Feburary 11, 2023

Just a short note, to my readers & subscribers here.

Hello everyone.

I rarely use this platform for these sorts of unpolished personal posts, but right now, that’s what I’m doing. I’m keeping the comments here locked, but they’re open over on the patreon, to all memmbers, including to the free members. (Patreon functions much like Substack that way). That post is here, and almost identical to this one.

Anyway: hi.

Hello. I'm here.

If you're only just catching up, I released a statement a few days ago, it's here on Instagram. There will be a time and a place where I will address the allegations that many of you will have read or heard about, but, for now, I ask that you continue to respect my request -and you've all been amazing, you truly have - for privacy for my son's sake. Truly, thank you.

My heart is currently in fucking pieces.

I am still, in the here and now, a real person. A working artist and a mother.

I've been a touring musician for twenty-five years, and an off-grid crowdfunded artist for fifteen years. This community, this internet-space off and away from "Social Media", this beautiful and wonderful place where I post and release art and write and discuss and listen: this is my workplace.

I know so, so many of you. You all have so many jobs.

Anybody who has gone through pure hell in their personal life and still needs to show up at work hopefully understands. My job as a crowdfunded artist is to make art. For my crowd.

I've been doing this for years through all kinds of weather.

I've received so many messages and missives - emails, texts, DMs, calls - over the last few weeks; I don't know how to keep up. If you have written - anywhere - and I haven't been able to respond, just know that I'm receiving. It's been disorienting. I am trying.

Meanwhile: we've got the internet out there. The clash of the tech titans, my friends and colleagues fleeing Facebook/Instagram/X/Twitter in droves. Trying to re-group, re-gather, re-orient. The Great Where Do We Go. It's chaotic.

Meanwhile: we've got, oh, America out there. Oh my...god. The landscape of our lives right now is so hard to even feel. It barely feels real. Is it real? Is it memorex?

I opened up the news today just felt stunned and sad. I saw the American Bar Association's statement quoted in Heather Cox Richardson's late-night post on Substack, along with the five former Treasury secretaries' op-ed statement that "our democracy is under siege".

I stare at these words. Is this real? Is this happening?

I look around this house - and this state, my old state, my old home state, my old state of being - that I share with my family now. I see the old and new pieces of my life.

It feels...unreal.

I look at the books that Ash is reading by the bed, I see the toaster, I look at the folded towels, I see my family's faces, I see the water running out of the sink, I see the emails on the screen, I see the salt shaker. I touch it. I light a candle. I hold my hand over it. I feel the warmth. That's real. I feel the hot of the shower. That's real. My friends texting, my family's arms around my body. The food my neighbors are bringing over. That's real.

I awoke this morning to a text from my favorite British Auntie. I was just about to cut and paste it here for you, but I think it'll be better if I read it aloud (so that's what I've done in the video that I'll attach to this post).

And here, to join her, is Dan Savage, who I love, and who I've interviewed.

He's often been a lighthouse for me. He's weathered a lot.

Never, ever in my life have I wanted to take up my art-pen and point it....where? I don't know. Towards the administration? Towards the past? The future?

No; probably not. Towards here. Towards now. Towards me, towards you. Towards the crowd. Towards...well, where everybody I know (especially the mothers and artists) seem to be pointing their exhausted energy right now: at the community. At the dance floor.

To stay in community, as resistance. To write and to knit and to dance and to make and to hold fast to the idea that our contributions to the listing ship can be part of the might and the power that helps the people who are rowing, and hoisting, dragging the sails up and down in the shitstorm. The Boat. Must. Stay. Afloat.

To truly believe, wholeheartedly, that art matters, that songs matter.

For me: that if this ship is going to groan from side to side with such ferocity that I feel I am in danger of sliding off it myself, into the arctic waters, that maybe, maybe, my offering to you can also be the clutching fingers that keep me from going down, from sliding off, from falling in.

(If you're wondering if I recently comfort-watched "Titanic" again....I mean, you may be right. You may be right.)

Over the weekend, while I was with Ash in the kitchen, a song idea came to my head. I listened. I listened. He was reading on the couch. I was doing the dishes and wiping off the counter. Nobody else was around. A song. Some words. A line. Just a line.

I went to the piano. I haven't been there for a long time. Ash almost never hears me play. I sat down.

I found the note in my head of the song I was singing to myself, I found the chords and without letting myself get too lost, I pressed record on my phone. I played the two minutes of the song-idea into my phone, all mangled, and sloppy, and unfinished, and true. Just three chords. Just for me. Just the music my heart needed to say.

Ash interrupted me in the recording, he came in from the kitchen, he wanted a snack. I didn't mind. I shut the recording off. But it exists. The seed of a song. I haven't had one for so, so long. This is the way out. This little lifeboat of three chords.

When I tried to lay myself down to sleep last night and couldn't stop the anxiety and my pounding heart, and I worried that it would be one of those nights where nothing would work....I laid the phone on my heart, and I played those two minutes back to myself. It worked. My own song, my own words, my own three chords stopped the panic of my own racing heart.

I heard. There was a secret chord.

And then, of course, Ash's little voice on the recording at the end. There he is, asking for a snack at the end of my song idea. There I am, stopping. There I am, being a mother. There we are, together.

The secret chords, his mundane words, the magic bridge of art and hope, it calmed me down, this unfinished song-idea-and-snack song, I listened to it twice, because the DJ wanted sleep, it sent me off to dreamland. Hallelujah.

I love you all, so much.

Maybe it will turn into a real song by the end of the month. Maybe I'll be able to give it to the ship. Maybe it'll be a lighthouse. Maybe. Maybe this is what it's all about.

I have art to release. I have the next "Liberty" artwork collaboration with Niki McQueen to put out (soon).I have stories to set down, I have music to make. I also have to switch the patreon over to monthly, and I'm going to just rip that band-aid, I think, because there's never going to be a "right" time if I wait and wait. So I'll write more about that soon. The show must go on. Cue the music. The music is what we are fighting for.

Thank you, thank you, for being here.

Listen to British Auntie, listen to Dan.

Stay in community.

Keep fighting.

Keep dancing.

Keep writing.

I will. I will. I am.

XX

Amanda

P.S. I cross-posted this post and video to my patreon this morning. My patreon is where I post all media (music, shows, interviews, etc) constantly, this Substack is really meant for my polished, publish writing. If you want to become a patron, feel free. It’s more of a constant workshop and community hub over there. I’m going to be switching the patreon to a monthly subscription model soon (the tech over there will soon no longer support “per item”) and I’ll let you all know about that when it happens.