i’m not a neil gaiman expert. well, that’s not true. i wouldn’t call myself an expert. i’m maybe…a professional? an advanced amateur? i know the MAN. really well.
the BOOKS, the COLLECTED WORKS…not as well.
i’ve met neil’s fans.
i cannot compete.
i don’t even want to try.
i haven’t read the complete “sandman”. i’ve said it before.
to be totally honest, if you’re counting EVERYTHING (and mr. dude has published a shit-ton) i haven’t read a pretty good percentage of his work.

so: usually when people ask me what to read, i size them up and, depending on their age bracket and demeanor, i usually recommend “the graveyard book” or “smoke and mirrors” (my more favorite of his two short stories collections). i even find myself recommending “american gods” if they look like the correct strain of brainiac, even though the book didn’t totally do it for me (sue me). i owe it a re-read. neil keeps telling me he’ll give me the secret glossary so the whole thing doesn’t fly right past my soul the way i am now convinced it did on first reading (or maybe i just don’t like it. that’s allowed, i guess).

my friend casey long was once walking with me in the south end and she made that laughing/snorting sound she makes (she sort of sounds like a goose, and i can say this, because she’s hot and she knows it. but it sort of sounds like: snortHAHAHAHAHA)
and i said
what?
and she said
you know it’s really funny that you married neil gaiman.
and i said
why?
and she said
because he writes all this stuff that is about not-real things and science fiction and all that
and you’re like the QUEEN OF FEELINGS.

snortHAHAHAHAHA.

hahahahaha.

this is the first time, since the wedding blog, i suppose, i’ve written a long blog just about neil (or about me and neil, as the case may be).
theoretically, this is a blog about his new book. but actually it’s impossible to write a blog about his new book without talking about us.

it’s not something i do a lot, talking about our relationship.

we may show each other a disgusting amount of affection on twitter, or do shows together, or plug each others’ projects, but our *actual* relationship…the feelings and fevers and discussions and layers of attachment and complication underneath…that’s….for us. our close friends follow the intimacies of this strange journey we’re on with each other. but it’s not for the blog, it’s not really for the public. sharing too much about our actual relationship wouldn’t be at all fun or wise….we have enough trouble as it is keeping people out of our faces (and i’m doing a terrible job of that lately…people are so up in my face lately that they’re practically blocking my vision in every direction).

but that being said, sometimes it’s impossible to talk about the art without the story behind it, and then, things get messy.

if i’m going to tell you about neil’s book, in the way that only i can, i need to tell you more about us and things.
it’ll be fine. as a matter of gracefulness, i’m going to send this to him before i post it.
i don’t want any of this making him upset. so…rest assured, by the time this is posted, anything in this has been neil-approved.

the first thing i need to tell you is that neil’s new book is absolutely fucking amazing. he’s really proud of it, and so am i.

but not just because it’s good. it is good.

it’s unlike anything i’ve ever read…it’s an explosive combination of dark and light, and it’s incredibly intimate.
and the most important thing i can tell you (that maybe neil can’t) is that it was hard for him to write, and while he’s insanely excited for its release and is showing the rah-rah enthusiasm of a book release….it’s also scary for him to put out into the world.

he doesn’t usually write things that are so personal.
we’re different, him and me.

i write super-personal shit all the time…in this blog, in my songs. and as i’ve gotten older, i’ve become less and less veiled and poetic and more and more direct in my writing, allowing my aches and pains and difficulties with the world, the public, my heartaches, and my own history to flow freely off my tongue.
granted: it’s not a style that’s for everyone.
but those who appreciate it seem to appreciate it deeply. and i come to appreciate whose who appreciate it more and more, if you know what i mean.
i’ve spent a long time facing the consequences for sharing myself the way i do. i’ve never written fiction…not really. i mine the depths of my own experience and lay them on the page. i am, i suppose, a “non-fiction” songwriter…for the most part. except when i’m not.

neil writes fiction. i interviewed him for my webcast (the AFP Salon) a few weeks ago and we discussed our differences in writing, and a truly bizarre metaphor (but an apt one, i believe), came tumbling out of my mouth.
we are the ingredients of our own art (much like i said in the writers’ conference speech: “we can only connect the dots that we can collect”), but the amount of distance from the “reality of our experience” to the “art we create” spans a scale of one to ten on the blender of art-making.

we start off with all these fresh ingredients, recognizable (a heart, a finger, an eyeball, a glass of wine) and we throw them in the art-blender. i only let things mix very slightly. i keep my blender on 2 or 3. you can recognize the component parts: in the final art-soup, the finger might be severed and mangled, but you can peer into your bowl and see that it’s a finger, floating there, all human and bloody and finger-y. neil puts his art-blender on 10. you wind up with a fantastic purée, but often you have no fucking idea where the experiences of his life wound up in the mix of his final product. if you see a finger, it’s not recognizable as a human one. and that’s part of what makes Neil Gaiman (capital N and G) work. and, i’d argue, my choice to dial my art-blender down from a 5 to a 2 or 3 over the past few years, as i write more and more “direct” songs…i don’t know, it may be part of what i’ve needed to do to survive as an artist (or more likely, as a human).

we do these things instinctively, i think.

EXHIBIT A
-art blender on 1-

woody guthrie:
“My mommy told me an’ the teacher told me, too,
There’s all kinds of work that I can do:
Dry my dishes, sweep my floor,
But if we all work together it won’t take very long.”

or william mcgonagall, writing about the tay bridge disaster in his famous “worst poem ever”…
“Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay!
With your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array,
And your central girders, which seem to the eye
To be almost towering to the sky”

or me:
“When I was six years old my sister Alyson
Asked for a stove for her birthday
A miniature one you could actually cook with
And my mom was nice and she bought one
Alyson needed a reason to bake something
Barged in my room and she grabbed me
She said:
‘I made a cake and we’re going next door
To sam weinstein’s and you’re getting married’”

(from “do you swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help your black ass”)

(and actually, i fictionalized sam weinstein’s name. it was actually eric brockett).

EXHIBIT B
-blender on…9?-

impossible to understand things i.e. i don’t know…the cocteau twins?
(and mind you, this is just an interpretation of the lyrics on the internet, because ACTUALLY WHO KNOWS):
“You and that land which one dresh are leaving
Hold me onto a mess a plenty
Me and that land should grow, end to a hard part
Meant a Christmas that’s me and a friend”

or neutral milk hotel….
“Oh comely, All of your friends are all letting you blow,
Bristling and ugly, bursting with fruits falling out from the holes
Of some pretty, bright, and bubbly friend
You could need to say comforting things in your ear”

and…
-blender on a complete 10-

i searched the internet for a good twenty minutes and all i could come up with was william s. burroughs:
“their photos weather-worn points of polluted water under the trees in the mist shadow of boys by the daybreak in the peony fields cold lost marbles in the room carnations three ampoules of morphine little blue-eyes-twilight grins between his legs yellow fingers blue stars erect boys of sleep have frozen dreams for I am a teenager pass it on”
…but actually, too much of that makes sense.

maybe a perfect ten is just this….jackson pollock’s “the pulse of ism”:

anyway.

for this new book, neil dialed his blender down a bit, and it was harder for him to do than i think either of us ever would have thought.

and poetically enough, neil wound up in the blender-ingredients of my record, which was inevitable. “trout heart replica” was a song birthed from a strange experience we had together, watching fish getting slaughtered by a frozen lake. (neil also wrote a poem about it, and zoë keating, the cellist, who was there too, still owes us her perspective – all three of us were so stunned by the thing that happened there that we agreed: this moment would wind up in all of our blenders, for sure). and another was birthed straight from an anecdote that neil once told me, a strange visual that was too good not to turn into a component piece that would ultimately become “the bed song”. we slither into each others landscapes.

a few years ago, we were in australia – in surrey hills outside of melbourne – and we sweatily slowed down from taking a long jog in the park. we’d been walking in silence for a while. it was nice. i was coming up with something, a tune and words in my head. we were having a rough time….or i was, at least. i was writing a song in my head about the very rough time i was having at the exact moment neil tapped my on the arm and told me he wanted to tell me something. something personal, he said, that he wanted to share with me.

yes. i want. but can it wait a second?, i asked him, i have this song stuck in my head and i want to get it onto the piano at home before it escapes.

we were about 4 blocks from the house. he nodded – but he went black after that.
once i was accessible again, an hour later or more, he’d gone back into his head, and wasn’t coming back.
i wasn’t going to get the story, i realized.
i pleaded.
no, he said – the moment’s passed.
i felt selfish and stupid and guilty.
you can’t fix those moments, you can’t take them back.
even if you apologize, you’re that asshole.

i’d put my work before my husband.

but wait.
i was also pissed off.
i felt like i was being punished.
wasn’t this our deal with each other?
can’t things fucking wait while i capture my fleeting ideas?
I’M AN ARTIST.
i’ve sat in restaurants quite happily while you jotted down lines and thoughts that you didn’t want to forget.
goddammit.
why was this different?

WHY DON’T YOU LOVE ME?

here’s the thing:
we’re both used to having control over our minds, our time, our creative domains. we’ve both been solo (in our ways) for so long.
mixing? it sounds wonderful in theory….but it doesn’t always work, and it doesn’t always feel kind, and we don’t always do it right.
most of it is context. on that walk, we were already in a rocky place. he took my gesture as a flat-out rejection. i hadn’t meant it that way. (weirdly, looking back, i can’t say i regret it. it maybe got a whole book out of him.)

so….shortly after that, with the landscape still rocky, neil went back to the states and i stayed in australia to make “theatre is evil”, the infamous kickstarter record.

it was a hard time for our relationship, but i didn’t understand quite how hard it was on neil.

well, i take that back. i understood, but didn’t really want to accept it.
i was too thoroughly focused on making my record, which i’d been preparing to make for four years.

it was game time.
i wanted to do what i always do when making a long studio album.
this one was technically my fourth massive attempt, after the first two dresden dolls’ records (the self-titled and “yes, virginia…” and my first big solo record “who killed amanda palmer”).
for those first three i’d been pretty much single, un-relationshipped and unfettered, and able to pull the blinds down and focus on nothing but tracking, recording, and making…obsessively.
i had habits and rituals. i’d deliberately chosen australia for our record-making destination because i knew there would be almost no distractions.
we’d be in a different time zone, i thought giddily, far away from any responsibilities to our normal lives.
i turned my email off (mostly).
i told my team and all my friends i was going to be AWOL.
i focused on the people in my orbit, and the task at hand.
any friends i had, or any social calls i made, were within blocks instead of thousands of miles.
i localized my brain.

this is a great strategy for making a record.

not great, i found, for a marriage.

neil had a hard time with it.

as i turned into a zombie of a wife, he started working on a short story, something he’d had in the works but wasn’t quite certain of. it wasn’t a memoir, per se, but a purée on a lower blender speed. some part of what pushed him to work on this (instead of the other four projects he had deadlines for) was to give the story to me, like some kind of olive branch, maybe….the story that never got shared that day in surrey hills.

so there we were: i went into australian-album-making mode, and he took to his writing desk somewhere in america, wherever he happened to plant himself. while i was slaving away in the rehearsal space and the recording studio in melbourne – with the band (and john congleton, our saint-like producer) – all with barely a day off for a month straight, neil started crafting a string of words that was like a long hand reaching out of his heart and across the void that i’d put between us. i didn’t understand that, then. i only see it now.

after the smoke cleared a month or so later, we met in texas, where i needed to spend a week to mix the record with john in his dallas studio.
neil came to spend the week with me.

“i accidentally wrote a whole book”, he said. “can i read it to you?”

yes. i want, i said. and this time, i heard the whole story….all 50,000 or so words of it, one long night at a time.

i went off to work my days in the studio with john, listening to mixes, fixing vocal parts, adding and subtracting the levels of swirling synthesizer and snipping back-up vocals onto the cutting room floor.
neil would go off to a café or sit on the couch in the room next to the mixing studio, typing the book into his computer (he’d written it longhand, in a journal), chapter by chapter.

at night, he would read me what he’d written. he would stop and start, and his fingers would clickity-clack out the typos and repeated words as he caught them.
if i didn’t understand something, or i thought a sentence sounded clunky, i’d speak up…but mostly i just laid there and listened to the story.

it was a long, terrifying story.
it was a beautiful story.
it was a strange story, mixing up reality and non-reality in a way that felt totally mundane.
he read and read, and i usually fell asleep.
in the morning, neil would ask me:
what was the last thing you remember?
the toothbrush, i’d say, they just got the idea about the toothbrush.
or
lettie just showed up with the bucket, i’d say….and a little bit after that.

and he’d start a few pages back, and he’d read me up to the end of a chapter.
and he did this, night after night, until i’d heard the whole book.

i loved it, but i have to admit, i didn’t fully understand it – it took some sinking in.
i don’t know. maybe i *have* become too literal. that idea terrifies me.
i grew up in an atmosphere with no metaphor, and i can now, as an adult, cast my whole life in a perspective where i see my craving to escape that literalness as if it were the plague.
(it hurts me when i can’t connect the dots.)

when he finally got the galleys of the paperback, i could finally read the book in a few sittings, with my own eyes. read it, not hear it.

it all started to make sense. i cried a lot.

and even THEN, i didn’t get it.

it wasn’t until we were at TED, taking a walk up a little hill in long beach a day or two before my talk, that i finally understood.

we were chatting about the book, i asked him a question about some of the symbolism in the story….and he stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and looked at me.

you twit,

he said.

and he filled in the blanks, and connected the dots for me.

i’d missed it completely.

i loved him so much in that moment.

and for a second, a split second, i was a neil gaiman fan.
and i was a fan because he’d tricked me, and he’d tricked me without me knowing, and i’d heard rumors that he does that, but i thought i was immune.
and for a second i felt like what it must feel like when i’m on stage playing “the bed song” and someone snaps a picture of neil a few feet away, looking at me.
and for a second i felt what it must feel like to wait in a line for five hours and have him sign a book that changed your life.
to stand not in admiration of the husband writer, the writer who wants his tea but not with the milk hot because then it’s just wrong, the writer who won’t remember what time he said he’d meet you, the writer who has to sign 12,000 copies of his new book that’s a bestseller before it hits the shelves and actually that’s really annoying because i’m slightly jealous of his instant success no matter what he does, the writer who gets irritated when i leave too many clothes on the floor and he can’t get to the bathroom, the writer who is awkward and has a hard time in party situations when he feels he doesn’t understand the social hierarchy, the writer who is not really a writer are you kidding me he’s just some snoring heap of flesh beside me, sweating and breathing and grinding his teeth and probably dreaming the kinds of dreams that neil gaimans dream, full of dreams and wishes and magic and wonder and all the shit that can drive me crazy if i’m not in the right mood for it….no…the WRITER. the man who actually takes a pen to a paper and writes things and creates a believable world that sucks you in and spits you out, its logic embedded in your mind forevermore. that. i saw THAT. and i love THAT so much, the fact that he can DO that…and i don’t get to see that most of the time. i’m too busy looking at the man. as it should be, i think.

one thing i have learned, being an artist married to another artist:
you cannot separate the self from the relationship and you cannot separate the relationship from the work.
call it poison, or call it the muse.

whatever it is, we’ve infected each other, and the only cure is more cowbell.

that’s the end of my book and marriage review.

i think i’ll always look back at this book (the ocean at the end of the lane) and the album (theatre is evil) as a weird matching set.
the first two big, complete projects we undertook within our marriage…and neither could escape their contexts.

i’m not going to tell you any more about the book, the plot, or whatever. just this: you should read it.
from now on, whenever anyone asks me “which book”…it’ll likely be this one. it’s just that good.
and being that i’m not a fanatically fanatic neil gaiman fanatic, that should mean something….hopefully.
i think it’s the best thing i think he’s ever written. that i’ve read, at least.

and i already told you, i’m not a completionist.

the only thing i want to know completely is the man underneath the books….

and that is a life-long journey that i never hope to finish.

if i ever finish knowing neil gaiman (and i don’t mean in the biblical sense), stick a dessert fork in me and turn me over, i’m done.
if i ever finish knowing neil gaiman, i get an A+ from god and a diploma from alain de botton’s philosophical school of life and every honorary doctorate in america plus a spiritual certification from the buddha himself that i can stop my life’s work and just drink mai tais in a jungle mountain hut while the ghosts of john lennon and elliott smith sit beside me, strumming ukuleles.

it’s just never going to happen.

and i don’t want to know him…not totally.

i want to be surprised.
i want to be in awe.

i want to give him my heart.

and i want to take it away sometimes and give it back again….to see what he’ll do.

if it keeps being like this, it’s worth it.

i love him so much…and in such a strange way that’s always so hard to explain.

and because i do, i hope that you can read what i read, and see what i see…

this:

the twilight place where the man and the writer smash into each other and for a second there’s a wrinkle, a schism, where you can jam a stick into the works of the blender and see the whole, floating components of a soul so fragile, so human, and so vulnerable that you must love whatever’s in there, unconditionally, because you have no other option.

the ingredients are just too beautiful.

xxx,
amanda on a plane.

p.s. when you read it, let me know what you think. book group is IN SESSION.
i started a thread HERE: bit.ly/TheOceanOnTheBox
here’s the link to order it from amazon (hardcover/ebook/CD audiobook/audible download), and here’s the link for people in the UK.
it comes out in various territories at different times. follow neil’s blog for the details.

p.p.s. we’re about to be apart from each other for a long time. i’m going to see him tonight at his book signing at BAM and then we both go on our respective tours.
for a while. here are his dates (mostly in the states), and here are mine (mostly in europe, the UK and australia). if you come see either of us, remember all of this.
and give us a hug.

p.p.p.s.

“The Blender” image (above) was commissioned by Land Transport NZ and developed at Clemenger BBDO (Wellington, NZ). the design team was Philip Andrew (executive creative director), Mark Forgan (art director), Jamie Standen (copywriter), Scott McMillan (agency producer), Lindsay Keats (photographer), and Geoff Francis (retoucher).

(ondi timoner & i during soundcheck, photo by @DavidMeKinley)

into the crowd (bonus points to the rad person behind me with the WKAP shirt)…

…and the orchestra plays on while i meander my way back to stage…

brandon hauled himself to the tip-top back of the venue while we were playing to capture the scene…gorgeous:

from the other side (during “astronaut”, by @glennrossphoto):

jherek did some fucking beautiful all-new orchestral arrangements for the evening. here he is bringing the rock:

one cannot imagine a more perfect venue for music-making.
the full setlist:
• smile (pictures or it didn’t happen)
• missed me
• trout heart replica
• astronaut
• the bed song
• runs in the family
• coin-operated boy
(videos are starting to pop up around if you go looking for ‘em)

speaking of videos, i started using vine more, and posted a bunch that night (you have to search for me in the app to follow – i’m just “amanda palmer” there)

meanwhile, fans used the AFP app to find/meet each other, plus we had some awesome #PhotoshopThis/#TitParty action:

i signed and met people…as always, random stuff went down…it was a blast.

…and the Denver house party was wonderful, too…jherek joined us, and we had another first: topless discussions of new social media platforms. why not? it was beautiful. huge thanks to alicia (@berthblue) for spearheading the whole thing.
if anyone has pictures, send ‘em along to photos@amandapalmer.net

so….the thing this damn blog is titled about…lots of folks have been asking about the “do it with a rockstar” video the past few months…
WHERE DID IT GO?
IT WAS RIGHT THERE ON YOUTUBE?!
AND THEN NOT!!

long story short, the “do it with a rockstar” video was taken down by YouTube, many months after being posted, because someone over there randomly decided they didn’t think the tits were artistic enough.

win some, lose some. all of the view counts and comments are sadly lost. the internet. sometimes it hugs you and sometimes it smacks you.

we did a super mini-edit and the new cut is FINALLY up, with a little coda message from yours truly (in bed, filmed by neil, edited by sean).

i hope you enjoy the video again (and again and again) or for the very first time…and if you do, please SHARE IT: http://bit.ly/DIWARSyt

AND…speaking of neil, i’m working on a long blog about his new book.

soon i leave for tour for real.

stay tuned.

x
a

(from an impromptu shoot with ondi at red rocks)

we also got some time to do stuff for atotaldisruption.com – i’ll tell you when it starts going up:

tattoos come into my life a lot, but this one broke my heart open.

neil and i both see a lot of tattoos of our words and works on people’s skin, and we have lots of weird tattoo anecdotes. last night I signed the inside of a girls thigh at the littlefield show and recommended that she walk home bowlegged because seriously that shit will sweat right the fuck off on a hot New York night. neil proudly tells the tale of the time someone got his signature on their arm in a signing line and then returned to the same signing line three hours later with saran wrap covering the freshly inked proof.

some people get my face tattooed on them. that always feels surreally challenging, to look at my own visage staring back at me from somebody else’s arm or back, like knowing I have sister-spy-selves all over the world, hiding under hoodies in the deep winter.

if you hadn’t noticed, i’ve been battling a kind of depression for the last few months. circumstances make it pretty understandable, i’m facing some crushing personal and business problems and feeling lonely and at loose ends in pretty much every department. the last time i was this low i was in college – unable to get out of bed and skipping classes. it wasn’t until i escaped the setting that things turned around. maybe tour will help. it never does.

anyway, i’m not so fucking depressed that i couldn’t write a song, which was the saving grace of last week, and having the house party in nashville actually directly kicked my ass to finish what i’d started, which was a massive blessing because i have a bad habit of finishing songs 59% and then leaving them for years unless i have an active instant-gratification motivator (usually a show, and even better if it’s a show for 50 people in a house, where i feel safe to fuck it up).

so as i was writing and wandering from the verse into the first chorus, the words “i am bigger on the inside” spilled out and i thought…i can’t fucking use this. can i?

it had ricocheted from doctor who into my incredibly dark mood, and i felt conflicted…on the one side my little sobbing song and on the other side, hoards of people in tardis t-shirts. fuck it. yes.

and i used the lyric.

i played it, two hours after finishing it, for a teeny room of 15 people at the nashville house party and cried through most of the second and third verse.

a few days later i flew to milwaukee to play for pride festival. i was having a rough night. the darkness was getting the better of me. against all better judgment (it was an outdoor festival celebration of YAY) i stuck the song towards the end of my set – a quiet, 8-minute introspective and repetitive ukulele song that I couldn’t play through without my throat getting stuck because it was just too fucking sad.

the crowd had never heard the song, because it didn’t exist anywhere. i cried through verse two and three again and it was fine except that i went straight into “ukulele anthem” afterwards and had a giant shiny glean of weeping-snot on my upper lip for the whole song. whatever. yes.

after the show i signed for a few hundred people. a boy asked me to write the chorus lyrics on his chest. the next day, he sent me this picture. he’d had them tattooed.

beat that, neil gaiman, i said, as i showed him the tweet, collapsing into a pile of useless blubbering on the floor of my mind.

but actually…there is no competition.

and this is what i see and understand about him, about me, about you, about doctor who, about coincidence, about the millions of ingredients and chances that lead us to this moment right here where we are facing each other (maybe through a screen, maybe not).

we are all connected – there is no way out, nor should there be.

say yes.

love
amanda

p.s. the body & the tattoo belong to gavin michael batker, @shizaminnelli on twitter.

p.p.s. i hope to record the song soon. stay with me.

just came home from the nashville kickstarter house party, which was fucking amazing and a balm for the soul. we dranked, we talked, we graffiti’ed a garage, i road-tested a brand new song.
i’ll write more about it and post up some pictures in a couple days (if you were THERE, please send us your photos: photos@amandapalmer.net).

and thanks to the nashville party (long story) i’ve decided to no longer be ashamed about my love of bagpipe music.
i’m coming out of the closet.
it’s all i’m listening to lately. i am not shitting you. nothing else works.
i put THIS on, and I FEEL CLEANSED.

try it.

(if you need a palette cleanser to get your sadz back: HERE‘s “9 crimes” by damien rice. judge away. i cover that late at night.)

i’m reading an incredible book.
this one is a “just trust me. read it.”
it’s a quick one (technically a young adult book – total page-turner).
it’s connecting a lot of dots for me.

find it at: goodreads | amazon | indiebound | powell’s

UND

if you missed it in the email blast (and if you don’t get my emails, get on the list dammit, you can sign up here: bit.ly/AFPemail)…
a lot (almost all) of the commissioned ARTWORK from THEATRE IS EVIL is UP FOR AUCTION!!!!

the proceedings are going to help fund ps122, an amazing non-profit performance art space in new york city where me and many friends have done work.
they’re honoring me in their fundraiser this year along with coucilwoman rosie mendez and chef gabrielle hamilton, and so we’re going to SHOW THE ART ONE LAST TIME and we’ve put it up for auction ONLINE, HERE. the BIDDING HAS BEGUN!!!

here are some examples of what’s up (click to enlarge)…

and even if you don’t think you could afford any of it, please have a peek (and share it with your friends)…it’s pretty rare you’d have a shot at owning originals by these artists, let alone while supporting a good cause.

BTW, it’s a good time to mention: if you missed the kickstarter art book (aka “the grand theft art companion”) that contains all these beautiful images, you can still buy it HERE.

and and and
….it’s june 3rd, WHAT ARE YOU DOING TOMORROW?
well i can tell you this…
i have a hope. a dream. a dream you’re getting ready to party with us on the fucking internet.
THE WEBCAST is TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so excited.

i blogged about this a few days ago, so this is just a reminder or for those of you who missed it.

for all of you who keep being upset that the band isn’t coming to your area, this is my way of connecting with you, wherever you are in the whole wide world.

in about 24 hours, i’m going to be LIVE from CAMBRIDGE, MA with MUSIC and TALKING and THINGS and GUESTS and more.
if all goes well (though i’m scared to jinx it, i think it might!!??) this’ll be EPISODE ONE in what i’d like to see become a new WEBCASTING SERIES starring yours truly with a rotating cast of interesting people and amazing performers. the way i see it, just pulling from my circles of friends in boston and NYC, i could do a talkshow every day of the week for a year and never repeat a guest.
i know some talented, smart, gifted brainiacs and i want to share them with you.

i hope this webcast will reach people in australia, the UK, south africa, japan, iceland….and the far deep reaches of BOTH south AND north dakota.
wherever there is internet, i can find you.

for our kick-off event, here are the guests, my nearest and dearest boston folks:

ANTHONY MARTIGNETTI – (reading & conversation)
anyone that follows my blog knows anthony by now. he’s my long-time mentor and best friend, and an incredible writer. here‘s a link to a video of him reading “swamp” from his book, “LUNATIC HEROES”. we will chat about life, death, writing, and…whatever.

CORMAC BRIDE aka RAVEN BRIDE – (music & conversation) | @raven_bride
i’ve known cormac for aeons and he’s opened for me here and there around new england. now, finally (FINALLY) he’s starting to play more shows and even has a little music up on youtube. go listen. prepare to be wowed, his voice is singular. we’ll talk about process.

NEIL GAIMAN – (reading & conversation) | @neilhimself
neil is going to read a selection from the book he’s about to bring out to the world “THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE”.
i’m going to interview him about the book.
also: tambourine? we’ll see.

SARAH BORRELLO – (music & conversation) | @sarahborrello
i discovered sarah two summer’s ago and she blew me away. i got her out on a string of shows with me and the embryonic version of the grand theft orchestra and she slayed nightly. her voice is phenomenal and she just won “best new act” at the new england music awards…fuckit, just listen. we’ll also talk about performing.

and of course i’ll be doing all sorts of shit throughout…music’ing and talking mostly, hopefully not too much running around’ing.
maybe i’ll sharpie something unlikely.

and….
a few other key players in these hijinks:

REDSTAR UNION – (webcast-central & venue) | @RedstarUnion
i’ve had historical difficulties with webcasting. the connection dies, the sound is often bad, the production is janky…at best we can usually get one part right, and the other pieces suffer. a LOT of things need to go RIGHT for a webcast to work, but i think i’ve finally found a top-notch studio for us to call home, and that’s redstar union. i think this may well be the missing piece to fix issues of the past but that’ll also help take us into ZE FUTURE. i went and sat in on some shows there this past winter (and sean’s going over there today to dig in on how we’ll be keeping in touch with everyone watching); the space, tech, and staff are all incredible, so i expect wonderful things. in my fantasy, this’ll work like a dream and we’ll make it a regular thing. fingers crossed to transmit love. here’s a sneak peak they sent over from prepping for tomorrow:

ZENA EL KHALIL – (poster artiste) | @ziggydoodle
in order to help cover the webcast expenses, zena created the beautiful artwork you’ve seen around promoting the event,
we’re printing a limited mini-poster run of her image which’ll be for sale and that i’ll be signing. you’ll wanna grab one before they’re gone for good. they’ll be available later and tonight through the end of the webcast, HERE.
in my last blog, i promised to include the rest of zena’s story about our paths crossing, and how she came to make the art. here it is:
“Most of my artwork is reactionary to where I live. And where I live, Beirut, is one of the most volatile places in the world. Through my work, I am trying to create bridges between cultures and religions. My work is a by-product of political and economic turmoil, focusing on issues of violence, gender and religion and their place in our bubblegum culture. I try to expose the superficiality of war, creating an alternate reality. My weapons of choice are love and humor. Consumerism and war are one and the same. The plastic I use in my paintings are made from oil. The same oil mankind is at war for.

I use the color pink. A lot. Pink is like cotton candy. It’s fluffy and sweet. Too much of it, though, will leave a bad pain in your stomach. It’s quick and superficial. Barbie, G I Joe politics, and Cherry Cola to me represent a generation that grew up pink. My generation is completely embedded in consumer culture. We are the pink generation. But other than shopping and MTV, there is a beautiful and powerful side to pink. It is the color of non-violent protest. I convert an object of violence into a celebration of life through a transformation into something beautiful. I truly believe that humor is a strong tool to tear down walls. And love is the foundation that will build our bridges.

The poster I made for Amanda is in the usual style of my artwork in terms of materials, but here, I am celebrating Amanda’s work and vision… There are a lot of Arabic elements; arabesque, calligraphy and henna patterns. Our two worlds have beautifully collided. East meets West, moving as one. That is the power of music! In my paintings, the macho macho men are usually carrying guns, but here, they are unarmed and harmless. Music is a great tool for peace and women all around the world are standing together to create positive change. In the face of change, Amanda is not afraid of anything, and I find that absolutely inspiring. And so, I put a crown on Ms. Palmer– she is now a queen, rocking the Casbah!”

you can see more of zena’s art here online: zenaelkhalil.com

SEAN FRANCIS aka @indeciSEAN – (the silent orchestra: interwebby stuff & new media) | @TheSilentO
we’ll be starting live at 7pm EST and going for a few hours, and through it all mr. sean will be manning my twitter feed (as well as, as always, @AFPwire), and making sure the online-stuff in general (the shadowbox, facebook, instagram, tumblr, etc.) is sailing smoothly.

and last but certainly not least…
YOUUUUUU.
yes, YOU. and YOU, and YOU, and YOU…
i’ll be chatting a lot online and taking questions from the live audience, PLUS from everyone who’s tuning in. the stream itself will be broadcast via our friends at redstar union and there will be a few other things there (a social media feed, poster sale, etc.).
until tomorrow, if you’d like to help promote, we’d be eternally grateful. here are a few ways that you can:
• RSVP on facebook (and invite your friends)
• change your profile pictures to some of the artwork we put together for you, HERE.
• reblog/share on tumblr.
• send a message into town via alaskan sled dogs…
…seriously folks, whatever you can do to help spread the word, have at it. and be sure to post your efforts HERE on the shadowbox!!

also, we still have a few tickets to give away – if you can come, go HERE and see what’s what.

and then? that’s it. buckle up. tune in at 7pm EST tomorrow (june 4) and enjoy. ask questions, make friends, sing along…just be there. here, we’ll make it even easier for you: HERE‘s a world-clock so that you can see what time this’ll be going down in your neck of the woods.

party. on. the. internet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

love from 35,000 feet in the air,
love from 19 feet above sea level,
just…love,
x
afp

she says

“hit back with love”.

this gets harder and harder to do, but just seems more and more necessary, doesn’t it?

it’s makes a circle of violence if you hit back with hate, if you decide to fight nasty, if you try to tear your attackers down with bigger gunfire.
nobody wins.
you become part of the problem, part of the darkness…the darkness engulfs you, and you fall into the pit with the people screaming at you.
sometimes, though….i just get tired of even thinking about it, and want to crawl into a remote jungle cave and read a book instead.

i’m actually doing that more lately.

instead of thinking endlessly/critically/defensively about why people don’t understand crowdfunding, don’t understand me, don’t understand my lifestyle, or my TED talk, or my eyebrows…. instead of cocking my head violently to one side and wondering why people feel the need to spend their blog inches calling me an asshole…nowadays i’m more apt to open up a book of poetry, have a talk with a good friend about life, or go to yoga. it seems to be the only correct action.

that is, in its own way, how i hit back with love. absorb the hate, embrace it, shake it off you and leave it at the door. and if i’m making it sound easy, it’s not.

i’m about to get on a plane to fly to nashville from boston, for a single night, to deliver one of the kickstarter house parties.
these parties have become my therapy. it’s pretty poetic, when you think about it.

who needs who?

AND…..
as soon as i get back, i’m doing something AWESOME.

a brand new fancy-fancy shiny-and-hi-tech webcast this coming tuesday, june 4th.
it’s gonna be at 7pm EST, and you can find out when the hell that is for you -wherever you are – HERE.
we’re calling it THE AMANDA FUCKING PALMER SALON.

(more on this awesome artwork below)

it will be totally FREE.

i’ve been wanting more and more to do stuff with webcasting, but it’s VERY HARD to get a webcast right unless all you want to do is chat about shit in your bedroom at night.
if you want pianos, quality audio, clear video, and special guests with whom your talking….you need lights and sound and an internet connection that is unbreakable.

a few months ago, someone tipped me off to a space in boston that’s been hosting secret little members-only events in a small club/theater that they purpose-built for webcasting.
they’re called REDSTAR UNION (twitter / facebook). they are awesome.
the space only fits about 50 people or so, and the stage and sound are INCREDIBLE. walking in there, it was like christmas. so we decided to try a webcast for one night to see how it goes, and it goes well, we’ll do more….hopefully A LOT more.

this is what the place looks like empty:

quite awesome.
we’re going to trick it out with comfy items and bric-à-brac-ness.

for this kick-off event, many of the people i love the most will be on that stage with me…
neil and anthony are both going to read selections from their books…
anthony, who’s in ok health right now, will be reading aloud from his memoir stories, “Lunatic Heroes: Memories, Lies and Reflections” (HERE‘s an old blog i talked about it a lot in).

and neil will read an excerpt from his new book “The Ocean at the End of the Lane”, which you can pre-order HERE.
i want to write a longer blog about his book, it’s pretty astounding and beautiful, this book. i’ll say more later.

i’ll talk to everyone. we all have a lot to talk about.
i’ll take questions online from you guys and pass them along to the guests, and chat with you about whatever.
SEAN (@indeciSEAN) will be there helping field/monitor interwebby stuff…he’ll be manning my twitter feed and making sure the online-boat is sailing smoothly.

we’re also going to have two special music guests, both boston-area natives.

CORMAC BRIDE, who’s been a close friend of mine for a long, long time…
he’s going to do a song or two solo and with me.
here’s a link to where he’s starting to share his music: youtube.com/user/RavenBrideMusic

…and SARAH BORELLO, a local singer/songwriter fellow-piano-slayer is going to throw down a tune.

she’s been opening up for me locally and killing people with her talent and i’m excited to give her a portal to the rest of the world, live on webcast.
we’ll all talk about making music, writing songs, what’s bugging us, and whatever else pops into our heads.

then there’s zena, who told me to hit back with love, and made the poster just for the webcast.
i love what she made:

even though the show is free to watch & listen to…if you feel so inclined, we’ll be raising money to cover studio expenses by auctioning off her art/signed mementos, live online.
it’s funny how people come into our lives…i asked if she wanted to talk a little bit about it and creating the poster…i’ll save some for another blog, but here’s the beginning. how we met (her words):
In 2009, a journalist based in the Basque handed me a mysterious CD. I was in Spain for the launch of my book, “Beirut, I Love You”. After the interview, he told me that it was imperative that I know about this woman named Amanda Palmer, because in some ways I reminded him of her. He had complied a CD full of Amanda’s music and videos and asked me to listen to it once I was back home in Beirut. On the flight back, I went through the CD on my laptop… Needless to say, I fell in love. And it wasn’t a gradual love. It was a smash! boom! bang! love at first sight kind of love. Jaime, in Spain, had helped build a bridge between me in Beirut and Amanda in Boston. Fast forward a few years later, I was finally able to connect to Amanda through a mutual friend at TED.

the right people, the right times.
sometimes.

before i go, last but not least, some stuff sean put together to help us get the word out, and how people who are in the area and WANT TO ATTEND in the flesh can win a ticket…

• use these images to help promote: bit.ly/AFPsalonFlickr
– spread them across your favorite sites, change your default picture on facebook, create your own artwork/collage…GET CREATIVE! whether it’s twitter, tumblr, instagram, facebook, face block, your blog, a message board you frequent, or out in the “real world” (coffee shops, record stores, etc) please share, share, share!
• you can find a large (18×24″) digital poster PDF at bit.ly/TheAFPsalonPDF (which will be great for printing out and hanging up)

ALSO:
• RSVP on facebook at on.fb.me/AFPsalonRSVP
- please mark that you’re “Attending” and SHARE/invite your friends.
• spread the link – and TUNE IN on June 4th, 7PM EST – at bit.ly/TheAFPsalon
• use the hashtag #AFPsalon on twitter, instagram, tumblr, etc.
– and consider using #AmandaPalmer, #webcast, and #AFP (especially on instagram)
• find/discuss other ways to help spread the word/win a ticket to ATTEND THE SHOW: bit.ly/AFPsalonInfo
• countdown timer/world clock for the show: bit.ly/AFPsalonClock

it is a teeny place, so if you wanna come, get crackin’ and good luck!!

really, though….i hope you can tune in.
i WANT YOUR FEEDBACK about how it goes, so i’ll be looking for it when it’s over to see how you guys dug it.

if this works, it’s going to be awesome.
we will hit back with love.

love
AFP

* Original Art By: AFP (herself), David Mack, Cynthia von Buhler, Cassandra Long, Blake Brasher, Kristen Hersh, Meghan Howland, Michael Zulli, Molly Crabapple, Nicole Duennebier, Tony Albert, Vladimir Zimakov, Zea Barker, and many others!

a lot of people asked for this, so here it be: the text from my talk at Grub Street’s 2013 “The Muse and the Marketplace” conference.

they’d invited me about 6 months before the conference to give the keynote address, and they wanted me to talk about “the internet”.
i was going to give a very “rah-rah blogging!”, “rah-rah free content!”, “rah-rah whatever works for you, weirdo writer!” talk.

but then, about two weeks before i was due to give the talk, poem-gate happened.

i’d already written a response blog about the poem…but addressing a room of 800 writers about the internet, art, messiness, and “where we go from here” forced me to think deeper, work harder, and explain in a way that i probably wouldn’t have done if not given the platform. for that, i’m incredibly grateful to the grub street writers. they had no idea what dots they were accidentally connecting when they invited me to speak at their event.

here is the speech in its entirety, with a few little fixes, since i changed some things on the fly when i got up to the podium.
(i left it more or less as i wrote it, and it was written to be spoken, not read. but whatever. art.)

if you like it, please pass it along.

i love you.

x
a

KEYNOTE ADDRESS @ THE GRUB STREET WRITER’S 2013 “MUSE AND THE MARKETPLACE” CONFERENCE

if you’re a writer, or any kind of artist, this may be a familiar story:
do you remember when, as a kid, being outside on a field trip, perhaps even in a literal field, let’s say, on a day-long journey with teachers and students, outside of the usual rhythms of school life and recess and familiar spaces – and you found yourself straying from the topics and the tasks at hand?
and you made discoveries.
and connections, wandering off with your own imagination.

and you were excited with your discoveries of the moment, in a new space, and maybe you held them up proudly saying:

did you ever notice that
THIS
looks like
THIS?

the shapes on this leaf look like the cracks in this puddle of ice, look like the veins on the back of my hand, look like the pattern on the back of her sweater…

connecting the dots between things.
maybe you thought it.
maybe you had the impulse to say it out loud.

and if you said it, you may have been encouraged. you may have delighted and amused those around you.

or you may have been discouraged.

you may have been told, calmly: this is not the time for that.
today isn’t “looking for patterns” day!
today is science day.
this is the time for collecting data.
to fill in your worksheet, this is the time to get back in line and answer the correct questions.

but your urge was to connect the dots, because that’s what interested you.

and maybe you saw the lights go on in the eyes of your friend, as you shared your discovery, and you took a kind of a pride in this.
and if you were sent to the back of the line, and told to “shape up”…
this may have been the moment where you decided that being an artist was an embarrassing PAIN IN THE ASS and not worth the trouble.

(and this was when you decided you were going to be an astronaut. up there, where you could eat delicious powdered ice cream all day and be ALONE.)

but the impulse, to connect the dots, and to share what you’ve connected:
this urge is what makes you an artist.
a writer.
the formats are infinite; fiction, fantasy, poetry, blogging, tweeting – doesn’t matter:

if you’re putting down words to connect the dots, you’re a writer.

picasso said something along the lines that “every child is an artist. the problem is how to remain an artist once you grow up.”

so…who decides?

i think, when we were young, when we envisioned our future selves as artists, we pictured ourselves somehow being hauled (or hauling ourselves) over that mythical fence where we’d leave behind the ranks of amateurs, hacks and other wannabes and bask in the glow of the arrival on the other side, where those waiting titles start to sound almost erotic: “published” (for the musician, “signed”) …legitimate! recognized as authentic!

ah…to be introduced at a grown-up cocktail party by a famous artist twice your age as “the real deal”.

so who does that? where does it come from?
or maybe: who used to do it, and who does it now?

does it have to come from above, or can it come from each other?

….because, in the wise words of bob dylan, more or less: shit is changing, and it’s changing FAST.
it’s changing at the speed of the internet.

i remember the first time i realized that my blog was actually a place for “real” art, and not just some semi-artistic smart-sounding rendering of what was happening with my band and in my life.

it was november 2005 and the dresden dolls were off tour, recording some music at home here in boston.

i went for a walk in the public garden, right here, reflecting on everything that was going on around me, with a song by casey dienel in my headphones and i saw something unusual. bobbing there, in the murky waters of the swan boat pond, surrounded by dying fall vegetation, there was an green empty bottle of miracle-gro. i thought this was the saddest and most hilarious thing i’d ever seen. the dots started to connect.

if i hadn’t had a blog, it would have been a song. if i hadn’t learned piano, it might have just been a poem. the format, doesn’t matter so much.

i went home, wrote a blog that was sort of a poem and sort of not, remember reading back what i’d written and thinking: this is art. it’s “writing”. the dots connected, i shared.

and back then, i had a small blog readership, and the heads nodded in the distance at what i wrote.
that’s all i needed. it never occurred to me to try to “publish” anything i’d written. as far as i was concerned, i had “published” it…on my blog.

and back then, the chances that ANYONE would read my little dot-connection/blog/poem/whatever-you-wanna-call-it other than my small fanbase, were slim.

hyper-speed-linking-content barely existed. twitter and facebook and tumblr weren’t rampant. i was just reaching ahead of me in line, in that distant field, to my schoolfriends, saying LOOK. THIS looks like THIS. and my friends – through the internet – nodded and smiled.

so: the title of this conference is “muse and the marketplace”. and while i was musing to myself about this speech, and what to share, another image struck me, and it was this:

the garrett.
the one in the attic.

i’ve thought about it before when asked about the music business.

the garrett belongs to that set of romantic notions we all had or have, painters, writers, musicians, and how they work.

“up there.”

with a pen, a paintbrush, a piano. by candlelight. alone. the space is isolated and fraught with artistic tension. drunk. chainsmoking. agonizing. creating. up here. in the garrett. separate.

then….

down to the ground floor, out the front door: you have the marketplace. loud. the stalls of exchange. the sound of bargaining and bartering and changing cash registers. it’s crass.
it’s mundane.

literally mundane compared to the garrett. it’s on and of the earth.
i give you goats, you give me bread.
i give you a handful of coins, you give me a paperback.
i give you an amex, you give me a best buy giftcard.

the marketplace is NOT “artistic”. it’s “commerce”.

but the building that supports the garret – let’s call it “the machine between”, “the middlemen”, “the translator between the art-maker and the audience” – is collapsing, changing, into a level digital playing field where anyone can connect with anyone.

artists are now empowered to distribute their work THEMSELVES. THEIR writing, THEIR music, infinitely and at their own will – without printing presses, without record manufacturing.

from your lips and pen to the readers ears and eyes…via their internet connection.

but in order to do that, to share directly, you have to leave the garret and go down to the bustling marketplace, where you have to deal with PEOPLE. dealing with PEOPLE sucks.

in the age of the independent “social artist” (as i believe this age is becoming), the question echoes again and again everywhere i go: what about PJ Harvey, what about elliott smith, what about the introverted or anti-social artists who have no desire to leave the garrett and enter the marketplace?

it is the WILD WEST down there in the marketplace of the internet.

carrying your fragile newborn work wrapped in a blanket through the stalls can be agonizing. the marketplace is dangerous. it’s dirty, it’s loud and filled with disease and pickpockets and naysayers and critics. it’s easier NOT to do it.

but there is another option, which is:

to YELL from your window.

to call to your friends below, your comrades in art and metaphor, and invite them up to a private party in your garrett.

this is the essence of crowdfunding.

finding your people, your listeners, your readers, and making art for and with them. not for the masses, not for the marketplace or the critics, but for your hopefully ever-widening circle of friends. and you aren’t totally protected from criticism. the minute you lean out that window and try to find your friends, you might get hit with a rock, and if you look down, you’ll see a lot of this from down there (*raises middle finger up to the sky*). you’ve got to learn to ignore that.

but you’ll also see people quietly heading to your door and knocking.
let them in. and tell them to bring their friends up.

and if possible: provide wine.

if you’re not social (and a lot of writers are NOT) you’ll have a harder time doing this.
connection always comes with risk.

art and commerce have never, ever been easy bedfellows, and the problems inherent in mashing together artistic expression and money don’t go away, they just…change form.

nowadays the harshest middle fingers are the ones that scream to artists who try to get help and funding:

“stop self-promoting. it’s shameless!!”

no writer wants to hear this.

these are the words we fear when we think twice about giving our work to ANYBODY, and asking them to read it, or help us.

but the problems of our age are just these.

the doors and windows are wide open due to the internet having come along as a tool, and you can choose how to use it. you will find an audience if your work is good and you put it out there, but with every wonderful connection you make online, there’s more potential for criticism.

and the criticism on the internet can be NASTY.

for every bridge you build with your community, there’s a new set of trolls who squat underneath it.

i asked my twitter feed last night if there were any writers out there, and, it being a friday night, there were thousands ready and waiting.

and i asked: WHAT makes you feel like an actual writer? was there a moment. answer however you want. and hundreds of responses flooded in, and i looked for themes. some people said”

“when i first got paid”
“when i first got published”
“when i got my first real review”

…but a LOT of people said:

“when somebody told me that my writing moved them. that was the moment.”

some of these people wrote blogs, some wrote books, all different styles…the format didn’t matter.

what mattered is that they’d moved another human being. nobody said they felt authenticated when they got their first negative blog comment, or bad review. (well there was one girl who said that her boyfriend insulted her for calling herself a writer because she never spent any time writing. so she quit her job and started writing. that was a happy ending, more or less….)

but mostly: we’re strengthened by those who nod at the dots that we connect.

a few weeks ago, we experienced a tragedy here.
the marathon bombing.
it was terrifying for everybody.
i spent the day on twitter, talking with people near and far about what was happening, what to do, how we were feeling, we coped, as a group.

and three mornings later, i woke up in cambridge to catch a train to new york, i turned on the radio and was told to stay in my house.

i left anyway, on the drive to new york i listened to the news with neil, my husband, for four hours, i cried a lot, i spent a strange and surreal weekend in new york.

i came home to boston on monday with a head full of tragic news reports, mashed up with a hard set of personal decisions i had to make with neil, and a haunting idea floating in my brain of a 19-year old boy, who, having inflicted terrible pain and death on a lot of people, having watched his brother die, and holding the enormity of his actions of the last few days in his own head, was hiding in the bottom of a boat.

i cannot deny i didn’t wonder how that felt.

that’s what i do. i wonder. i try to connect the dots. and i can only connect the dots that i see.

so back in boston, right before leaving for a lunch with some friends in a cafe bookstore in cambridge, i wrote a 10-minute stream of consciousness poem/blog about those connections, about that wondering, over a cup of coffee, posted it, and went to lunch with neil.

i checked in, and my readers read it and it got some nice comments.

heads nodded in the garrett.
but by the end of the day, i’d been called a terrorist-lover.

and soon, i was getting death threats.

for posting a blog, in which i dared to wonder how another human being felt?

and this WAS the general theme of the criticism: how dare you? how dare you empathize?
and worse: how dare you shamelessly self-promote and write a poem about this?

a slew of press has come out in the last week or so, not about me, but about everybody wondering if this “trend of empathy has gone too far”.

i think that’s fucked up.

to erase the possibility of empathy is to erase the act of art. to imagine how another human being feels, to connect the dots?

shakespeare. fiction. horror. sci-fi. poetry: this is what you’re doing.
imagining yourself into an unimaginable place.
the format is irrelevant.
you’re connecting the dots.

something really weird happened in those next few days….political extremists who hated my blog post started writing haikus and limericks in response.
some were really well-thought out, parodies of my own poem, and some were more along the lines of:

roses are red
violets are blue
fuck you fuck you
fuck you fuck you

and my own readers started to write their own poems. everybody was posting poetry in my blog comments.

then i found out that it national poetry month.

my first-thought-best-thought-whatever 10 minute poem had 250,000 views. it was so weird, and…embarrassing.

man, if i’d known that 250,000 people were going to read what i’d written i’d have written something SO. MUCH. BETTER.
but if i’d written something so much better, i wouldn’t have written it, if you get what i mean.

first thought, best thought, out. it belonged to its moment.

with the internet – you don’t get to choose.

when you open the door to your garret, or you walk around down in the market, all bets are off.

how do you put your work out on the net and find an audience, knowing how messy it can get, how open to criticism it can leave you?

a few days after this blew up, i posted a blog deconstructing my own poem and talking about the ingredients that went into it. in other words, explaining the dots i’d been connecting. a lot of people weighed in to the conversation and talked about their own take on the poem, on art, on writing, on the internet.

a boston globe writer wrote an article titled: “the problem with amanda palmer’s poem was that….it was about amanda palmer”.

well, it’s true. of course.

we can only write about what we can see.

we can only connect the dots we collect.

which makes everything you write about you.

what you write is you. what i write is me.

my neighbors, my thoughts, my paranoia, the frightened conversations i overhear, what i read in the news, my childhood drama, my understanding of shakespeare, and odysseus and the wine dark sea, and of the brady bunch, and bukowski. MY connections all go into the stew. that’s all you ever have. you can disguise it in any style, but it’s still you.

kerouac said: “the only thing i had to offer was my own confusion”.

that’s enough.

your connections are the threads you weave into the cloth that is the story only you can share.

so back to the marketplace and the garrett.

the door is unlocked.
people may enter without knocking.
they may crash your party and drink your wine.
let them in.
let them drink.

you may meet somebody interesting.

i wrote an email to the boston globe journalist after that article was published, since i knew him from around town and had his address, and we talked. and i found out that he was shaken, as i was, by the events of the last few weeks. he’d had friends at the bomb site. we connected. it was okay.

these are scary times.

and when the world around you is in a moment of panic and chaos
and parents are hanging onto their kids
and people are falling to their knees and praying
and people are gathered around screens in bars and saying OH MY GOD
and the noises overhead are either threateningly loud or deafeningly silent
and the fingers start pointing in every direction
and some are shaking in fear
and some are stabbing in anger
and you
may find yourself ….
doing what you did as a child
saying hey
have you ever noticed
that

THIS

looks like

THIS?

and you may tie those two ideas together with a metaphor
of gauze, a bandage,
and people might shout:

THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR ART

THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR METAPHOR

and

THIS IS CERTAINLY NOT THE TIME FOR ART ABOUT YOU

but

once you’ve shared your art and it’s resonated with a single person, it’s no longer about you.
once you share it, it is about US.

and if your art is found by a single soul, and shared with a friend, who links it to a friend….

in the response, you start to see how art becomes about everybody, just through the act of being shared.
(this is the way the internet is beautiful.)

but you, as the writer, have to weather the critics.

you have stay in the field.

to still wake up

and take up your pen

and connect the dots

because they need connecting

so badly

right

now.

we need people willing to wonder and risk the embarrassment of asking, in the newspaper, in a book published by penguin, or on tumblr, or in a tweet…

“have you ever noticed….
that
THIS
looks like
THIS….”

this is your job.

why would you want to do this?
why would you want to risk the pain?
the evil of blog comments,
youtube comments,
and if you’re lucky:
a bad review in the new york times?

self-publishing, without “authentication”, without the wand of legitimacy brushing your shoulder, it’s scary.

and there’s self-publishing a BOOK (which at least RESEMBLES something REAL)….and then there’s “posting your shit to the internet”.

but i’ve found:

what resonates, resonates.

so are you willing – in this new era, where you might never get authentication from a publisher, or a newspaper, or something big and legit – are you willing to accept that a party in a garrett with a bunch of groovy people helping you pay your rent (and buy your ink, and keep your fridge stocked) is ENOUGH? because this is what it’s coming to.

when you go directly to the internet, and publish something: it is your words, unfiltered, no fancy artwork and title, no marketing campaign, no autotune, no praise.

your voice, to the world. nothing to hide behind.

had i jotted down my poem in my journal and typed it up a few weeks later and then decided, a few years later, to maybe include it in an anthology of random amanda-palmer writings, would it have gotten read?

probably. by some benevolent friends in my garret.

now i’m not suggesting in the slightest, that you forsake your painstakingly edited work, your protected, hidden, well-groomed and agonized-over treasures, and post them to the fucking internet tomorrow.

but you can, if you want, find a crowd. an audience that will resonate with you….without the permission from “on high”.

because anything you write can change somebody.

can change an opinion, open an eye, scratch an opening in a scarred-up heart of a human being.

and it doesn’t matter how you do it.

if your writing is good, if it resonates.

if it connects the dots for ANYBODY out there…the lovers will come. the haters will come.
support will come, sometimes in the form of money, sometimes in the form of something less expected.

it balances out.

no amount of criticism that i’ve gotten in the past few weeks, could defeat the experience i had on thursday night in san francisco:

i was at the fillmore, playing at a tribute concert of a great songwriter robyn hitchcock, and while colin meloy was on stage singing one of robyn’s songs i weaved my way onto the floor among the hundreds of people gathered there, and was watching, with total joy, a musician i respected playing songs i loved.

and a woman with long grey hair turned around between two songs, and she grabbed my arm and she said to me:

“thank you for writing a poem”.

and i thought “oh, the fucking drama, it wasn’t even a great poem”.

but the squeeze of her hand on my arm and the way she looked at me said:

“doesn’t matter. doesn’t matter.
thank you for connecting the dots, for trying.”

these are crazy times

whether they aren’t ever aren’t crazy times, i don’t know, i doubt it.

but i do know

this IS the time for metaphor.

this IS the time for art.

this IS the time for art about you.

because you, and them, and me….we’re all the same.

we all feel pain, we all bleed red.

and if nobody else will say it to you….

i will:

thank you for writing.
thank you for connecting the dots, for trying.

pick a format, any format….and i hope to see you out there, in the field.

thank you.

here’s the actual live footage of the speech on youtube/vimeo:

xxx
AFP

p.s. here’s the blog that eve bridburg, the founder of grub street, wrote about this speech. it’s beautiful, and connects even more dots: bit.ly/WhoDecidesBlog
p.p.s. here’s a link to that old miracle-gro blog. it’s a good one: bit.ly/blog111905

down:

thoaty-sick and battling a fever and i kind of want to lie down and die.
but i’m not doing that. i’m on a train to new york to do a benefit to save the mermaid parade.

the mermaids will heal me, i can feel it.
if not: the combination of people on stage will heal me, i can tell.

neil and i did a show at wesleyan, my alma mater, last night…
i sang a handful of songs, neil read from “Fortunately, The Milk”, and then we interviewed each other.
here we are (via screenshots @indeciSEAN took of the awesome student-run webcast):

the random gentleman you see in the last picture asked neil a question during the q&a portion of the show, and then wanted to get his copy of “American Gods” signed…neil’s smile: priceless.

the night was a benefit for their financial aid campaign.
which was funny because neil talked about how he didn’t feel like he’d needed to go to college, and i tried to dredge up some good memories.
it’s always hard for me to go back there, especially when the atmosphere is very rah rah. they were such difficult and dark years for me, and i still feel out of place and like i’m ruining everybody’s party when i return.

i was telling neil after the show…it wasn’t just the college and the fact that i was having an impossible time adjusting and feeling all isolated and depressed and all that.
that was bad. but it wasn’t insurmountable. what i usually fail to mention when i’m talking earnestly about my difficult college years is the fact that within the course of less than a year, a lot of people died.
my recent ex-boyfriend, matt, and a few days later, my grandmother, then my step-brother (who also went to wesleyan, and who i worshipped) and my grandfather. all within about 6 months of each other. bam bam bam bam. death death death death. i was pretty much alone for every single one of these deaths, i never really took it all in…i just hid further within myself. that was also the year i left for germany and discovered beer, which, in retrospect, was pretty wonderful timing.

anyway, all that death usually gets left out of the story, but i think it’s a huge part of it. i was lost in general, and i happened to be at college, and paralyzed.
and i was, and still am, in awe of the people who enjoyed themselves at college. i feel a degree of envy that’s hard to explain.
it’s part of why i keep trying to go back, to work with college-age kids, to connect from the present, to karmically wipe out the past. it works. now is now. that was then.

anyway. thought i’d share that.

down.

sorry.

up?

up:

i was at a show in cambridge the other night and a girl came up to me and showed me this photo on her phone.

it’s me, as the eight foot bride, in around 1999, or maybe 2000, in my regular spot across from au bon pain.

and that’s her.

(via @domartothemaxx)

up.

it made me happy.
and here’s something else that made me happy….

two days ago i went into a recording studio (good old mad oak, in allston, with good old benny grotto, an amazing engineer, and pat boone, who says “howdy!” from the bathroom).

and for the first time since recording “theatre is evil” i laid down some tracks….

including doing something for WEIRD AL YANKOVIC’S new record, which will come out sometime next year.

this man is hilarious, but he’s no joke to me. i grew up WORSHIPPING his records, and i had them all on vinyl.

he is one of the sweetest, kindest, funniest guys. my little amanda exploded with glee.

UP. UP. UP.

(via @alyankovic)

i also laid down a real version of “the thing about things“. i’m not sure what i’m going to do with it yet:

up.

down:
realizing that neil and i aren’t going to see each other for more than three weeks between now and christmas.

up:
the redstar union webcast on the fourth. (lots more info being posted here on the box tonight, and you can RSVP here on facebook)

down:
feeling homeless.

up:
it won’t last forever.

down:
feeling broken.

up:
remembering i can still make music if i want to.

down:
not knowing what to do with the music i make.

up:
knowing that i just have to make it through december and then i can feel free again.

down:
why the fuck would i not feel free now? bad zen amanda.

up:
spring

down:
fever

up:
down

down:
up

across,
a

AFP and The Grand Theft Orchestra are hitting the road to make up the postponed dates: starting in Europe and the UK this summer, then to OZ & New Zealand, then back to Europe in November.
You know the story: we need YOUR HELP to get the word out locally. SO? We ask you to do your part – however you can, to help us spread the word – and then when you show us what you’ve done, we’ll give you thanks in the form of: meet and greets with Amanda, extra show tickets, a personal video or sound clip from AFP, and MORE, more, more…we’re trying to keep it interesting.
We want to see and share pictures of your creative flying and promo, we want to hear stories about your adventures, we want to know all about the new people you meet and the experiences you have…you are OUR delegates on the streets of rock. Ready? Read on.

A list of the European and UK leg of the tour is below. For a FULL list of tour dates, show information, and ticket links: please visit bit.ly/SeeAFP

We tried to make it arty and fun:
POST FLYERS
Amanda took a Sharpie and made a unique image for each show so that you can PRINT THAT SHIT OUT or grab it to RUN AMOK ON THE INTERWEBZ…do…THINGS!
View ALL the show flyers in HERE on Flickr and download the poster for the show in your city. Hang the poster up around town, hit the coffee shops, hit the yoga studios, plaster your derby meet, bring ‘em to parties, put them up on your university bulletin boards, leave a flyer on the dashboard of your ex’s car, etc. Place a flyer wherever bills are allowed to be posted (aaaaand always ask permission to post a flyer if you’re in a place of business). Here’s some more info & tips to get you started on this type of shizzle: The Grand Theft Street Team Flyer Resource Page

THE SHADOWBOX: The Street Team Hub
Use the forum as a hub of information and connection for all your postering/art activities. The Box is a major resource if you need help, or want to organize efforts with other folks in your city. It’ll also be where you should post pictures of your work, reports of your activities, and enter contests for prizes. Head on over to The Reconnaissance and dig in!

ONLINE STREET TEAM RESOURCES
We’ve set up contest widgets to help you share info about the tour online and automatically enter to win tickets to the concert. Find the tourdate in your city and follow the prompts to earn points in the contest. (BTW, you can enter every day up until the day of the show.)

FACEBOOK
+ Head over to bit.ly/AFPevents and RSVP to the Facebook event for the shows you are attending.
+ Share the event on your Timeline (you can also tag friends who may want to go with you)

TUMBLR
+ Post a flyer to a show on your Tumblr page and use appropriate tags on your post (i.e. “Amanda Palmer”, “concert”, the city name, etc).

TWITTER
+ Post a tweet about an upcoming show, be sure to tag @amandapalmer, use the hashtag #AFPtour, and always link to amandapalmer.net/bit.ly/SeeAFP – Don’t forget: getting people to shows and eyeballs on that show page is why we’re doing this!

OTHER CRAZINESS
+ We’ll be adding some assets for you on Pinterest, Vine, YouTube, Vimeo, Google+, and more…
ALSO: We’ll be giving you even more suggestions for the above social networks…stay tuned and get creative!

CONTEST: Win tickets to see AFP live this JULY in Europe and the UK!

Team AFP is giving away a few single tickets to every show of the tour. Enter to win through the widget(s) below by tweeting about the show (but please ONLY enter the contest if you are able to make the event). Please note that some shows on this tour have age restrictions, and it varies date to date. Winners will be notified via email. If you’re not feeling like taking a gamble before the shows sell out, tickets are available for purchase at bit.ly/SeeAFP

July 4th – Graz, Austria at PPC
The Shadowbox Street Team Hub (http://www.theshadowbox.net/forum/index.php?topic=47688.0) | Facebook RSVP (https://www.facebook.com/events/563308750367027/) | Ticket Link (http://bit.ly/AFP4julytix)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

July 7th – Utrecht, Netherlands at Tivoli
The Shadowbox Street Team Hub (http://www.theshadowbox.net/forum/index.php?topic=47689.0) | Facebook RSVP (https://www.facebook.com/events/160555057437162/) | Ticket Link (http://bit.ly/AFPjuly7tix)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

July 8th – Esch-Sur-Alzette, Luxembourg at Rockhal
The Shadowbox Street Team Hub (http://www.theshadowbox.net/forum/index.php?topic=47690.0) | Facebook RSVP (https://www.facebook.com/events/577303405620850/) | Ticket Link (http://bit.ly/AFP8julytix)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

July 9th – Paris, France at La Cigale
The Shadowbox Street Team Hub (http://www.theshadowbox.net/forum/index.php?topic=47691.0) | Facebook RSVP (https://www.facebook.com/events/160068400819499/) | Ticket Link (http://bit.ly/AFP9julytix)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

July 11th – Manchester, UK at The Ritz
The Shadowbox Street Team Hub (http://www.theshadowbox.net/forum/index.php?topic=47692.0) | Facebook RSVP (https://www.facebook.com/events/578858165471250/) | Ticket Link (http://bit.ly/AFP11julytix)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

July 12th, London, UK at Roundhouse
The Shadowbox Street Team Hub (http://www.theshadowbox.net/forum/index.php?topic=47693.0) | Facebook RSVP (https://www.facebook.com/events/234857603319174/) | Ticket Link (http://bit.ly/AFP12julytix)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

July 13th, Brighton, UK at Concorde 2
The Shadowbox Street Team Hub (http://www.theshadowbox.net/forum/index.php?topic=47694.0) | Facebook RSVP (https://www.facebook.com/events/485756271474212/) | Ticket Link (http://bit.ly/AFP13julytix)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

July 15, Bristol, UK at O2 Academy
The Shadowbox Street Team Hub (http://www.theshadowbox.net/forum/index.php?topic=47695.0) | Facebook RSVP (https://www.facebook.com/events/549157241772674/) | Ticket Link (http://bit.ly/AFP15julytix)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

July 16th – Birmingham, UK at The Institute
The Shadowbox Street Team Hub (http://www.theshadowbox.net/forum/index.php?topic=47696.0) | Facebook RSVP (https://www.facebook.com/events/625808197434020/) | Ticket Link (http://bit.ly/AFP16julytix)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

July 17th – Edinburgh, UK at The Picturehouse
The Shadowbox Street Team Hub (http://www.theshadowbox.net/forum/index.php?topic=47697.0) | Facebook RSVP (https://www.facebook.com/events/546146825407057/) | Ticket Link (http://bit.ly/AFP17julytix)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

July 18th – Dublin, Ireland at The Academy
The Shadowbox Street Team Hub (http://www.theshadowbox.net/forum/index.php?topic=47698.0) | Facebook RSVP (https://www.facebook.com/events/237810856364870/) | Ticket Link (http://bit.ly/AFP18julytix)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Please note that for your entry to be eligible to win, you must enter your full name and click the widget button that says “+1 Do It!” – click the button that says “Tweet” – and follow the directions for entering your tweet’s URL. You can tweet once a day until the day of the show, and the more you tweet the better your chances are to win. You MUST include your full name to enter and your name must match your photo ID to claim your tickets at venue will call. While AFP tries to play all ages shows whenever possible, please understand that certain venues on this tour have age restrictions that cannot be waived. Contest prize is for 1 ticket per winner to the specified event only, all travel and accommodation arrangements are up to you. You can earn bonus points by following @amandapalmer (and @AFPwire) on Twitter and giving her a “Like” on Facebook. Good luck…Thundercats HO!!!

first some quick news, then the dumping of my soul.

it came together fast as a slippery lady fish….i’m going to be appearing at a benefit to SAVE THE MERMAID PARADE of coney island.
may 25, bowery ballroom, NYC.
hurricane sandy was an absolute bitch and has threatened to shut the parade down. i have so many burlesque/performer friends who have taken part in this community tradition for so long, i felt called.
there’s going to be A LOT of special guests and i have the feeling this night will be an unparalleled THROWDOWN. come DRESSED in appropriate mermaid or merman (or just plain fucking nautical?) attire.
i’ll try to learn a special song or two

if you’re not in NYC, you can go straight to the kickstarter:

they’re currently at $63,226 of $100,000 with 1,408 backers, and some of the reward packages are AWESOME. i got the nipple-pasties.

tickets for the benefit are 18+, $25, and available HERE.

how could you not want these people to exist?

meanwhile…….

i spent the last few days in philly and new york doing weird shit and falling totally behind.

neil released a book of his University of the Arts commencement speech, it’s called “MAKE GOOD ART”
and i have to say, i was skeptical. how do you make a 25 minute speech into a book that’s not just…a speech?
you hire chip kidd, master designer, and he makes it all better.

the results are this amazing little book that’s deliberately designed like a designer’s worst fucking nightmare.
red on turquoise, pages offset wrong, the terrible works. it’s brilliant, and you can buy it at on AMAZON or POWELL’S or all sorts of other places… (watch the original speech HERE/listen to the NPR piece onnit HERE):

the night before he launched the book in philly, i did the philly house party, which was amazing – as usual.
here’s a pic kyle snapped (and my take on it as well):

so handsome.

ANYWAY…thank you to everyone who came to the house party, and to barb for letting us all use her house. magic.

i’m sensing a pattern with these house parties.
every one of them is balm for the soul.

this one had an interesting interloper….

jon ronson, a writer/novelist by trade, is writing an article about me for the guardian UK.
he’s the author of “the men who stare at goats”, “the psychopath test” and “lost at sea” (a collection he’s just put out).
but i was encountering him in his role as my guardian interviewer.

he said he didn’t just want an interview, he wanted to follow me around and see me be with people.

i asked him if he wanted to come to the party with me.

“you can’t be weird,” i said. “you can’t really come as an outsider. you have to actually come to the party and drink with us and possibly sing songs.”

he’s british.

but he said he was game.

by the end of the night, jon was reading his short stories off his phone to the living room, which was an assemblage of some of the warmest, wonderfullest people i’ve been with lately.

he fit right in.

here’s a picture of me with jon, and of me with every single person at the philly house party.

all photos by coriander under the mentorship of kyle cassidy (click ‘em to enlarge).

they’d just met. it was perfect.

bonus shots via kyle:

then i came back to boston, just in time to get to a cocktail party at the boston globe.
i wasn’t exactly sure why i was there, but i’d been invited and the boston globe is my hometown paper, so i thought, go…
maybe something interesting will happen.

something interesting happened.

i’d brought neil, and we stood there awkwardly holding our paper napkins and cheese and strawberries (which were excellent, by the way), and wondering what the hell we were doing there, when someone went up to a podium and started up a powerpoint highlighting and honoring the top 100 companies of boston. i hadn’t heard of any of them. i leaned over to neil and tried to apologize for dragging him to a giant lobby filled with people in suits, even though we’d gotten to talk to some nice people from the globe itself (including mark pothier…who is the deputy business editor of the globe and used to be in MINISTRY! MINISTRY!!!!).

so one by one, business people walked up to the mic and talked about boston unity, and how weird and hard shit has been around here lately, and how we all need to stay strong and help each other…

then there was a “and now the moment you’ve all been waiting for” speech and the top company of the year was announced.

it was smith & wesson, the gun manufacturer.

there was an intake of breath, a short pause, and then a smattering of polite applause.

GET.
ME.
OUT.
OF.
HERE.

love,
AFP

p.s. i’m on TED RADIO HOUR today. if you’re an NPR-head want to listen to the podcast, head HERE (for iTunes) or HERE (for a direct link via NPR).

OH and p.s.s. there are still some tickets left for the brattle theater movies that neil and i are showing each other this weekend in cambridge.
let’s escape all the guns, bombs and drama AT THE CINEMA!!! tickets & info HERE.

The two became allies quickly, and Ondi shot some concert and interview footage of Amanda while they began brainstorming a collaborative effort (more on that here in the blog, “HOW TO CROWDSOURCE A SXSW SHOWCASE & PANEL IN UNDER 24 HOURS”). Within a few weeks, a Kickstarter was launched – “A Total Disruption: Ondi Timoner’s Portal For Innovators” – to raise funding for a series in which Amanda will be heavily involved. That means from content (like this through rewards themselves, if you’re a fan of AFP, you should be paying attention!

As of posting this news item, the Kickstarter has just over 24 hours to go. Though it’s currently at 754 backers and has surpassed its goal, as Amanda said in her newest blog: “The more funding she gets, more coverage she’ll be able to give to this year ahead, as she trails behind me with her camera slung around her shoulder like a weapon of mass information.”

You can find more information from Amanda here on the blog, or directly at kck.st/ATotalDisruption

if you missed the announcement elsewhere, i’m heavily involved in a kickstarter project that has only a few days to go. the goal is to help filmmaker ondi timoner fund “a total disruption“…she’s basically crowdfunding her business from the ground up, and her business is to tell stories like mine, so the whole thing fell into place and made a lot of sense when we met down at SXSW.

the day ondi filmed me for the video you’ll see below, i was sorta a mess – running around SXSW at top speed, trying to cram everything in, shouting over the sound of the music outside.
i really fucking like ondi, and her films. check out “dig!” if you’ve never seen it, it’s amazing and won her the grand jury prize at sundance…it’s a documentary about the dandy warhols, the brian jonestown massacre, and the bizarre paths the two bands took and how they mirrored each other – it’s a rock doc classic. ondi spent YEARS following those guys around.

she also made a film called “we live in public” (another sundance grand jury winner – she’s the first person in history to win that award twice). it’s a super-intense and disturbing look at what the dot-com boom did to one man and community around the turn of our last century. in short: i really like what she’s doing and how she does it….and i think it’s important. she’s a film-documentarian trying to uncover the deeper, important stories of what’s going on in the world right now and why (and how) it’s happening – she’s like the alan lomax of current tech and companies and crowdfunding.

she’s already achieved her goal, but the more funding she gets, more coverage she’ll be able to give to this year ahead, as she trails behind me with her camera slung around her shoulder like a weapon of mass information. she’s hoping to show up at a lot of gigs, parties, and really try to tell the story not just of ME, but of this entire community and what we’re about, and what we stand for. how we help each other. what we’re really like. and all that. ondi gets it and i’m really proud she picked us as her specimens.

so here you go: this is the mini-documentary that ondi just posted up of me at SXSW, and she’s going to release a second part soon (i’ll let you know).
watch her wield her weapon here:

and now go….if you haven’t seen her kickstarter, this is it, last call. as of posting this (at around 1:00am EST early sunday it closes in 54 hours and is currently at $131,253 with 683 backers: kck.st/ATotalDisruption

i appreciate you all to fucking bits, and thank you from me and ondi if you do back this one.

these last few weeks have been particularly rough and you guys have been wonderful.

i couldn’t ask to be around kinder, more intelligent people.
i’m about to head to NYC for a lot of meetings and to do the philly kickstarter house party, i’ll see a bunch of you there….get ready for love. (i hear tell of hand-made pizza. i look forward to this immensely.)

x
a

p.s. neil took this photo today in cambridge.
the cherry blossoms are out and what the fuck else can you do but shake em all over: