amanda palmer's open poem to jonathan chait (and other crimes)

took a few deep breaths this year after wondering if i spent too much mental effort hating on AP and her oeuvre and whether it was part of some deep-seated personal misogyny or bias

it turns out what really bugs me is that her entire shtick is that performance should be extremely performative. it's like this dude i knew who, if he had an idea he thought was profound, switched to "extremely profound man" voice to deliver it. it never mattered what the actual idea was after that because i'm just like, why the hell are you doing this voice, i'm going to think this idea is horrible no matter what it is

re: the question of whether one is exerting too much mental effort hating on Palmer - the only way I ever hear about something she's done/said is through choice, either because I've clicked on this thread, or intentionally followed a link to hate-read one of her facebook posts or something. I guess if she was inescapable I might dislike her more - does anyone here actually move in circles where they are exposed to Amanda Palmer against their will, though?

and this is why Trump won the election

lol

I have a few friends who I'm not too close to that are fans so I see or hear the occasional content

btw not sure if anyone's used this before, but I just thought of "supertext" -- when the themes of a work that are usually the subtext are instead flung at the audience with such velocity you forget the actual work

like Bread and Work?

not familiar, i'll investigate

the local vape store had an amanda palmer quote on its sandwich board the other day. thought of ilx.

after hearing about SNL's tribute this one actually seems 100% chill and proper venue for melodrama

If she'd pulled out a copy of Goodbye Mog and read from that after hearing about Cohen I'd like her

I just thank god I don't know anyone who likes her music. It's bad enough I know Gogol Bordello fans.

sorry

I wish she had read Go The Fuck To Sleep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcI2ntnTzIw

there it is

I'm not watching that btw

lol

it turns out what really bugs me is that her entire shtick is that performance should be extremely performative.

It's funny how the effect ends up being completely the opposite of Brechtian. It's all about inviting earnest identification and collapsing critical distance. I don't really dislike her. It's just hard to look away when someone combines extreme earnestness with bad taste.

while, in theory, i'm all for totally committed, flamboyant performers, there doesn't appear to be any substance beyond palmer's performance other than 'look at meeeee', which basically makes her the goth geri halliwell

I tried to shit-post on FB about this the other day but instantly felt bad because evidently a lot of acquaintances see her as some sort of idol who 'is honest, tells it like it is and not afraid to show her true feelings'. I'm almost certain that this audience correlates exactly with people who have a knee-jerk hatred of Kanye and Bieber.

Massive overlap with Terry Pratchett audience I bet.

it's good that ilx isn't the kind of place to run a list thread about "people who were honest, told it like it is and weren't afraid to show their true feelings"

because that would be terrible

It would require a level of cultural naïveté which is broadly incompatible with ILX membership

I'm a Terry Pratchett fan and really don't like AP.

I'm cracking up imagining the type of person that goes to Amanda Palmer show and yells at the stage that Leonard Cohen died

xxp I'm sorry for the lazy generalisation, esp since I've never read any Pratchett - the AP fans I know all like him (hence I was put off) so perhaps a taste differential there.

Well yeah, Pratchett is very much recommended reading for fans of Neil Gaiman.

now I'm imagining Amanda Palmer in the audience yelling at Amanda Palmer on stage

I'm cracking up imagining the type of person that goes to Amanda Palmer show and yells at the stage that Leonard Cohen died

Like, if you're the person who yells that, aren't you kind of revealing to Amanda Palmer that you were checking Twitter during her show?

makes me remember the weirdest moment. it's 2006, i'm with a friend in chicago at a show at smartbar, and we randomly run into a friend of my coworker who is pretty up on technology for the time

he has just glanced at his phone, some nice pre-iphone device

we say hi to each other and he gestures at the phone, and says "steve irwin just died"

"whoa, the crocodile hunter. crazy."

last night on stage, when someone in the audience told me amanda palmer had died. i am not ashamed to say i fell to my knees and wept.

The possibility of this exact scenario is why I never leave the house without my ukelele

xxxityp's I assumed someone just walked in to amanda's show and released a single dove & she instantly knew what that meant

possibility of Prince-related confusion with that though

He died... again!

feel like The Year David Bowie (and yes Prince and Cohen) Died AP gets a free pass

like, if anyone should be able to do and grotesque melodramatic display in response to this year, it should be a steampunk theater kid who tours and makes music constantly

If anyone can bear to watch it, the moment where she learns of Cohen's death can be seen at 1'15" of this Periscope feed:

https://www.periscope.tv/w/1DXxyoEbXBLGM

oh christ it's worse than I was picturing

hate-watched, did not disappoint

think i'm starting to go off her

Today at my desk, while watching that periscope, I am not ashamed to say I fell to my knees and wept. Hope the web cam caught it!

what happened when she found out Mose Allison died

imo the over the top part wasn't the on stage reaction, it was the facebook post

I think the on-stage reaction was also somewhat ott tbh

"that's not fair! that's such bad good timing"

oh my god

Gaiman reading Goodnight Moon afterwards is pretty grim.

Couple of days after this he joined Amanda and corny rockist Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield onstage for another cathartic rendition of Hallelujah and he was miserable looking - just barely mouthing the words, standing 2 feet back from the microphone in case it caught anything he actually was singing.

at first i thought that was a random baby she needed to hold

thought mookie was talking about gaiman for a sec and still seemed apt

how the fuck are you gonna do goodnight moon multiple times the same night on purpose

i'm SORRY i just FEEL things TOO. HARD. -- amanda palmer on why she murdered that stranger in cold blood