empty joy, and help me: i’m about to interview pussy riot.

hallo loves.

greetings from havelock north, new zealand.

well then, it’s been an interesting few days, hasn’t it.

the most recurring conversation/sentiment i have seen online and while wandering around this town is a feeling-confusion. people are struggling with their sense of compassion about donald trump. people joke that they want him to die but ha ha not really but kind of really but wouldn’t it be nice if he just got really sick but i mean not really but….there’s a lot of that happening.

i felt a kind of empty joy when i heard donald and melania trump had covid.

first, justice, a sense of justice, and then a kind of relief, and then a kind of stupid numbness.

i received the news, by the way, not via twitter or the radio, but by a random kiwi in the streets of havelock north. i was walking ash to the post office, she was sitting at a cafe table. (i am almost never ever recognized in havelock north because…yeah. it’s not that kind of town).

she was in her fifties, and looked at me gleefully and said “it’s amanda palmer! amanda! donald trump has covid!!!”

there came that weird kind of relief (oh good, maybe things will be okay now) and then a sort of destabilizing argument within myself (oh wait, things aren’t going to be okay no matter what, and what makes you think this will make things ok? why are you so gullible) and on and on.

karma is not a weapon.

i was with a bunch of kiwis tonight and kept saying, over and over:

the fact that nobody really knows whether or not the president is lying and the fact that that is so normal is the scariest part of this.

trust is broken at a fundamental level.

how can a relationship, a country, a system of people work when trust is broken at a fundamental level? it can’t.

this was the sky tonight…

and i went to a tiny concert for about 20 minutes and stole this footage. if you’ve missed tiny concerts, here’s a little stream. go find her….anna coddington. she took me to a good place in my soul.

music is life, and i can’t believe i get to see live music when so many i know cannot. see it. or make it. or anything.

it’s so weird.

……

anyway….i am about to go to bed, after a long day with ash.

it’s been a rough week with getting the podcast and jack and gaby’s piece out the door all within a few days, and this betch is TIRED. but there’s one thing i gotta ask before i shut my shit down for a sweet ass off-line sunday…..

when i crank back up on my monday (sunday for most of you) i’m going to be interviewing nadya tolokonnikova – of pussy riot – for the podcast.

nadya and i became pals over the internet a few years ago, and she sent me a copy of her book when it came out in 2018…it’s called Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism, and the book’s tagline is “a guerrilla guide to radical protest and joyful political resistance”. (we’ll be reading it in the podcast book club, so go get a copy).

many of you probably know pussy riot from when they made headlines back in 2012, after nadya and one other member of pussy riot were arrested for performing  staging an anti-putin performance inside moscow’s cathedral of christ the saviour.

for a while, balaclavas had a new meaning in global imagery.

since then, nadya has been weaving around the world and on social media, doing her activism, putting that book out, writing and making music, performing, and figuring out how to best spend her time. she’s also on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/pussyriot/.

a few weeks ago we were chatting, and i invited her onto the podcast.

she’s going to be my first guest who’s POST-COVID. whee-ha.

and now….

YOU.

arm me with questions.

if you have anything you’re particularly interested in, please hit me in the comments, and i’ll weave it into our conversation, which will likely be about 2 hours and get whittled down to one for the podcast.

i’m particularly interested in asking her experiences with or without mindfulness while in prison, what she thinks about using patreon and how it’s changed anything for her, how she thinks art can help right now in covid, and how she rides the strange line between being pussy riot the “brand” and pussy riot the force majeur.

i wonder how she straddles that line.

anyway: HIT ME WITH QUESTIONS. PLEASE UPVOTE THE ONES YOU LIKE! i’ll use this post as a reference when i talk to her.

and thank you all, by the way, for all the positive feedback on the podcast! i am so glad people are loving it. the team put a ton of work into it and it’s nice to see it taking off so beautifully.

i hope you’re all doing ok.

hang in there.

x

a

p.s. for some not empty joy: i took ash to a parade today and they covered the whole crowd with foam. every day i cannot believe where i am and where i am not and what is happening where i am.