amandapalmer
patreon
Good Morning, Good Evening....I love you. Bondi Beach, Rob Reiner, Our Insane Timeline. (And OZ & NZ, you have your very own CHAT now❤️🩹)
🕑 Added 2025-12-15 22:18:19 +0000 UTCHey patrons of the globe, and especially the Oz and Aotearoa New Zealand people.
TL;DR: the whole world feels fucked, you're not alone, don't stop trying to be kind, and I'll see you Oz and Kiwi folks soon enough. You now have your own dedicated patron chat, please use it to comnfrot and find one another, and there's also a shadowbox thread for the Waiheke, Melbourne and Sydney shows so you can locate one another in the lead-up to share info, rides, tips, couches, love.
.........
Greetings from AmericaLand.
I’m in a diner.
It’s cold.
I'm sad.
I was going to make this cheerful little post a couple days aho about the new chats and the new shadowbox thread info and then….Bondi Beach happened, and the Providence shootings, and then Rob Reiner, and I’m mostly just sitting here stunned once again that everything can feel so fucking normal and yet it isn’t.
It’s insane.
So I made you a little video, too.
I dunno.
I'm trying.
......
Every time senseless shootings happen, every time there's an act of terror, every time.....we all try to adjust our emotional weathervanes to the new reality.
It feels harder every time and our collective heads spin and cannot land.
I am hearing from Jewish friends in Sydney who have folks in the crossfire. It’s real.
Sydney is small.
I’ve always been so proud to tell my American people about the sanity of the Australian and Kiwi gun laws. “After port Arthur....”. “After the mosque shootings....”.
These sort of things “don’t really happen” down there.
Until they do. Until someone with a heart full of hate and madness barrels into the thick of the Jewish community and steals lives. Terrorizes the people. Creates horror.
And let’s make sure to mention the Muslim fruit-seller, Ahmed al Ahmed, who charged at the gunman and got wounded in the process.
What other Humanity-first poetry could you ask for, here?
And meanwhile, the shooting in Providence, at Brown University, so close to home.
From that article:
So far in 2025, there have been at least 391 mass shootings and 13,929 shooting deaths in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Each number represents a shattered family, a traumatized community, another generation learning too early how to survive gunfire.
The timeline we are living in is….the timeline we are living in. We cannot choose another.
When I come, I will hug you all, each and every one.
Meanwhile, Rob Reiner dies horrifically and Trump posts this lunacy on Truth Social (a phrase I cannot utter without feeling 1984 vibes, every single time):
I posted to IG/FB:
This is….insane. To see the President of the United States - the PRESIDENT - doing this, acting like a petty, inhumane, whiny and selfish toddler in the face of a culturally important death like this….it is actually, seriously mind-boggling. You cannot make this shit up. It’s madness. Let’s call it what it is. Madness. Rest in actual peace, Michele and Rob Reiner, and thank you for all the beautiful art and joy you brought into gazillions of theaters and homes and hearts. Donald Trump, I honestly don’t know how you sleep at night.
This is beyond.
.......
And it is.
Feel free to talk in the comments. We are all here, together.
As together as we can be.
…….
To the housekeeping……that I had planned.
If you missed it, it’s TOUR TIME down under again. Niki made the tour art and tickets are UP…all info down below.
I cannot explain my level of joy about this down under. Ticket are selling well and I cannnnot wait to see you all and share all these new songs.
Hug.
Commune. Share pain.
Again; feel free to share with friends and community, but keep it off the public internet (for now).
Some housekeeping, because I was too slammed to do this until this morning….
The last time I toured down under was exactly two years ago in Jan 2024. I came armed with the “New Zealand Survival Songs” (here on bandcamp) and played a limited run in four cities…and this wee tour is even more wee for all the whale reasons. 🐳
The venues we are playing are all beloved local joints, and I’m going to be in the loving arms of some of my favorite Kiwi and Australian friends and musicians, all of whom I’ve been homesick for.
I’m mostly doing this tour to heal my heart, connect with the community, and just…feel okay.
Your support down there continues to mean more to me than you can imagine as I navigate one of the most difficult years of my life, but I will keep saying this, as well: it may have been a rough year, but it was a deeply clarifying one. The songwriting and artistic fire has never burned brighter inside of me, and my friendships have never rooted so deeply.
Extraordinary circumstances indeed, and I’m just doing my best to take emotional note of all of this mayhem….for the art, for the songs, for the recordings, for the new book. As usual, it all goes into the melting pot of catharsis and must, somehow, be galvanized into something useful for everybody else. If I cannot somehow wrest some meaningful art from this horrorshow, I will have failed in my job as a community-crowdfunded artist.
So please stand by while I spend the next few months hitting the road again, while trying to parent, while trying to write a book, while trying to finish a recording, while trying to manage a team, who are, of course, always trying to manage me.
Godspeed us ALL.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
....................
Now that I'm coming back down to TOUR in you, and SO SOON...I figured it's time you had your OWN CHAT, and no time like the present with all the sadness going on down there.
We ditched the Live Radio Chat since I can't go live directly within the chats anymore anyway (patreon changed that functionality), and now in addition to BOSTON, NEW YORK, UK/EUROPE, there's an NZ/OZ CHAT!!! This is what it looks like on desktop.
and mobile (and YAY Fleassy for moderating)
Maybe you can find a friend.
Go find each other. So many of you are coming to the shows, and I NEED you to find each other.
Talk shows, share thoughts, give love. I'm there right now....checking/posting.
Just go to the chat function in the patreon (it looks like this on desktop and mobile):
...and SAY HI TO YOUR NEIGHBORS.
.......
I also just made THREE THREADS on YE OLDE SHADOWBOX, our beloved old forum.
Since we still don't have a discord or a reddit (sorry), and since I kinda hate facebook (more every day!!), I still think it's not a waste to use the forum to organize rides, tickets, meet-ups and all that.
The Shadowbox integrates with the patreon!! So there are little hidden walls you can hop as a patron, which is nice.
I left these tops open to the public, though, no reason to paywall them.
The Shadowbox looks like this, and it's easy to use.
Here are the links to the Shadowbox threads....:
JAN 6 / WAIHEKE @ ARTWORKS SHADOWBOX THREAD
https://forum.theshadowbox.net/t/waiheke-jan-6th-artworks-event-meet-up-rideshare-thread/16376
JAN 11 / SYDNEY @ CAMELOT SHADOWBOX THREAD
https://forum.theshadowbox.net/t/sydney-jan-11-camelot-lounge-ticket-meet-up-event-thread/16377
JAN 18 / MELBOURNE @ BRUNSWICK BALLROOM SHADOWBOX THREAD https://forum.theshadowbox.net/c/shows-live-events/7
See you soon......keep your heads up, my loves.
xxx
AFP
................
THE TOUR INFO, all in one place:
JAN 6th - Waiheke, Aotearoa New Zealand
@ Artworks Theatre
Doors 6pm, Show 7pm
ALL AGES
TICKET LINK HERE
…….
JAN 11th - Sydney, Australia
@ Camelot Lounge, Marrickville, NSW
6:30pm doors / 7:45pm show
ALL AGES
TICKET LINK HERE.
…….
JAN 18 - Melbourne, Australia
Brunswick Ballroom, Brunswick, VIC
5:30pm doors / 7pm show
NOTE Brunswick Ballroom is 18+
TICKET LINK HERE.
Art by Niki McQueen.
Comments
Len Tower Jr.
Might also ask in the new NZ/OZ chat.
Scott Meekins
Thank you, Amanda.
Bradleigh Miller
Of course I wrote in the wrong post.. sorry its inappropriate
Bradleigh Miller
Its so late to be asking, I know... Im terrible with navigating social media... so I just thought I'd ask for an answer: are there any tickets left for NZ show? I have enough for the plane plus a ticket and will figure the rest out. Desperately needing some purpose, some drive, right now. Some beauty and crazy fun. Want to be out in the world with the rest of you. Any advice or help? Accepting all offers (that can get through my personal security checks, knowing how the world works...🤪)
Pedro B. Gorman
"The death of humanity is going to be the death of engagement" ❤️❤️❤️❤️ Amanda once again beautifully touching the raw nerve of unabashed truth ❤️❤️❤️💪💪💪
Dea
I don't know how I missed this - the video - I think because I was glued to the ABC live coverage from Bondi, all day. And the next. Hoping I think, while watching & listening to the ABC, that some something-snippet would...explain...even a smidge of it all. Sick with disbelief and terror, at how, HOW, here, HERE. But everything you said, Amanda - and everything you, my fellow Patrons said - is precisely why we are all here. xx
Larissa Rook
i can’t even process the shit that keeps getting thrown lately. i want to hide away from it all. so much violence and hate. it is easy to feel helpless. and isolated. easy to think you can’t make a difference. i did do something recently though that i highly recommend… i volunteered for my kiddo’s school PTO. it is a great way to connect. i have met other parents, made friends and we are working together to make changes on a local level.
Bean A
Man, Amanda, I'm not sure what to say. There were 3 shootings in 24 hours that seem to be targeting Jewish people on the first night of Channuka: Bondi beach, a drive-by shooting in California of a house decorated for the holiday, and the shooting at Brown. It wasn't reported much, but the professor whose class was targeted is Jewish, part of the program in Judaic studies, and her research focuses on the intersection of economic and Jewish studies. I'm nowhere near any of these places, thankfully, but I and so many I know are scared. Especially after the number of antisemitic incidents in the last few years, it's starting to feel like a lot more people are going to die before anything is going to be done - if at all.
Len Tower Jr.
We see you.
Anna Foden
my dudes i am so depressed I dont know what to do, my best friend is killing themself in active addiction, among a hundred differnet things going on in my life and I just feel stuck, the world is so fucked and i dont see my place in it, no school, job, motivation, and god Christmas grief and just, love to all my Kiwis and Americans ♥️♥️♥️🐳🐳🐳👋👋😖
Amanda Eckert
Your point about not disengaging despite the potential minefields reminded me of something that Andrea Gibson’s partner wrote after they died about fumbling for the right thing to say and getting it wrong, but trying anyway: “Listen—I revere language. When someone says, ‘There are no words,’ I think: try anyway. Find them. Here we are together, at the lightless bottom of the well. Don’t tell me there’s no rope when your eyes haven’t yet adjusted to the dark. Reach, fumble, grab onto something. Anything.” I think about that post a lot.
Colin Hay
I saw the sad story about Rob Reiner his family and then this morning saw the post by Tru*MP. When you think he can't go any lower, it just gets worse. He must have zero humanity or conscience about what he says. My thoughts are way Rob Reiner's family and friends
