amandapalmer

funny you should ask. well...i found my interviews yesterday with four australian journalists FASCINATING. they all wanted to know what i thought about miley cyrus at the VMAs. and i had to ask...what happened? and then i spent a half an hour of my bedtime googling miley cyrus twerking and read all the angry commentary about it and found myself thinking...why didn't the australian journalists ask me how i feel about something BETTER, so that my little peanut brain would have spent that half hour googling more enlightening things, like...i don't know...the history of women in dadaist performance art?

what am i saying? i don't know. but i do feel like people are yelling at each other a lot about what women wear, how they dance, and how they project themselves as performers...and men don't get half as much criticism and commentary. they get to just do shit. that sort of bums me out.

2) i'm useless, i haven't seen the blurred lines video. i am often in a pop culture hole (see my last answer about miley cyrus)....

1) i have a feeling id' do a better neil gaiman impression than neil would do an amanda palmer impression...but it depends on WHAT we had to do. i would LOVE to give a neil gaiman interview. i have his hand gestures down PAT. he does this one thing that i call "juggling a thought" where he bounces his hand up and down when trying to make a convincing point. BUT...if neil were trying to impersonate "amanda in a bad mood", he'd probably nail it. he'd get really serious, sulk in a corner, and everybody would believe it.

do you wanna get really terrified? ice caps are all melting and we're gonna die! do you wanna see donald trump impeached? get a jaron lanier book and read it on the beach?

HI BOT!!!

that's such a huge question...and probably one of the most important questions. i think it's made things more honest. we have had such a distanced, romantic and sort of dishonest with artists (especially musicians) for so long. i grew up in the 70s and 80s where all musicians seemed like these untouchable, otherworldly beings who weren't part of this dimension. it's like going to a super fancy restaurant and never meeting the chef who makes your meal and sharing a glass of wine with them: it's always been the case that as soon as a musician becomes a "professional" there's a giant army of middlemen (labels, publicists, distributors, promotors, etc etc) between the ARTIST and the person EATING THE ART. i think that that distance isn't something we should take as a given; i actually think both audiences and artists are happier when they are connected to one another in a more human way. even when that means that the uglier and more vulnerable sides of the artist (and the audience) come into play...including how the art-sausage gets made. so while i don't divulge every excel sheet and penny (that would be boring), my audience basically knows how my business runs, what it takes to keep the lights on, and i feel like that draws them closer to my art, it doesn't push them away. that's the counter-intuitive part: i think a lot of artists feel that the artist should remain in an unknown, faraway garret. i'm arguing for more connection, more knowledge, more community, more transparency, less "off in the tower" stardom. my audience (but they'd need to speak for themselves) seem to love this. it makes everything real. it IS real. but now it all feels more real. if that makes sense.