nyc. neil. nin. nap. naan?
hola comrades.
i’ve been lazy about blogging this week but it’s because twitter has sucked my self-archiving soul into it’s greedy vortex and i am now too lazy to think beyond 140 characters.really, must i? nobody ever reads these long fucking blogs anyway. i know this because the longer my blogs get the fewer comments actually appear because only the brave and devoted have slogged through to the end.i wonder about the perfect blog length. feedback is always welcome.
i am so goddam happy here in NYC, period. just being here.
everything always feels more real and alive than anywhere else.
it seems like fantastic shit just falls on your head off buildings, the sidewalks breathe, the colors are darker and brighter and everything smells like real city in the best way. the noise is new york noise, not boston noise.new york noise is the best kind of city noise, it’s the sound of AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH instead of AAAARGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH. that’s just my ears. i used to dream about that noise, i always miss it.
in brooklyn now…i spent last week living in a hotel in soho with neil. we got hooked up with an incredibly cheap rate thanks to rob, who has been hooking me up with bad-ass hotel rates forever in exchange for free tickets to whatever show i’m playing in town. PLEASE please PLEASE nobody tell him that concert tickets to an amanda palmer show don’t actually cost two grand. my ruse would be shattered and my hotel stays in new york will become expensive and then i’ll be sad and broke.
we met up with stephin merritt of the magnetic fields (if you don’t know them SHAME on you and go get 69 Love Songs right now) and went to see the coraline musical (based on neil’s book) which stephin penned the music and lyrics for. it was a beautiful, magical production dusted with drag, toy pianos and brecht, very very different from the film and the nytimes review.
this describes it well. if you can get tickets, go. the theater itself is a wonder and only seats 200, since stephin wanted all the instruments and actors to be un-amplified. we snuck emily brodsky a ticket since she’s such a huge MF fan and we had a good time at the afterparty competitively spilling wine on each other. i won. then emily got a black eye on the subway ride home because some dude tried to lift her skirt up. she won.
wednesday was our benefit show at housing works, which earned 10k for the cause and was the most wonderful comfy little night of inside a bookstore with rain outside and stories and piano.
we auctioned off a copy of the Who Killed Amanda Palmer book for $1300 – yes, physical copies DO now actually exist, omg. feeling one in my hands was intense: i’m not lying anymore. the book is REAL. neil and i traded off reading and playing and we interrogated each other from the ask neil/amanda boxes that circulated around at the beginning of the night.
neil read a beautiful story about a living statue that i had read but he’s never made public before. it’s one of the many weird coincidences that ties us together.
there’s a great article up at http://spin.com/articles/amanda-palmer-and-neil-gaiman-live-new-york-city and some lovely pictures……..
“pay no attention to the man behind the naked amanda pictures”:
note the picture up on the right….that’s yours truly AFP as the eight-foot bride back in the day.
(kathryn yu)
fuck he’s handsome.
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/39150759@N07/3598516881/)
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/39150759@N07/3599326344/in/photostream/)
in the stacks in the basement of housing works:
(kathryn yu)
it was also kind of an out-of-the-closet gig for us. we’ve been dating for a while, and while not actually keeping it a shut-up-shut-up secret, we’ve been not advertising it because….errrr, why do that? but it’s at the point where it’s just dumb so: yes. i’m dating neil gaiman. and moreover, he’s dating me. (very handy).
and more than that, i truly love him. i do.
the man makes me so, so, so, so happy. finding someone who understands me…really, really understands me…is a miracle. it’s never been this easy. we don’t need to change each other at all. it may sound absurd but he’s the only man i’ve ever met who’s willing to love me unedited, to take me as i am, completely, utterly. it’s been a bitch of a life, this one, running around and touring and working and trying trying to figure out this job and also trying to find real love that works. it’s near impossible. neil gets it. he gets what i do, he gets who i am, he gets how i work, inside and out, and as my friend anthony would say: he loves me despite knowing me. and i get him. i love every inch of his self. and so that’s that. i think i should keep him around, eh? he can also write, cook, sing, drive stickshift, beekeep and give great neckrubs.
but the man cannot play a tambourine in rhythm to save his LIFE.
can’t have it all.
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the highline ballroom gig was a love party, sold out, it was neil’s last night in town, we had a cakefight in beth’s honor…..(here she is with sxip shirey):
i held 3-minute confessionals in the men’s bathroom for about half an hour before the show (announced on twitter, of course)….
(photo by beth)
and emily brodsky came out and guested on “delilah” while the drummer from the lisps backed us up. then we brought the whole band onstage for “oasis” and this little number (sorry this is just a wee excerpt, but you get it):
brodsky. lisps, AFP:
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/_lovenothing/3605873306/)
ninja uke song (lua, by bright eyes) in the balcony. i love the face at the bottom.
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/_lovenothing/3605048413/)
i felt like i floated through the night, which came as a relief since i’m off tour and feeling rusty. sydney wayser (thank you thank you) loaned me her keyboard which lived up in the hotel room and i practiced my ass off but it never seems to be enough and i still fucked up all over the place. the setlist:
Lua (bright eyes cover, on ukulele)
Ampersand
Missed Me
Runs In The Family
Gravity
I Google You (word by mr. neil of course)
Trout Heart Replica
Thirty Whacks (beth’s birthday present)
Guitar Hero
Delilah (with emilyn brodsky and daoud from the lisps)
Oasis (with emilyn brodsky and all the lisps)
Yakety Yak (coasters cover, full band and brodsky)
–
Astronaut
One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong (with Jack Palmer)
my dad had come in just for the show and since we’ve been plotting a leonard cohen covers album forever so we took a stab at a new one. he was such a trooper, he took the train from DC, had lunch with me & neil, did the show, and left on a 3 am train. rock and roll, dad!!!
here’s us:
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/dust/3604448306/)
dad:
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/_lovenothing/3605056319/)
voila.
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/clicktrack-heart/3599949399/)
we all went to bubby’s after the show (our new favorite place where we’d been eating DAILY) for 2 a.m. omelets with the whole gang then i fell asleep like a dead person while poor neil had to get up at 5 a.m. after about an hour sleep and fly to chicago to pick up an award for being a fancypants.
got up, went to yoga (i recommend this place, it’s run by the same gal doing the wanderlust festival: http://www.kulayoga.com) and headed to SOMEWHERE VERY FUCKING FAR AWAY in new jersey with pope, bri and wizzle for the long-awaited NIN/JA (nine inch nails + jane’s addiction) summer extravaganza.
a lot of the NIN crew has turned over since the dolls toured with them but there were plenty of familiar faces and it was nice to see trent, who laughed at my fucking sneakers after i’d twittered that i hoped he wouldn’t. DUDE. heels at an outdoor stadium? really?
best twitpic of the night: i’m crushing @trent_reznor:
aside from the crushing, which i don’t think hurt him too much….he seemed so happy. he’s engaged. he put on a stellar show, as usual. the guy always delivers, he’s an incredible performer, always gives all always.
we got all giddy together about how lovely love is la la la and hung out a bit after the show and i got to gather some pearls of wisdom about the gospel according to @trent_reznor since he’s #themasterofhisownfate. I feel so lucky and humbled lately by all the help from those who’ve paved the way in these strange waters we’re negotiating as musicians. Shit’s changing and it’s changing fast.
ran into debbie harry, who’s also working on a new record and was there with some of the blondie. then watched perry farrell prance around shirtless and peacocky and sing all the hits of my high school psychedelic-soaked summers of glory and then it was time to go and i had to take a couple mental showers to wash all the happy and fancy off me at the end of the night. sometimes too many awesome things happen at once.
but then you have a day of walking around park slope with your favorite philosopher friend josh and it all becomes ephemeral.
inside of me is mixed up but strangely calm. i don’t really know what i’m doing next but i’m hoping to find out soon about the label crapola, which is keeping me at the edge of my seat. i’m also getting caught in the spinning wheels of possibilities and not wanting my brain to land on one thing. i think it is probably best if i stare at the wall for a while. i’ve done shitloads this past year. i can stop. i can stop anytime. i can stop anytime i want. really i can.
now, as promised in the subject, i am going to take a nap. a long nap, for about 6 hours. it will end in the morning when i wake up from it.
first i will go out on the balcony and take a picture of myself and finish the PS portion of the blog, which is the best part since it involves boat chases and cyndi lauper covers.
oh and here is some naan, because i also promised that.
naan-love,
AFP from josh and alina’s balcony, brooklyn, 4 minutes ago
p.s. two things:
here’s a clip that lee took of me & jason webley in my apartment the day we got the evelyn vinyl in the mail. we were very pleased. why lee was shooting in night vision when it was really sunny out i don’t know, but god bless him for capturing the happy moment and sharing it with this clip.
i am in rarely-seem classic AFP-eyebrow-free-dü-rag-sweatpants home attire. the clip is lovely – it’s a collage of jason and me listening to the vinyl and then working on our macs while listening to the joy division cover (this is what rock stars really look like. they sit next to each other and email) and then at some point later that day or night or the next day i must have somehow figured out that “when u were mine” by prince (made famous, of course by cyndi lauper on one of the BEST albums of all time, “she’s so unusual”) was playable on my teeny casio and so jason brought the lyrics up on his mac and we did an impromptu version. jason grabs a ukulele at one point but it TOTALLY doesn’t happen.
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i mentioned before that my stepfather john was working on a mystery novel and i am happy to announce that his first novel, Swedish Blood, is finally in print.
i’m so proud. he worked on it for years and years after getting the itch and i’ve seen the book go through all the many birthing pains. when i was in bordeaux about two years ago taking my freaky week off i read the first draft and it’s finally finally done. it’s a classic mystery-thriller with lots of references to the landscape of my childhood and surroundings so i couldn’t read it without my nostalgia filter, but the story is a twisty-turvy whodunnit crossing landscapes from cambridge to cape cod to urban and rural sweden and the plot races past deep dark family history and identity secrets, old primitive recordings unearthed and swedish neo-nazis. what’s not to love? and there’s a great boat chase towards the end. spoiler? sorry. you can order it HERE from amazon.
if you want to buy it in person there’s going to be a little launch party for it on Wednesday June 17th from 6–7:30 pm at Kate’s Mystery Books in Cambridge which is a rad little house if you’ve never been. there will be swedish snacks, liquid refreshments, and possibly some brief remarks by the author. i’ll definitely be there but don’t bring dolls stuff to get signed unless you buy john’s book to get signed because then i won’t look like a dick.
*Kate’s Mystery Books*
2211 Massachusetts Ave
Cambridge, MA 021400
617-491-2660
www.katesmysterybooks.com
