Amanda Palmer Nanny Harmer

I’m an abuse survivor, which is only being stated here to outline how my boundaries work, and why. The basic overview without stating too much, is that I did not have agency over my own body for long stretches of my adolescence. I didn’t always have language around what was happening to me, either. So in my later teens and early adulthood (when I was introduced to Amanda), the work was around reclaiming my body and the space around me. It was also around showing other people where the line was. This remains true for me today. The line is real.

Amanda was not interested in the line. Amanda was aggressive and antagonistic about the line, always challenging and mocking me about what she perceived the line to be about. I don’t know enough about her to know why she might have been like that; I’m just telling how our two selves came together. It wasn’t comfortable for me. She sent up all of my flags about being unsafe and they never came down.

When any person mocks me or my boundaries—especially about physical space—they are registered as unsafe, for me. In her case, she was also unkind. A tough combination to come back from. I never had the word for it back then, but she I can say now that she seemed like a bully.

Back when Neil and Amanda were first seeing each other, he visited Boston. A friend was working at an upscale restaurant and Neil, Amanda and another couple came in a few minutes before closing. The kitchen was in the act of shutting down, and they were the only customers in the venue. Didn't matter, they asked to be seated and had a full meal.

My friend was in charge of waiting on them. As they moved through the meal, and he kept watching them (he wanted to go home, and wanted to serve them fast to get them out the door), he was confused to see that Neil seemed to be spacing out as time passed, becoming less engaged with the conversation the group was having. My friends first concern was a health issue, as Neil has a growing expression of sensation on his face. So he approached to see if they needed anything.

But as he got closer, he realized he could see Amanda's arm moving below the table line, and it clicked into place what was happening. He tried to step back but Amanda, who had been carrying on a conversation with the other couple, asked for something, making eye contact with him, never letting up on what she was doing, and Neil didn't try and stop her.

Neil and I, because we both wield so much power with so many followers, have tried to be really careful that we don’t use our powers for evil and instead use them only for good.

I talk about that a little bit in the book, about learning how to not wield my power clumsily on my blog, which I learned the hard way in the early days by inadvertently hurting people and realizing what I’d done and pulling back and thinking, “These tools are really powerful and I need to use them safely.”

It’s also why I get really disheartened when I see celebrities and musicians ripping each other apart on Twitter or on the Internet. It pollutes the environment. Watching two female pop stars get into it like a bitchy catfight on the Internet just makes me bang my head against a desk, because nobody wins in a situation like that. People love that kind of exchange, but it really doesn't serve to tighten up the fabric of the music community and the feminist community. The tools can be so powerful when used to support each other, and it seems like everyone is constantly so outraged on the Internet all the time that people forget that these are also weapons of mass destruction.

we were no good, they tutted in their own turns. users, abusers, philanderers, bad news, us.

trouble.

watch out.

yeah. it’s basically true. we’re both bad news.

but now we’re a team.

congratulations, Neil Gaiman, you’ve met your troublesome match, and i’m so glad i married your ass.

There are lots of varieties of open relationships, from don’t ask/don’t tell, to very compassionate and considered, transparent communication. I’m a fan of the latter. We’re not interested in having big, multiple relationships; we’re just slutty, but compassionately so.

Of course, we’ve both shattered one another’s hearts occasionally through bad choices, but our relationship stands it. We remain one another’s emotional priority. It’s a shame that society is so closed-minded in this respect — there are a lot of unhappy marriages out there.

Amanda talked about Neil to anyone with ears ffs. My friend once described her as an energy vampire which is so true. What was supposed toto do with that info though? Stand at the street corner and tell passersby?

By this time she had said this to anyone who was anyone in the Hawkes Bay circle as well as the Auckland/waiheke circle. I didn’t know the rape details of course. It was generally understood Neil can’t keep it in his pants.

i wished xanthea a happy mother’s day yesterday, because she deserves the sentiment. she’s a friend from from melbourne who turned into a mom-figure almost overnight, and she’s brought her whole heart and soul to the task….and i cannot imagine what my life over the last month would have been like if she hadn’t been helping to raise, teach and protect my kid.

people will help you.

the world may make you think otherwise right now, and i am here to remind you of the inherent goodness in a lot of humanity. it’s real, it’s here in this community, and it’s all around us if we trust in it.

But despite all the healing I’ve done myself after having been assaulted, I’ve also been on the other side of the story.

I’ve done my fair share of drunkenly convincing, playfully cajoling, peer-pressuring, and over-aggressively cornering my sexual partners — sometimes one-night stands, sometimes long-term lovers — into doing all sorts of things in bed (or in cars, or in the woods). I’ve made likely unwanted advances toward lovers in their sleep. Will I ever understand the damage I’ve done? Will I ever know if they felt wronged, or too pressured, or violated? Will I ever have those conversations or get total clarity? No, I won’t.

Will I ever be able to set all those moments right, and apologize for the hurt I’ve almost definitely caused? (I do know one thing for certain: alcohol was at the root of 97% of my hurtful decisions, and I can count on drunkenness to lead to stupid decisions about 97% of the time. But our — and I use the royal “our” there — relationship with alcohol is probably for another column on another day.)

This was posted in June 2022, after Roe v Wade had been overturned.

And after she had refused to pay Scarlett for work done in Feb 2022.

The virtue signaling is unbelievable...

Or maybe paying wages and healthcare expenses, is only reserved for people who help the Amanda Palmer show make money, not the undervalued domestic labour that she's happy to exploit young fans for?

i am so sorry, internet, that i’m not perfect i am sorry i put flecks of gold in the dresden dolls chocolate bar i am sorry i sang words that offended again and again i am sorry i covered a song from encanto i am sorry i cried tears of joy about the president i am sorry they were too dramatic i am sorry i wrote a poem about a terrorist all those years ago i am sorry i had all those abortions i am sorry i had to go and sing and talk about them i am sorry i went to new zealand i am sorry i came back from new zealand i am sorry i didn’t get covid i am sorry i got covid i am sorry i am too honest i am sorry i am not honest enough i am sorry i hid when i thought it was for the best i am sorry i ate sausages for two years while everyone thought i was still a pescatarian i am sorry i have hidden everything that happened for the past few years i am sorry i have said too much i am sorry i have said too little i am sorry i am full of rage i am sorry that my rage is inconvenient i am sorry, so sorry i don’t want my son to live this story oh my god i’m sorry that i am really not sorry at all just deeply terrified

just like

you.

Recorded in 2022

Performed live at Dresden Dolls in May 2023

MV released Jan 2024

Central themes of her 2019 show concerned reproductive rights and sexual violence and silence. “I gathered a lot of information that year touring the world,” she says, “and a lot of it was really painful to learn, really devastating. The biggest theme I took away was I don’t think the world understands the extent to which women suffer in silence. If I learned anything on that tour, it’s that these songs that I wrote about abortion, miscarriage, cancer and grief had a palpable effect. I knew that the music was helping them and helping me. No big mystery. That’s a copacetic relationship.”

What’s happened in her life will inevitably show up, to some degree, in song. “I’m sure my personal experiences are going to do a continual dance with the experiences of my community and worm their way into the music,” she says. “But whatever album I make with the Dresden Dolls or make [solo], it can no longer be just about me. I know too much; I’ve heard too many horror stories from too many women and [I want to] put them in the blender along with my own personal experiences. Next to a lot of the stories I’ve heard, mine had been a cakewalk.”

I am currently in rehearsals with my old band, revisiting songs I wrote—dating back to the 1990s—about rape, sexual assault, confusion, and pain. It isn’t fun, revisiting this material, especially in the wake of what I’m still learning about the world, about how the arc of the universe may bend toward justice, but it is not bending fucking fast enough for me. There is still so little accountability, so little fairness, so little feeling of this getting addressed or fixed.

So I will keep screaming.

I will not be done screaming until the world wakes up to how broken and unfair this all feels. Until it wakes up to how much mistreatment and rape happen to so many people who then have to carry those memories—those horror-moments—around in their heads for the rest of their lives.

“You never screamed?”

Dear Mister Lawyer, I invite you to gently, slowly bring your ear closer to my mouth.

What’s not good is if the whole thing goes away in a mess of smoke and faffing of hands around “cancel culture”. It’s a red herring.

I think the world has matured to the point where we are ready to see men come out and openly admit their harmful actions, talk about their struggles and their sex addictions, their deep insecurities, their massively stupid and hurtful mistakes, and I think we are ready to create a space for healing, forgiveness, and eventually, a massive change in the way the whole culture works.

We have to change the way this all works, or our kids will simply continue the spin cycle of terror.

I eventually forgave my high school groomer/predator. I told the story on stage, every night, in 2019. One night in Portland, Oregon, at The Crystal Ballroom, a woman screamed at me: “AMANDA PALMER ARE YOU SERIOUSLY SAYING WE SHOULD FORGIVE OUR RAPISTS?!?”

10 Feb 2024 - "vague booking" a painting of a woman coming out of a bathtub, with a strong resemblance to Scarlett.

She posted on her IG/FB an oil painting: Truth Coming Out of Her Well to Shame Mankind, 1896, Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, 1824 - 1904), and it struck me how eerily similar the image looked to the garden bathtub shown in the January 13th, 2025 Lila Shapiro Vulture article. I have a high pattern recognition with images, shapes, and colors and the outdoor tub photo immediately came to mind since I saw that image first. Amanda's post feels cryptic and uncomfortable to me, as many of her messages do. The date is also unsettling because it was the beginning of February when the assaults began, and Gaiman had backlogged the NDA to the first day he met Scarlett.

I took screenshots of both images to compare them side by side, but the painting post is still viewable on her page. Intuitively, it just stuck with me as a kind of signaling related to everything else coming out now.

CONTENT WARNING - female nudity, allusion to Scarlett

As of writing this, there are around 9,000 patrons pledging around $28,000 for the first Thing each month.

Here's the income we got from Things in November:

Beautiful Is The Fight, which earned about $32,074 from 8,951 patrons

The Drag Supper painting, which earned about $13,746 from 5,084 patrons

Leslie Jamison's Talk from Graveside Variety, which earned about $8,340 from 3,221 patrons

The State of All Things: November 2024, which earned about $6,768 from 2,625 members.

hour after hour [I shiver in this cell?] I KNOW. THE. DEAL.

It's only real if Mr God says!

so now you leave me here with Sophie's choice— what […?] you took a razor to my vocal cords and ran and as I shake here in shock, I [lock on what he says?] you may have left me with nothing, but I've worked with less—and—you—can— quote—me—[on—I'll?] sing—my—way—out— of this fucking mess!

She talks about how the separate coincidences of being caught in a lockdown in Hawkes Bay and the separate and unrelated events that led to her divorce all amalgamated into the position she found herself in, where she had to rely on the kindness of strangers to support her. She was an American living abroad. She was a solo mother. She was an artist stranded and separated from her audience due to a pandemic, relying on her Patreon.

“I was reflecting on how I was in this unique position, with optimism and reliance on the kindness of strangers was a kind of lifestyle.” She’s referring to the subject of her book, ‘The Art Of Asking’, which documents her career from a living statue and artist, to a recording musician with Brian Viglione in the Dresden Dolls, and going solo with support from fans and crowdfunding. Palmer has made her own special connections with her fans, who are intensely loyal. “… and that’s not everybody. That’s me and my attitude towards life, for better or worse.”