rocky horror, church, and abortion. (and new plymouth ninja in-store gig w/ peter jefferies.)

unfortunately, there’s not an easy way to get the records wherein peter will actually see some money from ‘em, most everything out there for sale is second hand…whatever you do, just make sure to listen and spread the word.SO, he said he’d play with me at the record store.

he hasn’t played live in 9 years.

what the fuck is going on around here?

just kill me.

something astounding happened in auckland as well.

zanni.

zanni’s a beautiful free-style-style-rapper girl who’s accosted me at every signing and gig i’ve done in auckland to the point where i’d be sad if she DIDN’T show up and do a beautifully filthy dirty little rap for me at the end of the signing line. we saw her at the library ninja gig, where, by the by, i crowd surfed for the first time on top of a group of SEATED people. I discovered that while it WORKS, it doesn’t work QUITE AS WELL as doing it with a group of sweaty-crowded-standing people, as people aren’t able to shift and use their legs to support your weight. (LIBRARY NINJA GIGS ARE EDUCATIONAL…photo by sarahisinsane):

zanni found me at signing and delivered a very disturbing but very hilarious and well-executed one-minute song (think le tigre meets die antwoord) and i told her she should perform on stage with us, that i’d just slip her in-between songs during our set. then she pulled me and her friend aside; said she wanted to talk. she thanked me for my support of occupy. and she told me that in three days she was getting an abortion. i felt a deep connection with her and we talked a while, me about my experiences, her about hers.

and this would all be a brutal breach of trust if she hadn’t down something absolutely astounding: she took the stage that same night and by way of introducing her song, told the assembled crowd of 700 people what she was about to go through.

it didn’t smack of attention-getting or poor-me drama, it just felt like a bold statement, and she mentioned how the song “oasis” had helped her. then she delivered her song to the crowd. bam. i felt so many things in that moment. proud of her, because it takes extreme fucking guts to get up in front of a group of 700 people and say something so personal, but also proud of the band, and proud of the audience….because we’ve collectively created a space where something like that can happen. this really is a special fucking things we have, it’s a collective of people who really trust each other. i see it again and again at the shows….people take care of each other JUST BECAUSE they’re THERE, and they’re dolls/amanda palmer fans, and there’s a moral code of honesty and sharing and awesomeness.

also, it was thrilling and profound to have richard o’brien in the audience for that moment.

if you don’t know anything about “the rocky horror show” or the community, it’s hard to explain. but that film and the tangled, ongoing community are unlike anything else. and it was HUGE to me as a kid. i remember watching my older brother and sisters putting crazy make-up on in the bathroom to “go to rocky.” they were teenagers. i was 9, and too young to go. and as far as i was concerned, they were headed to xanadu, to paradise, to heaven, to whatever place there was where people get made-up and dressed-up all crazy-like and bring bags of toast and rice stuff to a movie in order to throw shit at the screen. i knew who i was, i knew what i wanted, and i knew it was THAT. i couldn’t fucking wait to join a world where shit like that happened. one of the most devasting moments of my life was convincing my parents to let me out alone at night on our family summer vacation to london when i was 15. i’d been fantasizing about going to the live, LONDON, rocky horror picture show for MONTHS. in fact, it was the only thing that excited me about going to london, because other than robert smith, it was the only thing i really cared about in the UK. i took the tube by myself, found my way to the theater….and the show was fucking sold out. i was, as they say, GUTTED.

rocky horror has been a universal umbrella under which generations of punk rock theater freaks have bonded in weird solidarity.

it’s the closest we get to a religious experience, a shared myth, the epic story we know by hear…it’s church.

more importantly: a haven where all is possible….where you don’t dream it, you be it.

when zanni got up and told her story at our show, with richard there to bear witness, making her statement and singing her crazy song, i felt it all coming together.

the church gets passed down, finds its own soundtrack, but the general rules and regulations stay the same: a space where the outsider is the insider, where the unusual is celebrated instead of judged and mocked, where we crush fear and worship at the altar of Get Your Freak On. all the shit of life, the pain, the sorrow, the loves lost, the health issues, the relationship problems, the jobs lost, the friends and families dying before our very eyes, we don’t come to this holy place to FORGET about it.

on the contrary, we come to celebrate, to yell at the top of our lungs about it, scream-share it, throw the burden on the ground and dance around it….finding solace there among our brethren.

all the pain and all the joy all together in one beautiful mishmash puddle of This Is Life and We’re All In It Fucking Together.

and this is why we do what we do.

do i sound like a hippie?

let me fix that

FUCK YOU.

this is it.

x
AFP.