The Dresden Dolls Diary

The blog has moved!

2009-01-07T17:44:00.002-05:00

As of today - January 7th, 2009 - we will no longer be posting Amanda's new blogs here. Please be sure to head on over to amandapalmer.net though, as that's where it'll live from here on out. If you've got time to kill or are interested in where to watch videos, buy merch, see Amanda or Brian on tour, or anything else related to A&B, check out the links to the right...

NEW BLOG: very many lots of THINGS.

2009-01-03T23:09:00.001-05:00

The new blog - very many lots of THINGS. - is up NOW! Check it out on amandapalmer.net or here on MySpace!

NEW BLOG: your fucking heart.

2009-01-01T18:00:00.000-05:00

The new blog - your fucking heart. - is up now at amandapalmer.net and here on Amanda's MySpace...

NEW BLOG: new years round-up.

2008-12-31T12:59:00.001-05:00

The new blog - new years round-up. - is up now at amandapalmer.net and on Amanda's MySpace...

a surprise christmas gift from amanda & vermillion lies

2008-12-24T21:53:00.001-05:00

hello my lovelies.

i hope that wherever you are, near or far, happy or sad, that this little gift brings you a bit of cheer in the dark of night.

it's been a rough year for every single person i know.

when in doubt?
grab a camera, put on a dress, give yourself a black eye, and lip-sync.

(if you want to go straight to Vimeo to watch it in full HD, click HERE - if you insist on watching in slightly-less glory via YouTube, it's available HERE)

love, wine, family as you make it, cold compresses
(or whatever you can grab that's within reach)
with all my heart,
AFP

NEW BLOG: the man strikes again, youtube wars

2008-12-24T09:40:00.001-05:00

The new blog - the man strikes again, youtube wars - is available now on amandapalmer.net, or here, on MySpace...

NEW BLOG: shoveling out.

2008-12-22T02:09:00.000-05:00

The new blog - shoveling out - is available now on amandapalmer.net, or here, on MySpace...

NEW BLOG: home. howard stern. dickens breasts.

2008-12-19T03:44:00.000-05:00

The new blog - home. howard stern. dickens breasts. - is up now, here on amandapalmer.net or here on MySpace if that's more your thing...

NEW BLOG: new tour clips up! and random dept.

2008-12-13T22:07:00.000-05:00

A new blog - new tour clips up! and random dept. - is up NOW at amandapalmer.net as well as here on Amanda's MySpace!

NEW BLOG: dispatch from aspen & salt lake

2008-12-09T07:40:00.001-05:00

The new blog - dispatch from aspen & salt lake - is up now at amandapalmer.net or here on MySpace!

party on the internet from neil's - tonight!

2008-12-04T14:55:00.001-05:00

hola!!!

chicago was the best. show. ever.
we're all staying at neil gaiman's house tonight. and we're cooking dinner together.
and we decided this would be a perfect night to try another webcast.
7 pm central time.
steven will be fielding the questions live, email them into ask [AT] amandapalmer [DOT] net
love
AFP, the danger ensemble & everybody else here, including the dog and the blind cat

boston music awards: please vote

2008-12-03T18:21:00.000-05:00

meanwhile.....
i must harness the power of you internet types.

please do this one thing: vote online for the boston music awards, it's muy easy and there are just a few days left to get votes in. to spice things up, we're going to give prizes to one lucky voter (details HERE).
i give you link.
i'm very honored to be nominated in four categories.
voting is really easy, you just click and vote.

vote for:
Act of The Year - National
Album of The Year - National
Female Vocalist of The Year - National
Best Song of The Year - National (Astronaut)

http://contest.flyfi.com/bostonmusicawards08/

thanks guys.
maybe if i win all four they'll send me a cheesecake.

love
AFP

NEW BLOG: the rebellyon. the deal with roadrunner records.

2008-12-02T21:16:00.001-05:00

The new blog -- the rebellyon. the deal with roadrunner records. -- is up now at amandapalmer.net, and HERE on Amanda's MySpace...

NEW BLOG: ghettofabulous

2008-12-02T05:00:00.000-05:00

The new blog - ghettofabulous - is available HERE on amandapalmer.net or HERE on Amanda's MySpace...

NEW BLOG: introducing chip & the WKAP tour documentary on youtube.

2008-12-01T02:35:00.000-05:00

A new blog - introducing chip & the WKAP tour documentary on youtube. - is up on amandapalmer.net as well as on Amanda's MySpace...

NEW BLOG: do sheep dream of electrocuting themselves?

2008-11-29T21:42:00.000-05:00

A new blog - do sheep dream of electrocuting themselves? - has been posted. Check it out on amandapalmer.net or on Amanda's solo MySpace...

NEW BLOG: trainstopping

2008-11-28T10:53:00.000-05:00

A new blog - trainstopping - has been posted.
Check it out on amandapalmer.net or on Amanda's MySpace

NEW BLOG: happy thanksgiving, mr. stevens

2008-11-26T16:45:00.000-05:00

A new blog - happy thanksgiving, mr. stevens - is available for your viewing pleasure on amandapalmer.net (or alternately, on Amanda's MySpace)

NEW BLOG: home. the leeds video. more belly solidarity.

2008-11-24T04:28:00.000-05:00

The new blog - home. the leeds video. more belly solidarity. - is up now on the .net as well as on Amanda's MySpace...

NEW BLOG: überdyke shoot, tits for sale, belly love, bleach pen

2008-11-18T00:03:00.000-05:00

Check it out here on the .net or here on MySpace...

NEW BLOG: missive from nashville

2008-11-12T19:58:00.001-05:00

A new blog to kick off the North American tour -- missive from nashville -- was posted at amandapalmer.net or on Amanda's MySpace...

Check it out to see some of the new merch, read a re-cap of World/Inferno in Boston, and more, more, more!

NEW BLOG: ...and we're off.

2008-11-09T11:25:00.000-05:00

Check out the new blog -- ...and we're off. -- now at amandapalmer.net or cross-posted to Amanda's MySpace for those of you who prefer it that way...

NEW BLOG: the soundfix bathroom

2008-11-07T17:46:00.000-05:00

The new blog -- the soundfix bathroom -- can be found on amandapalmer.net and here on MySpace...

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

2008-11-05T01:09:00.000-05:00

we can
we can
we can
we can
we can

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
AFP

p.s.
now comes the hard part.

voting

2008-11-04T14:12:00.001-05:00

my household all left around 11 to walk down the street together to our local polling station....
i've never seen anything like it - the line was around the block. hundreds of people came out.

when i voted in 2004 the line was about 10 minutes.

we waited over two and a half hours to vote - and we were SO FUCKING HAPPY to wait.
volunteers were passing out donuts. there were lots of wheelchairs and crutches. lots of people had their teeny kids with them.

i live in a predominantly black and senior citizen neighborhood in boston. lots of folks, all different.
rich south end folks, poor working class folks, wicked old folks.

when we were towards the front of the line, this 25-year old black kid came out of the voting booth and yelled
"My FIRST FRICKIN VOTE, ladies and gentlemen! OBAMA!" and everyone burst into applause.

FUCK! yes!!!

snapshot from the line:

when i filled in that oval, tears came to my eyes.

mother FUCKER.....

i can't wait. i can't wait.
please, let this be the beginning of something new.

x
AFP

i <3 my electric blanket (european tour re-cap)

2008-11-02T23:06:00.000-05:00

The new blog -- "i <3 my electric blanket (european tour re-cap)" -- can be read here on the dot net, or here, on MySpace...

THE OASIS VIDEO IS UP

2008-10-29T17:22:00.000-04:00

hallochen!!!

a quick missive from backstage at our last show on the european tour (we're in tilburg, in the netherlands....)

the newest video, for "oasis", is now UP!

watch it!

never again will you be able to see me get drunk, date-raped AND get an abortion ALL IN ONE VIDEO!

look out for special appearances by beth (my assistant), emily (my manager), michael (my boyfriend), becca (best known for her role in the "girls just wanna have fun video" as my drunk comrade-in-arms) and many others....truly a family effort.

special thanks, of course, to my main man michael pope, who did a brilliant job directing this one (as usual) and to brianna olson, who produced with class. big thanks also to jakob lodwick, who loaned us his loft in brooklyn to shoot this shiznit, the crew,
and all the extras.

dedicated, with love, to sarah palin.

xxxx,
AFP.

the ugg/crocs saga continues.

2008-10-26T22:38:00.000-04:00

The new blog -- "the ugg/crocs saga continues." -- can be found at amandapalmer.net or HERE (on MySpace)...

obama, obama

2008-10-21T09:01:00.000-04:00

The new blog is available on amandapalmer.net and on MySpace...

acquainted with the night

2008-10-20T13:19:00.000-04:00

The new blog can be found HERE on amandapalmer.net or HERE on her MySpace...

Waking Up: a break-down

2008-10-16T22:02:00.000-04:00

A new blog -- "Waking Up: a break-down" -- has been posted. Check it out on amandapalmer.net or HERE on MySpace...

greetings from sunny dresden

2008-10-13T23:11:00.000-04:00

A new blog -- "greetings from sunny dresden" -- has been posted. Check it out on amandapalmer.net or HERE on MySpace...

please, please, please let me get what i want.

2008-10-07T02:02:00.000-04:00

The new blog is up now at amandapalmer.net as well as on MySpace (now that it's working again)...

the future of the dresden dolls

2008-10-05T15:02:00.000-04:00

thank you all for your many recommendations of "wicked".
read it. loved it. haven't seen the musical. any good?

i'm holed up in the wonderful brighton home of the author and musician rohan kriwaczek, making teas and toasts, stealing his internet and trying to catch up on life.

a bunch of you asked about the band thing.
here goes, as honestly as possible.

there was a foibley chain of events that went down about a week ago when brian posted a comment - to a youtube clip - saying that the band was "over":

the video is kind of lame - it's obviously a journalist's attempt to get some traffic by posting something sensational, especially the way it's cut together and subtitled,
but since you're all off searching for it anyway because of my last post, here it be:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMsBQWXQQ90&fmt=18

a bunch of people responded in a "WTF" manner, and brian and i both went over to the shadowbox and posted comments trying to explain what's going on.

the long and short of it....?
life in this band is not easy.
never has been; never will be.
there's never been an easy, crystal-clear channel of communication, it's always taken lots of work and translation, and heaps of understanding from both sides.
and it's one of the reasons that brian and i sort of drive each other nuts.

for better or worse, as you can tell from this blog, i am an over-communicator.
i like to talk feelings into the ground, chat until 5 am or later about something if it's a problem.
this is not brian's style. for those of you who have met brian in person, he's a totally sociable and insanely nice in person....just....an extremely warm-hearted guy.
but when conflicts arise, he and i have very different ways of dealing.
mine is (typical chick) to bang on the door and demand a conference and make-up session.
his is (typical dude) to unplug the phone until he's ready to talk. sometimes (as i learned last year, with bated fucking breath) this can take months.
this has made our relationship difficult at best, for years.

brian posted on the forum that we've decided to leave things "open-ended" and that's pretty much where we're at . . . we've been touring and making records for enough years and dealing with our own personal conflicts that we're BOTH happy to spend some time away from the band. very healthy. very normal.

on that note...i could tell you about the first time the dresden dolls broke up, back in 2001. before anyone on the internet cared.

tears were shed. discussions were discussed. things changed. we re-formed. nobody was around to notice.

i could tell you about the time when the dresden dolls almost broke up for the second time (in new york, 2003, after a show at tonic). or the third (boston, 2004, in the attic of my house). or the fourth (london, 2006, in the lobby of a hotel. i think it was 2006. somewhere around then. check the date of the avril lavigne karaoke. it was that week).

this band has gone through SO MUCH SHIT that we could fill a 22-volume novel called "the pain behind the punk cabaret" and make millions on the mini-series.
love, sex, betrayal, jealousy, violence, silence, all the juicy shit. honey, it would take a decade.

this is not the stuff i blog about. this is the stuff that stays between the four walls of the band. as it should.
we go through the pain we go through with each other, and always have, because WE LOVE WHAT WE DO.
the bullshit? mostly we've considered it WORTH IT. the same way that touring is worth it.
brian states in the interview that i hate touring...it's not really true.
i hate conflict.
touring, for a long time, bred conflict with brian.
and i hated that.
i'm very, very happy touring right now, even with a broken fucking foot in the coldest, ghetto-tastic venues in europe . . . because there's no conflict.
there is no doubt that the touring lifestyle is weird. but when we play shows, and hear people talking about how much they're moved by our music, it's worth any amount of impossible interpersonal bullshit, conflict and discomfort. it's WHY we did it, it's WHY i do it, it's why we didn't break up in 2001, 2003, 2004, 2006 and why we are not breaking up in 2008.

so i repeat: the dresden dolls aren't broken up.
we're just taking a BADLY needed hiatus.
this is, to date, what the band has decided, and the wording we've agreed upon.

on the contrary, we are expanding the empire. it really pisses me off to see people feeling the needs to take sides as they comment pissily on boards and on youtube ("amanda's better off without brian!" "brian's better off without amanda!" "why is brian in this other band?" etc. etc.). what's good for the goose is good for the gander, ladies and gents, and if my solo record brings more attention to the dresden dolls (and hopefully it will) than fabulous. if brian's work with world/inferno does the same, awesome. we love our band. we want it to grow. everything feeds everything. and it all comes back.

while we work on other projects, get perspective and travel the world doing god knows what (i'm overdue for a ten-year retreat at an ashram in india, i also want to learn to surf, and write a book, and learn to play piano) we will continue to live in the ears, souls and minds of all who discover us anew, with your help. and more than likely, we will return to kick ass on the vast stages, speakers and other exciting platforms of the future. i am still praying for a mass teleporter, so we can do shows on the moon.

like i said in that interview: i love making music with brian viglione way too much to imagine that we won't do more.

in our own way, brian and i really, really love each other. our relationship has, i think, been one of my life's greatest teachers.
we've committed a huge part of our young lives to each other.
we speak music together perfectly. it's the rest that's hard.
but any relationship is like that.
right now we're pretty firmly entrenched in our projects (me in my solo record & tour, and brian in his new kick-ass band, world/inferno, who you should go see, because they're awesome and old friends of ours).
and if nothing else happens, i'll be super fucking bummed.
and if one of us dies, that'll suck too.
and if the world collapses, then ... nobody will be around to give a shit about one little punk cabaret band.
but, for now, let's be optimistic.

with as much strength as i can muster, i say to you:
long live the punk cabaret.

can i get an amen.

love

AFP

to my american comrades....PLEASE REGISTER!!!!

2008-10-04T19:46:00.000-04:00

A REMINDER TO MY AMERICAN COMRADES!!!!!!:

often i'm out on the road at registration time, but this time, i'm in europe. so i can only heckle you via email.

many people don't realize that in most states if you're not registered to vote by Monday, you can't vote in the presidential election in november.
PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU'RE REGISTERED!!!!

then start asking everyone you know if they are registered to vote! before you say hello, ask, "hey, are you registered to vote here in (name of town)? 'cause the deadline is monday, and you have to be registered where you live." (Click here to find out what the deadline is in your state and click here to find out what the procedures are to sign up and vote. If you are a college student and want to find out where your vote counts most, click here.)

for the next couple of days, each of us has to do whatever we can to get people registered. especially people who have recently moved, or students who are at college (students can vote where they go to school). obama's two strongest bases -- young people and african americans -- are traditionally the two groups who have the lowest voter registration and the lowest voter turnout. for obama to win, this must change -- and it has to change today or tomorrow, not next week.

the more enlightened states allow you to register the day you vote.

but in most places the deadline to register is this Monday, October 6th at 5pm.

DO IT TO IT!!!!

(lifted in part from michel moore's mass mailing!)

LOVE

AFP

squished foot, mac orzo, soldiering on.

2008-10-03T17:30:00.001-04:00

A new blog -- "squished foot, mac orzo, soldiering on." -- has been posted at amandapalmer.net as well as on Amanda's MySpace!

THE WHO KILLED AMANDA PALMER STAGE SHOW: AN INTRODUCTION

2008-10-01T00:51:00.000-04:00

The new blog can be found on amandapalmer.net and HERE on MySpace...

margaret cho is my hero, brooklyn TONIGHT, news from the front...

2008-09-19T13:18:00.000-04:00

You can check out the new blog HERE, or HERE (for you MySpacers)...

i smell like paint marker

2008-09-14T04:47:00.001-04:00

going at breakneck speed.
i'm at home.
i signed a shit ton of CDs tonight.
geeta took pictures...
this is only about half of them.

2000 got driven to my house by some fantastically kind people after the more traditional mail delivery service failed us.
fuck the postal service! fuck UPS! long live random friends of friends driving from New York to Boston with 2000 CDs in their car.

the pre-order has been SLAMMIN. we're all sort of in shock. the response to the pre-order was so overwhelming that it shut down the
server of the host company. they were impressed.

according to them, we outdid ACDC.

yes.
yes.
yes.
take that, ACDC.

if you haven't pre-ordered, there's not much time left and the prices are going to go up come tuesday when the record's actually out.
do it: whokilledamandapalmer.com

on that note: the REAL website (whokilledamandapalmer.com is going to house all the album artwork and credits and suchlike) will be up later in the week.
i was hoping to have it done sooner but life is a fuckshow.

i had a minor nervous breakdown last night after going to see a chorus line with my mother.
it wasn't the musical that did it. i was just ready to pop.
this whole last week has just been packed with weirdness.
i went to new york to do a bunch of stuff and felt disoriented the whole time. good things did happen, random things.....
i got to hang out with regina in new york, which was really nice because we haven't connected much lately (read her latest blog....she talks about how i bitched at her for never posting any personal blogs, yay! i've infected her).

karma happens....a few days after i posted about tegan and sara on my site (i plugged their record, the con, it's OUTSTANDING), i wound up - totally coincidentally - being in a photoshoot for out magazine with them. i'd met sara before, but only in passing.
they're both amazing people. tegan took some photos of me for the neil gaiman book and the hair and make-up people tried to make us look like a bunch of 1950s degenerates....

note the switchblade comb i am threateningly holding.

my inner theater dork came in her pants when THIS dude walked into the photoshoot -

yes, virginia, you're correct. it's edward albee....incredible, groundbreaking playwright (author, most notably, of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Zoo Story). i very rarely get shaky and fan out. but i got shaky and fanned out. i gave him a copy of the record. maybe he'll listen to it. he was so kind in person.

in other recent news:
the impromptu soccer game in london was a smashing success.
about 60 people showed up all told. most people watched and drank beer. we who played didn't bother with actual positions....we just ran around trying to kill each other.
goalposts were made of shirts.

we started the day by splitting into teams:

my team:

the OTHER team:

team love:

the AFP was max's idea. they were out of Ms.

the local drunks LOVED us:

among those who were too cool to play....max, robyn, steven, olga, becca:

we were ultimately challenged by a group of ACTUAL soccer-playing londoners to a match.
these dudes were from trinidad and jamaica and it was about 12 of them against 45 of us. it was a fair game.
we won....4 to 2.

these two from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/crazysockpuppet/2805699430/in/set-72157606993985687/

this dog was awesome.....

then we all loved each other:

these three: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zquack/sets/72157606982202386

bonus pic:

from: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1188376&id=731712810&l=aba04

and a little youtube clip someone posted....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APvmEUYrwX4&fmt=18

i'm going to post up some teaser photos from the past few weeks of video shooting soon....
two totally different experiences (leeds united in london, oasis in NYC).

3 days til the records out, comrades.
this week i'll be doing in-stores in boston, portland (maine) and new york.

and i MIGHT be doing my dawn record giveaway. stay tuned, i'm trying to hook up a superfancy texting system to let people know the night before where i'll be hiding.

breathe

a

ps random dept:
voltaire has posted a parody of coin-operated boy called coin-operated goi up on his myspace.
it's hilarious: http://www.myspace.com/voltairenyc

bringing charges against ben folds

2008-08-27T01:28:00.000-04:00

so, ben folds sent me an email in which he suggested i sue him for ripping off the dresden dolls.
please weigh in.

a version of his album recently leaked on the internet, including the track "brainwascht"
which, according to mr. folds, was lifted rawther directly from "backstabber".

you'll have to go listen for yourself: http://www.box.net/shared/q1fl8nftbk

(for those of you who want to hear the whole "leak", grab it here or here while supplies last* - please share amongst yourselves if these links dry up, though)

all in favor for suing ben folds, raise your hands!
think of the fucking PR! perfect timing! seriously.
and i'm in the UK. they live for that shit. i'll be in the tabloids at last.

after that, i'm bringing charges against pete doherty for fucking my wife.

and after that, paternity charges against beth ditto. yeah.

it's gonna be an excellent year!!!!!!!!!!!!!

in other news, ben folds also just released an amazing fucking video for the song you've all been asking about
("cologne"....the very one i've been opening the show with).
he had invited me to be part of the "piano orchestra" a few months ago but i couldn't make it....and i'm wicked kicking myself.
god dammit, i wish i'd been there. best. video. ever. the whole thing is filmed at ben's in nashville...
the same studio where i made the record....and slept, and wrote, and mixed, and did Noga every day.
in fact, if you look at the top of the stairs (where the naked guy with the tamborine is standing - yum) that's where my bed was :)

love from londontown
afp

p.s. PRAWNs
p.p.s. for those of you asking EXACTLY where we're going to be playing footsie tomorrow...sorry, "footie"....we'll be in the main triangle green of sheperd's bush.
take tube to central holland park and walk or take hammersmith to sheperd's bush. i assure you....you won't be able to miss us. we'll be the ones playing soccer, looking like idiots. BRING CAMERAS, by the way. if enough of us take video, we can pool it and make a movie about "being free".

google maps that shit

(* the real-deal ben folds album is due out september 30th and you can order it in all sorts of varieties, apparently...)

soccer...sorry, "football", anyone?

2008-08-25T11:45:00.000-04:00

i am staying in london instead of going to the fringe....i just couldn't handle anymore planes or trains.
the london gig was off the hook. life is working.
i am holed up in a hotel for a week, trying to catch up on emails and life.

1. i am listening to new music this week and starving for content.
please post here any incredible albums that you think i might not know. i'm getting in shape for the "leeds" video and downloading single albums to listen to back-to-front while i work out.
hit me. any era, any genre.

2. i am kind of bored. yesterday, i bought a soccer ball, and some charity-shop sneakers, to cheer myself up.

3. i noticed on my walk home that there is a big field (albeit its sort of gross and ridden with drunks and junkies) near my hotel.
so......

pick-up soccer/football game, anyone? let's fucking do it.
3 pm, shepards bush, this wednesday the 27th.
i am not kidding. we need at least 8 people to have a decent game. if we have too many people, we'll figure it out, we can rotate being athletes and hooligans, drinking beers on the sidelines and getting into brawls.
we'll play til about 5 or 6 and then HAVE TEA somewhere.
shepards bush is a total hole, but we'll find a place i'm sure.
please do wear appropriate footwear.

in other news....

the stencil mission is going well....people are posting up teasers on the shadowbox.
if you still want to enter, the deadline is far off and details about the mission are HERE.
here are some inspirations.....

by BHA/Sarah

by SANGRYART

by SANGRYART

(click any of the above images to be taken to the thread with full size images and lots more of inspirational stencil-y stuff)

here is another great one from my talk at mass art:

by dena bach

in related stencil-y-ness:

my friend olga sent me this incredible link....
a couple created an interactive choose-your-own-adventure stencil-romance project in the streets of San Fran:
www.sfweekly.com/2007-08-01/culture/a-novel-idea/
i fucking love the world.

more soon. i am cleaning out my head.

love & rocket (comes with all meals here, on the side. kind of like lettuce, only not.),

AFP.

p.s. the keyboard player for oasis walked by me at breakfast this morning. SIGN FROM JESUS??? i think so.

alone & grateful & losing

2008-08-20T20:11:00.000-04:00

things have been going extraordinarily well but too fast.
and i am dizzy.

i did a mini-tour of the states (new york, chicago, toronto, LA and san fran) and then without going home I came over to europe and did four festival shows with brian,
now three more solo shows in germany and london. then i'm going to haul myself up to edinburgh just to be there. then i am coming back to london for the video shoot
for "leeds united". fancy fancy fast fast fast.

my life is shifting. touring solo is unfamiliar, but it's so so so good. i'm getting used to it.
playing solo and then playing with brian and going straight back to solo was certainly weird and educational.

the thing that i didn't anticipate or think too much about is how different my gauge is when i'm playing alone.
i had gotten so used to always factoring brian into everything it that breaking myself of the pattern is weird.
it's all me now, there's no drummer factor, at all. this has it's pros and cons. it's a little lonely but it's also not.
sometimes being onstage with brian, when we weren't connected, made it feel impossible to connect to the crowd.

when alone, the shows can become completely impulsive and random, and they have been.
but i feel a little like pavlov's dog waiting for the shock to kick in.
i'm sure it's similar to the feeling you have when you get divorced or break up with a long-term lover.
you're excited by the liberation but you also miss the routine, however complicated.

i've been feeling more grateful than usual.

grateful to ben folds, for making this fucking amazing record for reasons i am still trying to comprehend.
grateful to neil gaiman, for appearing magically and writing for me and being my friend.
grateful to emily white, my manager, for being back in my life and being so passionate about music and her work.

this is starting to sound like the acknowledgments of a book.
but i'm feeling it, fuck it.

grateful to beth hommel, my incredible assistant, for coming into my life right when i needed help badly and making EVERYTHING go.
where i would be without her right now, i'm not sure, but i'm pretty sure i'd be on Planet Fucked.
grateful to brian, for being in a band with me and teaching me more than he'll ever know.
grateful to psycho dave, for touring with me and getting me a band-aid last night.

grateful to the universe in general for setting shit up. i can't believe it worked.

however.....

i have been losing and breaking things.
i don't like travel for this reason.
i feel like i've gotten RELATIVELY more responsible as the years pass.
i don't lose things as easily as i used to. i used to lose keys and wallets with astounding frequency.

but when you are, for several weeks in a row, on a daily treadmill of taxis, hotel rooms, planes, trains, cluttered dressing rooms with no tables,
restaurants and friend's houses, with people milling around you and loud music playing, things get lost. they get broken.
i try to let things go.
i try not to get upset.
i try to see wasted money and lost irreplaceable clothing as ephemeral, and then i wonder if that only makes me more prone to losing things.

in LA, i lost my iPod. i bought a new one. but the record's leaked ANYWAY.

in hamburg last night, i lost my favorite jacket. but it's relatively warm today.

somewhere in california i lost my cap. i really liked it. but my head must not be covered for survival.

in Utrecht i cut my hand open on my ukulele case. but the cut wasn't too bad and i have a nice pretty bandage and my sister had some neosporin.

in chicago, i lent emilyn "cupcake punk" brodsky my socks. she offered to give them back at the end of the night, actually, but things had just gone too far. it wasn't worth

also in chicago, someone stepped on my mac. the screen became modern art. that someone was kate lane.

BUT.....they know me at the mac store, so a few days later the guys in new york HOOKED ME UP with a new screen. for free. life is wonderful that way. (thanks mac store!)
and kate lane felt really bad and so in exchange, she gave me her pony sweater that i had been coveting. and so i got my mac fixed AND i got the pony sweater. i was almost glad it happened.
am i terrible?

dear amanda,
you stupid cunt.
why don't you keep your iPod in one fucking place and keep track of it when you lend it to people?
and why didn't you put your jacket away in your suitcase? you loved your jacket. now it's gone forever.
and why did you leave your fucking computer on the floor where someone could step on it?
you are an irresponsible child and i hate you.
will you ever mature and take care of your shit?
way to go, fuckface.
love,
amanda

dear amanda,
i know, i know, i know.
please forgive me.
tour is a bitch. life becomes random.
i am trying.
please love me,
amanda

i am somewhat terrified because i am about to embark on a fucking 3 month tour with TWELVE PEOPLE (zoe, jason, lyndon, my crew and the whole danger ensemble)
in venues the same size as the ones we've been playing. there's been almost no privacy and space and we're currently a touring party of TWO (me & psycho dave). .
it's going to be an interesting life. we might kill each other.
I wonder what i can do to never lose anything.

maybe i should just not HAVE anything.
but i sort of NEED things.
clothes keep me warm, my iPod carries my music, my computer keeps my life in place.
i am in a bind here. fuck.

.

random photos from tour....:

backstage feeling torn between solitude and ponies.

me & dad in LA, singing leonard cohen. it was awesome.
sadly i don't think anyone filmed it.

at the troubadour in the balcony:

(photo from http://flickr.com/photos/28155512@N05/)

San Fran:

with vermillion lies (who are AMAZING!!!! check them out: myspace.com/vermillionlies):

(photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/21341545@N00/2752799978/)

Chicago.....

the PONY SWEATER!!!!! (thanks kate):

(both by http://www.hatebasket.org/AP/)

(Photo by Denis Farr)

New York....(new york was sooooooooooooo goooooooooooooooooood)

(sign photos by http://flickr.com/photos/dollsneerpiece)

i did an introduction to the set by imitating bob dylan and lip-syncing ben folds....

awesome photo collage by bob lopez/almus.

there's a good live clip of it (from chicago) HERE

time to look at the cows.

love.
xxxxxxxx
a

me, neil & the children

2008-08-01T14:02:00.000-04:00

shot amazing photos all day.
exhausted, not ready for tour, fine.
in. love. with. life. and all it has to bring, good and bad.

in other news....
scaring children, again, amanda?
got to stop that.

neil gaiman posted this to his blog yesterday and got the following comment.
we tried to make up for it today and take some nice WHOLESOME photos on the set.

it's been an excellent week.

(well, it IS a bit of a crotch shot.....)

Hi Neil, is that lady wearing a slip? It looks nasty. What does Maddy (neil's 13 year old daughter, -ed.) think about that picture? My mom says it's in bad taste. LOL Patti

I think Maddy's been around film sets and photo sets enough to know that film and photo sets are fictional. That was Amanda's costume for the photo shoot on the roof that preceded the photos you saw. (Below you can see three out of six of today's costumes in pictures that, I hope, will be more reassuring and family friendly. Except possibly for the first, now I come to think of it.) Kyle is shooting a book of photographs called "Who Killed Amanda Palmer". Amanda is in all the pictures -- which are a lot like scenes from movies -- and I'm writing very short stories to accompany them. I'm trying to do the majority of them while I'm here, as my plate is scarily full right now, and it seemed easier and faster just to come out while many of the photos were being taken and see what was going on and write.

The photos yesterday, and the ones below, were all taken by Kyle between actual shots, because the man does not put down his camera.

cross-posted from kyle's blog (http://kylecassidy.livejournal.com/)

me & neil downstairs

neil, me & kyle...

note the re-appearance of the famous "fuck me when you're ready to text" shirt.
it will be available soon from post-war trade. yay.

love
love love.
love.
love.
love
love.
x
a

neil gaiman in the hizzle

2008-07-31T11:30:00.000-04:00

mr. neil gaiman yesterday to came to stay for a short week's visit to work on the album/mystery/photo book with me (i felt like having him as a houseguest might result in some wonderful time-space continuum warp in the guest quarters....or i'll go down there and all of a sudden the room will be filled with multiple neil gaimans sitting at his writing desk, surrounded by strange flying animals, exotic fruits and old wooden keys that sing, in swahili).
kyle cassidy the wond'rous photographer has come up for some shooting, literal and figurative, as well. this is shaping up to be an excellent project.

i've been embroiled in a shitstorm of business-y manager-y and label-y activity, the phone is lighting up every 6 minutes and the emails are pouring in, decisions to be made, and things things things to be done done done.
i need to do a lot of things that i'm not doing.

but it's always this way.

i'm getting better at just doing what i want....

i'm taking walks in the public garden with neil, eating watermelon slush and talking about things that have nothing to do with real life.
this, i think, is better. it has to be. because it is. i get this now.

and i haven't been a COMPLETE hack: today i practiced some songs for the upcoming tour while neil sat in the room and quietly scribbled in a book while listening to me play.
i would finish a song or two and he would read me what he'd come up with. this is sort of heaven, to let someone hear me practice, which i find very hard to do, unless there's a reason, and there's almost never a reason, but today there was a reason. and that felt wonderful.

there's very few people with whom i have to spend almost no time to feel complete trust, and the dude won me over fairly instantly. he's one of the kindest people i've ever worked with.

i feel very, very, very lucky, a little too lucky....of all the things this fancy man could be doing with his time and energy, he's chosen to hang around my house and work on a totally obscure little art project.
we were chatting today about our years plans and neil's are: "well, after shooting this film of my novel for miramax i'll be on book tour of the UK and then in china researching a new novel, and then writing the new batman comic series, and then...." and i'm wondering: WHAT the FUCK are you doing here in this po-dunk new england city with this hack songwriter for chrissakes?
but i can answer my own question.
we're having a wonderful time.
there you go.

i'm also very happy he can see the house this way, in the bowels of the summer, all covered in thick green with all the windows knocked out and everybody puttering around being beer-y and laugh-y and art-y.
the winter here is desolate.

i think this book we are making together is going to be amazing.

-

in other news:

the new video is up and it's....awesome. "runs in the family". it was so late at night we filmed this shit that i was going for broke, because I knew we would only do a few takes and probably only use the footage for filler, or at least only one segment of a larger theme. but no: we ended up just using the amanda-freaks-out-in-the-attic-in-the-middle-of-the-night footage and goshdarnit i think it works pretty well. the songs sounds incredible. that's all ben folds you're hearing, this song was his baby. he played all the percussion and synth parts and arranged all the strings. genius.

-

from comments:

at first, i thought this blog was a bit odd. but in the end i'm glad you posted it. i found it very educational. most of the time when this stuff happens to people they keep it to themselves. so thank you amanda. off topic, i got tickets to see you in L.A on Aug 4th. yay! i'm looking forward to the show.

-Posted by Emily on Jul 23, 2008 8:26 PM

-

if I don't ramble about vaginas, who will?

-

decidedly bookish said...

Ah, so that's why God made those absorbant little sea critters... I'm surprised he didn't make little tampon fish as well.

On the vagina subject, what were you encouraged to refer to your vagina as when you were a small child? My nan used to call it a "dilly," and I made up my own name: "widgy." Unfortunately this was also my nickname in the family. We've yet to come up with a good, all-purpose word. "Vagina" can sound a bit clinical. "Cunt" is hardly something you can say to the nurse. I hate "pussy," plus there's the whole cat bad-joke potential there. "Front bottom" is just wrong on so many levels, as is "flaps." "Minge" is hilarious. There are vague references, like your "bits" or "down there," but they just basically serve to avoid what doesn't need avoiding. "Vagina" is the favourite, I think, but I maintain that we need a new word which isn't also the scientific name. Any ideas?

xxx
5:03 PM

-

my mum always referred to it as a "tushy"

-

sarah said...

Hey, Amanda. I don't know if you appreciate somewhat unrelated comments or critique. I trying hard not to be inappropriate contextually.

Since you posted a few new music videos for some of your newer material... I thought of this. It's been on my chest for a while...

I was at the Filmore in San Francisco. I heard Boston played with an accompanying violinist.

I was emotionally affected by your performance, first of all. The heart-rendering agony, hope and bitterness of a tenuous, long term relationship-- you breathed life into this.

Secondly, the violinist pushed this song over the edge for me and was absolutely essential. I have searched for a happenstance recording of this, Youtube, etc, but I may just have to let this go as part of the vital power and magic of the night.

Would you be interested in re-recording Boston with an accompaniment? I respect your creative decisions enormously and just wanted to propose this idea, (perhaps a bit contrived), but nevertheless, the question stands.
7:45 PM

-

that amazing violinist was named meredith yayanos.
she's increidble: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meredith_Yayanos. we should indeed find a way to get that recording online. let me poke someone.

-

pumpkinking0192

I have a question about the eyebrows, in case you don't mind my asking. Or rather, a few questions. If anybody could answer, please.

1. Do eyebrows grow back? (Might sound like a stupid question, but I've heard conflicting info about this from various people, none of which have probably ever gotten rid of their eyebrows. I know unibrow hairs grow back for sure, but I've never heard first hand info from someone who's shaved/plucked/whatever their actual eyebrows.)

i believe that the "eyebrows won't grow back" thing is a myth if you SHAVE. if you pluck, you're damaging the follicles and that would make sense.
but then again, bodies are weird. don't blame me if you do it and wind up with a bald face for life.

2. If they don't, what do you do when you don't feel like doing your Art-Drill that day? Do you just walk around eyebrow-less?

i often walk around eyebrowless if i'm not going out. i will often walk eyebrowless to the store to get coffee and toilet paper. i walk around eyebrowless when i'm in my tour bus at night.
the shit stays on GOOD, unless i sweat.

3. If they do, how long does it usually take to grow them back?

these questions are out of order. i shave them about every 3 or 4 days. the shaving takes under 5 seconds. the drawing takes under 10 seconds. it's very lom-maintenece.

4. Should they be shaven or plucked or something else I haven't thought of?

i wouldn't pluck unless you want that bald face.

5. What eyebrow-drawing-in art tool would you recommend? (Specific brands, if possible... please? I'm not really good at looking at a giant wall of products and guessing which one is best. Unfortunately.)

i SWEAR by the one i use, and i've tested them all, honey.
maybelline. black. waterproof. liquid eyeliner. accept no substitutes. perfect pen. won't smear. stays on all day. every drugstore in america got that shit.

6. Is there any other advice that should be given to a (hopefully)-soon-to-be budding member of the Eyebrow-Arting-Out community?
I think i've always had a very naive dream to stay absolutely silent for a day, to completely observe people around me and to just keep my mouth shut. I've tried it and managed to stay quiet for maybe... 20 minutes.

i don't see what eyebrows and silence have to do with each other, but i'm sure i could if i tried.
i would recommend trying something new. i've always thought that eyebrows are a bizarre thing. you don't pay much attention to them, usually, but they shape your expression, which shapes how people respond to you.
maybe try gluing objects. lots of 60s models did that, with feathers and whatnot. looks interesting. start a cult. why not?

I'm glad you are doing well. Good luck with your silence, have you invested in a dry erase board for communication?

ah, my silence being long over, i can only thank you for the support in retrospect. but it rocked. i recommend it.

-

Do you have a mailing list where you send out your blogs? When I'm sailing about the seven seas, I am incredibly bored. And you write alot. And I enjoy every word. And I can't access Myspace while I'm out there. Or hey, if you'd like to hear about the o-so-exciting life of a sailor, I answer pretty much any email I'm lucky enough to get.... Please, repond quickly for I ship out again soon.

As we say in the Navy, fair winds and following seas.
-Zachary

i'm working on getting a more newslettery or emailable thing going for my blog. stay tuned.

-

that's it lovelies

be art to each other

love

a

avril's new clothing line.

2008-07-24T20:55:00.000-04:00

i am wicked disappointed.

this shirt, shown above, states:

"ROCK N ROLL
(ROCK N ROLL)"

i am confused. this shirt seems like it was designed for non-english
speaking tourists buying shirts off the street of midtown new york.

c'mon, avril.
what up with this shitake?

post war trade forever.

http://idolator.com/398263/avril-lavignes-clothing-line-just-as-awkwardly-punk-rock-as-its-designer

x
a

vaginablog.

2008-07-22T14:15:00.000-04:00

it's been an interesting summer stretch of life, lately.
little, yellow, different, better.

it's been a dirty sort of summer, busy.

yesterday was a post-party-at-the-house-day and i took a full day off.

it RAINED like in the bible and got black at 3 o'clock in the daytime.
i leaned out the window for a while. my favorite weather, all hot and
dark and windy and stormy.

i feel more alive than usual. i fear getting back on the road will
kill that. we're getting ready.

saturday night:
the parties here used to be epic - hundreds of guests
every floor of the house brimming with weirdness and color and light
and noise
the garden all lit up and tramply.
i used to run the show like a madwoman, then i stopped.
this time mali was running the show and blasting around dealing with
the guests, the drinks, the PA, the performers, the list at the door,
the performing herself, slamming that piano and being a rock star
within her own outdoor homegrown nightclub
- i miss and don't miss that feeling, i feel it on tour all the time
and never want to feel it at home anymore.

the guests are all old acquaintances but i never want to chat, because
chatting is exhausting, only talking is good, and it's hard to talk at
a party. i spent most of the party in my apartment and down the street
getting food. i have become party-phobic, unless i'm a stranger.

(i did bust out the ukulele, but i gave it to michael to play. the
neighborhood kids were all peeking at our party from across the
street, about a dozen of them.
they are probably scared shitless of our house. they're all black and
hispanic and we're all hippie honkies. one mom was with them and i
invited them, all of them, to come into the garden. they all freaked
out, as if i were inviting them into the land of OZ, and told me that
they call our house and garden "the jungle". i am glad we're part of
people's childhoods. we played rihanna's "umbrella", for ukulele and
voice, and they all clapped and sang along. steven grabbed the garden
hose and sprayed everyone at the end. we jammed. i took the uke,
michael took the drums that had been set up from the last band, the
kids screamed and ran around = heaven.)

the night i met brian, it was halloween, a rager. we were talking,
four of us, on the stairs outside my apartment. brian was quiet, there
was me, i was loud, there was a bass player named plamen and there was
scott roi, the guitarist. plamen and scott were both drunk (especially
scott) and i must have been, too, and deluded, because i thought i had
finally found the members of what would be my band. they had all just
seen me play and were excited to all get together and jam. brian hung
back and observed. he left his number. so did plamen. so did scott. i
called them all. i kept that piece of brown bag paper, with all their
numbers, for a long time.

scott roi and i got together a few days later at pan9 and ended up
just drinking, i think.

i visited plamen in his apartment the next week. he had taken my demo
recording of half jack and turned it into a dance remix with no vocals.
i never called him back.

brian and i got together a week later and became a band.

scott roi, i just found out, died three days ago. after pan9 burned
down in boston, he moved to the west coast. apparently he'd been out
of rehab for a week, had been stone cold sober and gone swimming, took
a dive from a trellis and broke his neck. pope says: "maybe god goes:
well done on the rehab stint. your work here is done. now when you
come around the next time you won't have to deal with all this extra
shit."

every time i lie still for a photograph somewhere filthy and wet, and
i've been doing a lot of that lately, i wonder if i'll get a disease.

mike penta used to say, taking his hyper-active very-gesticulative
stance: "amanda palmer? amanda palmer. ok. wait, ok. amanda palmer is.
a. DIRTY. girl."

and he didn't mean foulmouthed. he meant dirty, like, unwashed.
unkempt. brian commented recently that i should shower more.

am i dirty or just busy?

i feel like i'm just busy.

i know when i'm busy, i get dirty, i lose things, i lose track, things

get really fucked up.

case in point:

there were these few days around the boston pops when everything went
to hell in a goddamn handbasket.

i did a week of preparation up to the pops, had a day off to pack,
then had to fly to europe for a week of press.
i didn't face the reckoning until i came home form europe a week
later, but i could re-trace the mind-losing.
i didn't pay attention to anything but what was right in front of my
face, and i was even missing that. i lost a lot of details.

in the space of just a 24 hours i managed to:

-leave my bicycle unlocked outside the house, resulting in it getting
stolen, third one gone this year
-lose most of my clothes from the pops, which took me two weeks to
fully recover upon returning
-get two parking tickets
and
-totally forget to take my menstrual sponge out

these things had varying degrees of impact on my life.

the bike was a tough & guilty one, since it was a loving hand-me-down
from my parents, who took pity on me after my last one was stolen.
THAT one was a loving hand-me-down form my sister after the one BEFORE
that got stolen....my whole family might has well just save up a pool
of money to have my legs amputated and buy me a nice electric scooter
that i cannot possibly lose...though i'm sure i'd find a way. i'd
probably absent-mindedly roll off and and away from it while thinking
about something else and have to rely on the kindness of some stranger
to carry my confused torso to safety after i'd been lying in the
middle of a busy street for some time, musing about car tires,
acoustics and weather.

the sponge thing: not so good.

this same thing happened to me when i was a teenager. one of my wise
feminine elders had tipped me off to the two-tampon trick when your
flow is heavy and you're bleeding on your sheets every night.
great trick, but when i forgot to extract tampon number two, things
got ugly. i think a week went by. my vagina discharged a foul-smelling
complaint and i troddled my 14-year self down to the gynecologist, who
poked around and said: "hm.....amanda, did you know this was in here?"

i must have given her a guilty, somewhat bashful stare as she dangled
the evidence before my face. the tampon looked like a small, brown,
rotting little mouse.

i was slightly grossed out but barely phased, probably walked home via
candy castle to buy myself a celebratory root beer or watermelon slush
for a dollar, and had forgotten about the whole thing by the time i
got home a half hour later, happy and whole again. but this i do
remember: i told my mother in the upstairs hallway of the house...."i
went to the gynecologist, mom, and i had left a tampon in for like a
week. she took it out. all good!" she looked at me in horror and then
she held me in the tightest embrace i think she'd ever held me in. she
said "my baby" a few times and it was then that i realized my
situation might have been fatal. that moment brought me closer to her,
because i realized, in a concrete way, that she really loved me and
would be stricken with grief if i died.

i've always considered myself immune to fatal disaster, while yet
being so prone to the smaller ones....sort of inured to the simple
rules of the universe (stand under falling piano = probably will get
crushed.......wait really? MAYBE. but MAYBE FUCKING NOT!!!!!
haaaaaaaa. see? special.)

so where my mind was when i left the menstrual sponge in? i don't know.
packing for europe, probably. being in love and having sex, which
pushed the sponge farther from sight and mind.

sponge-o-mercial: ladies, the menstrual sponge is great. i have
recommended it many times in the past.
it's ecologically friendly and easy to use. but it HAS NO STRING. just

warning you. it's easier to forget about.

anyway, i started feeling odd when i was in london. i got headachy and
dizzy.
i awoke with my vagina complainy one morning, my last day in europe.
i thought: this is familiar. oh, good god. did i leave the sponge in?

so i investigated, there in the k west hotel.
there is something very sort of unsexy and almost heartbreaking about
sitting on a fancy little leather cube seat in the k west hotel (where

the hippest of the business travelers and rock stars stay and party -
they have a sign in the fancy bathroom saying please don't flush
EARPLUGS....i'm sure pete doherty and kate moss have had sex in that
room at least once) all alone and trying to see if i had maybe left
something in my vagina the week before.

i would really not be surprised if half the female readers of this
blog (over the age of 25, at least) have had to do this. this also
happens with condoms. they slip, they jam, they hide and they must be
fished out in a very clinical and usually desperate struggle. chances
are if you've lost a condom up there, getting the condom out is NOT
the only thing that's fucking troubling you.

love can be ugly.

my vagina is long. that is, literally. if women could boast in inches,
i'd win.
(but for some weird reason, we don't do that? i wish i could've pulled

that fact out in the locker room or slumber party...."dude. no way,
i'm like, 7 inches. check this out. hand me that curling iron/stick of
incense/scale ruler/zucchini, i'll prove it")

this is NOT from overuse, you cunts. i was born with it. every
gynecologist has commented from day one. it's not unhealthy and it's
not irregular. it's just free to be the way it be.

anyway, there i was in the fancy k west hotel, fishing around with my
fingers for some possible feminine archives. but i didn't find
anything. so i let myself off the hook and chalked up my complainy
vagina to jetlag and stress.
max came to the hotel to visit and i tortured him all day, after i'd
shared my complainy vagina story (sans details, he's a delicate
creature), by saying VAGINA VAGINA VAGINA every few hours and making
him shake his thin delicate hands in horror near his ears saying STOP
STOP STOP AAAGHGHGGH. but i think he sort of liked it. max played me a

wonderful song of the accordion. he's been accepted into an art
university in england. we miss him here. he'll be at the london show,
no doubt. if you see him, say VAGINA.

me & max in the k west. we traded:

he agreed to be photographed with
no mustache if i did no eyebrows.

self-portait the night before:

i flew home on an afternoon flight from london and i lay there in bed,
wondering if i was maybe dying.

i resolved to do the adult thing, get up, and go to the emergency room.

i reasoned: if i waited until morning and went to my regular doctor,
and it ended up i WAS dying, i'd feel damn foolish. and to clarify
things, i checked my bathroom and there was no sponge to be found.
this means there was only one other place it could be, and that place
was my vagina.

so at around two or three in the morning, i troddled my 32-year old
self down to the emergency room, which is only a few blocks away,
which is nice, and michael came with me, and we walked by a car parked
outside the emergency room doors with all the window-glass shot in and
shattered, and cops all around. when i got in to see the doctor, they
told me that a lot of kids have been getting shot lately and driving
themselves to the hospital. most of them are 15, 16. she looked sad.
she told me she was glad she grabbed my case because dudes don't
understand. i told her how much i appreciated the fact that she was
about to go hunting in my vagina for a sponge and she said:
"girl...you would't BELIEVE the shit i see in here every night. this
is NOTHING." apparently she has a constant influx of fretting female
patients, delicate anatomies overflowing with tampons, condoms,
sponges, diaphragms, GOD KNOWS WHAT ELSE but if you're wondering where
that odd sock or spare fountain pen has wandered off to...check your
girlfriend. you never know what you may find up there, according to
this doctor.

((ahh, my whole house & film crew is downstairs on the stoop. we
wrapped our last video today. they're all drinking. i'm trying not
too. they're singing along to regina spektor. a few minutes ago it was
queen. i love my house.))

so this kindly gal whipped out the speculum and said, yes indeed, she
could spy a foreign object back in there, and she tried to yank it out
with a pair of tweezers, but the sponge just kept tearing.
i told her that this was common for the sponge - they are organic
matter, plant matter (or are sponges animal matter? aren't they alive
at some point?) and do tend to break down after a while. (note for you
ladies, i swap the sponge out after it shows even the slightest signs
of wear. one does not want unwanted sea life hanging out in there. i
know this sounds hypocritical at this point, but i'm JUST SAYING. ok.)

so, after the inevitable comment about my well-endowed womanhood, she
tries a pair of forceps, and those don't do the trick either. at this
point i must look nervous, because she says: "oh don't you worry,
we're gonna get this sucker out. but i might have to leave you here
while I go get a longer pair of forceps. do you want to hang out with
the speculum in or do you want me to take it out?"

at this point i'd like to mention that giving birth must be an
extremely protracted version of this with a lot more gore and pain but
slightly less embarrassment.
i don't know if i'd be excited to go through that. if i ever do, i
promise you a blow-by-blow. anyway.

i told her she could just leave the speculum in and i'd hang, yo. fo
shizzle. the emergency room was an all-purpose one, and there was -
quite mystifyingly - a TV mounted to the wall, pointed right at my
vulnerable little body. i wondered why it was there. did they often
leave people there, bleeding and oozing after knife and gun fights to
bear their fates while watching Gilligan's Island re-runs? how crass.

the television was looping a long infomercial about a magically modern
steam-powered hair-straightener called - i kid you not - the
MAXIGLIDE. it's weird when someone leaves you in a cold bright room
in the middle of the night with an infomercial for a hair straightener
called the MAXIGLIDE pointed at your open vagina. frustrated young
performance artists could go to second-rate art school for years and
not come up with anything half this good for their senior installation
projects.

a very short trip to the internet to find a picture for y'all of the
MAXIGLIDE just told me that YOU TOO can watch this fucking
infomercial....on YOUTUBE:

and the fact that this infomercial has 9,000 hits scares the shit out
of me.

WHO WATCHES INFOMERCIALS ON THEIR COMPUTER?
i am scared to know.
the comments might tell you.

1.
you "hear" how about trying it and then complaining cuz people who are
complaining are complaining cuz the are doing something wrong. I got
mine two years ago and my hair are better than ever.

2.
me and my mom have superrr curly hair and when it dries it gets curly
puffy and frizzy. this thing SAVED my life when i was in 6th grade!!!
it works sooo great:)

3.
Do they pay the model more to keep smiling? :D

4.
ok so wow im like so confused...ive seen like 50 people saying it
works great, 50 saying its ok, and 50 saying its complete trash. whats
true??? my hair is only a little bit wavy, but REALLY REALLY frizz. im
talking more frizz than hair. if u dont recommend this one, can
someone tell me another one that works???

5.
SO true. I bought this maxiglide, and let me tell you: I was saving up
FOREVER to get it! You have NO IDEA how hard I worked to get this.
When I finally did, I was SOO upset because it smelled REALLY BAD, it
stunk up my house and my hair, and ripped out lots of hair too. I'd
like to smack that Max guy for ripping me off :(

6.
I ordered my one and a half inch MaxiGlide (the MP package) last week
and I'm waiting for mine.
This is a great styling tool.
I can't wait to get my new one. I'm giving my "old" one to my niece
but I'mma tell her to take care of it like I have.
(this last comment posted from "StillAVirgin"....at least as of two
weeks ago.)
i can only assume that these 74 comments mean that women are now using
youtube as a discussion forum much like the hen and bridge parties of
Old.

i'd like to point out that this greasy "max" character in the video
seems like a total clown, the barbie models make me sadder than ever
(i kept wondering - weren't we all buying HOME PERM kits in the
eighties? the poor women back then with straight hair were all
manically rushing to the drugstore in droves to buy Ogilve Home Perm,
shamed to death of their limp, straight locks - WTF?)... but if you
really want to feel a TRULY surreal feeling while watching this
infomercial, put that shit on dull screen, strip down from the waist
down and point your vagina at your computer. guaranteed: it will make
you feel WEIRD.

she finally came back with the long forceps, yanked the thing out
(this time, it did not resemble a dead rodent, it looked exactly like
it looked when i put it in. i love the sponge. i almost saved it for
my collector friend steven but she threw it away before i had a chance
to ask. he was mildly disappointed. he has an entire mason jar of
toenail clippings from all his ex-girlfriends) and i walked home,
happy and whole again.

who killed amanda palmer INDEED. it was the SPONNNNNNNNNNGE.

a word, ladies: don't forget when something's up there. that shit
ain't right.
and if you want a sponge: www.jadeandpearl.com (click on feminine
products).

--------

in less gruesome news.

the videos are done being filmed and they are KILLER.
killer. killer. "runs in the family" is getting released next week, on

tuesday if things go according to plan.

astronaut and ampersand have been getting rave comments and i'm really
really very proud.
pope and i made these videos with a laughably small budget, we filed
at my house, my old high school and my folks house, we used for props
and costumes what we had lying around - and they came out fucking
spectacular.
the intro, which has an excerpt from "another year" (the last song on
the record), is up too.

part 1 (intro):

part 2 (astronaut):

part 3 (ampersand):

there are 8 parts total.
we're going to be screening them in boston this weekend, the whole
shebang (25th and 26th...and almost sold out: www.brattlefilm.org) and
we're thinking of maybe screening the whole series in new york in
august, somewhere small like joe's pub with someone bad-ass playing MC. it'll
be like a little fuck the back row reunion.

that's it.
i'm back to cleaning my apartment.

sponge love

a

vintage blog: WHY AUSTRALIA DEFEATS ALL ELSE.

2008-07-11T15:49:00.001-04:00

so, i wrote this a long time ago, and, as you do, left it rotting on my desktop.
it's perfect timing though, a lot of what you see here became a rough draft for the tour we're taking on the road in the fall.
so get tickets, fuckers. the danger ensemble will be with me starting sept 27th in ireland. we're going to eff your head with art love.

i will gradually bombard y'all now with a mix of old and new bloggage until the time-space continuum is set RIGHT.
i'm planning a new blogging system that will SWALLOW YOUR HEAD starting in a week or so. so watch out mofos.

i am so busy.
working on the book with neil.
working on the new website.
working on a new theater project for next spring.
working on not feeling bad about ignoring my email.

it is awesome.

here we go............yo...............................

WHY AUSTRALIA DEFEATS ALL ELSE.
december tour 2007.

REASONS WHY AUSTRALIA DEFEATS ALL OTHER NATIONS, IN PICTURES.

THE WILDLIFE.
the first day of my trip to australia, tom took me to the zoo in ballarat.
this is where i saw the actually fucking kangaroos.

what do you WANT from me??

this is a python eating a rabbit, whole. we watched in fascination. it took about 3 minutes.
pythons would probably not eat you or me, so i think this does not count as a reason against australia defeating all other nations.

these things were just plain weird. but they defeated american lizard.

heading where everyone ultimately wants to head.

the last temptation of tom dickins.

he's a great songwriter with a voice of gold, btw:
www.myspace.com/tomdickins

that night i saw tom acting in a play. it was wonderful. he was wonderful.

it was sitting in a cafe in downtown ballarat that i first discovered that maybe australia wins above all.
it could have been been because my life at home was basically in total flux and chaos. i won't assume that.

THE WEATHER
can you wear this in boston in the dead of winter?
i don't think so.

NICK CAVE
obviously, if one spent enough time in australia, one WOULD run into him in a hungry jack's.
meanwhile, the arts center next to the spiegeltent was running a FREE exhibition of All Things Nick. points.
there was no bathroom in the tent, we had to pee in the arts center.
so every time i went to pee (and i was hydrating a ton, so i peed about 6 times an hour) i got to walk by these ginormous photos of His Nickness in all phases of his career.
there was a strict no-photo rule.

i love you.

the notes that also adorn the inside of my all-time favorite nick CD, "let love in":

THE PEOPLE
i spent the entire trip with steven, peta, mark and kaite from the danger ensemble. the danger ensemble is an offshoot of Zen Zen Zo, the physical theater group some of you guys know from the roundhouse and our last aussie tour.
they created beautiful theatrical pieces to go along with the show.
they brought lyndon their violin-playing friend, who arranged a bunch of songs with me, and there was drew (who's not from austrailian, he's from liverpool, but he's still awesome. he took most of these pictures and took footage of the shows and tried sushi AND avocado for the first time. wtf)
we rehearsed for a few days in melbourne before starting the run at the spiegel, and we found krin (yes, krin! of krin and jonas! she's left Cirque Eloize and been hired by La Clique to perform tissue in the tent and we worked her into Half Jack, she's the bombitty).

it was mostly stevens fault but the Your Mum jokes just wouldn't stop. somedays we enacted a rule where you couldn't make a Your Mum joke until nightfall. it never worked.

your mum wouldn't stop last night.

granted, not everyone in australia is the danger ensemble, or a good violin player. but i did spend about five straight days in a boiling van with them and i STILL LOVED THEM.
that says a fucking lot.
we slept at renee's for the first ten days, like sardines all on one floor of one room. i'm sort of sorry i didn't' get a picture of that. it was like an ongoing slumber party.
big props to renee for putting us up and letting us monopolize her kitchen for 10 days.
your mum let me monopolize her kitchen last night.

anyway.
we met the most wonderful folks along the way.
one day we saw a transvestite wearing only women's panties running at top speed down brunswick street and steven read in the news the next day that the man subsequently jumped off a bridge.
that wasn't good, actually.
i'll tell you what happened to him in the next blog

he died.

but there were much better things: we met the follow who put us up on a new floor in sydney.
they were sweet and kind, first-rate folks and they opened for us in sydney and fully Brought The Rock. we invited them to drive up to our last-minute show the next night at the winsome hotel.
in sydney we played to a sold-out house of 600. the next night in lismore we played to, i believe, 29 people, about half of whom were irritated locals who were simply trying to enjoy their drinks in peace.
the follow and i took the opportunity to play a drunken space-jam. you don't get to do that very often. hopefully the youtube footage has been taken down by now, because it's really embarrassing.

rehearsing with the Danger Ensemble in melbourne...........

lyndon&co, going through funeral and "astronaut"

running "strength through music"

cuddle puddle (clockwise spiral from top: steven, me, katie, mark, lyndon, peta)

THE SPIEGELTENT
okay, okay, the spiegeltent moves around.
but it's MOSTLY in australia. and the people who run it are australian. points
the tent is truly a magical place where magical things happen.
we were on every night after La Clique so we got to warm up to the sounds and antics of accordions and flying trapeze and captain frodo the amazing rubberman and the bathtub acrobat and and and
it was heaven.

backstage at the tent.....

steven, lyndon, mark

THE SHOW:
first night at spiegel.

lyndon in sydney.

the funeral procession.

mark and steven in mourning.

me & lyndon.

mark & me & some of steven during "coin-operated boy"
<333

"the assistant"...
beautiful peta

beautiful katie

"strength through music".
(beautiful steven, peta, katie & lyndon...and yes, some of mark's hand...you're beautiful too mark).

the day after i got to australia, i read in the news that a 19-year-old kid from nebraska had opened fire in a shopping mall and killed a bunch of people.
the piece was never more appropriate, and we held a moment of reflection each night.

ella ella eh eh eh (peta, katie and mark)

i EAT YOUUU AND YOUR CAMERAAAAAAAAA

impromptu singing with azaria from The Follow, and a vegan cupcake (before i eated it)

OK.
my case is closed.
i digressed, but my reasons are many.

one last picture.

saying sad but heartfelt goodbye to the tent.

goodbye tent.
goodbye australia.
goodbye danger ensemble and lyndon and drew.
goodbye "van of love".
goodbye pumped waters.
goodbye vegemite, you're the one bad thing about australia.
goodbye kangaroos.
goodbye weather.

hello MOTHERFUCKING USA FREEZING-ASS TOUR WITH THE DRESDEN DOLLS MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!!
we're psyched as shit.
please dress WARMLY yet WITH STYLE, you freaks!
hats! hats hats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and ellas. ellas keep the cold out.

merry xmas, happy everything,
send cold-killing garlicky vibes my way

see you all soon, i love you.

PCIMFF
a

life is obviously working

2008-07-08T15:06:00.000-04:00

home

i am insanely behind in my blogging. this is now usual. i keep collecting piles and piles of thoughts and photos and never collecting into concrete enough form. bad habit.

excuses:
in the past few weeks, i have played with a symphony orchestra for the first time, gone to several cities in europe to promote the record, taken many dead photos, finished up the artwork for my record, made 6 music videos with pope, and last but not least...........(this past weekend) curated a circus tent we called "the establishment" with all my best friends & favorite musicians at a huge hippie music festival in rural michigan. i was approached by dave matthews, who admired my make-
up job. go dave!

of all of the photos that i could post now, i think this picture that steven from the danger ensemble snapped - from the last day of the festival - speaks the loudest.

love live the punk cabaret, motherfuckers.

love

(from left to right)
amandacera, beth, michelle & katrina of Gravity Plays Favorites,
amanda fucking palmer & some random Man taking down our tent

celtic scramble brain pudding

2008-06-18T01:11:00.000-04:00

mother of fuck.
home, about to go to bed. but WAIT
the celtics won the basketball world series and it sounds like there's a full-on riot going on outside. car horns blaring, people making hooopy animal sounds, and now helicopters. it is times like this that i find myself very torn about a) living in the city and b) being a human being. i'm sort of embarrassed for us. and i'm also jealous of people who love sports.
it's seems so easy, you have something concrete to get excited about, and you have something in addition to the weather about which you can prattle on to your fellow strangers.

i've been at home.
since tour there's been a whirlwind around my head and i'm, again, not really quite sure what i've been doing. id have to look at the calendar. my brain is fried. and it's loud outside. i know i've been finishing the record (i have, indeed, been "finishing the record" for about sixth months now...it just went in to be mastered for the FOURTH time).

i know i've been trying to get ready for the shows with the boston pops, which are going to be in two days and also going to be incredible. i'm a little scared. i hate practicing. i am frightened of the many real people in the orchestra who all show up the day of, look at my music, play it without ever having seen it before during rehearsal, go get a sandwich, then play a huge show with me. it's weird. i want it to be good. i am trying. i'm doing so much WEIRD and new stuff for me. you'll see.
i will write about it.

i know i've been working on the album artwork. i am used to this process being long and arduous. i've gone through 3 or 4 completely different concepts and finally hit one that stuck. and now is now, so that's what it is. i don't like imagining that i have to present myself to the world on a 5 inch by 5 inch piece of cardboard. but i do. so i stress it and try to make it as perfect as possible. that is how i do it.

they are still yelling outside. people in heat. it's getting louder. the horns are blasting. there's whooping. it's getting frighteninger.

why not?

i've been trying to picture my life from here on out. it's very blurry and yet very exact. i know that i'm about to leave home and get on a ride that wont stop for about a year while i tour around the world promoting this thing. but i want to. i've never been so proud of something in my life. i want to eat my record.

oh, wait. no - now i remember.
last week i shot videos with pope. (for those of you who don't know him. he's my dear friend, ex-housemate and also directed most of the dolls videos and paradise DVD).
we took 5 whole days and blocked them off and made 5 videos for the record.
all very low-budget, all very simple. just a small idea, pope and a few cameras, and me, trying to act convincing. i think it worked. pope is going to send me the edit for the first one tonight. we're then going to start putting them online, one by one, until the record is out in september. it's real. it's starting.
the first song is going to stream on myspace next week.

me & pope on set (yes, that's my kitchen. again):

good god, it sounds like war out there.

i was going to take an ambien to go to sleep (i have a radio thing at 8 am tomorrow) and now i don't even think it will work through the noise. we'll see.
hang on.

ok....they're rioting. i wonder, really, how long they can keep it up.
while the ambien kicks in, i will keep typing. i assure you, things will start to get tyop-y and weird. as i drop to the floor, i'll hit send.

being on the set again with pope was good for the soul. i am reminded that working with people you like and who like you is the key to happiness.
our schedule became so regular that it felt like i had a job. wake up, get onto the set, make videos all day, finish at 10, go to the bar with the crew, order beer, unwind.

all the while, i was trying not to notice that my computer had crashed and was sitting inert on my desk, waiting to be saved. i finally took it into the mac store (they're very nice at the mac store)and about 3 days later (as i paced outside the video set like the waiting-room friend of a stroke victim about to hear the doctors pronouncement) found out that my mac was unsalvagable. the last time i'd backed it up was two months ago. i lost an extraordinary amount of work and a ton of photos and all of my mishmash organization (i organize my entire life inside mac Mail. which means my mail lives on my machine not online. which means if my machine crashes, i lose tons of shit). i found it strangely liberating. i toyed for a few days with the novel idea of becoming a new person.
there's a line from a song by guided by voices that i just fucking love. it goes:

I'm going to start a new life/
with my valuable hunting knife

and i think everybody knows this feeling. some small event or object inspires you to just give up and start over. change wardrobe. re-name self. start carrying pocketwatches or wearing moustaches. that kind of shit. its always tempting. i decided for about a half hour that it might be better off being one of those musicians who just doesn't email or answer anybody's shit. i could pretend the internet was a distant memory, let my managers decide what my website should look like, let other people worry if i had posters at my show or not.
i might even start writing music again.
i realized recently that i haven't written a new song in over a year. that's a record. it scares me.
it's funny. i got an idea for a song the other day and as i came into the apartment i found myself thinking "sit at piano? write song" and the immediate nasty comeback in my brain:
"no. don't write song. let idea rot forever. you have a record coming out in 3 months that you're going to be touring on for a YEAR. why do you need more songs, fool?"
this is the kind of twisted logic i live by. the truth is i actually just don't like work. i really like getting ideas. i just hate everything that comes after that.

the sonic kaleidescope continues outside. i really wish you could hear it. it's like a cross between a rave, a parade, and a terrible, terrible traffic jam.
motorcycles are revving. men sound like they're dying. if i had the energy id go out and watch.

neil gaiman is working with me on the book that is going to accompany the record. he's also writing some liner notes for the back of the album art, which is taking a bizarre turn into the 1960s.
he's an amazing man, this neil gaiman. (the ambien is kicking in). he is kind of a rock star trapped in a writer's body. i like the way he talks about things, it makes me feel like i could spends hours and hours with him and never get bored and never stop laughing and never forget for too long the profundity of silliness. i feel so lucky. all of these incredible people have come into my life lately. neil gaiman. ben folds. beth, my assistant who is helping me save my life so that i can go tour in peace.

it's stopped. now its started again

good god........tires are screeching.

ive been finding slugs on the steps
the front door came off its hinges today

here's a haiku:

in the loud city
cars express their happiness
the lawn is screaming

definitely time

time to go to bed. i think i'll enjoy these sounds much more from a supine position.......................

Love
amanda

p.s. if you're coming to the POPS shows, try to take illicit footage without getting caught. i'd love to see this stuff wind up on youtube.

p.p.s. here's a little clip of me rehearsing at symphony hall

lemons. touring. drinking. couch forts.

2008-05-30T18:42:00.000-04:00

hola comrades!
...........................................................
right now......i am fucking tired. i am in santa fe.
we've done san fran, LA, san diego, tempe arizona and albequerque.

i took this picture today. on my telephone.

i love the future.

i'm in the middle of nowhere in santa fe, re-couping at my step-sisters and soaking in the homemade-bread and baby vibe.
ronan, my wee nephew, is 10 months old. i'm beginning to relate to him more....he's banging on shit constantly to see what sounds he can make.
babies are weird and wonderful. i love how engrossed he can get in something....he recently spent about 15 minutes opening and closing a book.

here are some pictures from tour.
all these photos (expcet where noted) are by beth, my new assistant of life, who is kicking ass all over the place.
she is busy all day doing crazy shit and i wonder already how i'd be coping without her help. i love life. we've been doing yoga together.

ok so

this is me, backstage with a lemon. the people in catering made the face on it and left the knife in his head.
and i was trying to explain why little fucking things like this make my life suddenly worthwhile.

this was the night morrissey came to the show.

please understand.
i worshipped at the altar of the smiths and the songwriting of The Moz for a long time.
second only to robert smith.

i knew he was there. my tour manager shook his hand. i missed him.

i was nervous.
not in the usual nervous way.
i don't get nervous like that anymore.
it was more.....
i hit stage and couldn't stop judging myself.
i just kept listening to my lyrics ricocheting around in my own head and my terrible judgement setting in ("amateur. stupid. trite. dumb. why did you write this shit?")
i was only happy during mrs. o ("ok. this isn't trite") and astronaut ("ok. this is also good"). what a mindfuck.
i feel like i wouldn't be so judgemental if robert smith showed up.
but morrissey has been so vocal about his total hatred of certain things. i totally pictured him leaving the venue four songs in with a thought bubble above his head reading "talentless twats. waste of my evening."

brian picked up on my nervousness and to top it all off the place was air-conditioned to shit (cold = bad gig) so LA was ok. but not great. morrissey left right before the end of the show.
i am sort of glad i didn't meet him.
i had the chance to, about two years ago, at a german festival. i declined. i was just too afraid he would be a dick and then the music would be marred (no pun intended).

i hate that about music. when the magic is ruined. its only happened to me once or twice, but it's devastating.
if you love music, and then you meet the source, and the source disappoints you, you can never hear those songs the same way again. i've tried to avoid that now. on purpose.
some music is just too good.

HOWEVER.
san francisco was AMAZING.
zoe keating played with us (on astronaut and half jack) and so did meredith yaynos (on boston)
......and so did east bay ray from the dead kennedys.
i couldn't find a full clip of it on youtube, but here's us playing the tail end of "moon over marin" by the dead kenndys, with ray....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G74DkvMprno

then we took some time off in LA
brian cut my hair one morning.....

....then brian pulled out his wicked italian recipes and cooked the whole crew dinner while we stayed at my aunt & uncles' house in palos verdes.....
(check out jaron with his PLATE)

katie kay and her beau, patrick, awaiting food....

the best surprise of tour has been our opening act SMOOSH, who have been kicking ass and taking names.

they are three sisters from seattle, age 11, 14 and 16. and they are ROAD WARRIORS. they;ve been touring forever and play like pros.
you'd think they were in their thirties. it's crazy. they've been tearing it up every night and we love watching them.
we got their youngest member, maya, to play bass with us on "fight for your right".
and then we decided that we needed to do a song with the whole band, so we threw together "karma police" during soundcheck and debuted it in arizona. they killed it.

(here's brian teaching maya the chords....)

here is an awesome clip of karma police with the girls....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6klcWi0M1Y

me and beth, dorking out backstage.....
(photo by brian)

eric, our beloved new tour manager:

the couch fort that we built in the dressing room in new mexico (we had 4 couchs to work with, it was awesome).

FORT BEER!.....
maia (from smoosh - sadly, quite a ways under 21), eric (our tour manager), yours truly, captain brian viglione, brian spett (our lighting guy) and jon lammi (our sound guy....)
one big happy beery family.

....so

tour has been bearable.

the new album came out this week.
reviews have been mostly great. the new york times reviewed us for the first time and were sort of back-handed dicks, but at least they put us in the critics choice section (leave it up to the NY times to choose you but also rip you apart by starting a review by saying: "obscurity suits the dresden dolls....."-------aaaah). but mostly awesome.

i have been cranking in the moonlighting hours on the artwork for the solo record. it's going to be incredible. i just have to .... do it. finishing up the cover artwork. feeling slow and cranky.

random dept: the infamous blog tshirt on beth's friend sarah in pennsylvania.
people keep asking for them, we might just have to make a large batch for post-war trade.
(let me know if you want one.)

............
.......................

four days later...............

we played in kansas city last night. i got atypically drunk over the course of the show, under the guise of self-medicating a very thrown-out neck.
i often drink during our shows but i usually cap it at two drinks or i start getting too sloppy and forgetting lyrics.
yesterdays adventures saw me drinking wine BEFORE the show, which i never do, forgetting to eat dinner, taking aspirin, walking by the bartender and grabbing a shot of jagermeister during my crowd-wander "the gardener", then stupidly opening my gullet when my well-meaning monitor tech jaron came to pour a shot of whiskey down my throat during "fight for your right to party".
it was a DAMN FUN show, for sure. i can remember very little from the encore, but i have gathered that the night involved me lying down on stage for the encore and some very birthday-party era nick cave muscial shenanigans during the half jack solo which everyone said sounded very "interesting". drinking and playing, not good combo. but i suppose i am allowed one behind-the-music night every year or so for all the other sober yoga days.

in a way the night was a weird over-reaction to teh night before. we were filming the show, in denver. and i decided not to drink. and it threw me. i'd gotten so used to hitting a certain level of looseness halfway through the set, with my one beer down, that i got disoriented. the altitude didn't help. i snowballed, stone-cold sober. there's something to be said for moderation in moderation as well. i'll figure it out.
i do hope some photos surface of the night so i can see what happened.

three more days of tour from here, all in texas, which should be good fun. we haven't headlined here in years and years.

us, somewhere, being sweaty:

rock

love
A

fish/people/belly

2008-05-09T13:32:00.000-04:00

christ.i've collected too much in my head again and got stuck.

running, running, running around and don't even know what i've been doing except that i've been doing a lot.
the solo record got re-mastered and it's.....mind-blowing. it's so good. it's sooooooo gooooooooooooooooooooooood.
so i feel safe in a deep way. because as long as the record is amazing then i can fuck everything else up and it's technically ok.
it will be released september 16th. that is now like christmas day for me. it is four months away. that seems long.
next week pope, kyle cassidy and i shoot film and video for the solo project for three days straight and then there's barely a breath and the dolls hit the west coast.

i play solo tomorrow and the next day with death cab for cutie (looks like brian might show up for the boston show) and then we'll play this last-minute benefit for my old french teacher's exchange program on sunday (details on the calendar).

my voice is kind of ready, but not really. it'll be interesting.
................

i spent a lot of time in new york. i love it there.
.................

my apartment is now messy as fuck again. o well.
...................

i went to cape cod with my family and watched the herring spawn.
they do this thing where they swim upstream & they're so exhausted by the time they get to the top of wherever they're getting to, they just barely have enough energy to pro-create and then they die. it's very romantic. jason webley had been telling me that he goes to see the salmon spawn near seattle every year.

so i was on the cape, watching the herring spawn, and my step-father mentioned how they're sort of like marathon runners, being all crazy and doing this terrible thing to their body for the sake of some weird higher purpose. and my sister shared the story about the original marathon runner, who ran 26 miles in wartime to get some crazy message to rome or something then dropped down dead.

and then two days later i was at home in boston and needed to go to the sprint store to get my phone replaced. i had forgotten it was boston marathon day. so i walked to the store but all the roads were blocked off and it was this mad undertaking of maze-iness to get to the store and i walked about 27 blocks in a spiral to get about 5 physical blocks away, including jumping some fences and getting crushed by throngs of marathon fans and families. people were just finishing the course a few yards from where the store was. and they were flopping like dead herring on the ground and the BEST part was that they were wearing these fucking crazy NASA-looking silver sheets that keep them warm. so they REALLY really looked like spawning herring and i really enjoyed myself.

FISH:

PEOPLE:

and i had to add this, because when i was googling images of spawning fish it popped up.
and how could i not, come on:

FISHPEOPLE:

jason and i were writing back and forth, i was interviewing him over email for the press release of his new record (which features a picture of spawning salmon on the inside).....i asked: whats with the fish?
here's his answer.

but here:

"AP: What's with the fish?

JW: Have you ever seen salmon spawn? It is really intense, and kind of ugly. All of these fish, their bodies already falling apart, beginning to decompose even before they die, pushing and fighting their way upstream. There's something so poetic about how these creatures that are born in little streams, go out and live in the oceans for years and then when they are old and falling apart they return or try to return to these places where they were born.

I remember the first time I saw them. I was walking in the woods and I crossed this little footbridge, and looked down and saw them. Dying fish flailing around among dead fish. It was really shocking to me, and somehow deeply sad. I remember looking down at them, trapped in this visceral struggle, and just thinking "fuck." And wondering who was on the bridge about me looking down at me and thinking the same thing.

Metaphors like this can often feel cheesy or clumsy, but I really is something huge here. In my mind I feel like the salmon help me understand somehow all of our involvement in the middle east. Baghdad and Jerusalem aren't just random cities in the desert. They are the places where our Western cultures evolved from. All three of the major Western religions, modern concepts of agriculture and just the basic idea of what a city is, all of these things come from the Fertile Crescent. We learn about it in school, but we don't really connect the idea with modern geography. Baghdad is right there between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Western Culture is totally going back to its mother, and it is going back there violently. I don't think it is right, but I do think there is a terrifying poetry to it.

I think similarly in my own life, probably in everyone's, there is some kind of constant pull back to our roots. In ways we don't really understand. Like the salmon - I don't think they consciously know that they are going back to where they were born or that their struggle is noble and is perpetuating their species. I think they just know that they are doing this thing, and it is hard as hell and really sucks. They don't see the bigger picture, and I don't think we do either.

So anyway, yeah... that's why there are fish.

...................................................

there was a moment when i was watching all those herring and i really felt the futility of my own hard work.
a great big WHHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY are you working your ass off and making so many things to do only to collapse down down a few decades from now, you mindless herring-girl? i will let you know if i come up with a suitable answer. mostly because, i think, like our herring friends, i don't know any other way of life. i am programmed this way. work. do. work. run. ja ja ja ja. stop? die.
i think this is why i dig yoga and meditation so much. if i didn't carve that time out, i would never rest my brain. i would implode. balance be key.

this is the record by the way. jason webley is amazing.

you can get it here:

www.jasonwebley.com

i posted the rest of my interview with him up on the forum:
www.theshadowbox.net/forum/index.php?topic=3915.0
................................................................................................

i went to a lecture given by richard heinberg about peak oil.
it is real.
it is scary.
i am thinking about it a lot. life is going to change. and soon.
shit is running out. people are starting to starve,
if you feel like realizing how fucking insane the world is about to become:

www.postcarbon.org

i think i will be talking about this more soon. it's bugging me out.

.................................................................................................

i went to my alma mater lexington high school tonight and helped with the make-up for the spring play, which was a weird version of faust. i loved that.
god the kids were so fucking talented. i wanted to eat them like fish. or die with them. or something. it was just inspiring.

.................................

i was in harvard square the other day and had an Ego Roller-coaster Ride.

i went to the post office with a friend and the pretty lady posting my 12 packages was like "anything liquid fragile or perishable" and i was like "no"
and then she asked "hmmmm. does this package happen to contain a copy of No, Virginia?" and my jaw dropped. she was older than me and didn't look your your average dolls fan and i was so happy,
and i looked so damn cool in front of my friend. oh oh yes. they know me AT THE POST OFFICE. i am famous. yay. then a few hours later we went to cafe pamplona and were sitting there enjoying our coffees and musing and a pretty girl came up to us and was shy and adorable and told me she was a fan and we rapped for a bit and i was like: my ego is SO fed today. i am so known. damn, i feel fancy.
so then i went to the counter to ask for our check and there were these two older ladies sitting at a table, probably in their fifties and one was looking over at me and whispering to her lady friend and i was like: this can't be.
and they tittered a bit and i got my check and the lady who had been looking at me said: "i'm sorry, you're going to kill me for asking this...."
and i was like "no, no, go ahead!" and in my mind i was like: I AM SO AWESOME. i have achieved ultimate fanciness. i am loved and known by OLD WOMEN! my life is so complete today.
and she looked at her friend and did that giggly nervous smile you do and gave me the biggest grin and said

"...you're pregnant, aren't you?"

that evened things out quite nicely.

for the record: i'm not pregnant. i just have a belly at all times. can't do nothing about it. even when the rest of me is rock hard, The Belly (i sometimes call it The Orb) is in full force.
people think i'm pregnant every once in a while. I find it charming. i once ruined some guys life....this was in the UK and he was a super-fan and his band was opening up for us. at the end of the night he congratulated me on being pregnant and I laughed and was like.....dude, i'm not pregnant. i'm just belly. or beer. or whatevers in there. but it's not baby.
anyway, this threw him into such a panic that i got 3-page apologetic emails for a year. it was heartbreaking.

also for the record: i'm so glad i'm not pregnant.

and while we're on this topic, i was reminded of this AWESOME short youtube clip called "amanda palmer & the belly" that surfaced from edinburgh last summer:

long live the belly

x
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

a

p.s.
........................................

best. birthday. ever.

2008-04-30T18:39:00.000-04:00

today it's my birthday. i am 32.

for my birthday I walked alone from 13th street all the way to penn station with no sunglasses and the sun beating in my eyes.

for my birthday I bought a big container of watermelon slices from a bodega and ate them in under three minutes.

for my birthday I walked through the park and got to see a boy with curly long hair sitting on a bench reading franny and zooey by jd salinger.

for my birthday I walked into a bra store and looked at all the pretty things.

for my birthday I devoured a cappuccino and a vanilla bread pudding heated up and smothered with frosting and strawberries and bananas.

for my birthday I got the new york times with a big picture of obama on the cover and felt my heart go thump thump maybe he'll be our president and the world won't die.

for my birthday I got a flower, and a poster of my favorite wim wenders movie, and text messages and voicemails and emails and I felt loved.

for my birthday I stood at the bottom of the empire state building and looked all the way up to the top.

for my birthday I gave a five dollar bill to a guy playing saxophone in union sqaure station.

for my birthday I ate french food with french wine and then italian food with italian wine and got drunk and am not hungover. but I feel sort of fat.

for my birthday I'm going to see eddie izzard.

for my birthday I did graffiti.

for my birthday I got a soy shake and drank it while I waited for the seven train to take me out of queens.

for my birthday I put on my headphones and listened to "everybody's gotta live" over and over and again and again and lip-synced along and slapped my hand against my thigh in the train and people stared and I smiled at them.

for my birthday I bought that same shirt that john lennon wore in that great photograph even thouigh its a total cliche.

for my birthday I let myself fall in love all day. and its only 6 o'clock.

grammar be damned

2008-04-15T00:26:00.000-04:00

i have been continuing my apartment cleaning
i want to say so very much but feel that this t-shirt says so much
more than i ever can

i am in queens.

2008-04-03T16:48:00.000-04:00

don't knock it, dude.
i actually really, really like it here. i do.

about to embark on 3 days of marathon meetings in The Big City of manhatttan.
wearing heels, the weather is good, things are looking up.

plenty to say and plenty to respond to....

but

for now:
go to the dolls myspace page (we're re-tooling the actual website for re-launch in late may).

if you didn't notice, we just added a bunch of west coast dates (san fran to texas, baby) may 18-june 1st.

aaaaaand
we posted the first taste of "no, virginia...", one of our favorite tracks, called The Kill.

go leeesten.

brian viglione = drumming god

queeeeeeeeeens

x
a

train kills girl stuck in ugg boot

2008-04-01T01:00:00.001-04:00

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=548159&in_page_id=1770

Footage of The Evelyn Twins

2008-03-24T15:01:00.000-04:00

I am slowly crawling out of my mute stage, but it's no fun.
will relate more soon but i am holed up working hard on the text and
layout for the new songbook (i finally titled it & i went with the
very stately: The Virginia Companion).

yet

i had to retreat out of my hole for a moment to share this youtube
clip with you.
it is a clip of the conjoined twins Evelyn & Evelyn performing their
very first live set when jason & I were out in Seattle finishing up
their record last month.
they were REALLY REALLY NERVOUS, it was their first public appearance
ever and getting them to do it was a herculean task.
this was a song they had just written called "you only want me 'cause
you want my sister"
at the end of the clip, they take a break for a snack.

love
a

days 4-12 as a mute

2008-03-17T13:18:00.000-04:00

you fucking people are radical. i love reading your comments so much and i am struck helpless in the face of how much i want to be friends with all of you but here we are, stuck on the internet. the internet. i can't figure it out completely but i'm working on it, because it's obviously Real. i think we're making it what it is, as novel as that seems in this fucked culture. the future really baffles me.
-
mute life suits me so much i am seriously considering staying here for a while longer.i am going to reflect upon this separately.
-
i am upstairs and downstairs max and becca and sienna and some other people are celebrating sienna's 20th birthday with a box of wine and a bunch of becca-dj'd ipod music played through terrible speakers.
i may leave my writing of this blog on occasion to visit said party and refill my plastic cup of boxed wine. i am not supposed to be drinking. but my throat feels healed. alcohol is also an astringent and general antibiotic.
-

i have had a generally basic routine here at home for the past week.
i wake up at around noon.
when i am being good, i stretch or go to yoga. sometimes i sit.
when i am not, i begin immediately emailing. i have written, literally, over 950 emails in the past 6 days.
i am answering shit from august. i am answering fanmail from 2005.

while i do this, i spend the morning cleaning.
i have been on tour for about 5 years. seriously, i do not keep house. my kitchen is covered in CDs. i do not clean when i am home; i arrange and avert disaster and straighten....when i am feeling ambitious.
there is dust and caked shit in corners like out of a fucking bad b-grade horror movie. me and this shit, we hang. we communicate, then i pull the trigger. i am like an excited silent ninja with my windex all-purpose cleaner and my dr. bronners-soaked washcloth.

while i do this, i listen to things on my stereo.
mostly to vinyl. i have a collection of about 400 vinyl records. many of which i've never given much attention because they were purchased during my pack-rat-heavy high-school and college days when i would go to yard sales and buy every pice of vinyl that looked even remotely interesting (e.g."1963: walk in space", "exploring swedish in hi-fi" and "dances of the scottish highlands" - these are just a few of things i've been spinning). i've also been listening to ols musicals and frank sinatra. i haven't wanted to hear anything new.

while i do this, i email.
i get a SHIT-TON of emails. i tried to average it out recently day and i get around 100-200 emails a day, not including spam. many of these are emails i am copied into, but most of them need responses. i have struggled over the years about what to respond to and what to let go. i used to answer every single piece of email that came through the dolls website, and to do that i would stay up until 4 am and get no sleep. at a certain point, about 3 or 4 years ago, i realized it was a losing battle. so we transfered the band web email over to our beloved management and they would go through it and forward me a condensed email with every week's worth of email in one file, which i read when i get the time. the really important shit (gig bookings, lost cousins and friends trying to find me, people offering concrete services or having problems, etc).. that they forward to me immediately.

but i still get hundred of emails from people that i have Shit Happening With, friendships with, people i have met on planes .... and so on. i am a hoe this way.... i am known to give my email to just about every person i sit next to on a plane or a train. seriously. i do. i dig a serious hole. after years, this started to seem patently stupid. wy must i keep wanting to communicate with every person i meet on a plane??? why? because i want to, desperately. but i can't keep up with all of it. i am a total communicationholic and it gets in the way of...art? life? i don't know. but i do know that i realized about a year ago that i as reaching out too much and not having the energy or the time to reach back to what i was reaching out to. i was, as they say, spreading my self way too fucking thin. so i tried to cut back. i didnt' really succeed. but i recognize that i have a problem, that i have no control over this problem and am willing to give myself over to a higher power ... and i am wiling to make steps to change. hi.

i go through these phases where i let the emails pile up and pile up and pile up and as they mount i tell myself i am going to get to them at a very specific reckoning date in the future.

now i reckon.i take occasional breaks to watch youtube clips, but mostly, i read and write.
i have been watching the emotional parallels between answering 338 emails leftover from november and cleaning out the gunk from the wooden-carved spice rack above my stove and it's really - honestly- the same thing,
with every passing day i feel about 3 pounds lighter. i zap every old-but-easy-to-reply-to email with the passionate enjoyment of squeezing an over-ripe zit.

i have also been cleaning out the drawers and the tables. my drawers and tables and desk are full of Items

it is impossible to explain, but everyone understands it.
STUFF. THINGS. ITEMS that have no home but but be reckoned or dealt with.

i travel all the time and accumulate dozens of ITEMS per day that must be dealt with.
cds that people give me.
gifts.
weird clothing items.
things to read.
things to watch.
recordings.
letters.
THINGS.
these THINGS, over the course of many tours and then returnings-home, become an albatross of doom.
i look forward to going through these ITEMS.....in theory......and am REALLY attached to their THINGNESS, but never seem to clear them away to make counter space.
so i drown in a Sea of Things.

in the past four days, i have ejected 4 giant bags of THINGS to Away - to the trash, to the recycling (god only knows where that shit actually goes - i grow more skeptical by the second), to goodwill.
to max, to lee, to people In The Mail, or other purveyors of Thing who might find my discarded treasures interesting for a while. who knows.

and while i do this, i listen to Frock.
Frock is what brian and i have come to call what used to be called "Friend Rock", later shortened to Frock for brevity.
"friend rock" used to refer to friends (or acquaintances) who would give us their CDs, which would then join the Mountain Of Items In My Apartment.

i have to hand it to myself. for the first 2-3 years of the band, i was religious about listening to every single CD that was given to me.
i even started FILES in my FILING CABINET with ALPHABETIZED DIVIDERS for every band we knew and wanted to play with.
in said file i would put their CD, press kit, and any other promo or photos they had sent.
why? because we would bill shows together with these bands and i would send their materials out to the local press when they were on our bill. pay attention, this is Struggling Band In the Internet Age 101: Step One, be your own publicist.
i just emptied out that entire filing drawer (including tons of old bank statements from 2003 and instruction manuals for windows 98 and letters from the DMV from 1997) and threw that shit AwAY.

back to Frock.
Frock then came to refer to anything given to us, at all. when i tour, i am handed several CDs a show. multiply that by an 8 week tour and i return home with a bag of shit.
a lot fo it i deal with on tour. i can tell form the death-metal artwork and the band titles like "cleopatra's tears" that i am not going to dig the club promoter's girlfriend's sister's band.
in such cases, i do what we call "flinging frock".
you take said CD and with a great amount of relish you say "FLING" and you jettison the Item in whatever direction you wish. the Item usually does not survive the journey to where ver your Fling takes it.
but before i start sounding like an asshole, i keep about 85% of what i get, because most of it usually looks interesting. and i want to hear it.
so it comes home with me and joins The Mountain Of Items In My Apartment.

when listening to Frock at home, i listen to the first 15 seconds of the disc, and if i like it, i listen to the whole first track. if i like that, i listen to the rest of the disc and look for the and online. if i dont, i Fling.
i often unearth frock from three years ago and love it and get online only to find that the band became defunct two years ago. thats always depressing.
if i really, really, really like it i will email the band if they've included a contact or i'll message them through their website.

while i do this, i clean the bathroom and do laundry and throw away clothes.
somehow i manage to accumulate a ton of clothes on tour.....they get given to me. i can't throw them away.
so they join the Mountain.
for some reason, i can let go of something psychologically if it's been rotting in my apartment for 6 months. my brain goes: ok....you gave it a shot. but you've never touched it. Fling.

i still have dresses i bought six years ago that i am convinced are awesome in theory but i've NEVER worn them.
but i cant throw them away. this is an awful, and may i submit possibly very american, dilemma. i have a love affair with My Shit.
I did well this week, I am proud.

i have found that the only way i can get rid of my Shit is to give it to other people, thus making me think that my potentially-valuable-Shit might have second life with someone who love this Shit as much as i did.
i was really psyched when brians' little sister maia came on the scene because i started unloading all of my unwanted clothes on her. she was psyched at first.

ANYWAY.
to this end, i began a fantasy and started a huge box on my kitchen floor into which i started purging & Flinging every weird-ass THING and otherwise unusable and semi--but-not-totally-sentimental tchotchke i own.
in my fantasy, i am going to send every one of these Things Away in the mail, along with a CD of Frock to anyone who sends me an empty self-addressed envelope. i'm still waiting to hear back from my management
about whether they are willing to aid me in the organization of such a task (if i had the envelopes sent here, the mailman would fire me). more on this later.

while i do this, i drink tea.
i collect tea and infusions, and find that brewing cup after cup while working at home is soothing.

while i do this, i look for pens i can throw away. i mange to accumulate ballpoint pens. where do they all come from? hotels? i hate them.

i had five bottles of carmex. i buy carmex in winter in drugstores in the midwest when i have no carmex when my lips are chapped. i consolidated them into two jars.
why do i have so many teaspoons and yet so few forks? when did this happen?
i had three jars of cinnamon.i threw one away.
i had 7 corkscrews. i threw 4 away. 3 were technically sentimental.
i had two staplers. why? i took care of this problem.
there are big questions at work here. why do i need more than one thing of each thing? why didn't i just reject that second stapler when it appeared in my life?
i don't know, but i understand that past person who said : "yes!!! that second stapler may indeed be very necessary!"

life is uncertain.

i am going to write a spiritual sequel to the I Ching called the I Fling.

i threw away my VHS collection. lucky for my green-mind, i found this lovely site: www.greendisk.com. they take technotrash.
i had over 100 VHS tapes leftover from the 80s, mostly 3-to-a-tape movies on EP speed from cinemax and showtime, channels which - by some fateful coincidence - my family got free in the mid-eighties due to a mistake at our cable company.
though it was difficult to part ways with revenge of the nerds, fatal attraction, spies are us, romancing the stone, dangerous liasons, the flamingo kids and trading places, i did it.
plus, i re-bought dangerous liasons on DVD last year.

i read a book about frank sinatra. it was great.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Sinatra-Matters-Pete-Hamill/dp/0316347965

at night, at around 3 or 4 am, i take a bath if i am feeling ambitious. then i go to bed. in fact, i am going to go run a bath right now.
when i go to bed, i bring my mac with me and watch twin peaks. i am almost done with the second season.

i go on occasional walks to obtain food.
i am sometimes accompanied on these walks by loved ones.
i communicate via blackberry. these meals are enjoyable. i enjoy them more than usual

i've spent three afternoons and evenings so far at brian's house, sorting through endless photos to make selections for the new songbook.
brian's house is already very clean. brian has No Mountain, he's not the type.
we spend half the time working and half the time eating foods and making each other laugh.

i do not play the piano. i did vacuum the piano yesterday. the idea of playing it is Not Attractive. i don't feel guilty.

i agreed today to give my very first piano lesson. to a random Boston University student, who emailed the band, in april.
i don't know why i said yes this time. people have been asking me if i'll give lessons for years. i just felt like it.

i cleaned under the bathtub. i havent hit the bedroom yet. the bedroom is where the Letters are. the Letters and the Photos and the Songs.
thats very frightening territory.

i am supposed to be writing the text for the new songbook, i am procrastinating.

i threw away kitchen utensils that i have always had and never used, but that looked cool. like the tongs. and the big antique poundy wooden smasher. how could i throw that away?
it was hard.

i have gotten out a few times. i went down the street the other night with a friend to a night students' music pieces at jordan hall.
very experimental shit, the night was titles "notes on the theater of cruelty" and was based on artaud. i expected it to be awful but it was, for totally avant-improv shit, awesome.
the students made frequent use of the audience space (often you'd be surprised by a student next to you in a chair busting out a sax or muttering found text as part of a piece).
one student played cello upside-down. while i was there i was inspired to jot down the entire running order and events of my touring show in the fall.
it's going to be fucking amazing. i left inspired and excited. thought-based live art will do that to you. bad rock show in bad bars will not. i should go out more to Good Things.
......

on the Uggs.
jesus, people. hit a nerve, eh?
and the CROCS. such dramatic feelings! it gave an an interesting insight into the demographic here. you australians couldn't help it.

spinewillsnap said...
RE:Ugg boots...ugg.

That actually reminds me...a couple of friends drove me out to a mall so i could raid the hot topic there and buy a david bowie shirt, but as payment i had to go to abercrombie, a&f, american eagle, hollister, etc. with them.

it got to the point where i was so sick of the smell, the lights, the music, that i sat in front of a potted plant and began to meditate.

i love you. sit on.

elise said...
blogging at 1:19 in the morning? You MUST have a lot of time on your hands. Make sure to enjoy it while you can, although I do miss your singing. Hell, maybe your true calling was blogging...

a truer word was never spoken. i sometimes wonder if i will ever be inspired to write music again now that i have found this handy and direct vehicle.

the deviant tart said...
god i hate today's fashions. the best is when they have faux-fur on the top of those boots, and wear their pants tucked into them. it looks like they are trying to pretend they are on some sort of ski trip. Now, am i correct in assuming that the sweatpants of which you speak are the variety with words written on the ass? because i have noticed that the people who are most likely to wear those are the people who least need to draw attention to their ass!

pope, who was raised in manhattan, once told me that baggy pants were the OPPOSITE of cool if you were truly bad-ass in new york growing up, because you CANNOT RUN FAST IN PANTS LIKE THAT IF THE COPS ARE CHASING YOU. take that as you will.

altho, further to madonna/feminism/allthatjazz, someone the othr day proposed to me that they were the "ultimate feminist shoe"; comfy and unconcerned about their appearance. i think this is wrong, but i did stop to consider it. thoughts, o muted singer?

Posted by Ben on Friday, March 07, 2008 at 7:11 AM

ahHA! i think you're onto something here. it seems that BOTH footwear and madonna have stumbled into feminism by default.

just want to reply to the guy above who said ugg boots could be considered the ultimate feminist shoe...what the hell are you talkin about?? they may be comfy but i'll tell you this they give no protection whatsoever, my doc boots would stamp them out good and proper and they on the other hand represent feminism more accurately than those mushy things...doc martins depict the strength that feminism stands for and are not to be messed with...

also i know for a fact that 99% of the girls who wear uggs have never even heard of feminism..
get well soon amanda:)
although it is good when u cant speak,you start to see the world from a different perspective:)

Posted by Lorraine on Friday, March 07, 2008 at 7:31 AM

oh shit lorraine. you are actually correct. they may be comfortable but they probably provide zero arch support, and obviously no protection from actual riot grrls wearing steel-toed boots in the pit. fuck my theory.

I'm the 1% that totally rocks my 3 different pairs of Ugg boots & is a huge feminist.

What can I say... they are perfect in the snow - even though they are ugly!

Posted by milkshake & honey on Friday, March 07, 2008 at 9:02 AM

and the last word is spoken.

crocs.

my clogs.

these sheepskin boots (evidently some yanky asshole put a world patent on the word Ugg) are best viewed with naked silky smooth pegs of shapely design reaching high to an angulated gap factor, clad in scottish tweed, etc

Posted by glenn on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 at 3:58 AM

of course, glenn, you would say something like this. fucker. i'm siccing madonna on you.

have you ever watched "the piano" ?

the main character is mute. its a fucking good movie.

random question: do you ever have trouble deciding how you are going to paint your eyebrows on that day in the morning? i imagine it would be like deciding what to wear. i mean, you can express a surprising amount of emotion through the eyebrows. confusion. anger. surprise. cynicism. anxiety. quizzical. its all there man. i know these things because i am one of those people who stands in front of the mirror sometimes and makes different shapes with the eyebrows. its a good procrastination mechanism. i feel that i somehow am accomplishing something because when somebody asks me why i didnt do it, i know i will have a GREAT facial expression, eyebrows and all, to explain why im a lazy ass.

but seriously, watch the piano.

Posted by George. on Friday, March 07, 2008 at 8:17 AM

amazing film, one of my favorites. re: the eyebrows, it's a very short moment of the day. i consider it at least a .0001% moment of the day that must involve some creativity. it's sort of an Art-Drill. one must alwats be armed with a liquid eyeliner, which is against my lo-maintenance state of being. however, life is full of paradox. dig.

hey amanda,
being an avid finger-picker myself, i was wondering if you still had the habit, and if you don't, how did you stop because i really think i should but i just can't do it! i've tried everything but alas, my fingers are still all red and picked apart. every single one of them. it'd be great if you had some advice. see you with the pops. i can't wait(my mom was so impressed haha)!

love,
kk

you know, the finger-picking is like a stress-indicator. i pick most of the time, but really badly (like, to the point of bleeding) when i'm super-stressed - then i know things are Not Good Around Here.
it's like a barometer. when i'm feeling really ambitious, i have found that one thing helps: i get a manicure. with clear nail polish if you're not into the color shit. they scrape every single hangy-thing away. and for about a day, you go to pick and there's nothing there to pick and you are taken aback. it's an eye-opener, at least. do it, the cheap place it town should only cost like fifteen bucks.

dave said...

Amanda,

I'm wondering if you can advise me a bit on keyboards. I'm looking to buy myself my first one - I don't know how to play - yet I intend to stick with it, so I'm not just looking for some $40 beginner's synthesizer off eBay. basically, I want something simple, preferably with the full 88-key range, weighted keys, and a good sound. I'm less concerned with having a million effects and voices and more with just finding a good, solid keyboard to play and record with. I've been looking at the Yamaha S80 and the Kurzweil PC88, which are both reasonably priced on eBay at the moment. my price range is around $600, more or less.
any thoughts on this would be most appreciated.

cheers,

Dav

i love the live sound of the kurzweil but it's a real subjective choice. it depends whether you want built-in speakers. i would assume yes, yamaha makes some good ones. go to the store and test that shit, thats really the best way.

eli said...
uuhh ? what drugs were u on ?:P

or was it something else ?

funny video but prefer the Nine Inch Nails Downward Spiral Spiral project ..gues you know it ?

love from the Netherlands

2:54 AM

you know, someone from the netherlands WOULD ask that. trent had more budget and it was 3 am, ok? don't knock it, fella. fuck it

This is absolutely ridiculous.
And you know, it's silly that I'm bitching about this, because, I honestly don't give a fuck about what people wear. They do what they want, I do what I want. It's something I've striven for most of my life, as for most of high school I thought I was the biggest riot grrrl in the world and wore bondage pants from Hot Topic and band t shirts etc. RED AND BLACK allll the time. And I was constantly made fun of. I just wanted to be left alone. But at the same time, I remember one day...I was out of clothes, and one of the only shirts I had left was A&F or American Eagle or something like that. I liked the design, but it had the brand name on the front--something that, to this day, I still argh over. In any case, I covered the shit out of this shirt with duct tape (my own personal Jesus) and wrote Anticrombie and shit like that all over it. Man, I thought I was so badass.

Posted by Persona non grata. on Friday, March 07, 2008 at 1:57 PM

oh man, that opened up a floodgate of memories for me. i remember the whole year of 1989 when i would only buy black items of clothing. ocassionally polkadots and paisley and floral (somewhat random, doens't it seem? nay. i was following my idol, robert smith). i also got in the habit of rocking hospital gowns over long-johns and boxers (yes, with requisite doc martens. blue ones). i thought i was The Shit. i had all of these leftover clothes that were black.... but brand-name. so i went to town, ripping off all logos and brand-names with a vicious fervor, using scissors, bleach and sharpie.

it was the opposite extreme. and it was so sudden. it literally happened overnight, i remember it....i was getting ready for school the night before eigth grade started and i happened upon the combination of black jeans and black shirt and looked in the mirror. and i thought: that's it. this is me for a while. fuck all these people. fuck those other people at school. fuck my family. fuck my sister. fuck the mall. fuck the tv. weird. but probably not that weird. i went from trying to get in with the popular kids to wanting to torch them in 15 minutes. it was as close to a full epiphany as i;ve ever had in my life.

I have a question, totally non-UGG (stands for UGLY) and non-surgery related. A friend of mine and I were wondering if you and/or Brian had any "formal" training in performing? Such as acting classes, piano lessons, voice lessons, and the like. Experience counts as training.

Posted by Kellsj on Friday, March 07, 2008 at 7:05 PM

well, depends how you define formal. i was way into the drama shit in high school, and i had a genius director, who i still work with to this day. but i never acting school. by the same token, i was in a jazz improv band diuring school hours at high school because he has a kick-ass department, and i took some lessons on the side. but i was never very serious about practicing. i spent a lot of time alone, improvising and playing, but not a lot of time practicing. i still have practicing. i've been at home for over two weeks now and haven't wanted to play the piano once, that should tell you something. you said "experience counts as training". i couldnt' agree with you more, if you're passionalte about your experience. if you really want to be in a rock band and you already know what you want to do and play, fuck school. it might only defer your experience.

as for voice lessons, i've been taking lessons from a vocal coach occasionally since i started touring, i felt i had to since i was losing my voice so much. but i havent spent a lot of time on technique.

I work at a mall, and I've noticed that even though we're in the Northeast and even though it is COLD(tm), the big thing to do is wear Ugg(ly) boots with a big huge puffy coat.... and a denim mini skirt. It is as if someone did not tell these girls' vaginas that it is winter. Their upper bodies and feet were informed, but no one told their vaginas. Or their thighs. I can't wrap my head around it. 60% of your body is wrapped up like Nanook of the North, while your waist to knees are on a permanent Hollister-cponsored vacation in South Beach.

I'm so glad I'm in my late 20's and done with the adolescent THIS IS WHAT I MUST LOOK LIKE OR NO ONE WILL LOVE ME! bullshit. Because that is the only overriding logic I can think of to justify all these little girls all thinking that they must dress like this. I want to wrap them all in a blanket.

And PS-- Uggs are ugly no matter what you wear them with. I don't care what anyone says.

Posted by Hell On Heels: Red Hot since '81 on Saturday, March 08, 2008 at 2:41 PM

those poor deaf vaginas.
hallelujah to the end of adolescence. fucking hell.

Oh, and I have a question for the mute.
When organising tours, solo and with Brian, how do you choose the Support Acts? Do they have to come to you, and audition? Like a 'Dresden Doll Suport Act Idol' and get voted off every week?
Just wondering about the process.

xx

Posted by ALICIA. on Saturday, March 08, 2008 at 6:16 PM

oh my god. no, but you just gave me an excellent idea for a reality web tv show. with all of my free time, i shall do this.
honestly, i keep a list. the Frock contributes to this list, and people send me links and tips all the time. sometimes i will see bands. it's always different. i hear about reigna because i was at my old high school helping out with a show and a student was playing her on the stereo in the drama club room. i was like, WHAT IS THAT, I MUST KNOW. i foudn the red paintings because i posted to the forum asking about good aussie support acts, and they wound up following us to the states. faun fables were old friends from when we toured with sleepytime, who brian knew from his old days as a pure fan. devotchka were recommended by a friends we had at management in denver. key ingredient: just be good. people will talk.

Also, after watching the brilliant video, I am fairly sure you need a keytar.
Yours,
Cee

done. i have an omnichord. that's close. i'm also thinking of auctioning off My First Keyboard (a 2 foot casio i got for christmas when i was 9) for Obama. i can't handle looking at it anymore.....and, to be honest, i boight a better-working duplicate of it at a shitty fleamarket in leeds or somewhere godforsaken in the UK when i was there two years ago.

ok i stop.

while Flinging, I was very excited to find this shirt that i bought at dollar-a-pound 3 years ago.
i'd forgotten about it. i never wear it but i figured i might has well immortalize it, because it's awesome.

the downward spiral (a tragedy with a happy ending).

2008-03-11T02:55:00.000-04:00

before i write about days as a mute 4-6, i had to share this video link with you before i forgot. kinda long story, but worth it. i promise.

so, last month i was in seattle with my good friend jason webley to finish producing the first album by the conjoined twin sisters Evelyn and Evelyn Nevel.
one night we had a small show in the studio/performance space owned by my fine pals in Estradasphere, who live, play and record there (jason and i also
spent a few nights crashing there...waking up in total darkness as the space has no natural light. and no heat. but that aside the place is RAD.)

anyway, there was very little space to fit people, only about 100 spots, so the tickets sold out almost overnight.
i felt really badly about this, because by the time i got my ass in gear to send out via myspace and to the e-blasting list,

(- break: i love this. brian just called me to tell me he was coming over and i answered his questions using only a shoe and a tambourine -)

most of the tickets had sold out. the show was a week or so away.
so i talked to jason and said: lets do a ticket giveaway contest! involving imaginative portraits of the twins since nobody's met them yet! he was like: yar.
we would give away 5 pairs of two tickets and one lonely ticket for a total of 11.

so i sent out a huge email blast, which i'm sure many of you got, asking for "pictorial representations" of the twins.
i suggested, with my typically winning sense of humor, that the pictures could be related in any medium: watercolor, crayon, acrylic, gingerbread, scarification, etc.
except i made a typo, and somehow the email went out just asking for "pictorial representations", without specifying OF WHAT.

jason and i were together in seattle by this point, working hard with the twins on the record every day.
the pictures started to come in, and jason was checking the account. and something was Very Wrong.

the first picture that came in was a complicated painting of two squids (not conjoined), one small one and one large, and some other sea life.
the second painting that came in was giant letter E floating in space.
and so on.
none of these pictures looked AT ALL like the twins and we were wondering if we were on crack.
then the most frightening entry came in. jason broke the news to me.
somebody had sent in a very fresh looking photograph of their shoulder, covered in deep spiral-shaped wound about 6 inches wide, cut into their flesh
about a half centimeter deep with a scalpel. wow. i said. that's heavy.
i had forgotten at this point, i should point out, about my scarification joke. so it did not bother me too much

things were getting weird and the art was getting less and less twin-looking. then we went back and checked the mailing and caught my mistake.
and i re-read my suggestions for mediums.
jason showed me the photo of the contestant's freshly-sliced open shoulder.
that night i told jason: "that's it. i'm going to hell".

i sent an email quickly to the list clarifying the deal, but blood was on my hands.

we gave scar-boy the lonely winning ticket.
here are the winning entries & some runners-up (not including the scalpel one, because it might make you faint):

-ursula rose

-dixie

-theresa

-beth and nicole

-lisa

-amanda

-sam

-miss oblivious

-david

-emily (also, fyi, the artist of the "letter e" drawing. she re-entered and won :)

the show was excellent. we met all of the art-makers and saw all of the art first-hand and were really very happy.
we saw scar-boy and his healing scar first-hand (who had a name now: jes) and the twins were good but really nervous (it was their first public appearance EVER, so they were freaked out but honestly they did great, considering, they kept laughing for reasons nobody could understand...there's a good clip being put together of one of the new songs they played, we're going to post to youtube soon, i promise and will inform you when this takes place.)

this story did have a point.
this is the point.
after the show, jason did this thing he's been doing where anyone who wants can stay after the show and write a song with him, including an impromptu filming of song to be posted to youtube.
he's done some really excellent once in all different places lately (i recommend "frozen smiles of indonesia").

so it was REALLY late, about 1 am already, when this process was started

we found out, by the way, that jes's scar was NOT made expressly for the purpose of the contest.
which made me REALLY happy on top of our already excellent night because now i wasn't going to hell.

i ate some soup and was just going to WATCH the song-making promise but i'm a songwriter and a bigmouth so of course that did not happen.

about 15 people stuck around to write the song. we sat in circle and jason played guitar and then tim and (other) jason from estradaspehre joined in on bass and electric guitar.
we tried for a while to come up with a topic for the song, and we started talking about weird shit that had happened to us that week. we wrote the song in about 45 minutes and practiced it a few times.
by then it was 3 am.

and well....i'll let you see the results for yourself.
we did some slap-dash choreography as well. jason put his macbook on a chair and that was our camera.
i should point out that jason and i both missed our true callings as junior-high school drama teachers.
i should also point out that for the dramatic purposes of the song, jason embodies my pain.
i guess i don't need to tell you which one jes is.

ok, ok, enough, here it is ladies and gentleman:
"The Downward Spiral"
(or as i call it in my head: "I Am Going To Hell For Sending a Terrible Email to The Dresden Dolls Mailing List"):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fHDe4_wxkI&feature=related

love
a

p.s. i am addicted to being silent and don't want to go back.

days 2-3 as a mute

2008-03-07T04:19:00.001-05:00

life here at my parents house has become a wonderful blur.
i'm pretending that i don't have any work to do, artwork to make, business to deal with or email to answer and that watching the entire two seasons of twin peaks is actually an important, nay, CRITICAL thing to accomplish.
i'm getting there.

i have been going for silent walks with my loved ones.

today i went for a walk and i cut through lexington center.
i love lexington center. this is where i grew up and shoplifted as a youth!
the skateboarders in back of the bank, etc.
except the skateboarders have been permanently banned from behind the bank. they're supposed to skate in an ACTUAL skate-park that the town BUILT using thousands of town tax dollars.
i don't understand.
don't they get that building a skate-park for frustrated teenage boys - who want to very purposefully skate their angst away in public parking lots - is dead wrong, it's like the worst kind of insult?
it's remind me of bansky's wonderful stencil.

anyway, it was a half-day (thursday, school lets out at noon) and there were millions and millions of tadpole-like middle-school kids all sprouting around, being all high on sugar and cellular technology and generally terrorizing main street with their deafening cries.

i listened to a few of their ramblings and shoutings as i passed by their groups. it was insane, they're all talking incessantly about shopping, money and brand names. and they're, like, 11.

however, i think i remember this being the age when i was at peak insecurity. that was the era of swatches, guess jeans, benneton, forenza and whatever the fuck else and NOTHING ELSE FUCKING MATTERED.
if my OUTFIT DID NOT LOOK GOOD AND I DID NOT HAVE COOL SHOES, I WOULD DIE. i really, truly, clearly remember the feeling. it was a strong sense of purpose, to shop (or shoplift, in my case) for the desired items in question was a kind of be-all-end-all of existence. seriously. those years were hell.

all of the junior high school girls were wearing jeans, bling t-shirts and Ugg boots. they look like this.

i have to talk about this, it;s been bugging me for a few years, since i noticed (at airports is where i mostly pick up on what's trendy, since there are always high-fashion chicks in line at security, and you can stare at them).

what is up with this shit? is it just me, or has fashion recently gotten ACTUALLY UGLY? legit ugly?
i think people felt this way in 70s - those with common sense were like: I aint' putting that shit on my body. go away with your bell-bottoms and shag hairpiece.

i think it's happening again. the big sunglasses, the ugg boots, the flared jeans, the velour matching sweatpants.
it seems like a cruel joke on the part of some fashion-designer-in-the-sky who wanted to see how far he/she/it could take this joke.

can we agree....

...that these are bland bedroom slippers, staple-gunned at the bottom for reinforcement?
i googled. they cost about $150. i don't know. i feel crazy. whats going on???????
it really feels like someone is laughing. i will not waste any more time on this topic.

on that note:

from comments:
How about lip-gloss and overall at the same time? Posted by Psychodelicategirl on Wednesday, March 05, 2008 at 10:41 PM

Totally.

how about lip-gloss and nothing but these hideous things:?

,.....................

so a man staggered toward me a few nights ago downtown, looked at me and said, "excuse me, am i going the right way?" I looked in his eyes for a second and quickly answered, "yes, you are." he thanked me and continued to walk...
these kinda things really make you wonder... where are we going?
ps. i absolutely love that you exist. Posted by LYNZ on Wednesday, March 05, 2008 at 10:57 PM

i, in turn, love that you exist. where are we going? to lexington center, of course!, for absolution in the blood of the middle-schoolers.

........................

For live use the Shure Beta 87 is highly recommended to allow better clarity at lower volume.
It's a condenser with a 10 kHz boost and a sloped low cut filter for reduced popping of P's and B's.
A multi band compressor such as the Drawmer S3 may also allow you to preserve your health while still giving the audience everything.

I love you for what you are.
Eric Posted by Magnolia Studios on Wednesday, March 05, 2008 at 11:18 PM

yes, yes. yes. this is the microphone i use, wise man. i recommend. one of these days i need to do a tech/geek blog about all that shit.

...........................

i have a sort of serious question,
did your insurance cover the operation.... is there like a group plan for rock stars?.. do rock stars have insurance?
just a thought, Posted by The Debutante Massacre on Thursday, March 06, 2008 at 2:33 AM

thank you for asking. insurance is a fucking joke in this country, as we know. the answer is: no, virginia...rock stars do not have insurance. once my rock band got to be big and huge enough and we felt we could afford it, we turned into a business, employing me and brian the drummer as. we then bought a group plan to the tune of several hundred dollars a month per person. and no, my insurance did not cover the whole operation. i paid for it with a credit card and will have to submit the bill to the insurance company and pray to god i get paid back. the insurance did, however, cover the hospital costs. but not the surgeon. i am glad you asked this, because a friend of mine named jasmine just started a great organization called "rock for health" and they address exactly the "why do no musicians have insurance" issue. go visit, learn, and give them money and energy if you can, and from the look of their site they're going to be at sxsw in austin next week, so if you're there, give them a hug: http://www.myspace.com/rockforhealth

....................................................

i can empathize. i got my tonsils removed last year. it was not a jolly week. but you're doing pretty damn well, i see.
now this is something i thought you of all people could figure out. i have to kick arse at a symposium organized by my university (where nepotism is the thing i struggle with on a daily basis). the theme is "cultures in transit". please suggest a topic! i've picked my brain for 48h and still haven't find the right one. just scribble anything that pops up in your head. something that can throw those bastards out of their chairs.
Much love,
Soso Posted bySoso on Thursday, March 06, 2008 at 10:03 AM

"The Impact of Environmentalism and Post-modernism on Pre-teen Footwear"

......................................................

david said...

SSSSHHHHHH! Day #3. Have you spoken yet?

funny you should ask. i fucked up the other night. brian was over to watch the family movie and i totally forgot i was supposed to not speak. the movie ended and i poked my mother in the foot to see if she was still with the living. she didn't move. i turned to brian and said "she's out like a light". but it sounded more like "sheheheh uout likekekliggh". i realized i'd fucked up before the end of the sentence and we all agreed to pretend it hadn't happened, all exepct my mother, of course, who continued to be out like a light.

.........................................................

i'm really tired.

.........................................................

these boots would make an excellent album cover

............................................................

one last word on madonna?

.........................................................
andy pants said...

Re:Madonna
Is someone being 'in complete control of their own life' really something to idolize?
I like to think I have some control over my own life. But that I also give some control to the significant people within it. The people that I feel matter.
Isn't to be completely independent ultimately to be completely alone? Isn't that alienating?....

oh god, this is the lonely at the top discussion i have been wanting to avoid for years. but really. i think you've hit another nail on the head with madonna and the feminism issue here. BEING IN COMPLETE CONTROL does not mean that you are a powerful woman, or person. it reads like a sign of weakness, of non-humanness. when madonna defended herself however-many-years-ago re: the "express yourself" video by saying "but I CHOSE to TIE MYSELF UP! NOT SOMEBODY ELSE! I'M THE ONE IN CONTROL HERE!" it just sounds so fucking terrible. this is not what i want to look up to. i am spending a lot of time harshing on madonna here, but the points being brought up are valid. i love her, love tons of her music and have been shaped by her to god knows what extent. huge. but i don't think of her as a powerful role model, not in the THATS-the-way-to-do it way i crave. she seems to be trying too hard to truly BE in control: a lady-doth-protesteth too much situation. in fact, thats the thing that makes me crack when i see it, that makes me not buy it. when i see a woman with a hard, fuck-you-i'm-in-control-here exterior, it's just as much of a turn-off as when i see it in a man. i don't want to see ANYBODY like that. it's a cartoon and i don't believe in it, because i TRULY BELIEVE THAT NOBODY AROUND HERE REALLY KNOWS WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!! if you're acting as if you do, you're LYING. that includes you, madge.

thats all i have to say from tonight's mute pedestal

UGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG. UGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG.

goodnight

love

a

day #1 as a mute

2008-03-05T16:39:00.000-05:00

so, the voice surgery was brilliant.

i'm already bored of being a mute.

but i like it, kinda.

brian the sweetheart picked me up at my house at 5:25 am and i got to the hospital by 6 am.

i spent an interesting time in the pre-operative room, curtained off and listening to all the hospital sounds.

man, hospitals are fucking surreal. every time i'm in one i imagine what it's like to work there day in and out.

no sun, on your feet all day and with sick and crazed and dying folks around you. crazed.

by 8 am i was seeing my surgeon in the OR getting shot up with general anesthesia and the surgery lasted over 2 hours, way longer than expected since he found all sorts of juicy new scar tissue to shave away. waking up was the worst part...i was back in the room of madness and a million pre- and post-op humans and the nurses running everywhere and i hadn't been given any pain medication. it felt like someone had roto-rootered my throat, i had to keep a steam mask over my face, and it hurt like hell just to breathe. then things got better, my mum came to pick me up, and they gave me a cup of liquid percocet. that was yummy.

i was out by noon. i left via wheelchair and came back to my folks house for convalescence.

i had some sort of bizarre vision in my head that i wouldn't be able to work or email for a few days but it's actually all i want to do right now since i have no other means of communication. and i'm treating this like a mini-vacation, so the internet actually becomes a fun tool (finally watching the cowbell video! i'd never seen it! wikapedia-ing jodie foster! all the things i am always too guilty to do because it will NOT HELP! i do also have a back-up pile of about 700+ emails. for real)

i have eaten two pints of dolce de leche ice cream.i have zoned out to several episodes of twin peaks (true brilliance).

my sister came over and the whole clan gathered at the family television for a screening of silence of the lambs. i think it's my 6th time.

damn, man. i think it might be the best film ever made. this time i watched the entire documentary as well. simply amazing. i would kill to work with people like that. so fucking smart.

and jodie foster. i mean, before we start getting started on madonna again. i'd just like to say the name jodie foster about 36 times. she is the other side. if you haven't seen her in hotel new hampshire, see it. then read it.

damn private life she's got. she and pj harvey should move in together.

i didn't know that my favorite image (hannibal's bloody artwork: the cop's corpse stretched across the cage and all lit up with stage lighting) was inspired by the paintings of francis bacon.

this being an internet holiday, i got to go on a little google image journey and find out more about him, i'd only heard the name. quite incredible

i loved this photo-of-art, something ominous about it. featuring a francis bacon triptych.

and i was reminded that i keep meaning to turn my favorite painting by max beckman ("the actors") into a stage design somehow...

i might need a bunch of very patient volunteers. or do it all cut-out sgt. peppers style:

my mind is starting to slowly turn to All Things Artwork...i can tell. i'm looking at everything greedily and visually.

things start to happen. This Painting Would Make a Great Album Cover. This Color Would Make a Great Album Cover.

My Cat Would Make a Great Album Cover. Your Mom Would Make a Great Album Cover. etc.

the mind wanders.

i am wandering around waving my hands when needed, getting more and more constant reminders that 94% of what we say is useless anyway,and finding that typing on large sticky notes on my laptop is 400% faster than handwriting.

i heard that blackberries for communication are big in the deaf/mute community.
..............................................

if you were living under a rock, by the way, brian plays drums on some tracks of the new NIN record.

go to the NIN site to download: nin.com

i'm so proud of him i can't tell you. he is a force of nature.

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from comments:
............................

lots of folks posted about a pull-out yoga section for the book. that could be so creative and yet is totally anathema to the coffee-table vibe i was going for.maybe i need yet another book project. thanks. fuck. better: live yoga classes from my mac in different club parking lots and theater broom closets across the world.
......................

....also, i think you should jsut start an advice column. you are so good at answering all those little questions that sound trivial but really are more important than you would think. "which headphones to trust", "what type of yoga is for you?", "the best kinds of chai", "there is a bitchin´ cafe near you!"
well at least you know if your nodule surgery goes nuts, you have an occupation to fall back on. not that im putting bad zen on the surgery. *good vibes good vibes, zen zen* thats better.

so my question: have you ever been to munich, and if so, do you know any great cafes?
i just arrived in munich, im staying for a year, and to know where the best cafes are would be a valuable piece of information indeed.

Posted by George. on Tuesday, March 04, 2008 at 12:45 PM

you know, i always fantasized about having an advice column in teen people. or jane. or a place where totally deluded young 12 year old suburban girls might actually benefit. then i realized these people would never hire me to write in their magazines. so i gave up my dream. but this is fine, isn't it. you should come to a solo show. i often pull out my "ask amanda" routine (i leave a box at the merch table) and it's usually ridiculously fun. people do ask the stupidest questions though. i would need someone around to edit all of the "where do u get the ideas 4 your songs" out.

re: munich: don't know any hott places but i lived an hour from there in regensburg. go there for a weekend or i'll kill you. get a drink at the banane and go to the goldene ente beer garden (i worked there) when it's nice out.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

bobbing_for_applesx said...
I ordered the companion book (what? two years ago?) and I remeber my mom finding it and ripping out all of the pictures(which was the primary reason WHY I bought it in the first place...)

She thought it was straight-up porn. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. I think it's funny, though, she left the very last picture. the one that mimics yoko ono and john lennon.

was it a statement about what nude art really is? or did she just forget to tear it out?

4:39 PM

can i tell you how happy i am to hear that?

..........................................

malte said...
Good luck for surgery. I'd say your voice is still perfect for the things you do, so I demand at least a perfect queen of the night aria after the wounds healed ;)

Following this thought... What about a Mozart-/Haydn-/I-dont-know-all their-names- cover. Piano and drums should do a good job for some of those classical pieces, dont they?

5:13 PM

i have actually been thinking about that pretty hard. i am a classical hack, but i might be able to come up with something.
it would be great to play classical shiznit while even more interesting and parallel shiznit happens on or off stage.murder?

............................................................
to pick up the madonna thread
......................................................

proph said...You ranted beautifully on Madonna putting her vulva out there. I think the critical part of this process is not to allow our clothing, our faces, our packaging to define us. It's like a canvas we can paint a mood on, but what is inside should remain untouched by what we put on the exterior. Too much insecurity and self loathing come from body issues and beauty issues. We will be lucky to grow old and unattractive. Your sexuality is something so deeply internal, so connected to you inside and out, emotions, tactile sensations, mental bullshit. Sex and sexiness open up such a door to the inner person. To me it's as much an energy as an invasive "thing" I can get so hung up on. No matter which, the perceptions of others, they should not apply to us sexually. no part of this body or soul belongs to another, to know, or label, categorize or throw away. They may form their perceptions, but I'll not have them foisted on me. What should I be today? A slut? A frigid bitch, a tease? Maybe just be what I feel and make sure those labels peel off easily and don't take too much skin off with them.

1:12 PM

you took word out of mouth, friend from earth. so agreed.

.............................................

I hate Britney and Madonna. Yuck. They're just attention whores. Don't even talk about them. I don't think there's any mystery--they just know what'll make people talk about them, and that's explains the unexplainable. (Posted by The Little Natasha In Outer-space on Sunday, March 02, 2008 at 10:59 AM

i disagree. i think the phenomenon is a great mystery indeed. it keeps unraveling and unravelling into endless halls of mirrors about culture and humanity.....................
Haven't thought about the Madonna book in years. .... I was working at a record store (that still sold records) at the time it came out. One of my friends came in a purchased the book and opened it right away. We browsed through... other than the visceral response of "getting to see a famous person intimately" we were both unimpressed. (I *was* disturbed that some boy-holes had been airbrushed out. eep! And by her questionable taste in Ice. Ice-T would've been hawt.).... My friend, he just looked at me and said "Sister, this wouldn't even qualify as risque on a *Wednesday night Green Bay*! (Posted by Sepiachord on Sunday, March 02, 2008 at 11:00 AM)

this seems to be the general consensus as i was mentioning it, and as i left it on my table at the weekend house festivities. there are pictures, brian and i had a mini0brecht party for a german TV crew. will post.

.............

yorksdevil said...
I can't be alone in finding Bjork sexier than Madonna, surely.

11:50 AM

you are so not alone.
...............................

i feel like such an amateur feminist. some women at smith and stanford and wellesly spend their lives dissecting this shit.

or you could just ignore it, make choices, and live...period. ha.

someone sent in the camille paglia shit i was looking for. her book, sexual personae, btw, is awesome. read it for the insight. just to know.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE1DC123AF937A25751C1A966958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
(Posted by Musings on Saturday, March 01, 2008 at 9:11 PM)

"Madonna is the true feminist. She exposes the puritanism and suffocating ideology of American feminism, which is stuck in an adolescent whining mode.Madonna has taught young women to be fully female and sexual while still exercising total control over their lives. She shows girls how to be attractive, sensual, energetic, ambitious, aggressive and funny -- all at the same time.

Contemporary American feminism, which began by rejecting Freud because of his alleged sexism, has shut itself off from his ideas of ambiguity, contradiction, conflict, ambivalence. Its simplistic psychology is illustrated by the new cliche of the date-rape furor:" 'No' always means 'no'. " Will we ever graduate from the Girl Scouts? "No" has always been, and always will be, part of the dangerous, alluring courtship ritual of sex and seduction, observable even in the animal kingdom.

Madonna has a far profounder vision of sex than do the feminists. She sees both the animality and the artifice. Changing her costume style and hair color virtually every month, Madonna embodies the eternal values of beauty and pleasure. Feminism says, "No more masks."Madonna says we are nothing but masks.

Through her enormous impact on young women around the world, Madonna is the future of feminism."

ok. i agree with the date-rape overkill. lets not go backwards. let's not forget that sex is fun, a game, a power struggle of lust. but...

hang on there. if madonna is the true future of feminism, i think we might be fucked. i don't think madonna SET out to have us calling this shit. madonna wanted to be a star, the world was ready, it all worked.

camille. c'mon. this is where all my itchiness about madge comes in. ALL I SEE IS THE MASK. i don't see the woman underneath. THATS what makes me care with other artists, to want to care, to feel like the mask has real humor, real gravity. who's putting on the mask in the morning? when do i get to see HER????

so, camille:

Feminism says, "No more masks." Madonna says we are nothing but masks. Amanda says You Choose, Ladies: mask today, naked tomorrow, lip-gloss today, overalls tomorrow. fuck 'em if they can't handle you either way.

love

AFP

The Virginia Monologues: madonna, sex and seattle.

2008-03-01T22:17:00.000-05:00

2/13/07.

on the plane from boston to LA.
i just read a long spread about britney spears ("an american tragedy") in rolling stone magazine. dammit, man. i feel terrible for her, poor baby. never got a shot to be human.
however, all the bullshit surrounding this chick is so indicative of EVERYTHING THATS WRONG AROUND HERE.

however again, fuck me. i bought the magazine. i always do, i allow myself at least 2 magazines of my choice per plane trip. i gave up my "teen people" phase two years ago. it got boring.

i looked out the window and wondered.

when i find myself sucked into reading this sort of trash/trainwreck stuff i always think i'm doing it as cultural research. following the movements of the masses, reading with my heavy media filter and bullshit detector, always trying to find the story behind the story behind the story behind the story our our cultural downward spiral.

but come on. i could just as well be sitting at the airport gate reading proust or hegel. i could!!!!!!!! i don't.
what makes me really wonder is how we all seem to approach the celebrity hype ironically, yet we're still there, flipping through the magazines, chatting about the trainwrecks....the most intelligent young people i know. i travel the country tirelessly and we have two things in common everywhere: the local weather and britney spears. village mentality, something to talk about, something to have an opinion about, something to chat mindlessly about with no danger. who is going to blame you for having an opinion about the snow or brit-brit? seriously? harmless. mindless, indicative. here we is.

...............................

What kind of yoga do you recommend? Should I use classes or DVDs, or what? I was actually planning on trying it before all of this happened, but I didn't know where to start.
You are the best. Thanks again.
Love,
Megan

i recommend any kind of yoga that touches on the idea of being present and mindful in the moment. some yoga is treated like aerobics. i would stay away from that kind.
i practice baptiste yoga, also called power vinyasa (i know, it sounds pretty embarrassing). there's a link of affiliate studios here.
bikram is good for people who want an ass-kicking jumpstart. it's not quite as mindfulness-oriented as baptiste but it's decent. there's a list of international studios here.
try going to a few studios until you find a good one. sometimes there's only a couple studios in your area and you have to hunt to find cool teachers. don't give up. they ARE out there.
if you can't find a class in your area, i've heard that there are some great feeds online. just hunt. but it's not the same as being in a class full o people, obviously. try to find someone who might know something about and see if they are willing to teach you. chances are if they're into yoga, they'll be psyched to transmit.
when i travel, i just plug "yoga near xxx" into google maps and look for places that have lots of classes and aren't cheesed out.

...................................

2/29/07

i just got back from seattle.
it was a great, hard-in-the-best-way trip, jason and i worked tirelessly with the conjoined twins Evelyn Evelyn on their debut record....all of the songs are recorded but not mixed.
the record is 100% awesome. what raw talent. it will most likely feature 11 songs and possibly one bonus track.

we worked days and into the nights (and mostly slept at) estradasphere's studio and also held one show there featuring the twins....they were really nervous but they pulled through.
some night we stayed at jason's houseboat, which is approximately 11x11 feet, and i'm not joking. there was room for a bed and a desk and a bookshelf. miraculously, there was cell service and wireless internet.

i spent most mornings at the ballard yoga studio and then jason and i would meet up at mr. spots chai house. we would sit there, plugging away at our email for a few hours and then one of us would say: "well, i guess we should go work on the record." jason made a comment about how we were obvious representatives of the glamorous rock star lifestyle. toiling away at and sucked into our macs. DIY has it's price, and i'm not even DIY. i have a fucking manager, a label, a lawyer, a business manager and publicist and the whole nine yards. the point? work is endless and i communicate and project beyond my means. This Is Not New. it's Life.

we made it away from our macs and our recording project long enough to go see st.vincent play at neumo's one night, she ROCKED as usual....we sang with her on "marry me" and i still recommend if you haven't checked out her last disc, marry me, do yo'self a favor and grab it,. if you're going to coachella, go see her there. she's just amazing live and her record is sublime.

....she's also in boston TONIGHT (3/1) at the middle east, if you get this in time. i'll probably be there, not sure, depends how my day goeses.
.............................

in the recommending department:
baby dee. baby dee. baby dee. she signs and plays the piano and the accordion and the harp and is devastating.
baby dee was first introduced to me a few years ago by sxip, who featured her at one of his variety show sin new york. she is hard to explain, but impossible to miss and totally in her own world.
instead of doing a lot of explaining, i urge you to just go to her myspace or site and listen to just about anything up there.
hymns for the broken. where antony and johnsons meets kurt weill meets bach.
she's on tour with a full band for the next long while....please, please go. it will be an experience you will not forget, so bring a loved one with an open heart and mind and prepare to weep a few times and also laugh your ass off. yes, it's that good. she's playing europe too....dates are up on her page. if you see her, and you probably will since the clubs are small and she hangs out, send her hugs & love and greetings from amanda.

.................

i ordered the infamous 1992 madonna "sex" book while i was on the road. i enjoy ordering books from amazon when i'm on the road and then seeing them waiting patiently for me in yellowy packages on my kitchen table when i come home. i actually ebay-ed it. the best part was when paypal got all effed up and i had to email my business manager's assistant, to help me out with my payment for the madonna sex book, since all of my credit card and check billing goes through their new york office. i was like: IT'S RESEARCH, NOT PORN. truly spoken. (btw: it was $51.00. AMANDA PALMER, YOU HAVE WON,,,,,!).
it's not actually porn. unless you're into...god, who can say what...it's not a turn-on. my business mind can't get off topic. madonna is so madonna.

why research?
i'm trying to mentally put together two books right now: one companion for "yes., virginia" and "no, virginia" and one for my solo record.
when i first got the idea for "the dresden dolls companion", which is the sheet-muisc-lyrics-photo book that came out about a year after our first record, the content seemed obvious. band history, stories of the songs, all of our awesome back-logged photos and artwork that had no home. with these books, i wanted to get away from an obvious formula.

now.
don't start thinking that these books will feature pretentious photos of me and brian fucking each other, fucking goats, fucking lesbians, or fucking ANYTHING for that matter.

i don't know a hell of a lot about madonna. i was certainly as obsessed as the next 12-15-yr old with "like a virgin", "true blue" and "like a prayer". she was not to be defined, i had no opinions other than: she is MADONNA.
she simply exists, is a Rock Star, and that's it. we loved her. we dressed up like her. it was the way things were done, fingerless gloves & crucifxes and all, no argument. it was 1985. them was the rules.

i remember being in high school, actually, probably college when i think about it, far out of my madonna phase and well into coil, nick cave, death in june, current 93, the legendary pink dots and swans. madonna was by then way in the guilty pleasure category along with the thompson twins, the cocktail soundtrack and wham!. i was at a random friend's house and i saw the madonna sex book on his coffee table. i remember thumbing through it and thinking, eh. i remember loving her naked hitchhiking picture,

which is AWESOME, and lots of soft-to-medium-core art-porn...but thinking...good idea, madonna.
but what seriously gives? who is this for? what's the deal? shocking? personal? media whore? demons out? just cause?
c'mon, madge, gimme some truth.

tonight, i opened the book up and flipped through, having not seen it since then (which indeed must have been around 1993 or 1994).

i am Torn, the way i am always Torn about madonna. and not natalie imbgrulia Torn. the other kind.

on the one hand, my inner critic sees the whole thing as so stylized, so manufactured and so calculated that even the raciest photos seem transparent.
madonna kissing two women. madonna getting ass-fingered. madonna whacking off suggestively with a dog. madonna tied up and getting eating out, madonna smoking another cigarette. madonna getting humped by vanilla ice....etc. tons of confessional-down-dirty scribblings, not quite turning me on. would they if i were turn-onable by this stuff? real? fantasy? for you to decide. in my cynicism: it seems like she sat down in a boardroom with the photographer and gave them a checklist of taboos. the insertion of faux-fantasy letters between her (or, as the book would have it, her alter-ego "dita") and a fictional lover just seem....i dunno. bland? i attempt to imagine the impact it must have had at the time. i try to imagine, as i'm sure everyone must have imagined at the time, how madonna's dad reacted to his daughter putting out a book of totally r+ rated naughty fetish (....no penises, lots of boobs and LOTS of baginas.).

on the other hand, somewhere in me is like: YAY! go madonna!!! YAR!!! show your bagina and get all fetishy and leathery and kinky and let us all make what we want out of it for Whatever Reason. why not?
i mean, you must have been paving the way for SOMETHING, loads of shit, who knows, for gad's sake. or if not, at least you pissed off a bunch of critics and sold books and records and probably put soft-to-medium core porn into homes that might not have otherwise had it in the (if perhaps thinly veiled) name of Art. what would camille paglia say?

the sex question is hard. beyond just the obvious: sex and porn are good/healthy/shouldn't be demonized, there's that other question of how you deal with yourself (ok, how I deal with Myself) as a woman in The Market. like it or not, you are out there and your tits must be dealt with. you can play it up like madonna, play it down like fucking, i don't know, ani difranco, or play it sideways like bjork, but they're under there, being assessed in all their glorious absence or flagrant blingy-blang.

this begs the question that rustles around my head and probably the heads of many women, the post-feminist question that haunts us all in the post-sexual-revolution age: women still wield all this sexual power but what do they do with it? to use what, where, to what ends? when to feel guilty and when to feel proud? can you do it without relying on it? can you glam up one night in heels and false eyelashes and go out the next night to the same restaurant with hairy legs, shorts and combat boots and feel the same amount of self-confidence? should you need to? is that where empowerment really lies? does it lie in being able to expose yourself like madge? not need to expose yourself like madge? wtf? camille, help.

i think the thing that consistently disappoints me about madonna is that i want to find out the truth behind the madonna and i never do. i remember watching "truth or dare" about 5 years ago and being totally fascinated by her willingness to live on camera but totally dismayed at the lack of actual truth or dare, lack of humanity. then again, this is coming from me. madonna, to be fair, offers more than what 95% of god-fearing citizens can handle. but on what level? what does this say about me?

here, i pour another glass of elderflower cordial and start to reflect.

why did i order this fucking book anyway? who am i to judge madonna? madonna job is to get us discussing this, right? she's not a pop icon, she's a cultural fulcrum. i said fulcrum!
fuck. i'll never know how much she/it/The Thing shaped me, and how much she shaped girl/rock/culture in general.
i have to leave that one up to camille. it's an endless chicken-egg battle. madonna as pseudo-sociological processing plant.
madonna as post-modern cuisinart.

one difference for sure: the thing that's interesting about these books that i'm about to compile (especially in the case of the virginia companion) is that i'm peddling wares to a pre-existing audience,
i don't plan to cross-over onto the NY times best-seller list or get any press attention or prove to the fetish/alternative/gay/fill-in-the-blank community that i'm down in the trenches with them. it's all me and blank canvas and not much to prove. i am preaching to the choir, writing for an audience that already has (we hope) some connection with me, my band, the songs. so why am i even doing it? here we go.

the only thing i can learn from this situation is what i already know: the closer the note is to it's neighboring string without being perfectly in pitch, the more discordant it sounds. why is anyone doing any of this shit?
i have been reading a bunch of rock biographies in the past few years hoping to either find out my answer, their answer or any answer and the only thing i can come up with is that i'd like to answer my own personal challenge of displaying some kind of truth that's profound but not shock-valuizing, meaningful without being pretentious, self-inspecting without being egotistical, and relatable without being stock and cornball. this is hard.

i don't think about these questions when i go to make a record, not as much.
i have some sort of instinctive song-making auto-pilot that doesn't question WHY. i don't feel that way about blank paper when it comes to book-making.

all this being rambled, any comments on upcoming content are heavily welcome.

i know this much: i have plenty to say about where the songs came from (though those stories are usually short and probably not necessarily exciting), there will be plenty of fan art and unused submissions from the yes, virginia booklet, and there will be lots of bizarre band pictures, studio and non.

we are saving all the naked band pictures (which number in the hundreds by now) for the dresden dolls sex book which will be issued at some point long after this blog has been forgotten so that i do not feel post-modernly self-conscious.

what else can i put in two dimensions? surgery is tuesday, i have plenty of time to sort through the boxes of crap in my bedroom to come up with something interesting.
perhaps i will watercolor. madonna doesn't watercolor. shit, wait, does she? what about that children's book? fuck fuck fuck.

.................................

on that note, here's a clip of me singing a madonna cover song last saturday night in seattle. it's barely recognizable from the original, it's called "i know it" and off her first record.
i arranged it, along with estradasphere, as a big band number because...it just had to be done.

the sound is shite and it cuts off at the end, but it's still kind of awesome. please admire the glue-gun jean-jacket i bought at the goodwill across the street the day before.

http://www.youtube.com/v/y67I5Ga9w2k

............

hey amanda,
i would like to know, do you have a middle name?
(i may or may not want to call my kid after you, in the hopes that they will be excellent at life)

Posted by HANNAH on Sunday, February 17, 2008 at 7:33 PM

i do indeed. it's MacKinnon, my scottish family name.

my alternate middle name is Fucking, which will upset my mother so don't tell her.

love

AFP

p.s. our good friend and genius-director-filmer-putter-togetherer of girl a, coin-operated boy, paradise, and sing, Michael Pope is up for "Best Visual Artist" in the Boston Phoenix "Best 08" poll. Please vote here. Also, feel free to write him in for "Best Filmmaker" here. just to be clear- you need to click the "skip to finish" button and fill in an email address and name for your vote to count. long live the pope!!!!!!!!!!!

this is such a bad idea this is such a bad idea

2008-02-16T21:37:00.000-05:00

ok, i warned you.
here's a set of stills from the scope they did of my vocal vag.
it's in motion. your folds open and close hundreds of times per second to create the vibration that makes sounds, comrades.
so these are stills catching me in action singing different pitches.
rad!

http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k14/Bill_H/amanda/2e6d4283.jpg

they are apparently called "kissing nodes" since they are right across from each other.
your folds are supposed to close completely.
as you can see, mine don't close because those fucking nodes are bumping up against each other. they're in love.

oh, you people. thank you for all the advice and support. it's amazing how many of you have knowledge about this or have had it done - crazy.
everybody's always got shit wrong with them. we is human, we is flawed. thats the story.
speaking of flaws, by the way, i must own a terrible mistake i made in the last post:
vocal CORDS, not vocal chords. kinda beautiful, that mistake. and the two words are obviously etymologically related. cave man music!: strike cord, make chord.

there is a bus advertisement in boston that is DRIVING ME NUTS: it is a wheel of fortune advertisement featuring the sparkly wheel of fortune green-letter board with the text:
THE WHEEL'S ON THE BUS GO ROUND AND ROUND.
so:
how is it THAT NOBODY CAUGHT THAT? like, between all of the people at the ad agency, the printing agency and the bus-ad mounters nobody made a call and was like: THIS IS SO FUCKING GRAMMATICALLY INCORRECT? fuck man. school-children all over boston are going to see that sign. it's like anti-education.
i've said many time that when i die i want all my money to go to this obscure non-profit in england that is devoted to the upholding of the correct usage of the apostrophe. i know, i know. i do not capitalize. shuttup.
on this subject i am reading yet another amazing book by my all-fav-time crush bill bryson called mother tongue: english and how it got that way. fascinating stuff, i recommend. i love bill. he needs his own song. christopher lydon got one.

i go in at the beginning of march and then plan to undergo convalescence at home while i work on the artwork for the solo album.
it's funny, but i don't think of the silence as being that difficult. i notice that when i'm at home working i will go hours and hours days without talking and not notice.
i was thinking about singing myself up for a silent meditation retreat during the two-week perdiod (i've done several of those, and they are wonderful) but then i realized that was just a pussy-ass move on my part to escape the work i need to do. speaking of which, i'm hunting for various designers of high artistic repute to help me with various packaging/website/projects. if anyone knows anyone awesome (and truly professional) comment me with a link. preferably people with high-concept art-love, nothing too corporate or corny.

i was in new york for about 8 days and did nothing but run from one meeting to another. and i'm not exaggerating. except for the day i was hung over. that day i did nothing but suffer.
i stayed in lance's HOT upper-west side apartment (he was in berlin with meow meow) and woke after little sleep every morning to negotiate the subway system and the cab traffic. brian came and joined me for a few days. we were manager hunting.

we're in love with our new record. the working title is "No, Virginia" and unless something wins over that, we're sticking with it. brian and i have been spending hours poring over old photos for the album artwork.
i'm also working hard on a songbook to accompany the record with ALL the sheet music for yes, virginia and no, virginia. i am torn about what to call the book. "possibly, virginia"? "a virginia companion"? "steal this sheet music book"?

our band is good. we love our band.

there was also endless talk in the New York Meeting week about my solo record.
it's so weird seeing all these industry folks sizing me up, sizing my music up, while i size them up. this place where business collides with art - it's strange lands.
i only know what i know, i only know how i deal with my band, my music, my business. it's only in hearing about other artists careers that i learn about what makes me different.
i wish i knew more songwriters and musicians. the odd thing is that i get the majority of knowledge about other people's careers through magazines, books and other music industry people.
i wonder if they all feel the same way. we are all ships passing in the night, huddled in our sealed-up tour busses wondering when we'll get to the promised land.
some of the things that i learn about other artists that i love and respect shock me. some things don't shock me.

i am getting on a plane today to head for the west coast....quick meetings with katie kay and our new post-war trade intern leslie and then two weeks of seattle goodness.
jason and i are going to hunker down with the evelyn twins and finally finish this record. why am i making so many records? i Do Not Understand. something happened.

while we were in new york brian and i also stopped in and did a quick-for-fun recording with our friend franz from world/inferno and the Hold Steady. franz is a the-shit accordion player.
we did two covers: one for a johnny cash compilation and one for a jonathan richman compilation. both songs came out great and i won't ruin the surprise too much - hopefully they'll both come out by summer or fall.

while we were in there i was telling franz about my hangover, which was still, three days later, hanging on over. i cannot drink like i used to. i swear, i used to be able to take it. nowadays my sensitive little yoga-body is becoming a wuss. drinking is terrifying. hangovers are terrible. someday i will write a long story about the year i spent at 20 completely drunk and all the embarrassing details and near misses with rape and death. one thing is for sure: if i stack up all of the serious mistakes and regrets and shame-filled moments of my life, most of them fall in the drunk basket. thank god i never spent a year on hard drugs. why do we do this?

i went to the dentist and she told me i'm brushing too hard and that my gums are going to slowly disappear if i dont fucking watch it. i have been trying to brush with less vigor.
i write so hard when i use a pencil that i often rip through the paper.
i have been singing so forcefully for so many years that i have KISSING NODES.

is there a message here somewhere?

franz and i were about to take vocals in the studio in brooklyn and franz noticed i was passing up the delicious cashews that brian was offering me.
i told him that i've learned my lesson too many times: eating before doing vocals = bad. we then exchanged stories about accidentally eating tons of mexican food before performances and what occurs (hint = nothing good).
i once ate a giant burrito before a gig in pittsburgh. i almost vomited AND fell asleep during the set. we agreed that there's something evil about a burrito specifically: it just BEGS to be finished. it's very hard to wrap up and save for later. franz re-enacted the moment in which you are sitting there, over the plate of enchiladas, having eaten half of it and already full, continuing the raise the fork to your mouth while simultaneously thinking "THIS IS SUCH A BAD IDEA THIS IS SUCH A BAD IDEA". what the fuck is up with us humans? why are we so un-evolved and completely stupid? i don't envy us.

i was prescribed a sort of anti-reflux medicine that all patients of this surgery have to take before going under the knife. i never take medication but i take a lot of vitamins. i was supposed to take one each morning before eating.
ok. easy. oh, and not drink. i think. whatever.

so the other night i had 3 glasses of wine with dinner, went to bed, woke up, ate lunch, took the medication, felt queasy, got in the car to go to yoga and then had to pull over on storrow drive and yarf in a plastic micro-center bag. it didn't even occur to me that it was the medication. i was in such a state of shame about my hangover the previous week that i decided i was just an alcoholic and that i should book a ticket to LA and head to promises with lindsay and brit-brit. i went to yoga, threw away the yarf-bag in a parking lot trash can, spent the entire time curled up in a ball on my mat, went to drive home, and yarfed again (this time in a chinese food take-out bag). it was a terrible day. there was a party at my house that night (which i thankfully wasn't running) and i barely made it upstairs. max played the accordion. i just noticed there is lots of accordion in my life. i love saying Yarf.

from comments:

kristie wrote

Amanda,
I need new headphones for ipod/walkman use. do you have any reccommendations?

You rock, by the way.

i use two headphones, both expensive so brace yo'self:
for casual listening and excercising and karaoke filming i use bang & olufsen wrap-arounds, seen here: http://www.bang-olufsen.com/page.asp?id=46&bhcp=1
for serious listening and studio-monitoring when i sing, i use (getting geeky here) HD280 sennheisers: http://www.sennheiserusa.com/newsite/productdetail.asp?transid=004974

Jessie Maims, R.O.C.K. wrote:
This surgeon isn't the same one who took away Julie Andrews's voice along with her nodes, is it?

funny you should ask. actually, the doctor who is doing the surgery in teh one who SAVED julie andrews' voice afer she got it all fooked by that other doctor.

Eric wrote:
Break a leg in surgery. I found a copy of Blackfish in my parents' attic and will send you the pdf as soon as I have a chance to scan it.

damn, man! send that shit!
for everyone elsE: blackfish is the zine i made 4 issues of in high school. it's hilarious. i'd love to post copies somewhere online. i used to spend hours and hours and hours making them.
and eric and i recently re-united at a DC show - we went to high school together and eric was in the first play i ever wrote and directed. yip times! i love Again things.

MISC ART DEPT:

long ago, when i was working as a street performer, some film student asked me if i would do this, so i did.
here i am, as the 8-ft bride in a student film with avant art-rock in the background:

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=4DIc7hs_MgE

ah to be 22 with that much free time.
it's funny, i look back at things like this and barely remember doing them. i like to think that it isn't that my memory is bad but just that my brain is full.

in NEWSES:

after my convalescence, i've got a few things coming up.
the dolls record (pope's clever new title: "Know, Virginia" - which to me sounds like the name of a planned parenthood campaign) is going to come out in late may.

i am going to make a few very small appearances in may (including the yoga journal conference - namaste motherfuckers! - in boston, my first attempt at singing with my new CORDS).

then in june i'm going to play at boston symphony hall with the boston pops. i had no idea just how much of a huge deal it was until i told my parents and they flipped out. i suppose it's hard for me to gauge because symphony hall is right down the street from my house and i pass it on my way to the grocery store every day. it's just THERE. but man, folks is psyched, and i'm psyched and i'm going to kick ass all over the place with those fuckin' real-music playin' bastards. keith lockhart, the conductor, apparently asked if he "gets to wear make-up"; this is going to be great fun. i might make him a dress. maybe a kimono or something. o boy o boy. i will be playing piano in front of a 100-piece orchestra playing my songs. this is cool. i will do some solo stuff, some dolls stuff, some other stuff. surprises will be.

in july i'm putting together my own little party-land at the Rothbury Festival, which is about a 3-hour drive from chicago in the middle of the woods. we're getting a TENT and i am very happy.
we will have croquet and cold drinks and lots of friends over to play. parades and head-shaving may be involved. Ill be playing every day of the festival: the dolls will be playing the mainstage, I will be playing solo in the tent and I might even be teaching yoga in the morning like a fucking hippie.
Aw yeah.

.......................

more later.

i still have two blogs on my desktop from australia and montana. they are now Vintage Blog

maybe instead of posting them i will sell them to people magazine to get money for crack

.

love
a

goin’ under the knife - northwest shows canceled

2008-01-28T21:14:00.000-05:00

so. i have vocal nodes. i am going to have surgery to get them taken off.
this wasn't too surprising, honestly. but the randomness involved in HOW i found out is unbelievable.

i was at the studio one week ago finishing the new dolls recording, emailing during mixing. i'd been bitching about my scratchy voice to a writer friend at the boston globe and she sent a link to an article about a boston vocal surgeon (in fact, here it be) that the globe ran in 2004.
i was in brain-candy mode so i followed the link, read it, thought what the hell, googled the surgeon, found his email address, dropped him a line, and three days later i'm in a tall building in boston getting a scope stuck down my throat while i sing. "yep", they say. "you're a rock singer".

there's a fancy computer showing me what the scope is seeing, revealing the terrible truth....my vocal chords look like a vagina. well, to be fair, EVERYBODY'S vocal chords look like a vagina (they must get used to that after a while in the dept on laryngology).
but MY vocal chords look like a vagina that's, frankly, seen better days. i could go into some really uncomfortable poetic metaphors here involving busy and careless hookers but i WONT.

basically, i have what is typically referred to as vocal "nodes" - sort of like calluses that appear after years of battering. lots of people get them. teachers, lawyers, preachers, probably stockbrokers, you name it. if you are normal person and don't need your voice as a tool for your trade, you just deal with them. you have a scratchy voice. if you have a career that involves singing and touring, you get surgery to have them removed. i have been on a downward slop for years now, singing at half-mast because they just keep getting worse. dr. zeitels (i'm a fan - he's rad) has done lots of people. cher. julie andrews. steven
tyler. my favorite actor, jeremy geidt (some of you saw him in the onion cellar). GARY CHERONE OF EXTREME.

and my favorites: ozzy and sharon osbourne were in the office at the same time as me. what better endorsement than that, i ask? i called brian right after my appointment and was like "I have vocal nodes and need surgery and ozzy and sharon were there!" brian was like "OZZZYY!" and i was like "did you hear the part about the surgery?" brian was like "the ozman was sent from the metal gods to guide your voice to freedom".

anyway. long story short: i'll be getting this done in march and they ask that you go easy on your voice leading up the date. then it's 2 weeks of no talking (not even whispering) and another 4 weeks of rehab (and i said no, no, no). the good news is that i will have a shiny new set of vocal chords to sing with and the surgeon is the best in the country and just happens to be in boston. so i lucked out.

i am still going to head out to seattle to finish mixing the Evelyn Evelyn record but i canceled the 4 shows i was just about to announce in seattle, portland, eugene & olympia. i know some of you had already found out and bought tickets, and i'm sorry about that. is what it is. i've never canceled dates like this before, i don't plan to get all winehouse on you. anyone who bought a ticket can get a refund at the point of purchase, btw.

MEANWHILE, i am assured that next time i go into the vox doc i will get photo stills of my node-y throat and of course i will post forthwith because it's NARSTY. if you're really a glutton for punishment, a google image search on "vocal nodes" will probably make you lose your lunch. someone on the forum posted this handy wiki and i am pleased to see i've been added to the list of famous sufferers.

note:
Bonnie Tyler, in 1977, found out that she had nodules that were so severe that she had to have surgery for their removal. After the surgery was performed, she was ordered to not speak for six weeks. One day while healing, she accidentally screamed and her voice took on a raspy quality. max (who's back in town, YAY!) informed me that bonnie tyler (yes, of "total eclipse of the heart fame") screamed because her mother didn't get bonnie strawberries (as instructed) for the ride home from the hospital.

on a brighter and more or less unrelated note:
here's a clip from tour of us covering "sweet dreams (are made of this)" by the eurythmics with our friends in the luminescent orchestrii.

love
amanda

ps "there will be blood" = awesome. saw it tonight.

amanda at a poetry slam

2008-01-20T15:30:00.000-05:00

well, it wasn't a poetry slam in the strict sense of the term.

we've been in the studio in boston literally non-stop since coming back from tour. a revelation, exactly what i was hoping would happen.
since there's no huge pressure to make this album some sort of definitive statement (what does that even MEAN anymore....i dunno) we just laid the tracks down, all in one day more or less.
i started with vocals yesterday, sucked because my voice was blown out from being out of practice in the studio, went back in today and nailed all five songs in under 5 hours. i'm happy now.
i would tell you the songs we're working on but i feel some (useless?) need to keep it SOMEWHAT of a surprise.

i realize as i spend more and more time in the studio that it's an actual skill set, and i've become better. i can walk into a studio and DO IT now. i know how things work, i understand how to prioritize and conserve, how to let certain things go and get stuck on certain other things. it was never my intention to learn how to do this. i always wanted to be able to go into a studio and with as little pain and effort as possible, re-emerge with a record. i've never been very process-oriented. that's changing. i'm enjoying it.

sheri hausey, one of our fav boston photographers, came by and took some pictures the other day.....

yours truly getting jiggy on the hot german mic

brian the intern of doom, sean slade, most well-edumucated producer in the west and benny the engineer in the control room

b-dog's kit

sponge bob squarepants presiding over the soundstage

tonight i finished vocals and sean (our esteemed producer) let me off the hook while they starting piecing together some takes and edits.
i hadn't checked my phone messages for as few days. i finally listened to them all while eating my thai food in the studio kitchen and i got a message from cormac from several days ago telling me that saul williams was doing a spoken-word show at brandeis (a university about 30 minutes outside of boston) tonight at 8 pm. i looked at the time and it was 7:45. i managed to get over there and i am so fucking glad i did.

saul williams is a fucking hero. if any of you are NIN fans, you probably know that trent reznor produced his latest record and they released it as a free internet-only download a few months ago (right after the radiohead campaign, same concept more or less, you can either download free or pay $5...hint: pay the fucking money)

i first saw saul a few years ago when we were on a bill together at the sundance film festival (random) in utah and i was just floored, blown away. we made fast friends. i remember pope being blown away too and us all pointing and going: PUNK ROCK! THE PUNK ROCK! this man is truly fucking PUNK ROCK!! fuck it! he's a steely and hilarious and passionate performer with poetry and music unparalleled. part spoken word, part hip-hop, all sharp as a razor, he's just THE SHIT. check out his site (and his new record "the inevitable rise and liberation of niggy tardust") here: niggytardust.com

we showed up and the night was a long program of incredible, heavy, political/personal/bad-ass spoken-word, really well-known and insanely talented folks from all over the place. saul was headlining but the night had a fantastic family vibe. i found saul backstage and he asked if i wanted to do anything. i don't write poems. but wait, i remembered....i DID write one. back in edinburgh in august. i had it on my computer in cormac's car. so i went out, got it, copied it down onto a piece of paper backstage and all of a sudden i was up there, in front of 1000 strangers in a college auditorium on a saturday night, about to read a poem. saul let me cut into his set. it could've been way worse. i think it went well.

poetry and spoken word, as evidenced by the crowd tonight, is a fucking THING, man. it is it's own genre with it's own code. it's the same feeling when you go to a hardcore show and you realize there are all these unspoken but commonly understood rules about how the crowd and interactions will proceed. etiquette. this was a spoken word crowd at it's best...people shouting and standing up and hootin' and hollerin', REAL talent, searing words, hallelujah kinds poems and art jettisoning off that stage....it was a cross between a rock concert, a political rally and a kicking sunday gospel service.

people went nuts for saul and he delivered, starting his set from a balcony in the house, roaming the aisles while he spitted endless wonders out of his mouth, everybody's knuckles on their chair edges, screams of "YES!!!" inside and outside everybody's lips.
when i was got there, about to read my poem, i felt so out of place. i wasn't going to measure up to all of these performers. i started to make some sort of half-assed excuses about what was about to happen and people from the audience started yelling "FAMILY!" at me. as in: shut up with your excuses. read your shit, bare your soul, you're with family, you won't be judged.
i did. i wasn't. the whole experience was exhilarating and made me want to write poems. fuck this music shit. all i needs a mic, bitches! maybe i can beatbox.

as for saul, you gotta see it to believe it. i tried to dig up a good clip, here's one. this is saul doing "telegram to hip-hop", one of my favorites.
please watch it, so you can understand what i fucking mean:

then, go see him.
go see saul. he's touring all over this spring to support his new record.
if you see him, tell him i said hi.

k.

..............................

eyecandy dept/more tour media:

here's an awesome clip of us doing a led zeppelin cover with two ton boa.
we decided to do this very last minute and it was a toss up between this ("immigrant song") and "ocean song"....thus the confusion at the start.
i forgot to tell brian what the rest of the band decided.
i had the lyrics written on my left arm and if you look closely you can see me desperately trying to rock out and read them at the same time
we got volunteers from the audience to play Rowing Vikings, The Ocean (and obviously, later in the song, Heaven), A Lonesome Tree and Moonshine.
serious 4th grade drama shit and how splendid it was!!!!

from comments:

natasha drake wrote:

Badass Prince thingamabob back there lady!
My mama gave me her Purple Rain tourbook as an apology for fibbing to me on that night in '85 when she was on her way to see the Revolution and told me children weren't allowed to go to concerts.

i am so glad someone noticed my prince poster. i just had to acknowledge that.

thanks all y'all for your continued feedback about release formats. all taken under advisement....

love

a

p.s. one more endorsement....sweeney todd = A+

us tour: finale

2008-01-16T02:21:00.000-05:00

we're home.

i slept 14 hours last night.

brian and i are going into the studio tomorrow to record some old dolls songs and get the shit out of our system and off my brain.

for those who have been asking or conjecturing on new recordings, since there hasn't been an official release:
we have a collection of songs from yes, virginia that weren't used on the album but that i deemed too GOOD to be relegated as "b-sides".
so they were never released.
these include The Kill, Boston & Gardener (we thought we recorded glass slipper, but now i can't seem to find it. hm.)
we also have some rarer stuff and with these new recordings, we're currently trying to decide how we want to package and release this stuff.

we might put it out on one whole album, make things available gradual-like online, or put out two EPs.
seeing as you are the audience, mofos, if you have thoughts please hit me. i'm clueless, (in dumb-ass italian voice, with glare) i just make-a-da-music.

"who killed amanda palmer" is going to most likely be released in september.

i am going to take a general apartment-and-life-and-relationship-cleaning-and-feeding break from now til june, when i will come back in full force and start doing record promo for WKAP all over the states and europa. then in september i'll be doing a full world tour (some dates with danger ensemble and hopefully some dates with estradaspehre, and some dates pure solo AP).
thank you for all the venue ideas for this spring. we'll see what i get to. it's hard. i want to go everywhere. play everywhere. i heard recently that we have a huge fanbase in kluj,

"Evelyn Evelyn: the full score musical extravaganza (or whatever they decide to call it)" is going to be finished in march (the reason i am planning a few west coast solo shows is to be in seattle with jason to finish the record with them) and we have NO IDEA when it will be released. but i'm hoping we won't have to wait too long. the twins are frail and impatient, they don't understand all this waiting around shit and i am tired of explaining things like releases schedules and promo. they want to post everything to myspace the day we record it and i'm like NO NO NO. anyway.

after WKAP my next solo record (due for relase 2011) is going to feature an all-star cast of feist, 50 cent, neil young, conor oberst, kenny g, britney spears, the klaxons, avril lavigne and peaches and the working title is
"I WAS YOUNG I NEEDED THE MONEY".
................................

more tour media..........

favorite moment of tour:

when brian invited everyone to join us onstage for "fight for your right (to party)" at the vic in chicago and the entire pit climbed onto stage and rocked out....

the club workers shit a brick, but nothing got broken (i don't think).

some clever person (iris in iowa aka PlacesParallel) captured it and edited it down for youtube.....

great new years shot....grand ballroom in NYC:

photo by Lisette M. Voytko

amanda holding the mic for Care Failure of Die Mannequin (in toronto):

photo by Brandy Alexander.

dolls, our bad-ass crew and two ton boa backstage at the norva in virginia....

(photo by lauren goldberg)

.............................

from comments:

steph g:
"I sometimes wonder if you find your fans offputting. The screams of 'I love you Amanda!'. Isn't there an important distinction between loving the work and loving the person? Does it get freaky that people declare their love for you over and over when they don't know you? Or, in doing things like self-promotion and blogging are you deliberately tearing down that wall, becoming more human and letting people know you, and so soaking in the love-fest? Don't misunderstand--I love the fans, or most of them. But the occasional one seems so rabid and insistent that I wonder if it gets creepy."

this is an excellent question.
i grapple with it a lot. i am trying to suck everybody in. i'm a performer. i need you to love me. that's how this works, to a certain extent. but love comes in all shapes and sizes. you need me to love you. for the most part, i do. really do. however...no, i never like hearing screams of "i love you amanda" when i'm trying to actually play a song. especially a quiet one. it's annoying. i think i talked about this some while back on another blog. anu difranco used to have the most irritating fans at her shows (brian and i went to several together, she's amazing live). i mean, real psychos who would just scream I LOOOOOOOOOOVVVVVVE YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU ANNNNNNNIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII again and again and not shut up. that is not love. that is something else. what do you do? she ignored it.

i usually hope that the crowd takes care of those people. a good crowd can be very effective at self-policing. when people drink it becomes more difficult, because they stop giving a shit what anyone is yelling back at them. different venues effect it. when we play sit down theater shows the crowd sometimes drops to a complete silence. there were moments on this tour, during "glass slipper", where not a single person was talking. in a crowd of almost 2000 people, you could hear a pin drop. i am amazed by that, proud of that. sometimes you know its a losing battle, especially if there's a bar in the club. forget it. sometimes it can get quiet and stay too quiet. it's a weird artform, that noise thing.

this very distracting and disturbing thing happened on the last night of tour at the norva in virginia. i was among the crowd, singing from my wireless microphone, on the balcony facing the crowd beneath during "the gardener". someone came up behind me and literally grabbed my ass, with two hands, and didn't let go. i kept singing and tried to ignore it, thinking it was a quick prank. then the person (mind you, i couldn't see them, so i had no idea what i was dealing with, man or woman, football player or fairy?) grabbed my right tit. i sort of donkey-kicked them with my boot, hoping to get them to lay off. and i kept singing. i turned around and in that moment, i saw this person and i just couldn't be angry. i was just confused. it was a girl, maybe in her twenties. i just left, kept singing, used it, felt a little violated, let the song bring me close to tears. i was emotional anyway, it was our last night of tour.

the thing about moments like this, and they are few and far between, is that it breaks this implicit faith that i have in our audience...that i'm always totally safe out there, that i can crowd-surf without anybody pulling my pants off, that nobody would ever do something stupid, that i don't need security (sometimes the club provides it but i never ask for it)...i just feel safe. people ask me if i have any truly crazy insane stalker fans and i can proudly say no. our fans are the most loving and civilized bunch of people i've ever met. they're all amazing humans....they're artists, they're thinkers, they are intelligent, they are respectful, they are kind to one another, they love music. i don't have to believe this, i see it because i meet them and i know them. and when i come across someone not fitting that description, i feel upset. and almost guilty, like: what did we do to attract this sort of shit? no, no, no.

so this event. it preoccupied my brain for the next 3-4 songs of the set because i kept replaying it in my head and finding myself unable to let it go. i finally just got fed up and told the audience what happened and started talking a little bit about how odd it felt. you're out there and you're in a totally different context. these are the people who are supposed to respect you, be with you, on your side, and they're objectifying you and doing something they would never dare do to a total stranger (lest they get punched in the fucking face).

it made things even more difficult to find out that this person turned out to be a real fan, someone who posts on the board and is part of our community. she emailed me an apology.
things like that are easier to take if you think it's some random friend-of-a-boyfriends-sister who came to the show and was just acting like a drunk dick. i wrote back, no hard feelings. truly. i related how unpleasant it was and i feared for her safety because she's headed for a possibly very icky experience of getting smacked by someone less non-violent if she goes around doing that to other people in virginia.

what can you do other than just be with it?
that's this life. didn't tori amos get raped by some crazy fan on the way home from a show? didn't eddie vedder have some crazy chick drive her car into his living room?

i had lots of these interesting encounters when i was a living statue on the street (i really need to write a book about that someday). people would literally treat me like an object, even when they knew i was real. throw things at me. poke me. grab me. i stood still through it all, never blinking. it gave me nerves of steel. and excellent peripheral vision (both of which, i may point out, came in serious handy for my stage career with the dresden dolls). i trusted that the general public would protect me from anybody truly crazy. and a few times, they did. i was literally laying my fate down at the feet of humanity, every day. my feet literally bound, relying only on the goodwill of others to keep some random asshole from toppling my delicately constructed self. i really miss my old job sometimes.

when people ask about the stalker thing, i say: i think i don't attract actual stalkers because there is NOTHNG MYSTERIOUS about me, and nothing to find out. i air out my dirty laundry with a frequency that makes it impossible for someone to want to root through my garbage. what are you going to find that you can't find out anyway? not very much.
does that make sense? it's just a theory. i think that people who actually cultivate mystique (whether deliberately or not) are easier to target.
i feel like i'm really cursing myself here, maybe it's time to shut up.

so we're done, for a while. brian is off to tour with other bands and i am off to get my life together and start work on this new solo record.

we talked a lot on this tour about how wonderful these last years have been despite the hardships.
our community, our slowly built land of punks, thespians, nerds, jocks, geeks, moms, kids, queers and whatever else you can imagine is a testament to the worthwhileness of all of it.
to see all these people actually in a room together, rocking out, getting it, loving each other, loving the experience.
you can't buy that in a store, you cannot download it from the internet, you cannot feel it unless you are there.
it's simple, it's REAL, and it's why live music will never die, ever.

the final hug ( rock love ).

(photo by lauren goldberg)

love (your mom),
amanda

p.s. mad props to the awesome person who brought me this shirt on the
last night of tour, excellent touch with the blackberry.

(self-portait with nice new shirt, 2:43 am. january 16, 2008)

US tour: days 4,5,6,7,8,9,10 and ELEVEN

2008-01-09T20:15:00.000-05:00

the flu hunged around. but it's mostly gone.

now brian has it and so does jaron, our monitor tech. we're in tampa florida, taking a day off.
things started going very fast and i got back into the tour rhythm, sleeping 10-12 hours a night, waking in the dark in parking lots, staggering into a venue, becoming coherent in time for soundcheck and watching the rest of the day turn into a blur. pouring everything out on stage, meeting people all night, falling asleep, waking up, repeating and trying to battle exhaustion effectively.

occasionally breathing deep turn the phone and computer on and put on my "i can still do business, i swear" t-shirt and trying to negotiate my life off tour.
i got to a yoga class in chicago before the show.
i went to two yoga classes on our off day in nashville.
i went to cafe coco (my nashville again cafe) a total of 4 times, in one day.
Again is an addiction.

new years eve was a beautiful family affair....
photos from The Grand Ballroom, NYC

brian during "in the flesh" from The Wall

meow meow:

me & lance on "mandy"

midnight
1 - check out the hot drummer (thats me)
2 - katie kay's getting action on far right!!!!!)

meow stage-diving during "we are the champions"

brian and sarah from luminescent orchestrii

a&b

brian and jaron luksa, our kick-ass monitor tech

my PEOPLE

amanda and meow

all the above:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fairytalevegas/2160563879/in/set-72157603619032721/

i wish i could separate out each day of tour from the cluster and enjoy it as an isolated event.
night after night i feel like an overloaded sponge.
our fanbase is so fucking incredible. i can't get over it.
i read constantly about the decline of the recorded music industry and about how people aren't going out to shows anymore because there's nothing to believe in anymore....and i want to drag each and every one of those cynical bastards out of their cubicles and go "NO!!! LOOK! LOOK! LOOOOOOOOK!!!!"
i'm tired as shit. thank you so much, all of you.
thank you for making our lives this month so wonderful.
i want to burst with joy from all the glee and craziness and love we feel every night coming out of the audience.
...................

random thoughts:

some journalist read my blog about going out barefoot in the snow and wrote a preview of the show calling me crazy.
i kind of like being called crazy, it's sort of romantic. but i really don't feel crazy. i feel pretty sane.
i think a lot of people think that i'm crazy because of the lyrics, the music, the image. that bugs me.
my theory, and we were discussing this in the bus last night. there are four kinds of music:

1. negative negative music.
2. positive negative music.
3. negative positive music.
4. positive positive music.

the first adjective describes the lyrical and musical content of the band (ie: what kind of music is this?)
the second adjective describes the overall vibe of the band and the quality of performative connection (ie what kind of people are these?).

we tried to come up with perfect examples of each and an overarching phrase to encapsulate:

1. negative negative music = "we are sad the world sucks and fuck you too you bloody cunts" = sex pistols, gg allin
2. positive negative music = "we are sad the world sucks but don't you feel the same way and let's all bond together in mass sorrow and anger" = rage against the machine, the smiths, nine inch nails
3. negative positive music = "let's all dance and sing and be happy but don't fuckin' bother me you bloody cunt i'm a rock star" = any bitchy pop band out there (you name it, i ain't gonna take the heat)
4. positive positive music = "yay! we love happy music and everythings great and we love you too" = polyphonic spree, yanni

dave argued that the dresden dolls fall into the "positive negative" category. i think we straddle that line between positive negative and positive positive. depends on the song. i mean, ALL the songs aren't about pain.
o god. no, wait. maybe they are. well, fuck it.

.............................

six days ago it was MINUS 17 degrees in montreal. today it is 70 in tampa. this schedule is not human.

................................

t-shirt slogan ideas from the last while:

I DO NOT HAVVE TIME FOR YOU IN MY LIFE

TEXT ME WHEN YOU'RE READY TO FUCK

and the winner

WHY DON'T YOU LOVE ME I'M AWESOME

........................................................

i am trying to come up with a plan for next year. i think i am going to take the spring almost fully off and start gearing up in june for the release of the record.
i might do a few casual solo dates here and there when i travel around to visit friends (right now thinking about chapel hill, DC, nashville, santa fe, paris and berlin).
if you have any ideas for good venues (think: small, weird, good...maybe 300 capacity as i want to keep these shows small, easy and family) tell me now!

....................................

i was reading about amma the hugging guru in india and was thinking ....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3136524.stm
....good promotional idea for the record.

what if i just GAVE AWAY THE RECORD FOR FREE with the catch that you PHYSICALLY HAD TO WREST IT FROM ME??
yes, you must meet me at 6 am, on the golden gate bridge the day i am playing san fran, at the eiffel tower plaza in paris, in tiergarten in berlin, on the docks near pier 51 in NYC, on the cliffs of dover the day of the london show.......i'll be there. with a box of records to give away. but you have to wake your ass up at 6 am (and so do i for the matter) and if you make it over, you get the record and a hug and my supreme admiration.
i wonder how many people will actually show. i wonder if this idea is even REMOTELY feasible.
.................................

did you realize that Cuisinart is actually "cuisine art" (as in, french-for-kitchen ART).
i didn't catch that until about two years ago and shared the information with brian last night, to whom it was also a revelation. thought i should share.

.......................................

some random tour pix:
everybody on stage with us in chicago during Fight For Your Right....(yes, we got in trouble with the venue)....can you find the band?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fishtoasted/sets/72157603655667487/

hugging and loving

http://www.flickr.com/photos/scaredsquee/2164878231/

luminescent orchestrii:

"yes, juliet" at the vic in chicago

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fishtoasted/2172988401/in/set-72157603655667487/

tea-pouring brigade at orpheum in boston

lexington high school drama dept. performing to "snow song" by neutral milk hotel, orpheum in boston:

brian

gravity plays favorites in st louis

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasminefoxedme/2179407938/in/set-72157603668614554/

jonas woolverton and the rou cyr:

covering "golden age" by beck in st louis

more soon......

love
a

US tour day 3&4

2007-12-31T11:23:00.000-05:00

i made it through the boston show with half a voice.

i always feel so shitful (to use a meow adjective i've picked up)
when i can't sing, which is most of the time.
why does this happen?

being sick didn't help. not having a trained voice doesn't help.
i really am going out there and making shit up every night. believe
me, i do NOT have a plan nor know what i'm doing. period. i've gotten
really well-practiced at i-got-no-clue-how-to-really-do-this-well-here-
goes-nothing.
i can sort of play piano, and i can sort of sing. i've been figuring
this out as i go along. blindly hoping i'll get it right most of the
time and assuming i'll mess up approximately 27% of the time.
i completely spaced the lyrics to "girl anachronism", which we played
second, because my brain simply went haywire. its always interesting
to see what comes out of my mouth at those times.
it's not quite english, it's not quite gibberish. brian commented
that last night it sounded sort of swedish. WHATEVER IT TAKES.
the fact that the shows was still stupendous makes me realize, once
again, it ain't the tools, it's the delivery. but i almost don't want
it to be true. i don't want to be able to get away with it. i was
talking with melissa (aka meow) about this. she can do shows in
character (ie as Meow Meow) with a broken voice, no problem. whatevs.
it's cabaret, it's punk, it;s rock, there's no rules. but if she's
doing an opera gig: all bets are off. the voice has to be there or
the gig doesn't go off. what do those fucking people do?

i want an understudy.

strangely, four or five different people (all girls, actually), have
told me over the last few days of shows that i inspired them to learn
how to play piano.
that inspires ME to learn how to actually play the piano, because now
i feel guilty. it's all relative.

after the orpheum show (sold out, to our amazement....over 2300
people in our hometown....we were very excited by that) i entouraged
home because meow, lance, katie kay and all the members of the
luminescent orchestrii were staying at my house, some in beds, some
on floors. beer and wine and assorted folks found their way over and
though i should have gone straight to bed, i stayed up, drank
(resPONSIBLY, wine only and two glasses at that, i hear it kills
germs) and chatted for an hour with my brothers and sisters. was it
worth it? fuck yeah. still. i woke up with no voice. i spent the day
stuck crusted to bed in my apartment, still feeling flu-like and
unable to cope with the realities of life (like packing for the
upcoming two weeks of tour...i'll have to do that tomorrow morning).
many cups of tea later, i am still wondering if i'll have a voice for
the new york show.

if you're coming, cross your fingers. i am already plotting an
elaborate hand-drawn dresden-dolls karaoke machine and i'll have to
find someone to run it.

i took this picture outside the philadelphia show since the marquis
on south street was so pretty right at dusk

.....and as i was standing on a newspaper box making a fool of myself
trying to get the perfect shot sxip and sarah from lumii showed up in
the frame.
i ran down and said hello right after that, it was our first reunion
in a while...and sxip said that at that very moment i caught the
photo he'd been saying to sarah
"someone should get a picture of this marquis"...then they turned
around and saw mah ass.

love it

did you know you can take an online colorblind test?:
www.kcl.ac.uk/teares/gktvc/vc/lt/colourblindness/plate1.htm

i tested normal. thank god, now i can be a pilot if i want to.

last but not least, here is a very kinky looking Evelyn Evelyn-
inspired "bondage Elephant Elephant" that showed up at the boston show:

excellent.

have a safe new years....they're CRAZY out there, those fucking people.

love
a

USA tour day 2

2007-12-30T10:50:00.000-05:00

In philadelphia, still ill with the Sickness. I'm waitin it out, man. I
have a remarkable cold sore under my left nostril and a magazine cover
shoot today. Time to bust out the fake hitler moustache and create
some controversy. Like rammstein.

Yesterday was a bruiser of a day, we had two shows back-to-back in DC
and baltimore, the first in an honest-to-god (no pun) synagogue and the
second in a club. The gigs were great, brian and I rejoiced in being
back on stage with each other and just played our asses off and enjoyed
being back in full dresden formation. Meow Meow blew the crowds away as
I knew she would and sat in with us on delilah. Her hot pianist lance
guested on mandy goes to med school. Our crew is back in full-force.

I'm not superstitious. But things have been happening. music,
especially certain songs, has been speaking from the beyond and indicating my
path like those emergency lights embedded in airplane aisles.

The point was.
I have a favorite Again cafe in philadelphia. I'm in it right now, its
called the chapterhouse; I stumbled across it the last time we played
here. I went out of my way to walk here for some thinking and writing
before soundcheck and as I entered I heard the sound of something I knew
coming from the speakers but I couldn't place it..... Sounded like low
air-raid sirens. Then the guitar started and it was "two-headed boy part
II" and I melted a bit.

When I was in scotland in august I went to my edinburgh Again cafe
(the forest) one afternoon and there was a girl (autumn ayers )from
philadelphia singing "oh comely" on a little stage with an acoustic
guitar.

I'm starting to think that my life is just strung together moments
against the backdrop of this record album. If you don't know the record,
this is harder to explain. The record: In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by
Neutral Milk Hotel and its music and songwriting: without equal. I had
been discussing with my favorite director-friend the possibility of
creating a stage production inspired by the record (it seems like getting
the rights might be impossible) but we agreed on one thing: the album
and songs have an internally magical power.

Wherever you go, you will meet people who know and love this record
with a passion that may seem unreasonable. The literally extra-ordinary
thing is that the album was never hyped in the mainstream, there was no
giant promotion. It was hyped for a while in the indie community (I
remember discovering the record, through brian, about a year after it came
out and mentioning it excitedly to one of my hip indie musician friends
who was like: yes amanda, that record is amazing but sooo last year),
but that means nothing to 99% of the american music-listening
population. So its ENTIRELY word of mouth outside of the indie-cult. And not
unlike the way the dolls grew in certain communities, the word-of-mouth on
this record has carried it year after year further and further. It
didn't hurt the magical momentum that jeff mangum, the creator of the
record, supposedly cracked immediately under the impending success and
disappeared, barely ever to be heard from again (rumors abound, I have no
idea what the actual deal is). But ask your average person and they'll
have no clue about this album. I'm still shocked when I talk with some
huge music fan or record industry heavyweight and they have never even
HEARD the bands name.

What makes this record so perfect? I heard someone say, or maybe I said
once, can't remember (I'm getting old): the record is like mainlining.
Its a direct transmission of soul through sound. That said, you might
listen to it and hate it. But watch the comments on this blog. That
will tell you everything.

Have to go to soundcheck.

-later-
......................

Show was fantastic, we're in for a 6-hour van drive to boston. And
we're tirrrrred. These two angelic people, michael and shonda, brought us,
luminescnet and meow and the whole crew a gigantic vegan feast after
the show, complete with absinthe (which we're saving for new years). Food
Love. Bring it on. This tour is a perfect bill. Meow the anarchist
cabaret singer, luminscent the insane klezmer dance band and us. I wish
bills like this would last forever. Sxip played with us (I played drums!!
I love the drums.) And brian and I sat in with lumii. Meow and lance
both sang and played during our set. Its a full-on lovefest.

Festing more, Jenny owen youngs showed up and we snuck her on the bill
right before us to play "fuck was I" on brians acoustic. She's amazing.
I piggybacked her onto stage.

The photoshoot was fine. We ripped the long red curtains down from the
windows, got naked (poor brian has finally caught the Sickness too,
neither of us were feeling sexy so we figured we go for a weird naked art
photoshoot....) and wrapped ourselves up in them. I found a hat. The
shoot worked. Pictures are weird.

Autumn, the girl who I referred to in the above ramble - the one I stumbled upon singing neutral milk in edinburgh - she magically appeared at the end
of the show with her two sisters. When I told about my happy cafe
experience and the welcome song I got there this afternoon, her sister said:
that's so weird. I haven't listened to that album in years and I put
it on today.

You are starting to see what I mean.

Here's a link to some great photos of last night.

Here's a link to the neutral milk hotel CD.

Tomorrow: hometown throwdown in bosstown.

Goodnight, elephant.
AFP

US tour: day one

2007-12-27T05:20:00.000-05:00

well, it doesnt really count because we havent officially started
yet. tomorrow. two shows.

do you ever wonder:
if someone were to place a real cap on your mortal years....like,
really just give you a concrete date: "your number is going to be up
when you hit 45"
that you would live your life that much differently. fight club
examined this for as split second. i'm in baltimore, i just took a
bath, and i found myself wondering.
if someone were to tell me i had ten years (exactly) - what would i do?
would i tour? stay put? travel unknown?
help the needy? stuff my face?
really hard to say. i think i'd spend a while figuring out, for sure.
the problem with this sci-fi fantasy is that knowing your number does
more than igve you a limit, it also gives you immortality for an
unlimited time period. this is irritating.
maybe what we need is a maximum. you have, maximum, 23 more years to
live.

GO!

23 is no fun.

what if

ok, you have 13 months to live.
really. you're not impervious to obvious pitfalls (if you walk in
front of a bus, you LOSE) but as soon as those 13 months are up,
you're out.

GO!

what do you do?

i took this photo tonight.
i captured everything i feel about being on tour again. i am feeling
better but not amazing. i have still have snot flowing out of my nose
regularly.

on this x-mas eve

2007-12-25T16:16:00.000-05:00

i've noticed i'm getting into a really nasty habit.
i'm not posting when i feel like it because i keep stock-piling photos and long, complicated blogs involving all this media - and much like tons of other shit in my life, i lose the forest for the trees, get sidetracked and leave the shit hanging.

so fuck it. i'm just writing with no plan. i'm just writing because it's xmas eve and i'm feeling reflective. and just took a two-hour bath, which gave me time to think. it's 3 am and i'm still a little jetlagged from australia.
i'm at my parents house, the house i grew up in. i love coming here. i know the sound of every door latch and every floor creak, i am overly familiar with the rattle of the bannister (which i incidentally fell over, 13 feet, when i was 7) and the ticking of the clocks and - my favorite sound - the gurgling banging of the radiators. i've tried to explain this many times to many people: the only way i can describe the relationship i have with this house is to say that i had very few friends when i was little, and that the closest thing i had to a consistent "best friend", who protected me and played with me and guided and amused me, was this house. some kids had a dog. whatever it takes.

the bath, unbeknownst to me, hadn't been used as a bathtub in some time covered in Cat Hair, presumably because the Cat (and affectionate jet-black boy named shadow, he's on my lap right now) likes to hang out in there and sleep. and shed. by the time i was fully immersed and noticed it, it was too absurd. there were thick clumps of it floating everywhere. instead of being grossed out it was sort of fun, i played a game to see how much floating Cat Hair i could wrest out of the tub and ball into a giant collection on the side of the tub. then i got the idea to go outside and feel the snow on the ground, sort of like when you run from a hot tub to a cold plunge. so i ran the shower as hot as possible, scalded myself, then wrapped myself in a blanket and ran (quietly, as to not wake my sleeping family) out to the back porch steps. they overlook a totally isolated wooded area, and i went for as long a walk in the 1-foot snow as my burning little pink feet could bear. i only got about 6 feet from the porch, the snow was very cold, and icy-sharp at the top, and my little feet froze. i waled back up the the porch and felt the relatively warm planks of wood under my feet. the blanket was keeping me warm and there was a very, very slight wind. the sky was crystal clear. the moon was casting really stark, bold shadows off of the bare craggly trees onto the blank-with-snow yard. it was a really astonishing sight. dead quiet.

i've canceled my life.

i'm leaving in two days for a short, killer dolls tour in cities where we know we can just rock out and have fun, and then i'm coming home with absolutely nothing on my schedule. i had a spring tour planned, i just canceled it. i was going to put the record out this spring; i canceled that too. everything around me has suggested that it's time to stop, assess, re-start and then blast off.
i'm not going to go live in an ashram somewhere, don't worry. i'm going to take an Actual Break. a real one, this time. not that fake shit where i say i'm going to do it and it turns into a five-day affair at home. this is It. i'm stopping., i swear. for at least two months. my apartment, my apartment is crying for it. it's crying Amanddaaaaaaaaa pleeeeease clean meeeee. i've been dumping all this tour shit in it for 5 years and never sorting through it. i've done a dozen photoshoots int he past 6 months and havent gone through the shots. i have emails waiting to be answered that were sent to me in august. so it will be a cleaning, sorting, re-vamping, re-structuring the framework of my life and business kind of break.

the minute i decided all this, things changed. that saying about Jump and the Net Will Appear?
the moment i realized that i had my own decisions in my hands, that i could plan my life the way i needed....that i could stop depending on my old blueprint for life: Bam. not only did my head clear and the realization that a break was truly in order really hit me, but the possibilities of how i can re-structure my life also appeared. the right things and people appear when you start trusting yourself. that's exactly what's happening. it's the exact same way with love-relationships. you can say that you want to start dating again in theory, but if you're hung up, you can wander through life for YEARS and it's not until you truly get over someone. then that the new lover walks into the party and your eyes meet. life is astounding that way, but it certainly makes sense. the phone starts ringing when you get off your ass and start doing dishes.

.

i just finished reading anthony kiedis' (the lead singer from the red hot chili peppers) autobiography. what a fucking frightening life. i had no idea that up until really recently he was such a junkie. terrifying and the stories of how poorly treated everyone in that lifestyle gets when there's drugs just ruling. to me the idea of not showing up to rehearsal because i'm out getting loaded is just simply unimaginable. my brain doesn't even go there, neither does brian's. we simply rely on each other in a way that excludes shit like that. i said to him today: we may argue, but at least we're sober when we do. arguing with someone who's been in and out of rehab 6 times over 15 years and just happens to be trying to kick that day after a week-long smack-and-coke binge. not quite fun. it's enlightening reading how other people Do This Life. it's the same lifestyle, give or take a mansion, motorcycle and tattoo or two. tour, band, rehearse, write, interview, assess, fight, make-up, perform...it's a grind. but everybody find a different way of turning it into a Life of some sort. there's so many different ways of doing it. but the similarities between bands are becoming more and more apparent to me. for the record, in most cases: i am anthony (minus the smack habit) and brian is flea (minus the mohawk).

they were so like us in their early days, though, just total freaks excited about being freaks and doing crazy action for no reason other than....they could. i had always assumed that their early fanbase must've been a real skate-punk crowd but from the way anthony describes it it was really similar to the early dolls crowds...a punk here, a goth here, a total rag-tag motley crew of whoever was into these crazy cats getting up on stage and being total clowns. the first tape i had was in 7th grade, i remember distinctly buying it at newbury comics, it was the self-titled album and i bought it because my best friend holly young and i had had a cafeteria discussion about how you could Just Tell if a band was Cool and Alternative from their name. we tried to think of good examples and we came up with Nine Inch Nails and The Red Hot Chili Peppers. but i actually had no idea what either of those bands sounded like. so in order to inform myself i went out and bought the tape and was hooked. blood sugar sex magik came out the year of 9th grade, and it was our summer theme CD. we would go to the meadows, smoke pot and blast that shit. that same bunch of friends and i went to see them play on new years eve. they blew me away with their live energy. we were crammed right up against the stage at some sports arena, about 20 people in from the front, really close.

the most memorable events of that new years eve, however, weren't during the chili peppers set. the two opening bands were at that time totally unknown: Pearl Jam and The Smashing Pumpkins. Eddie Vedder crowd-surfed from the stage to the sound-desk and i remember grabbing his leg and making a mental note to remember about that in case he became famous and i could claim leg-touching bragging rights. the circle is now complete. the other very memorable moment was when we were waiting for the chili peppers to take the stage and this song came on over the PA. this guy in a baseball hat turned to me and said, "i love this song. this songs fucking rocks." what is it? i asked. he said, "it's this band called nirvana. they're the shit." the song was smells like teen spirit. i was witnessing the birth of grunge.

.

i am going to try to post my complicated blog about australia (i still have my fall blog, getting more obsolete by the second, sitting in my drafts folder with 25 pictures attached) within the next week or so. i can summarize the trip: FUCKING AMAZING. what a beautiful place filled with beautiful people. the fans in australia are unbelievable. the theater group o worked with, the danger ensemble, was a total fantasy come true. i'm hoping we can do more shows in more places together. and seeing everybody and talking with all our fellow freaks.....it made me hungry to get back on the road and re-connect with everyone on this upcoming tour, i had forgotten how much i miss it until i did it. this upcoming tour is going to be such a perfect love-fest with all our friends on stage with us...sxip and luminescent, my new soul-mate meow meow, our trusty crew....we're so excited.

it's time to go to bed. i have a flu to kick and exactly two days to do it.
please send garlic vibes my way.

i can't wait

merry xmas, happy everything, be safe, drink lots of water...i love you guys.

love
a

australia, day one

2007-12-05T03:54:00.000-05:00

Today I saw two kangaroos fucking. For real.

fuck packing

2007-12-03T18:41:00.000-05:00

it's officially winter and it's cold and it is 4 am and i have not
started packing for australia. obviously i must blog.

i still don't know where i'm going to stay. that is, we've picked a
joint in melbourne with some freak types who sound right up our
alley, but we've got no address.
so i think i may land in melbourne many hours from now, suitcase in
each hand, and look forlornly at upside-down street signs while
dingos eat my baby.

actually i plan to take a cab straight to the spiegeltent and hug it.
i've missed it so since edinburgh.

i didn't pack because a string of people happened tonight....andrew
called and said there was a jazz band at a place in cambridge, so i
went there, thinking i'd have time to pack after, then geeta was next
door and i haven't seen her much lately and i shared a bottle of
lambic with her, thinking i'd have time to pack after, then my old
friend from elementary school, fred, came to visit nick at around 1
am downstairs and started telling us about converting to judaism and
the three branches of judaism, and i needed to absorb myself in that
for a while, thinking i'd have time to pack after, then i needed to
talk to katie kay about post-war trade and she's on LA time, so we
talked for a while (we're making POST-WAR TRADE UKULELES....i'm so
happy), thinking i'd have time to pack after, then i started cutting
my fingernails. and took some self-portraits with my furry cat hat.

i am so excited to go back to ozland. everyone there is magic,
there's a friendly syrup in the air. i am so excited to see steven
and the other performers in the danger ensemble. i am excited to
drive the aussie coast with them as we groove tunes and talk butoh
and plans for our bizarro stage antics. i am even excited to have a
10-day slumber art party with them on somebody's floor.

i am also very very more than psyched for the upcoming dolls tour.
brian and i have been practicing and it's soul food to play with each
other again. we had the traditional every-song-we-could-think-of-on-
the-violent-femmes-first-record jam, this time with brian on guitar
and me on drums. meg white watch out. and i have better sex tapes
too. oh wait.

film recommendation:
the lives of others. we watched it the other night after rehearsal.
german. recent. long. starts a little slow. but GOOD GOD it's fine.
can't do much more justice than to say holy shit, perfect movie.

best reply from the last blog:
a web of safety benefits only a spider. all rewards come from risk.

i sat next to a man in the cafe pamplona tonight (yes, thinking i
would pack later) and he was translating papers.
he made a phone call and to the other person on the line he said:
"oh, just sitting her, working on papers and having some coffee. and
happy to be alive."
he told me he'd been coming to the cafe pamplona since 1959.

it started snowing today in big fat gorgeous chunks. it's still
coming down.
i think this calls for a picture, let's outside.

post-script: 6:52 am: completed packing mission, compacted vitamin collection, created many fingerless gloves. snow switched to rain, sun has risen.

flailing flag from the front

2007-11-25T20:11:00.000-05:00

this isn't the blog that i wanted to write.

the blog that i wanted to write was epic and profound and detailed
and full of photographic images and reflections on the last two
months. in fact, i have several drafts on my desktop complete with
photos. i've been all over the fucking place a lot has happened. i
was in montana, doing a solid week of training for yoga-teaching, i
was in seattle working with my new back-up band, i was working on the
record in LA and san fran and somewhere in there i was in new york
with brian and other friends putting on the finishing touches.

i still might write that blog. it's long, but every passing day makes
it feel less relevant, because i'm stuck in an entirely different
swamp now.
i need to at least relate my current state of mind. are you guys
still out there?

during all this mess of the last two months i got gradually lost in
every way.
my mind started to deteriorate and my body tried hard to keep from
crashing.
i went vegan for a while for survival.

my whole infrastructure started to feel like it was falling apart.
my home, my team, my brain, my career, my general web of safety all
going the same way: nothing literally falling apart but nothing
working at capacity anymore, either.
the basics keep me from despairing: my record is incredible, i'm in
relatively good health, nothing is awful.
the difficulty lately lies in wondering what the point of all the
struggle has been. i've been working my ass off for years, non-stop,
deluding myself into thinking that it would get easier and more fun
and it's only over the course of the past year or so that i realize
i've dug my own grave more than i have dug the tunnel to freedom.
it's just the same cycles over and over. don't mean to sound morbid
or anything here, but the theme is applying to life in general. i'm
watching all these people around me rushing and struggling, caught up
in the game, everybody working their fingers to the bone. myself
included.

it reminds me of that wonderful part of "eat, pray, love" where
elizabeth gilbert goes into a lingerie store in italy and buys a
shitload of fancy underwear, even though she has no lover and no
chance for intimacy even remotely around the corner. she finds
herself thinking about the italian soccer fan she was sitting behind
a few days before who was screaming at the top of his lungs at
Albertini, the star player, who had just passed the ball to midfield
where there was absolutely nobody waiting. the fan was screaming:
"Per CHE, Albertini?!?!?? PER CHEEEEEEEEEEE?!?!??" in her own mind,
she was asking the same question: "For WHO, liz??? FOR
WHOOOOOOOOOOOOO??!??!?")

this is how i'm feeling lately. maybe it has something to do with not
touring for too long. the disconnection is pretty complete. for who?
for me? for you?

the biggest delusion i've revealed is that i keep learning the same
lesson of self-reliance, or is it just my puritan upbringing?
i've had these mini-realizations before, but this one was more seismic.
i was working for years on the assumption that if i just played hard
enough, wrote well enough, felt passionate enough, proved myself
enough, toured enough, won enough fans, who know...that help would
come swooping in like a magic carpet and take all the responsibility
away. but this is totally childish thinking. there is always a
support staff, but that's what they are: a support staff. i am, will,
and should always be the end of the line, the only one in control of
my own show. i don't know why i started thinking, at a pretty early
age in my career, that if i just worked hard enough i 'd be able to
hand that responsibility off to a team of experts. i am the expert.
it's terrifying to realize that and have to re-format your mind to
the new scenario. it's not only applicable to my career, it's just as
applicable to life. you wander through your days thinking that you'll
find that perfect scenario, job, lover, partner (fill in the blank)
who will somehow unburden you of your struggling existence, your
decisions, your responsibilities. it's bullshit; only you can truly
unburden you. but the fantasy is very, very tempting. does it ever
work? if you exchange stories with anyone (try someone who's recently
been divorced for starters) you'll find that the delusion is an
extraordinarily common one. we want to believe in the fantasy more
than we want to take responsibility for the fact that we are, indeed,
the only ones who can run our own show.

one of the yoga teachers who was in montana left me with a choice
phrase that keeps reverberating around in my head.
we were in an incredibly long and hard pose, sweat pouring and people
groaning.
he said:

"Don't be fooled. HELP IS NOT ON THE WAY."

everybody cracked up laughing. we all knew what he meant. there is
that fantasy, in every moment of tension and struggle, that help will
magically arrive and make all the pain and suffering go away.
so many people in my life...my agents and managers and engineers and
producers and lawyers and accountants and bandmates, the list goes
on....the airport luggage carriers, the hotel clerks, the
taxidrivers, the people who make my sandwich....they're all helping,
and god knows i need them and they need me to function to
survive....no doubt. but they're not going to save my life, they're
not going to give me any answers, they're down here in the mire with
me, trying to figure this shit out for themselves. wondering, too, if
someone is going to open the door to their bedroom one night and say:
"i know you've been waiting for me for years and i'm finally here.
things have gotten way too out of control, my friend. before we get
to the meaning of life stuff (and believe me, we'll get there) let's
start with something simple, like your closet."

now we know why cult-like religions and personal organizers paid $500/
hr are doing fantastic business.

this is turning into the blog i wanted to write.
i should be warming up my voice for tonight.

look i rhymed.

i'm trying to focus on each small task at hand until my shit gets
together in some recognizable way.
i'm supposed to be leaving for australia in a week and i still don't
have a plane ticket or a plan of where to go and stay, even though
there are shows booked, which makes me wonder if i'm going.
my head works in strange ways in this regard, and always has: until
i'm at the airport, i still think there's a chance it might not happen.
this fear is founded, actually, on a life and schedule in which
things - often beyond anyone's control - have fallen apart at the
last minute often enough for me to not trust anything unless it's
right in front of my face.
i've gotten used to this the way i've gotten used the things in my
apartment always being different when i come back due to the number
of people coming in and out. i just don't blink an eye.

i'm at home right now, jason webley is staying here, we played in
portland last night.
i hadn't played the piano on stage in a long time. i felt rusty but
creaked back into action well enough. there was some snafu with my
keyboards not being fixed so i started the set off with two broken
notes.
something was cosmically against me (or else i was playing harder
than usual) but by the end of the show there were 8 broken keys. i
could barely get through a song. there's nothing romantic about it,
you don't get the satisfaction of a guitar player with the springy-
sprangy look of strings splaying everywhere. every song ends up being
an intellectual obstacle course instead of an emotional outpouring
and that plainly sucks. in trying to describe the feeling to the
audience, i tried to come up with an apt metaphor and finally hit on
this: starting a song and then realizing that the main notes you need
are broken is much like when you're driving a car in an ice storm in
the way left-hand lane of a highway and the entire windshield fogs
up, leaving you only a few 3x3-inch patches through which to figure
out where the fuck you're going.
but playing together with jason, and watching him play, was joyous in
itself. i could forget the fuckshow of my life and take comfort in
singing some new material, which we had a great deal of fun putting
together on the drive.
he's one of the best songwriters i know.

tonight we play providence and then i spend the next two days trying
to dig out of the pile.

so that things do not end on an entirely sour note, i will include a
recent self-portrait that made me happy:

all my love,

a

An Open Letter to Nick Vargelis

2007-11-14T14:31:00.001-05:00

dear nick,

when i got home earlier tonight i felt like shit. i have been
traveling for almost a month straight. i know you don't even know
exactly what i was doing. nobody knows exaclty what i've been doing,
and that includes me and i'm not kidding.

you've been crashing in my room, because that's how things roll at
the cloud club. you're leaving in a few weeks for paris, and you're
couch-surfing, as i have been for the past month. seattle, portland,
san francisco, LA, santa fe and new york (with connecting flights in
salt lake city, atlanta, phoenix and maybe i'm missing something),
doing everything from recording to mixing to photoshoots to singing
and rehearsing to shows and video shoots to holding new babies to
mastering and having nail-ripping and life-determining meetings about
my life and career and suffice it to say, i'm fucking tired. so
tired, nick. empty tired. don't give a fuck tired, unhappy tired. i
have been feeling so weird lately. coming home has been upsetting.

i got in from NYC at around 4pm today, dropped off my suitcase and
put on a dress and got a ride from lee straight downtown to go to the
opera with my family, which was the whole reason i came back today.
we ate. i tried to stay awake. then i came home. i felt Empty And
Lonely. i sort of know what i'm doing with my life, but not really. i
don't feel at home here anymore. i've gotten too used to the road.

i felt something bordering full-on depression as i decided that it
was time to go to bed. i didn't want to go there. i've been sleeping
alone, but something about going to bed alone tonight seemed
especially sad. i brushed my teeth and picked two books to take to
bed with me to keep me company. i couldn't do it, couldn't for some
reason, didn't want to go to bed, even though i was so fucking wasted
tired. i just kept listlessly looking at piles of unopened mail to
see if maybe something personal showed up in the course of the last
month along with all the bills and books from amazon......maybe....
some letter from some ex-lover that might change my life that i could
take to bed with me and clutch to my chest.

i kept checking emails, until my computer got knocked offline and i
decided that it was a sign and i should, finally, go to bed.

so, reluctantly, i finally did.

and when i climbed up the stairs to my sleeping loft and found not
one, not two, not three or four or five, but SIXTY impeccably-frosted
vegan cupcakes laid out in the shape of a crucifix on my bed, i
wanted to crumble with gratitude that indeed, everything is All
Right. the fact that you included a painfully large xerox
reproduction of my embarrassing high school yearbook picture was also
The Shit. i'm not even tired anymore. i am now in a Fantastic Fucking
Mood. i need more friends like you.

i really, really love you, nick vargelis.

yours,
amanda

the songwriter gets it.

2007-11-05T00:42:00.001-05:00



"one fucking false move and the songwriter gets it"

self-portrait, hyde street studios, san fransicso 3:33 am, november
4th 2007.


good godamn morning and happy daylight fucking savings, hopefully
even more cheerful news tomorrow

love
a

me & the zombies

2007-10-31T16:32:00.000-04:00

hola comrades,

here is a video that chip and i shot last week in seattle.
don't ask.
happy halloween.

this week: seattle, los angeles, san francisco, santa fe, new york. boston, sleep.

how am i feeling?i feel about how i look in this video: completely lost, clueless and isolated and yet somehow ok despite my total lack of direction (which, if you look carefully, is backwards).
the last few months have been.....enlightening is the positive way of looking at it. i'm not even close to out the woods yet. when i blog, prepare for four to five installments.

love and death,
a

Moon Over Marin

2007-09-28T14:41:00.000-04:00

Playing Moon over marin by the dead kennedys at paul's warehouse in san francisco.

shot by paul nathan himself. he also has watermelon and made me a bath.

i can't believe how fucking tired yet happy I am

i will write for real sometime soon
meanwhile I am recording all day every day and getting not enough sleep
at
all

i love my record

X
a

The Fucking Fringe Fucking Rocks

2007-09-03T23:37:00.001-04:00

writing in planes seems to have become a habit, but it makes sense to me.

i barely thought about blogging when i was in edinburgh and when i stop to think about it, i realize why: i have no desire to keep a running of my life and actions.
did this. went here. met so and so. greetings from....
it's not the events themselves that i'm interested in writing about, it's the reverb.

so maybe:
memoirs, not chronicles.
maybe this:
it's been so sublime that to write ABOUT it DURING it would have seemed like a violation, as tasteless as stopping incredible sex to discourse thoughtfully with your partner about how incredible the sex is.

at the beginning of august i flew to london for the bush hall show

amanda and rohan (photo by nickie mcgowan)

and then to edinburgh and just left yesterday (by way of one short show at the pride festival in manchester, which was a disaster, though fun, and not part of the story).
i'm flying back to boston. in total i spent about 3 weeks at the fringe festival in edinburgh. i booked 8 shows at the spiegeltent and played a few extras as the opportunities came up.
it was the third year i've been in edinburgh during the fringe. the first year it was just for a day or two. i vowed i'd return. last summer i managed to stay 3-4 extra days.
from now on, i'm there all month every year. it is no less than perfection. it is disneyland for artists. it is heaven.

this is the fringe:

wandering lost in an city transformed into an altar to theater, music and art. old stone and brick buildings in the center of a twisted and cobbled fairy-story city that lie in slumber until fringe time and are then transformed into damp and dark spaces where art-makers compete for your attention, every one of them attempting harder than the next to plunge their hungry fingers into your heart and make you bleed so profusely that you have no alternative but to promote their show by word of mouth to all your friends.

everywhere the walls are damp and everywhere there's laughing and it smells wonderful and everywhere things happen now now now until 6 in the morning and profanity and profundity walk smack into you in the street.
jaaaaaaaaaaa.

on the third day steven (from zen zen zo in brisbane) came. we'd been hatching some vague plans to put action to music with him at the helm and a collection of performers he would wrangle from australia.
he introduced me to the performers from a show running at the fringe called "six women standing in front of a white wall". they were friends, some of them old students, of his and they generously lent us their performance space so we could rehearse the ridiculous lip-synch performance to "umbrella (ella ella eh eh eh)" that i had dreamed up on the plane ride over. it involved reggie beatboxing. reggie came over. game on. art started.

here's what we came up with:

the next day i saw the performance of "six women...". it was exactly this: six women, wild-haired painted white butoh-style and wearing pink prom gowns, standing in front of a white wall in a dark brick basement venue that is usually a hallway. they stand behind velvet VIP ropes with signs that read "please do touch". they stand there, writhing in wait, every muscle of their body tense, waiting to be touched. music alternately manic and heartbreaking plays through the speakers. maybe somebody crosses that rope and walks up to one of them touches them. and when touched, how they respond, all gleeful and wild and wordless and explosive, happy but terrifying like a baby in a state of shock in that moment for bursting into tears. the performance was attended by 10 or so people. steven and i touched them. i smiled, it was sweet, it was art, i knew these were my people. we invited them to come perform during my spiegel show, they'd be perfect during "material girl". let them writhe in front of the audience in their terrifying dresses and why not let's put blood capsules in their mouths and have them start oozing during the "living in a material world" section of the song. so every night these women, along with steven and the danger ensemble, all australians, would be packed behind the tent putting on white and laughing, what heaven will look like for me. steven and his crew put together a piece for my song "strength through music" that broke my heart so hard one night i wept while i watched them, hands on heads, all attending columbine and virginia tech, freezing and falling to the aisle of the tent while it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop every night. during "coin-operated boy" they paraded in the audience with "pash for a pound" signs. pash, i learned, is british for Making Out. they had many takers and often made out (no pun intended) very well. someone made a twenty one night. during "the assistant" they created a striking tableaux of twisted circus magicians and assistants. steven is like pope: he sees straight into my head and straight into the music and knows what goes where without me barely having to utter a word. chalk one more point up to Rock Love. we have it. we call it Art Love. i played off of them and their energy the way i play off brian, they fed me, more and more every night.

there's a great video reggie took of our daytime rehearsal of "creep" with the six women, you can really get a sense of what the tent looks like:

Amanda Creeps from Reggie Watts and Vimeo.

vimeo rocks, it's youtube for artists.

ok.

this is the spiegeltent:

stained-glass & velvet & gold vaudeville tent that seats 300 people and travels the world, a magical ship of cabaret and drinking that delivers atmosphere in such large doses that it's almost intoxicating. it's like stepping inside a gingerbread house or a movie that you love, you can barely believe that it's real. there were two tents set up at the fringe in a garden of tables and umbrella-ella-ellas and bulbs strung on tress. one with wrap-around booth-seating and a dance floor (my tent) and one with old circus bleacher-style seating (the bosco tent). there were dozens of acts, all rotating from afternoon til late late at night and the turnover was tight. we all shared dressing room trailers and the bathrooms were portapotties smelling strongly of cigarettes. it was one of these portapotties into which i accidentally jettisoned (and from which i vainly retrieved) my blackberry last summer.

we were all all all over each other, everyone fast friends, everyone in awe of the next person, everybody checking out each others acts and the whole place feeling like family.
i've never had so much constant exposure to such an abundance of my kind of talent and people in my life. it was what i'm always trying to make. already made, and there, for me.
the staff, including all the door people and backstage crew, wear old-school 1920s and 30s attire: hats, suits, vests, garters, skirts, boots, everybody truly loving it. fucking class.
wine in the morning, coffee at night, cider all the time.

i shared the stage with Bob Downe, a hilarious seventies throwback and with Camille, a french-irish beauty i've seen for years at the tent who does a nightly show of kurt weill, nick cave and jacques brel. not up my alley at FUCKING all. she was an inspiration and we would bump into each other every morning and share hangover woes and she would give me pieces of french apple pie. late at night there was the shuffle club, where the tent would jam pack and we would swing dance to a smoking band playing jazz standards. sweat everything off and slip down drunk on all the beer on the floor. (http://www.myspace.com/theshuffleclub)

...with bob downe backstage at the spiegel

most of the spiegeltent 07 family in front of the bosco (can you find amaaaaaaaanda? photo by ryan mcgoverne)

at the bosco tent was meow meow, one of the premiere cabaret performers from the new york scene and she was an instant hero, just add water. i've never seen a performer like her.... in love and in awe. she crowd surfed to the lighting booth every night.

meow sound checking in the tent

there was suitcase royale, which was a junkyard paradise combination of monty python, terry gilliam and, as the reviews said, "wallace and gromit meets david lynch". sxip showed up and we went together and clutched each other in hysterics the whole time and kept saying all day that we wanted to live in the set with the butcher the doctor and the newsman. they're coming to pittsburgh in the fall. go or die, i'll try to remind: www.myspace.com/thesuitcaseroyale.

at the end of every night starting at one o'clock a password was spread and bosco tent would turn into a speakeasy where only the performers and the staff would knock at the backstage door. some band or another would kick out the jams and the drinks were served in teacups. the first night i went was almost the best, meow's piano accompanist and i took over the grand piano and played a 15-minute version "ice ice baby"/"under pressure" while the doctor from suitcase royale tried to channel vanilla ice. my last night i showed up with a song i had penned that afternoon to play for the assembled patrons: an ode to the spiegeltent. it was a tango, the lyrics began:

"i want to live inside this tent
i dont care how much rent they want
i want to curl up in a ball
forget the worlds out there at all
and fall asleep each morning plastered underneath a wooden bench

i'll drink my breakfast at the bar
i'll never change my clothes or shower
i'll hire a desperate local child
to fetch paninis from outside
and keep me stocked on cigarette papers and
underwear and i'll be best of friends with all the staff
we'll share our sorrows and a laugh
they'll be oblivious at night
when they are turning out the lights
that i am sleeping in a pile of their 1930's hats...."

....and so on and so forth. it ends with us all dying and meeting up to get pissed in a spiegeltent in heaven.

it went over very well.

then me and tom dickins sang "hallelujah" together and tried to make each other cry.

this is the fringe. it's the best place in the world.

me, meow and camille in front of the bos (photo by ryan mcgoverne)

there was my apartment.

which i found through the dentist(who-fixed-my-tooth-that-i broke-beatboxing-at-the-fringe-with-reggie-watts)'s son
sam. sam ends up being an amazing musician in his own right and i got to see him play and sing a few times over the course of the fringe.
sam had a friend named jo who had an empty room in her house for the month.

i rented a shitty keyboard and put it in the corner so i could practice. rohan practiced on it. i think max played it before he found tonsillitis.

i'd wake up in the morning with new thoughts in my head, ideas that maybe i always have but because of the change in climate and shift in lifestyle i finally did things i don't do.
i wrote two poems. i don't write poems. i'll share them later. one is called "broken-heart stew" and sounds like a dr. seuss book and one is called "how to hold a man with no arms". they are both good.

i wrote a children's story. it took 30 minutes but it's not really finished. it's about a boy who keeps changing his name.

i ignored everything coming in. i dealt with the essential but i have, at last count, approximately 567 emails (after spam-deleting) in my inbox.
i don't care.

everybody texted. i had a UK cell phone left over from last year and it became my new lifeline.
everybody always had somewhere to go, and if there wasn't somewhere to go, you could always find someone at the forest.

self-portrait on arrival day:

this is the forest cafe:

one day i walked in for a sandwich and there was a girl from pittsburgh playing "oh comely" on guitar and instead of ordering my sandwich i sat down in a chair and watched her and within about 2 minutes i was in tears. ok, so i was having a sensitive day anyway but what the fuck. her voice was like an angels, i talked to her afterwards and she came along that night to hanover street and played the guitar part for "two-headed boy" while i sang. we practiced in the basement. (http://www.myspace.com/autumnayers that's her).

the forest is the world's best Again cafe, co-operatively run and volunteer operated by everyone around, with plates of vegan salad, mad painting on the walls and indie music at all hours of the day and night. they only play music that is sent to them by unsigned bands. where everybody is, thinks, talks, sits in rotting armchairs with disintegrating springs that sink you to the floor. where the abandoned presbyterian church upstairs finally opened up as a forest cafe annex for a few weeks and miraculously the giant pipe organ up in the balcony was still working. the collective that was anarchically taking over the church space was a mass of 20 kids from london, and they put up gorgeous photos everywhere and made music for the end of the world. the sounds were like the old Birthday Party live recordings. the group was called "What They Could Do, They Did". the place was packed and dark with light creaking in from the street lamps breaking through the tin foil that had been plastered over the two-story stain-glass windows and i played "will" on the organ for the crowd down below as max worked the foot pedals with his hands.

upstairs at the forest & the pipe organ.

max. and rohan. the two of them sleeping like homeless angels on the wooden floor of my room and we would all scrape ourselves up sometime after noon and walk down to the cafe on the corner where we had, all three, fallen in love with the waitress who was so frazzled and terrified every time she took your order that you had to, just had to, deliberately slow your speech to watch her slowly self-destruct in agony. we were sadists, trying to inflict jedi zen on her and it never worked. the orders always came wrong, i always tipped, which you don't DO in scotland. from then when i was alone there, i would write. i would curse the draft from the door which was always kept open even though, for the first two weeks, it was always freezing and raining. from bush hall to edinburgh, max and rohan and i ate many meals together and always ended up in the same seats on the same topic of technical skill losing out to passion no matter what the application. about how there are no rules for life and you realize this gradually. rohan finally made me an associate member of the guild of funerary violin players and i attached the golden plaque proudly to my ukulele.

some pictures of the forest:

outside

inside

the forest bathroom, which gets repainted all the time, as do all the forest walls:

i took jogs through the meadows near the apartment and listened to the songs that becca left on the iPod i had lent her that she named Maggie.

one day my heart broke.

i had my heart broken, mostly, i think, because i needed it to be so i could fix it and feel my own blood pumping. i'll never know. i keep forgetting what it's like to feel even the remotest shallow heart pains.

that day i was hung over and i gathered up all the energy i could muster and left the house for a run. maggie was on shuffle and "everybody's gotta live" by the band Love came on. i had never heard it.
i played it again. and again. and again. i kept running. i felt like that character described in Paris, Texas. i kept running and running and hitting repeat until i was so full of Yes that it was impossible. then i went home and showed and went out that night to see what would happen but i brought maggie and when things got hard i finally took her out and i put on the song and i walked by the throngs of people in the cloudy dark wet light and i felt my heart explode with every face i saw pass me. i wanted to grab my cracked heart out of myself and throw it in the river and i wanted to hold onto it forever.

i went to 99 hanover street to pick some money up from gavin. i'd had a variety show there the night before and invited all my friends to come play....sxip, reggie, rohan, steven and the other guys from danger ensemble, jessica delfino singing songs about vaginas, more more more, it was a juicy night everybody sat on the floor and we all rock loved and drank wine and ate indian food in the make-shift basement dressing room. i was tired from my jog and from my heartbreak and from the late night. gavin waved, he was just finishing up a band on stage and as they played their last chord he told me to hang on so he could throw a song on the turntable and he ran over while i got a cider at the bar and i heard
"EVERYBODY'S GOTTA LIVE.....AND EVERYBODY'S GONNA DIE..."
and i properly melted to a puddle of fucking mush on the floor.

i dragged my semi-broken heart around for a few days like a suitcase filled with top-shelf drugs, happy to have it but afraid that it might burst open and get me in a shitload of trouble.

on one of those days i went back to see the six women show. they'd gotten rave reviews, the show was now packed. instead of 10 people, the room was teeming but the crowd was just as timid and confused.
i was raw, tired, sad, happy, broken, leaving in a few days. they just stood there, writhing. i held onto a set of hands and i felt tears gush out, thinking this is it: this is your lover. and i knew i was right. and they knew i was right. and they held me and i held them, and in all the parts of my brain that were working i tried not to take any of it for granted. saying: there's no rule that says that people are going to make mind-blowing art, no rule that you're going to be there to see it. touch it NOW. NOW. and i left the theater without saying goodbye to any of them in words, my hands and pants and mouth and nose covered in white, and got in a cab to go to the dentist's house for dinner.

the six women of little dove art theater:

(from http://www.realtimearts.net/studio-artist/Six_women_standing_in_front_of_a_white_wall)

more connections and more:

i knew andy, a bad-ass trumpet player, from last year and the next thing i knew he wrangled three of his friends and i had a horn section fro "leeds united". they all played pants-less and i loved them.

photo by stuart barrett

i loved them so much i booked a day in a local recording studio and they brought along a bass player and drummer and we laid the track down. it is the sloppiest thing i have ever recorded. i did the vocal in one take and didn't even warm up. i think it's going to go on the record just because IT CAN! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA ha.

we had a good time in the studio:

with the band recording "leeds united" at chamber street studio
(drew forrest)

doing vocals
(drew forrest)

the record has been on my my mind but i tried to ignore it all month. i went jogging and i realized that if you didn't know me, you'd hear all these songs and just think i was just an incredibly morose and fucked up chick. that didnt' sit well with me. i need to think about that.

this is the dentist's house:

there is a house in edinburgh where a family lives that is the most wonderful family in the wolrd. i've never seen so much drinking and laughing and joking and shared love of music and life around a family dinner table in my life. instruments are played, spilled dessert from the table turns into an art installation and photo opportunity and the dying and lovable cat, pumpkin, shares time in everybody's lap. i am now torn between living in the suitcase royale set or the dentist's family's house. emily came over for dinner the first time. we ended up all lying on the floor stuffed with food and wine watching alice cooper and tom waits and captain beefheart clips from the old grey whistle test DVD.
we spent the next day looking at each other shaking our heads saying "dentist's house. Best. Family. Ever." the encore dinner was just as wonderful and sam and i practiced "two-headed boy" together and then we all walked over to reggie's late-night show and at 2 am we took stage and played it. then i played "what about blowjobs" with reggie and did NOT break any teeth this time. no pun intended ok next:

this is the fringe:

-heading to the spiegeltent in the morning and checking my email under an umbrella drinking cappuccino and eating banana bread while camille comes by and talks irish in her gorgeous wool coat and sxip comes by with someone from luminescent orchestrii and talks about how their show went and mark comes by and calls me darlin' and sonya comes by and says how you goin' and tom comes by in his suit with his big australian smile and tom's mom gives me a massage in her trailer maked "zen central" and puts flower essence under my tongue and talks to me about love and life and makes my chest break open.

-a piece of physical theater called "the angel and the woodcutter" that it makes me cry not one, not two, not three, but four seperate times. by the last scene everyone in the house is fucking sniveling.

-sitting in the kitchen with my housemates, from all over, greece, italy, food being cooked, wine poured, conversation turning in circles and the record player always on. the back window lets you out into a garden with tiger lillies and fox gloves.

-three weeks of Noga

-a one-man play about technology and isolation in which everything morphs into a sick video game and i cry from happiness and not-loneliness and then the actor who is a friend of reggie and jason webley's from seattle takes me back to his house under a cliff and makes me eggs and toast and we end up talking (surprise) about how technical skill loses out to passion no matter what the application.

-a walk to the spiegeltent one evening, decide to take the long way through the meadows and a group of four or five people are lying on a blanket drinking beer and i'm in a good mood and one of the guys is playing a hand-drum even though he doesn't really look like a hippie and the beat makes me happy and so i smile and when i walk by i catch his eye and he doesn't look away and i don't look away and the whole episode only lasts 3 seconds but he ends it by saying "i love you"

-showing up at club noir with reggie and the danger ensemble to do a quick appearance and being backstage with a gazillion half-naked burlesque dancers and drinking GOD knows WHAT was in those pitchers.

..c="http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k14/Bill_H/amanda/09032007blog/19.jpg" border="0">
with reggie at cloub noir
(tina warren)

mark during coin-operated boy at club noir. i'm not sure if he made any money that night.
(tina warren)

-seeing fuerztabruta, the same folks who made "de la guarda" at a tent on the other side of town. me and steven and drew all cab it over. i grab steven's hand within the first ten minutes because we both know that this is It.
in an hour, urban life sticks the arrow of decay through our hearts, world trade center towers crash over everybody's heads, and tsunamis consume us as all three hundred of us agree to dance and scream and FUCK IT.
we leave drunk on the performance and take public transport back to town, steven produces a bottle of vodka from his backpack and we all feel 16 as we burst into spontaneous fits of laughter taking swing and making faces in the back of the top of the double decker bus.

-conversations about the end of the world in a bar with the staff from the bongo club after seeing the group 1927 create the most incredible fusion of film and performance i've yet seen.
true genius; i am determined to get them to come open up for the dolls this winter: http://www.myspace.com/1927cabaretmostcurious

-cider, whiskey, lager, wine, repeat

from comments:

"You aren't the sum of your experiences. You're the whole fucking equation."
whoever wrote this, you're awesome.

"did you ever see a film called "paris, texas"? i expect you have, but i think youd like it anyway."
this is not only one of my favorites (and i love wim wenders in general, if you haven't seen his new one, don't come knocking, it's pretty good and bleak) but the soundtrack is oneof my favorite soundtracks of all time.
ry cooder, slide guitar, just ridiculously great.

amanda and alex, my last night at the fringe in the underbelly bar. notice indeed my bloated cider-belly
& how my jacket barely closes:

all right.

i'm out to the mountains montana for a week with no phone or email again, finishing yoga teacher training so i can finally quit this ridiculous day job.

if anyone tries to message or email me i'm way backed up so be patient.
i finally put life first for a while and it means i have about 462 unanswered emails in my inbox.

i get back & then i'm spending all of september finishing up the record and then mixing the first week of october in nashville. i'm scared. it'll be done and then i won't be able to change anything. but then it will also come out and people will finally be able to hear what i've been doing with my life for a year.

NAMASTE MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!!!

love

a

oh p.s. miscellaneous plug:
YOU MUST SEE REGGIE'S NEW VIDEO for "WHAT ABOUT BLOWJOBS".
me & him performing this song together at the fringe seems to have become a tradition, and this video is the funniest shit i have EVER seen:
go go go:
www.collegehumor.com/video:1771127
& hopefully we'll do this song together at the ART shows in boston in a few weeks and everyone can sing along.
if you haven't got tickets, get them http://www.amrep.org/hoc/, these shows are going to be epic and beautiful and never again.

further deconstruction of umbrella & other news

2007-08-03T12:31:00.000-04:00

i was in the chiropractor's office while i was home, he wears a white turban and has a really long beard.
in the waiting room there was a copy of "Real Simple" which, as i understand it, is a magazine about living more simply.
the tagline of the magazine:

Real Simple: Life Made Easier.

what would have henry david said about this one?

but that is not the funny part of the story,
the funny part of the story was the fact that when i opened up the magazine randomly to see what was in there, i opened to an advertisement for something or other. i think it was actually a ad for another magazine, which also makes me laugh in retrospect.

anyway

the advertisement was a modern black-and-white affair with text and a photograph of a very weird-blender-looking-high-tech-device-with-a-handle

the text said:

"I don't know what it is, but I want it."

....................................................................................................................................................

being not in the habit of writing music anymore and anyway being disgusted with myself at the thought of using my own personal not-even-very-large heartbreak to write lyrics, i went to the local hipster bar instead.
i drank two oatmeal stouts and talked to a girl named rachel who has worked with the blind who approached me because she recognized me.
we talked about the coasts.

then i wrote in my journal and then i got sick of that and bummed a cigarette off a bike courier and drew a picture of myself feeling sorry for myself. i'm still 16. i can't handle the fact that my romantic self is dying, that i'm getting old, that doing the unexpected is too much of a bother.

that i know too well how things will go - because i do know, because i have the experience - and so i let go, i don't do.

i don't want to let go.
i want to torture myself, i want to feel hurt, i want to feel my own heart breaking, i want to remember what it's like to fall in love. it's been too many years, i've loved nothing but my self and my own creations and the scenery that goes along with it. fuck that.

meanwhile, my balanced self nods wisely saying: this is the pain that you have to experience to grow up. finding balance means feeling the pain of not doing certain things.

but i WANT to drive to other people's driveways at three in the morning and declare my love. i want to make things happen. irrational things.

exactly, my self says....but you don't.

but i don't WANT to be rational. i don't WANT to be responsible. that means i am OLD, and DEAD.
i realistically have nothing to lose.
why can't i be like i used to?
i want to be stupid.
run out naked into traffic and all that.

exactly.

.................................................................................................................

i just got an email from michael franti. we have the same management company - madison house (great bunch of people and dogs there).
we met a while ago in australia and went to each others shows. our music couldn't be more different but MAN the guys got soul. he is very very very tall and rarely wears shoes and writes overtly political reggae-rock-inspired songs about peace/politics/fucked-up-ness. he's a marley/mellow clash. i had no idea he was actually famous until i got home from that trip and they were playing his CD in my yoga studio, and everybody knew it. it's nice when you meet famous people and you don't know it. he's recording a new record in LA and doing yoga in the parking lot. he sounds like my long lost brother, except i'm not black. ok.

.........................................................................................

from comments:
"Sorry about your cat. I always looked at temporal bodies as slingshots being pushed to their breaking point, and when we die the trigger is released. I'd like to think your cat is getting the ride of it's life right now."

thank you for all your Cat Still Exists confirmations.

i had a dream last night and Govinda was in it.

here it was:

i was in my old house, the house in lexington that i grew up in. almost all my dreams take place there. my best friend, who's a shrink (go figure) says that the old house represents my Self. it's stable, never-left, never-changing, a good repository for whatever images my poor and over-worked little brain-imagination can stuff inside it. (i also have very frequently recurring dreams in which all my possessions, and my self, get immersed in some body of water but we'll leave that to another blog SHALL WE).

i was running around, distracted and breakneck speed, wearing sweatpants and a dirty t-shirt, as i usually did back then. i kept feeling something trapped in the cuff off my pants, something like a little furry animal still alive, and i kept thinking i would tend to it, but i kept forgetting. finally, after too many bouts of running around and doing, i remembered to reach my hand up through my pants to see what the object was.

it was a tiny yellow chick, just barely hatched and hours old, beaten and bruised from all of my hustling about. i felt a guilt so heavy i couldn't bear it: if only i had paid attention sooner. i even knew, i felt it moving; yet i did nothing.
it's eyes fluttered open but couldnt stay open. it was barely moving, barely breathing. i thought to myself that maybe i should kill it and put it out of its misery.

i did do that once.
i was at some friend's house and all alone because they hadn't arrived. and there on the ground by the side of the house was a dying bird, a chickadee, a little one. it was obvious the end was near, it was barely moving, heaving little bird breaths.
my heart was breaking and before i could think about it twice i lifted my right black mary-jane (i remember not wearing my boots, because the sole of the show was paper-thin) and stepped on that bird as hard as i could. and then again. and again. it was harder than i thought. which reminds me of how easy it is to be killed but how hard it is to kill yourself.

anyway, my right foot reverberated for a long time. even now, under my right arch i can feel that little warm body and the bones crackling, not giving as easily as i thought they would, defying death.

this bird in the dream was like that bird. i put the bird down on the floor of my old bedroom, which was emptied of all the original furniture though the walls were still covered in mess-collage.
under the window on the wooden floor where my futon used to be.

i was grief-stricken, guilt-ridden, panicked and convinced i was working against time to save this little life, if that was even possible, which i doubted.
i ran down to the kitchen. there was my mother. i started rustling through drawers and cabinets:

"i need something, quick. a bird upstairs is dying. something warm. some safe place to put it."

she didn't seem phased and she suggested that i use some of the leftover warm tea-bags that were being used in the dish she was making.

"no! those won't work....i need something NOW something and quickly."

and i grabbed a dishcloth and a big bowl and ran back up to my room. in the place where the bird had been was little kitten. not a newborn kitten but a grown-enough one. fully functional.
my logical mind ignored itself and i thought:

how amazing
the chick has evolved into a kitten, and lived.
and then i thought to myself: that's completely stupid.
chickens don't turn into cats.
but i was under some sort of fantasy-dream power so i let that one go.

the kitten hopped up onto the top of my old bedroom closet, where govinda was lying on her side, white belly bared, being her very happy and alive and very soft-and-furry self.
the kitten cuddled up against her and they seemed to get along famously. i felt a surge.

i jumped down from the closet ledge and saw a large plastic cat-carrier sort of structure on the bare wooden floor. an incubator. it was emanating warmth and peeking in it, i saw a large pink blanket folded and in the corner, the newly-hatched yellow chick sleeping soundly. my mother had put it there.

when i told this dream to my friend, i burst into tears telling that last part.

i am broken-hearted and feeling old and losing my sense of freedom and self. my step-sister gave birth two days ago. i'm an aunt.

i know what most of it means.

.........................................................................................................

from comments:

"
Well you know what they say. If you've gone over the cliff, as we all do once we struggle out of the womb, you can do one of two things:

1. Enjoy the view
2. Scream the whole way down

"

exactly.

....................................................................................................

i saw st. vincent play in boston at the middle east.
i think she's the most incredible thing i've seen/heard in a long time & i highly recommmend checking her shit out

regina+pj+joanjett+doris day

http://www.myspace.com/stvincent

go see her live if the tracks don't do it for you.
tell her hi.

.............................................................................

the other day, while driving back from the hospital and being faced with several faces of death, i was reminded of a poetic theme of my life: massachusetts avenue. i grew up off this street, many of my major epic break-ups and hook-ups and massive other goings-on have taken place on this street. i started composing a song in my head. i forced myself, when i got home, to finish the song.

it was not terrible, but it was Terrible. upon completing 47% of the song, it dawned on me that it was a complete, shameless rip-off of the jeep song, truce, ampersand and one other song which i forget now. that;s how bad it was.
i tried to finish it but instead lost myself back into the harsh reality that song-writing (any art, pretty much) is a craft that must be practiced, not mustered

(fuck, i really wanted to be artistic and lazy)

..................................

you can run into my arms
it's okay don't be alarmed (?)
come into me (delay: come into me)
there's no distance in between our love

ok stop right there.

there's no distance in between our love.

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN????

it makes no sense.

....................................................................................................

two years ago i joked that i would only ever endorse one product if i had the choice: Dr. Bronner's Magic Castile Soap.

we wrote them some fan mail and they responded by sending an entire box of soap. i was thrilled. i gave the soap away.

i wish i could give this soap to everyone.

now they have made a movie about Dr. Bronner's life and family and soap (Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox) and brian and i went to see it the other night at the coolidge.

it is an incredible film: the moral ABC, heartbreak, family, mental instability, human connection, the holocaust and it's long-reaching aftershocks. all there.

go see it if it's at an arthouse near you:

the site for the film:

http://www.magicsoapbox.com

A human being works hard to teach love to his enemy, to help unite all mankind free, or that being is not yet Human; so, go the second mile, hold the other cheek brave, not meek! For we're All-One or none! All-One! Exceptions eternally none! ABSOLUTE NONE!

ALL-ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

.............................................................................

from comments:

"I'll fess up: I kinda dig on that "Umbrella" song. Deep down, I'm just a dirty pop whore. I can't help myself. Don't get me started on "Fergalicious," and if you aren't familiar with that song, stay with that. It's the purest form of audio crack. Hear it just once and you're hooked."

audio crack is a very good way of putting it, but is it necessarily - de facto - bad for you?

i have been re-reading books that i've always meant to get back to. i have been trying to do more of that lately.idiotic
i have found that re-reading certain books from my teenage past that i found amazing then are even more amazing now, profoundly.
so i am going back Again and again.
in the past week i've been reading "the unbearable lightness of being" by milan kundera. i remember being stricken by it at 18, so stricken that i continued on as a fan and read 4 or 5 more of his books (immortality i also remember being striking, i'm going to re-read that in edinburgh).

let's talk about rihanna's "umbrella" in the context of kundera.

here are excerpts from the past few passages that i just happened to read on the plane (sabina = czech at-this=point-currently emigré painter):

Sabina's inner revolt against Communism was aesthetic rather than ethical in manner. What repelled her was not nearly so much the ugliness of the Communist world (ruined castles transformed into cow sheds) as the mask of beauty it tried to wear - in other words, Communist kitsch [for you Regina Spektor fans out there: Soviet Kitsch]. The model of Communist kitsch is the ceremony called May Day.
She had seen May Day parades during the time when people were still enthusiastic or still did their best to feign enthusiasm. The women all wore red, white and blue blouses, and the public, looking on from balconies and windows, could make out various five-pointed stars, hearts and letters when the marchers went into formation. Small brass bands accompanied the individual groups, keeping everyone in step. As a group approached the reviewing stand, even the most blasé faces wold beam with dazzling smiles, as if trying to prove they were properly joyful or, to be more precise, in proper agreement. Nor were they merely expressing political agreement with Communism; no, theirs was an agreement with being as such. The May Day ceremony drew it's inspiration from the deep well of the categorical agreement with being. The unwritten, unsung motto of the parade was not "Long live Communism!" but "Long live life!" The Power and cunning of Communist politics lay in the fact that it appropriated this slogan. For it was this idiotic tautology ("Long live life!") which attracted people indifferent to the theses of Communism to the Communist parade.

-

long live the punk cabaret!

-

you can stand under under under my umbrella.

-

i just listened to it again.
it's the synthesizers.
it is aimed to hit all the brainwashed children of today
PLUS everyone who loved Disintegration.

............................................

And in fact, Soviet films, which flooded of all Soviet countries in that cruelest of times [post WWII], were saturated with incredible innocence and chastity. The greatest conflict that could occur between two Russian was a lovers' misunderstanding: he thought she no longer loved him she thought he no longer loved her. But in the final scene they would fall into each other's arms, tears of happiness trickling down their cheeks.
The current conventional interpretation of these films is this: they showed the Communist ideal, whereas Communist reality was worse.
Sabina always rebelled against this interpretation. Whenever she imagined the world of Soviet kitsch becoming a reality, she felt a shiver run down her back. She would unhesitatingly prefer life in a real Communist regime with all its persecution and meat queues. Life in the real Communist world was still livable. In the world of the Communist ideal made real, in that world of grinning idiots, she would have nothing to say, she would die of horror within a week.

-

when the sun shines
we'll shine together:

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN???

does it mean that ONLY when the sun shines, we'll shine together?

meaning that when it rains we will NOT shine together, meaning that now that it's raining more than ever, you CAN'T stand under my umber-ella
ella ella e eh eh eh?

eh eh?

eh?

-

i played with a full band, Aberdeen City, this weekend. the four days that i spent before the run of shows were sublime. i went to their boiling hot allston rehearsal space and we worked non-stop for hours on end to arrange the songs. we ended up playing: five of mine ("don't take the flowers" - a new one, "night reconnaissance", "you owe me a coke' - which i have to re-title but actually i kind of like it, "awful detail", "the mouse and the model") and two tasteful covers ("together" by avril lavigne and "take ecstasy with me" by the magnetic fields). the peak experience came on rehearsal night three when we went for a beer run and i felt something akin to losing my band virginity. none of them knew it.

miller time in summertime. is happiness simple? answer = sometimes yes.

the shows got better and better each night and though i got the distinct feeling that the hardcore fans didnt want to hear guitars mixed in with my piano playing, i didn't care. i was having too good a time. aberdeen city gave me a blue mandolin and a chord book as a going-away present. i want to drink the champagne of beers forever. I want to get back to writing songs, eh eh eh.

as for aberdeen, go see the band in their own glory:
i highly recommend the songs "god is going to get sick of me" and "pretty pet":
http://www.myspace.com/aberdeencity

i usually describe them as mid-latter-day radiohead, but they would probably hate that.
i think what i love best is that i don't know what they are. they are an excellent band full of excellent, that's all.
also highly recommended live.

-

the germans have an expression for when you can't get a song out of your head: they say that you have an "ear worm".

-

She stood in front of her easel with a half-finished canvas on it, the old man in the armchair behind her observing every stroke of her brush.
"It's time we went home," he said at last with a glance to his watch.
She laid down her palette and went into the bathroom to wash. The old man raised himself out of his armchair and reached for his cane, which was leaning against a table. The door of the studio led directly out to the lawn. It was growing dark. Fifty feet away was a white clapboard house. The ground-floor windows were lit. Sabina was moved by the two windows shining out into the day.
All her life she had proclaimed kitsch her enemy. But hadn't she in fact been carrying it with her? Her kitsch was her image of home, all peace, quiet, and harmony, and ruled by a loving mother and wise father. It was an image that took shape within her after the death of her parents. The less her life resembled that sweetest of dreams, the more sensitive she was to its magic, and more than once she shed tears when the ungrateful daughter in a sentimental film embraced the neglected father as the windows of the happy family's house shone out into the dying day.
She had met the old man in New York. He was rich and liked paintings. He lived alone with his wife, also aging, in a house in the country. Facing the house, but still on his land, stood an old stable. He had had it remodeled into a studio for Sabina and would follow the movements of her brush for days on end.
Now all three of them were having supper together. The old woman called Sabina "my daughter", but all indications would lead one to believe the opposite, namely, that Sabina was the mother and that her two children doted on her, worshipped her, would do anything she asked.
Had she then, herself on the threshold of old age, found the parents who had been snatched from her as a girl? Had she at last found the children she had never had herself?
She was well aware it was an illusion. Her days with the aging couple were merely a brief interval. the old man was seriously ill, and when his wife was left on her own, she would go and live with their son in Canada. Sabina's path of betrayals would then continue elsewhere, and from the depths of her being, a silly mawkish song about two shining windows and the happy family living behind them would occasionally make its way into the unbearable lightness of being.
Though touched by the song, Sabina did not take her feeling seriously. She knew only too well that the song was a beautiful lie. As soon as kitsch is recognized for the lie it is, it moves into the context of non-kitsch, thus losing its authoritarian power and becoming as touching as any other human weakness. For none among us is superman enough to escape kitsch completely.

No matter how we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition.

take that rihanna

love
a

self-portrait in london, august 3 2007.