On Work. It’s another fire. (Patreon)

Hello loves.

The last time I felt like this, it was the very start of the longer part of the pandemic. American summer 2020.

By that longer part I mean: it was the part where the initial shock was over and the horror was settling in. This is where I realized that the energy was going to turn into life.

My marriage was over, I was suddenly partnerless in a rental house with a kid in a foreign country, my own home country was burning. I was completely in shock.

I wanted to work, but I couldn’t. But I could. Cover songs are like a lifeboat sometimes, a thing of somebody else’s making that you can climb aboard, a readymade vessel on which you can get to dry land, safe from the sinking. It’s important that it’s not yours. It’s important that it’s carrying you, the songwriter, by being a song you didn’t write.

So. The last cover song/offering to you patrons that truly pulled me through a painful and difficult moment was “It’s a Fire” by Portishead, I sang it with a Rhiannon Giddons. I recorded my part in Auckland, New Zealand, she recorded hers in the states.

https://amandapalmer.bandcamp.com/track/its-a-fire

To record the song (the piano and vocals) I had flown to Auckland from Hawke’s Bay for the first time. It was August, 2020. The US was a mess. New Zealand was opening up. No covid.

I received some news late the night before the recording session that was so horrific and so deeply disturbing that, the next morning, I had to ask my ride to the recording studio to pull over so I could be sick.

That had never happened to me before. Never in real life, and never on the way to a session. I got to the studio and almost canceled. I just wanted to throw up from panic.

And then I sat down to play. Music. And the song - this cover song, and the feeling of physically playing the piano and physically making these words and sounds with my mouth - it saved me. Took the nausea and the shakes away. Took the awfulness away. Medicine. Actual medicine.

…..

I am feeling that way right now, tonight, as I work on this new one.

It’s not nearly as acute, the pain. Not nearly as catastrophic. I don’t need to throw up. It’s a dull ache, a deep and a throbbing one. It needed a song tourniquet. I’m also finally emerging out of the darkness. The joy makes me want to sing, to swim back in that just make music water.

Or to return to metaphor one:

I know a robust lifeboat when I hear one.

This song is rowing me to shore.

I really can’t wait to give you this one.

Holly Miranda is gonna produce it.

Stay tuned.

I love making music.

Thank you for helping me make music.

X

Afp

Ps posts coming up ASAP about graveside and campersand. ♥️♥️♥️