Mar
6th
this is a tree, not an ashtray.
head. of. mush.
backstage in perth right now…..is gorgeous, sun is setting and jeffmaker.com is at his computer.
this place is real. it’s like a house.
this is my favorite window:
twitter has been my latest smack and it helps me feel connected.
twitter has also proven to be very fucking useful for last-minute gatherings and ticket give-aways.
50 people showed up in perth today after i twittered the all-ages gathering last night.
go figure.
we hung out at a soccer field, ate cake, and generally were. i bought a soccer ball but we never got to that part because i had to go soundcheck.
lots of people gave me long letters, which i’ve been reading backstage while i drink redbull.
choice quote from one of them:
“Meeting your best friend on a psych ward. Then moving in together. Still not sleeping, turns out your friend is addicted to meth. For everything else, there’s Mastercard.”
that made me laugh. sometimes i wonder what happens to all these letters that i read, if they are all living in a certain space in my head and someday they will finally turn into a black hole of pain that frees the universe or makes me explode with anguish. mostly i think it’s just fine. what to doctors do, watching people die all day. they must enjoy it as much as i do, because sometimes they get to fix things. so you trade.
dude.
have i mentioned….that australia is amazing. i FUCKING love it here.
can’t we all agree to just move here?
all at once?
my new plan, for when i’m old and dying:
new york in summers and melbourne in winter…done.
yet sometimes i want to quit this job, you know, the JOB part of it, the travel, the people management, the constant bullshit, the things that don’t get done, the never-ending emails, the never-ending emotional clean-up.
i’ve hit the tour wall and my patience with things going wrong is maxed, so i’m just trying to deal with what needs to be done,
one foot in front of the other.
sometimes i feel like i’m faking my own life.
and i am, indeed, PMSing. ask me how i feel in a week.
i’ll be fine.
a few of my friends are at the end of their ropes back at home and i feel useless to them, with the time difference and the space difference.
tour depletes you, emotionally, physically, spiritually. you are surrounded by people, for better, sometimes, for worse sometimes.
you are helpless when it comes to so many things that need to be done, you are a constant victim of random circumstance.
but
(you chose to do this).
up, down. down up.
around.
anyway.
picamatures:
this is all of us in brisbane with our hosts, chris and ziggy, who were awesome and made us the most amazing breakfast:
go figure.
here are some ace pictures from the show in adelaide, at which i also traded make-out time on stage for cold beer.
i am becoming fearless:
(all photos by matt james unless noted, from http://www.flickr.com/photos/matt-james/)
lyndon:
hot.
have to drive:
(tora and mark)
(kat and steven)
guitar hero
(photo by cheesequake on flickr)
tora in coin-op:
uke:
nigel’s birthday moment, which involved the ensemble coming out with a cake on an almost-naked tora…..
which nigel then proceeded to mush into his own face.
cake on tora:
i love this man:
about to ruin the rental keyboard, which was a piece of fucking shit, at the end of “girl anachronism”…..
ok.
to stage.
xxxxxxx
AFP
p.s. am still backed up on bloggage. working on an epic music-biz-related how-to. and a series about the videos, which are now, by the way, back up on youtube.
start watching/rating them, i need to get the counts back up:
leeds:
click here to rate, comment, favorite, etc.
oasis:
click here to rate, comment, favorite, etc.
wkap series -
intro:
click here to rate, comment, favorite, etc.
astronaut:
click here to rate, comment, favorite, etc.
ampersand:
click here to rate, comment, favorite, etc.
runs in the family:
click here to rate, comment, favorite, etc.
the point of it all:
click here to rate, comment, favorite, etc.
strength through music:
click here to rate, comment, favorite, etc.
guitar hero:
click here to rate, comment, favorite, etc.
another year:
click here to rate, comment, favorite, etc.
epilogue (everybody’s gotta live):
click here to rate, comment, favorite, etc.
Jan
7th
the videos are BACK. ask afp. tit support.
my videos are back.
fuck youtube. for the time being, they are up on vimeo,
where the quality is a shit-ton better than youtube, anyway.
vimeo.com/amandapalmer/videos
if you missed the story, all of my videos were pulled from youtube because warner records (who own my label, roadrunner) got into a penis contest.
all the artists on warner got pulled. me. madonna. oasis. ENYA. dude. you pulled ENYA? wrong. nobody pulls ENYA.
but let’s look at it as a gift from the baby jesus.
if you have never taken the time out of your life to go see the amazing collection of videos i made for Who Killed Amanda Palmer, go see them now.
they look better.
ah, high quality. i love the idea that ten or twenty years from now we will laugh at little youtube videos the way we now laugh at rotary phones.
i’m going to shoot one final video at the end of this month with annie clark from st. vincent (guess which tune).
mr. michael pope will be in the directors chair, we’re shooting in new york. i can’t wait. i love annie. i want to make more music with her.
speaking of which, fun news: margaret cho is making a record and asked me to co-write one of the songs with her. we’re going to work on it this summer
and hopefully do some shows together (watch out, provincetown, it might be in your neck of the woods. for reals).
…………………………………………………….
i’m going to spend three weeks this spring at lexington high school, working on the spring play.
that’s right, betches. back to my roots. i’m going to eat in the cafeteria and everything.
i’ve been accused of having severe “the rose”/janis joplin syndrome.
but fuck it.
steve bogart, my high school theater director, is a genius. he’s been doing shit other people are afraid to do for years.
i owe him a lot. and i want to work with him.
and i want to make theater with people who are passionate. and these kids are.
their agenda is to make awesome art. this is where i want to hang out. so i am.
our budget dwindled to nothing and i can only give the project a few weeks, but it’s going to be fast and furious and amazing.
the show is going to use one of my favorite records of all time, neutral milk hotel’s “in the aeroplane over the sea” as inspiration.
how awesome.
…………………………
remember when i blogged about me & steven copying steven’s arm-heart-tattoo onto a another girls sliced-up arm in denver?
her name is tina, and she did it.
she sent a photo.
she said it’s been helping her to not slice her arms up.
life is crazy, isn’t it?
whatever it takes, man.
…………………………
neil wrote:
I really hope this doesn’t come over as preachy or snooty or anything like that it’s just that its an interesting conversation I have had a few times with some friends of mine, one a scientist of mind, the other an artists and myself in the middle. I mean it to be an interesting thinking/talking point but sometimes I come over as a bit aggressive when I don’t want to. So….
Not to be a pedant (but I am so why try not to be (incidentally it will be on any kind of tomb stone or plaque I have but spelt wrong for giggles)) but technically someone cannot be wrong when talking about a songs meaning.
Yes you can look and say well I wrote the song and that’s not what I meant but when someone else looks at the song (or film, or painting or anything) and says ‘this songs means’ what they should be saying is ‘this song means this to me’ as surely when we examine anything like this we take our own lives, what we have learnt, what’s happening to us then and what has happened, and use that to help us understand the piece.
We may see your art but we put it in our own frame.
I know some people will try to be objective and can look at artists history and bios etc to try and view it from their point of view but it is still hard to be totally objective, to view it abstractly (if that term fits, I think it does)……
afp answers:
you are 100% correct.
when i said some people on songmeanings.net are wrong, i suppose i mean that their interpretations didn’t match mine.
but i totally agree with this philosophy. i’ve always looked at it this way: once i write a song and record it and put it out there, it’s not mine anymore. it’s yours.
you may pervert it beyond all recognition from what i intended, but that’s your right (i can’t tell you how many people STILL think that coin-operated by is TOTALLY about a dildo. bastards. LONELINESS! LONELINESS!).
……………………………….
Betsy wrote:
Astronaut always makes me a little weepy. Is it just a sad story or did someone fly away?
afp answers:
someone flew away.
………………………………….
elise wrote:
I have to make a music video for a class of mine and I was thinking about doing a stop motion animation or flash animation to one of your WKAP songs (not sure which yet). Would that be ok?
afp answers:
of course you can. just make sure you send it when it’s done. i wanna see.
and just so you know, you never have to ask an artist for permission like this if it’s for school. but if you ever decide to sell it or otherwise take it into the real world, come back and ask so i can sic my lawyers on you.
……………………….
chris wrote:
So, I’m riding on the G train the other day after a ten hour work day wearing my goofy kitchen pants and stupid blue hat. I’m standing there in the cold and I say to myself…’That women looks familiar.’ Then this woman gives the awful guitar player behind me a dollar and I think again. As she turns around, I notice her eyebrows. Amanda, where you sitting across from me on the G on Friday? If so, I didn’t want to bother you, but Half Jack, Perfect Fit, and Good Day are some of the best songs I’ve ever heard. I wish I would have told you that.
afp answers:
that was totally me, dude. weird. i was on my way from yoga in williamsburg to my friends place in carrol gardens. and i give money to almost every street performer i ever see, even if they’re bad, as long as they’re playing real music. i hate the dudes who solo along to muzak back-up tracks. i want to kill them.
i used to be a street performer. i have to. they iz my brothers and sisters.
………………………………….
stephanie wrote:
You said in your blog that you’ll answer questions and such, but I wanted to know where the best place to ask you is.
afp answers:
i read all the comments on myspace and on amandapalmer.net. so you can ask me in the comments in either of those places. you can also non-public emails to letters [AT] amandapalmer [DOT] net. if i want to reprint them in the blog, i’ll ask permission first, or if they seem really topical and impersonal, i won’t ask.
………………………………….
The Dread Pirate Rose Wyldeheart wrote:
I have a small question regarding sheet music: the one/one of the songs I’d really like to be able to play is Thirty Whacks is there ever going to be sheet music available for it/Glass Slipper etc?
afp: that’s pretty unlikely because those songs are both on A is For Accident,
which never got its own book and probably never will. the chords to thirty whacks are REALLY easy. glass slipper is way harder. i would recommend heading over to theshadowbox.net and seeing if anyone has posted them, there’s a ton of tabs & stuff up there that people have figured out and shared.
……………………………………
i actually played the piano tonight.
it’s been ages.
lee sent me an ancient video still of myself playing the old upstairs piano in my bra when i first moved into the cloud club.
it’s so old, i have eyebrows. freaky.
my tits were so awesome back then.
i feel like they’re still awesome.
but they’re different. they’ve settled.
and…..
things have not changed in 8 fucking years.
i still refuse to play the piano fully clothed, even when it’s 23 degrees out. i crank the heat in here. i am a bad person, burning all this fucking fossil fuel.
it’s time to move to australia.
i started working on an old song tonight that got booted from the demo pile in nashville because it wasn’t quite finished.
it’s called “berlin”. the person, not the place.
and here, in closing:
AFP at work….still wearing a bra, sans eyebrows, with a much better piano.
i love that i can hold my computer above my head and take a picture.
i love the future.
i love you.
x
afp
p.s. if you’re in oz, and you haven’t voted in the triple j hottest 100 poll, go do it now. leeds united and the dolls are up for hotness. plus we’re giving away prizes to fans who vote. check it out/vote here (and make sure to select “overseas” if you’re voting outside of australia).
