fringe. london. out.

up late at night, after a one-day trip to london. back in edinburgh at the house of the edinburgh family that’s become my family.
tomorrow neil and i go offline for a week (no phone, no computers) because we love to fucking binge and purge and that’s how we live.
great.
but it is great. hiking around with the sheep is the only cure for too much internet.

the room i’m in is REAL room. it’s a room with a real table, with real mail on it and real wine and real flotsam on the carpet.neil’s asleep on the sofa, snoring, chris already went to bed, rosie and mary went to
bed long ago, and i’m trying to get all the emails answered so i can leave the computer for a week without freaking out that things haven’t been done (merch and band details for the tour of the states this november = one glass of red wine per 2-page email).
i have been feeling totally unhinged lately.

i think it has to do with the fact that:
– i’ve been off tour for too long and am feeling bizarre about that. i’m just not used to it.
– i’ve been dating neil for long enough that it’s starting to sink in.
– i have no ida how to get of this FUCKING FUCKED UP FUCKING RECORD FUCKING. LABEL and it’s driving me crazy because i can’t push my life and creative decisions forward.
– i’ve been eating too much bread and chocolate, drinking too much coffee and wine and doing almost no exercise for about 5 weeks.
– i’ve been living out of a suitcase for just about as long.
– i don’t know what i want to do next. i’m really not.
– i’m sorely in debt and need to figure out how to work myself out of it gracefully. the record and the tour fucking killed me. i’m broke.i’m broke in that i-have-enough-money-to-survive-by-playing-gigs way, but i owe huge sums to my merchandisers, my agents, my ex-managers…
i feel like a fucking middle-aged man with mortgages and debts, except i never had the house or the children. i had a the rock band and the tours.

but i love how my life floats together. how i can wind up in this magical house, with this magical family, accepted, loved, fed.

max left his ring here. i’m keeping it for him.

being with neil is so fucking weird.

i’m so in love with him and we talk endlessly and we understand each other so easily.
we love being together.
he’s rich. i’m not rich. i’ve been rich. a few years ago, i qualified as rich, by my own standards.
now i’m broke.
weirdly, we share expenses. it lopsides. he picks up the pricier shit, and his lifestyle means that the general flight-and-living tab often gets picked up by some crazy third party because he’s always working and the hotel rooms are almost always magically covered. everything becomes symbolic.

we talk about everything. nothing gets swept under the rug, we just deal. this is part of why i love him. everything is obvious, nothing is hard.

but but but

i spent the first few months of our relationship in fear that i’d be tempted to freak out, quit my life, turn into a fucking sloth hoe and just start living off room service.
i feared that even if this didn’t happen, people would make that assumption anyway.

it hasn’t. either way. that is a relief.

….

when we hit offline land, i’ll sit down with a giant pad of blank paper and just kill all the turning and smoking wheels in my head.
i’m so confused. i need to start plotting out what i’m going to do after around december. i have NO FUCKING CLUE.
i really don’t. i have idea, but no plan.

i have music all over me and in me but can’t even think about writing or recording until the label lets me go.
the things inside me, it’s music. it’s my music…it’s nothing commercial, nothing they’d fucking want anyway, but they’ve decided to be very fucking lazy and just keep me waiting while no decisions are made and everything is stalemated. i’m going insane with the lack of motion.

i feel like i’m just sitting, waiting, stewing a little bit. sometimes happily, sometimes guiltily. sometimes i look at my fucking life, and what i actually do during the course of a day and i just want to throttle myself.

i get ideas every ten minutes for things i want to write about and blog about and i never have the discipline to patience to sit down and expand. to make up for it, i’ve been making art on twitter and with photos. which takes a different kind of time time.

i’ll send some of the THINGs i’ve been compiling as THINGs while i’m gone. sean will post them for me. that way my blog will not be lonely-land.

ok meanwhile

1. britain is fucked up.
at customs, they interrogated me.
this was not fucked up, that happens all the time.
what was fucked up is that the customs official actually wrote that i was doing “BITS + BOBS” while i was in edinburgh.
a) who says that?
and
b) who fucking writes that on an official fucking government document?

i kept my customs form. i have proof:

2. neil, sam (the son of the best dentist in edinburgh, chris cunningham), and me.
all on ukulele the other night at the house. (sam on flying V)
i believe at this moment we were jamming to “heroin” by the velvet underground.

no joke.

3. zen zen zo.
this is the kind of parent company to the danger ensemble, who many of you saw on tour with me this year.
mark (the bald one who was with me) is touring with them now and this is a still from their current show, zeitgeist.
we went to see it 3 nights ago. i’d seen it, in a different form, in 2000. it still blew my mind.

if you’re at the fringe, GO.

they performed before me and after the indelicates at my picture house show.
they killed it, people freaked (in the good way).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisdonia/3848623774/

4. die roten punkte (german for “the red dots”)
they are a faux amazing theatrical german punk band.
they remind me of a cross betweem the white stripes, the dresden dolls, monty python and saturday night live.
here is me at a weird afterparty at the big red door, dancing with them to “ICH BIN NICHT EIN ROBERTER, I AM A LION”

i am, in this photo, being a LION:

4b. i did a singing at forbidden planet, a comic book shop in edinburgh.
it was great and weird and cool and fun…people brought cookies.

5. me at a secret show last week with my horn section, an actual busking band called the HORNDOGS.
they backed me up at my huge gig at the picture house as well. they slayed.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/erindubitably/3846128502/in/pool-dreamsofsteam

6. i was guest judge at an event called CIRCUS VS SIDESHOW.

you can guess.
that’s me at the judge table on the left next to otto of die roten punkte.
we voted for the sideshow lads because they were MORE ROCK AND ROLL

we had a “caption this photo” challenge on twitter for this one:

winner: @chelliemo
as the titanic sinks, Amanda Palmer gives one final interview to an aquatic circus performer.

(that aquatic circus performer is actually a kick ass singer, at the band is his own black sea gentlemen)

7. i played on a trash can outside my huge gig at the picture house.

someone took this:

8. this was possibly my best experience of the fringe.

i was walking outisde the cunningham’s house (where i stay, they are my family) and there was a bicycle repair shop.
outside the bicycle repair shop was parked a piano. on bicycle wheels.
near the piano on wheels was a man in a very dirty tuxedo. obviuosly we made fast friends and before you know it, oliver, was coming to busk outside me gig. we ended up, after my gig, making a parade with 15 people and some pasta and stolen forks from the venue, to the afterparty, where me, neil, (his daughter) holly, my sister, and a bunch of freaky people danced, drank and generally felt alive alive alive.

i love the fringe.

i do

next year, all month. i promise. i will bring the twins.

(oliver. it looks like he’s coming to the london shows. which are pretty much sold out. woooo)

photo by mwezzi

there is much more i have to say and i have done, like seeing tartuffe, a meta-postmodern play that was in a dirty loft and me & neil and rosie and mary sat on dirty couches and had our minds blown. and some of the actors freaked out that neil was there and so cast him intot he audience participation role of evil boyfriend to his great embarrassment.

and seeing fascinating aida, with dillie keane, who wrote “look mummy, no hands”, which i’ve been covering. amazing. smart, fucked, good cabaret.
and so much more, i feel like i’ve been in 16 places every day.
playing random shows, draggin the ukulele around.

i don’t even play it.
who am i kidding?

you.

london was seven dials, fastness, secrets and weirdness.
i’m going to be in film, as a statue, saying nothing, in love. neil’s directing.
we’re having fun, but i’m going too fast.

time to

stop.

xxxxxxx

afp

p.s. flipside, motherfuckers.