Thread by @amandapalmer

the guardian’s music editor snubbed the most feminist album and tour of my career, and you’ll never believe what happened next...

(or: how to fight clickbait - and other stuff - using patronage.)

{thread. please RT this one. i thank you.}

photo: @gmotophotos

when i started this album cycle for THERE WILL BE NO INTERMISSION, i was told by my publicists that the guardian wouldn't cover the new record or even announce the tour dates. this was shocking; the guardian has been a career-long ally. i was busy and didn't dig into reasons why.

then i noticed that the guardian’s music editor had blocked me on twitter. weird, i thought. i googled. this person didn't like my music, or, apparently, me, and had gone so far as to include me in disparaging reviews of other artists' work as an example of What Else Was Bad.

i loved, and still love, the guardian, who’ve written about me with kindness & enthusiasm over the years. i’d even written a really emotional piece for them when i broke ground on my new record, about how @nickcave’s film had inspired some of the material. theguardian.com/music/2016/sep…

so, this sucked. i was about to do a huge tour of britain and ireland - one of the most extensive UK-centered tours of my career, including four hard-to-sell-out shows in london. losing this press ally was going to be a major pain in the ass.

let it go, amanda, let it go....

and i let it go, but i still thought, WHERE IS MY NEW YORKER PROFILE? WHY IS THE ATLANTIC NOT BANGING ON MY DOOR TO WRITE A TWELVE-PAGE PIECE ABOUT MY INCREDIBLE COMMUNITY? i was sad.

let it go, amanda. let it all go....❄️❄️

meanwhile, i'd been musing about how i could use my patreon more creatively. i'd made videos, songs, animations, poems, webcasts...i was getting the feeling that the sky truly was the limit, that 15k people really wanted me to stretch the bounds of my imagination to make things.

after touring for months and listening to so many abortion stories (and more) every night, realizing that the story was so vast....i realized there was a solution that was so gracefully simple that it almost didn't seem possible:
why not just hire our own long-form journalist?

i knew the perfect one. @Jackofninetales, an incredible up-and-coming trans writer from australia.
and a photographer: @gmotophotos, a photojournalist i'd recently come to admire & who just published a photo/essay book about gender equality in iceland. anequaldifference.com

i hired them with patron dollars to create a piece of long-form journalism not just about the backstage world of my tour, but about the actual world we were moving through. for over two months, they traveled with me, talked with my community...

...explored the gender-free bathrooms we created at shows, went to climate marches with me, drank on bus, schlepped gear.
then, after a lot of work and layout, they published - on @medium - the kind of long-form, thoughtful, nuanced, non-clickbait music journalism i really miss.

i don't know exactly what kind of history we're making here, but it feels important, and we have 15k patrons cheering us on. like i've always said, when the media disappoints you, don't blame the media.

make the media.

BE THE MEDIA.

here’s the article:
medium.com/we-are-the-med…

i’d like to thank @neilhimself for not only inadvertently introducing me to jack nicholls, the journalist i hired, but also for editing and helping me shape this statement. (he’s a good editor). also: all the photos in this thread are by @gmotophotos, from the article itself...

(the header photo, btw, is by @gmotophotos of the burschenschaft tyrannia - an incredible feminist group who came to my austrian ninja gig and concert hall show....read more about them & their history in the article).

if you want to support this whole circus of new-media-making, free from shackles of click, please join my patreon. i can’t wait to hire more undiscovered, diverse writers. let’s amplify their voices. we’re on fire & almost @ 16k people as of this tweet. patreon.com/amandapalmer

and p.s. if you want the full hollywood ending, all four of my london shows - 3,600 tickets - sold out without the guardian’s help.

and for the record: they are very invited to come review the show, and i’m still a huge fan of their paper in general.

all hands on deck. 🌎🌍🌏