece of Writing), which earned about $15,662 from 5,623 patrons.

The State of All Things: March 2023, which earned about $9,392 from 3,471 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.

And remember: these numbers 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.

These numbers also do not reflect the money I SPENT MAKING THE ART, paying my staff, paying the office rent, paying for crowdcast, getting myself around, getting the team around and fed and slept, all the collaborators, and my actual staff payroll, etc.

I 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.

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ARTISTS TO SUPPORT & OTHER STUFF TO CHECK OUT!!!

Some of you might remember Tristan Allen from way back when, when we helped him to crowdfund his first album, and I collaborated on one song with him...

Well, now he's created a full-length PUPPET SHOW WITH MUSIC, and it's performing at my fave little neighborhood indie Tinker Street Cinema here in Woodstock, right down the street. Whimsy and wonderfulness.

COME JOIN US!

It's a short show, good for all ages, probably best for kiddos 8 years and up.

You can find tickets and more info on his website:

tristanallen.org

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ART BEGETTING ART

Here is a gorgeous painting posted by Anna Mulch on facebook...

And - oh my god, Joni Augustine is back at it again, here's a work-in-progress she just posted of her latest portrait of me...

(as a reminder - we are printing up the next round of Art In The Mail, using a commissioned piece from Joni... we've just picked up the prints, and they are looking GORGEOUS, so if you've signed up that'll be heading your way in the next couple weeks, once I've signed them...)

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THE PATRON COMMUNITY BULLETIN BOARD

A podcast made by patron James Lark!

Neurotic Literature is a narrative fiction series, each week telling a story that is quirky, funny, often dark and sometimes downright disturbing. There’s a childhood nightmare in which the recriminations of a fusty aunt have lifelong repercussions, a man whose world is turned upside down by a groundless accusation about his bottom, and a dark fairytale about a town’s benefactor causing unexpected problems in death - grim subjects, perhaps, but they have a lot of humour running through them, so can promise to entertain, even if they do live in your mind rent free for a few days afterwards.

This week’s episode is called ‘The Woman Who Ate Her Own Children’, a grisly exploration of marriage and parenthood (and, on another level, a political allegory…). Still to come there is a dystopian future fuelled by background music and a Faustian pact involving memories.

It’s also, even if I do say so myself, a damn good listen with decent production values and I’m very proud of it all. It’s available on all of the standard podcast platforms - links and further information can be found at https://www.jameslark.co.uk/neuroticliterature

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(Don't forget - if you have something you want to pimp out, a new project, fundraiser etc, send an email to patronhelp@amandapalmer.net and we'll pick a couple to feature in each month's Althing!)

In closing....

Thank you for your support here. Always.

I'm struggling to keep my head above water, and it's felt like that for many moons now, but I'm slowly gathering my wits about me.

I hope you are, too.

The poem from the end of the video:

The Second Coming

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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More soon.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.

Here we are. Holding.

I love you.

xxxx

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