(Transcript) 39. Live Conversation with Amanda Palmer at The Rubin Museum

Tim: Hello everyone, and good evening, and welcome to the Rubin Museum of Art, I’m Tim McHenry, deputy executive director here, and chief programme officer, the longest title in the world, and we welcome to this museum that really is a global hub for Himalayan art, with a little home base in the foothills of Chelsea, so welcome.

So we’re exploring some major questions tonight. Tomorrow afternoon, for example, we’ll be posing the question to the assembled audience in a totally darkened room, and we’ll ask the question, who wants to die without knowing who they really are?

And in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the dark retreat practice is a 49 day practice in which all sources of light is removed from your world. And when all the light has gone, everything you see is you. And it’s not always convenient, and it’s not always beautiful, in fact it’s very often the reverse. So that’s a preparation for the dying process, and death is not the end is an exhibition that runs through to the early part of January next year, I urge you to go and see it, the gallery is open until 10 o’clock.

But what we wanted to talk about tonight, and in our series with our host Amanda Palmer, is what happens? What is the life after you tell the truth on yourself, for the benefit of others? And that becomes a pivotal moment in anybody’s life. And here, on stage tonight, we’re going to witness two extraordinary storytellers who do not fabricate stories, they use stories to tell the truth, and transmit an understanding and a perspective that has often been obscured by things like the media. And Noor Tagouri is no stranger to the misconception that can arise through media dissemination of information that is far from truthful. And as an award-winning journalist and podcaster and truth-teller, she has really been trenchant about holding that line, and bringing the truth to bear on a situation where she sees it. And quite frankly, no differently Amanda Palmer is a truth-teller, but in song. And so, here we have these two storytellers together, who are going to parse this out and reveal how difficult it is and what the price you have to pay is when you tell the truth on yourself.

So, first up: hands together for Amanda Palmer!

Amanda:

I have loaned a lot of things To a lot of friends
Like dresses, and records And books

And a lot of the time
I never see them again
And in a weird way, I think that that works

Because the thing about things
Is they start to turn evil
When you start to forget what they’re for So if you’re not sure
What you did with my sweater
I’ll just have to love you a little bit more

I had a ring
That belonged to my grandfather He was a mason and gay
And he was distant and bitter For all of my childhood
We never had much to say

He wasn’t the type
To give tokens of affection
So I stole the ring when he died
And then twenty years on
When I lost it in a bar
I thought that’s fine, I don’t want it in my life

Because the thing about things
Is that they can start meaning things Nobody actually said
And if he couldn’t make
Something mean something for me
I had to make up what it meant

I can carry
Everything I need
In one collapsing suitcase

I can carry
Everyone I love
In one phone application

Built to maximize the face time Of the friends I’m bent on making Actually I want to be alone
To mourn the loss
Of what it cost

I think it’s a poem
And I think it keeps going
And I’ve borrowed and loaned lots of things And three nights ago
In the bar where I lost it
The bartender gave me the ring

And I lay in bed
With my phone in my hand
Thinking what can I fix with which app?

And I called my grandfather
But he doesn’t answer
And I have to make peace with that fact

Because the thing about things
Is that they can start meaning things Nobody actually said
And if you’re not allowed
To love people alive
Then you learn how to love people dead

The thing about things
Is that they can start meaning things Nobody actually said
And if you’re not allowed
To love people alive
Then you learn how to love people dead

Please give your hands together for Noor.

Noor: Hi, beautiful friends. You know what would be so... Oh. Guys, I think I dropped... I may have dropped my poem in the back. I did memorize it – wait, one...

The truth is, I did memorize it when I was 17, and then it all came back to me. The poem is what I’m talking about.

Hi, beautiful friends. I am so honored that you all are here. Can we just get another round of applause for Amanda’s amazing music?

And Tim, thank you so much for having us, this is just so beautiful. Okay.

(Arabic)

This is a Muslim, and also recently I was told it’s also similar to a Jewish prayer, that was said by Moses. He, in our tradition, we believe that he had a lisp, and the translation of the prayer is Oh Lord, please open and expand my heart. Make my task easy for me, and untie the knots in my tongue, so they may understand what I truly mean to say.

So, I pass that prayer onto you guys, because tonight is a night of truth-telling, and I pray that your hearts are open enough for sharing.

My name is Noor, and I’ve been a journalist for exactly 15 years of my life. I turn 30 next week, and I started when I was 15. But I wrote this poem that I wanted to share with you all, because poetry was what was a medium of art that I’ve used since I was a child to try to make sense of things when natural storytelling couldn’t. And it was one of those things

where the line would just come in your mind in the shower, and then everything would come out, and sometimes I would write words that I didn’t even know what they meant. And now I’m realizing, twelve years later, that this poem that I wrote in 2011, one month into the Arab Spring and the Libyan revolution, which is where my family is from, Libya, that this poem was a gift that was waiting for me as an adult too. So I wanted to share it with you all. It’s called Deaf, Dumb and Blind. And it’s a reference to a verse in the Qur’an that refers to these ailments through a spiritual lens. So unfortunately that’s the limited translation in English, but here we go.

Y’all, I haven’t performed poetry in ten years, so this is...

My stomach is full, but I am starving
The aching want of food for my hungry eyes
Hurts from the force-feeding tubes of mainstream media lies And the hunger shapeshifts into vulnerable slices
Into vulnerable ears that want a satisfying slice
Of the truth

Tempted, we bite the sugar-coated hand that feeds us And choke as we learn that not everything
Is served on a silver platter

And while everyone has his or her hands on a piece The truth remains scattered
No one’s eyes have the audacity or the mental capacity To witness the reality that’s fate is fatality

Our mentally acquired taste
Favors the buds of ignorance
As the ulcers in our eyes grow
It has become impossible to visualize Mercenaries sent out to massacre
Leaving maimed corpses brutalized
An image that mother media has made numb To those with no ties to the land that reeks The scent of death

As she allows ignorant minds
To suckle lies through her breast

Meanwhile reality never takes a rest
And brave men catch bullets with their bare chest Their blood runs parallel to the stream of the Nile Refusing to cut the umbilical tie
To the motherland
So they sleep with one eye open
Never having peace of mind
Because they give a piece of their mind

Yet the only sound heard
In the transaction of words
Between the leader and the rebel
Is the universal language of gunshots
Spoken with machine gun mouths
And twelve gauge tongues
And when they pray
This is the language that is sung
Worship in the most prominent religion today Self-interest

Where brutal practice to obtain paper and plastic persists Man sacrifices human blood to this worship
And instead of feeling pure after prayer
The dirt stays embedded underneath the fingernails

Of hands that have touched so much impurity

But when night falls
Darkness paints the skies with stars
And handwriting of a God who knows the golden silence And the quiet in truth

And this is why they never tell you the truth This is why they feed you lies on a silver platter And tell you
You are not worthy of gold
You are not worthy of God
And you are not worthy of fact

Well here’s a fact
Ninety percent of human communication is non-verbal So maybe I should stay silent
Mother media tells me that silence is golden
But I have seen the color of silence
Silence is blue that turns bright red
The moment it hits oxygen
Silence is the breakage of skin
And the shedding of blood
And for those who hold he power of a mainstream voice Your followers are lost
Lamenting the imminent return to real life

(Arabic)

Deaf, dumb, and blind So they will not return

I just want you to know that I wrote that when I was 17 and I didn’t know how to say the word ‘lamenting’ until last week.

Amanda: How were you saying it?
Noor: I was saying lamenting. Like laminating.

Amanda: I wrote songs when I was 17 that I’m still really proud to perform. There’s also this thing of, I don’t know if you could write that poem now in the same way.

Noor: I don’t think I could.
Amanda: There is shit you can do when you’re a teenager that you can never do again. Noor: It’s the undeveloped brain!
Amanda: And sometimes it’s the best shit.

Noor: I actually literally meditated on this this morning, because I was like, is it silly for me to share something that I wrote when I was a teenager? And also, I hadn’t read that poem in literally years, until last week, and I was like, oh my gosh, it was me trying to make sense of the industry that I was stepping into, and seeing how they were covering the people that I belong to. And it was this cognitive dissonance that felt like nothing was fitting, it just wasn’t making sense. And so I was just thinking this morning, wow, the power of an undeveloped brain that doesn’t really think about the consequences, and just thinks about telling the truth over and over and over again, and that’s what we’re here to do today.

Amanda: Well I’ve been contending... maybe contending is the wrong word. I’ve been revisiting my old band, which has been my band all my life, The Dresden Dolls, we’re putting out a new record. And there’s some really complicated things about this, and part of the complication has been as a woman who’s now 47, performing some songs that I wrote at 15, 18, 24, and seeing if they still fit. And in some instances, being ashamed of my now-self that I’m not as honest as I was when I was 15.

Noor: Right? Yeah.

Amanda: And then the flipside of writing these is kind of being inspired by teenage Amanda, and 25 year old Amanda who just gave no fucks. And then writing this whole new album, some of you may have heard it if you were at the Bowery, as I played seven songs, and I’m afraid of my own material. And I’m ashamed of myself that the progress has come. We become older, we become more conservative, and there’s a good reason for that. And if you were at Sophie’s talk last week, we talked about how we actually need this whole ecosystem. We need 15 year olds raging and screaming the truth like wake the fuck up. And we need 95 year old people being like, and there’s also this.

Noor: But doesn’t that show you the cycle that all of this exists in? In my brain, the way I think about it is children have the truth, and our elders have the truth. Everybody in the middle is just trying to get back to the truth that we knew as children. And that’s where we’re at right now, which is why if you have any art that you created as a child, I don’t even care if it’s a finger painting, go back to it. Because you were telling your adult self things that it needed to know, and it just makes things a lot easier. I always say, have a 12 year old brother, and I’m just like, I need you to write that thing that you just said down, I want you to remember it, you’re gonna want to come back tot his. Because somewhere along the line, we lose it. We lose the confidence to just be. We get told that you can only show up a certain way, you can only speak about certain things, you can only love a certain way.

And I would love to know for you, because I remember when I first heard you perform upstate, you shared that song you wrote when you were 15, which was really... it was referring to sexual assault, and you shared it with your music teacher, and his reaction was quite shit, in my opinion. But you were 15, and you depicted an experience which by the way was an experience that I had a very similar one when I was 15, and so I was in the room just sobbing, and I didn’t know you could even say those things out loud. So what did 15 year old Amanda know that 47 year old Amanda is trying to figure out again?

Amanda: Well, we’re gonna get very truthy tonight.
Noor: We already made a really out loud, people were like what does telling the truth on

yourself mean? I was like oh, you’ll know when you’re here.
Amanda: I’m gonna try to be more truthful than usual, which for me is a challenge.

I wrote this song at 15, it’s called Slide. And I don’t remember writing a lot of songs. This song that I played for you today, I don’t remember where I was when I wrote it. I don’t even remember what city I was in, what house I was in. I have very few memories specifically of writing songs, and my memory is bad in general. I specifically not only remember writing this song, I remember the marker, the gray Pentel marker with which I wrote it. And like a lot of good songs and poems, it came out in one go. And I was in high school, 10th grade, living at home, and in my bedroom, and I snuck down to the piano in the living room, because I knew how I wanted it to sound, and I had to play it quietly enough that I wouldn’t get in trouble, because my parents were asleep, and I was not allowed to play the piano late at night.

And I was unlocking, at 15, and being taught by the bands that I was listening to, the songwriters that I was listening to, Depeche Mode, and The Cure, and Nick Cave, and Leonard Cohen, and PJ Harvey, how it worked. And how it works is something terrible happens to you, and you take a metaphor, and you talk about it. And that’s how you make a song. This was what I was learning by the master chefs of songwriting. You don’t write a song and say I was raped. That’s boring, and bad, and also won’t work in a lot of ways. What you have to do is write a song about being raped that’s interesting and beautiful

Noor: Where you’re talking around it, but not talking about it?

Amanda: Yes, and also, that makes you an artist. And I was like, I’m an artist! I’m a songwriter! I want to be Robert Smith, so what does Robert Smith do? Robert Smith takes a metaphor, it’s a caterpillar, it’s a bed, it’s a cloud, it’s a flower. It’s basic. This is also the shit that we were taught in third grade English. And I was like, I know what a great metaphor would be. A slide, in a playground. It has a top, it has a bottom, it has a beginning and an end. I’m gonna write a song about a girl who starts at the top of the slide, and goes to the bottom, and there’s a scary man waiting there, and this will be the song about sexual assault. It’s perfect! I am an artist! With my gray magic marker.

And I’m still impressed by that song. I still look back at that little 15 year old girl, and I’m like, that’s a good song! Go you! But also, I was listening to the masters. I was paying attention to what resonated with me when I heard it with my ears.

And the comment that the music teacher made, I had a bit of a music teacher mentor, and this was the first song that I had ever written that I thought was good, and I had written lots of songs. And I was like, I think this is good. I think this is good. And I played it for him, and he said, I got to the end of it, I was so scared, I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my entire life, I was like, this is it, this makes or breaks me as an artist. And he said, it’s going to be amazing when your musical abilities catch up with your lyrical abilities.

Noor: Imagine you just shared your sexual assault with a teacher, and that’s their response. You can laugh about it now, but that’s wild.

Amanda: I don’t think he even got what the song was about.
Noor: Oh... men.
Amanda: I picked the wrong teacher. I should have picked my English teacher. Noor: But then you wouldn’t have had the story.

Amanda: I should have picked Peggy Diro. Peggy, I’m sorry! No, then I wouldn’t have the story, and I wouldn’t have things to rage against. And you know what’s funny? This is an important part of the story, and I’ve never really, deeply thought about or told this part of the story. But I wasn’t angry at him. Because I was 15, and he was the teacher. And this was also right in an era of my life where two of my piano teachers who were much older than me tried to sleep with me, and I did. And I was lost in the realm of, of course the adults know. The adults know everything. He’s right. I must try harder. It never occurred to me to be upset until way later, when I was like, what were you thinking!

Noor: You mean way later like when your brain became fully developed, and it finally closed the circle? Have you guys had that experience, post-26 year old, where past childhood teenage stuff goes oh, that’s what that was? Raise your hand?

Amanda: Yes.

Noor: I wanna know if we were the only... Okay, cool, got it. Okay, but I have a question about this. So going back to all the masters and the metaphors and blah blah blah blah. Zooming out a little bit, do you feel like in a way some of these artists were avoiding the truthiest truth? Like they were just trying to mask it with metaphor and poetry and stuff, because they actually themselves were like, I’m not gonna go that deep, I’m not gonna feel that, and my audience is satisfied enough with the metaphor?

Amanda: No.
Noor: You think that they do feel it all the way? Amanda: I think it’s two things.
Noor: Right.

Amanda: Number one, telling the direct truth about incredible pain is a bit of a firehose, and maybe not useful in an artistic setting. There are spoken word poems where someone stands up and is like, I was raped! And you’re like wow, that’s powerful. But that’s different. It’s a different avenue.

And maybe way more importantly, when you art your pain, when you use a metaphor, when you create a story, when you transmute a trauma, a pain, a sorrow, we’re talking about all the negative things, but throw in the positive things too. An unbridled joy. And you don’t just stand there and go, I’m so happy! It taps into the magical alchemical thing that art can do, that none of us have ever really been able to explain. And hopefully we never can. Because then it’s a different kind of invitation, to a viewer, to a listener, to the person who’s being presented with the piece of art.

It’s almost like every human from the dawn of time understands that if you take something, and you package it in an artistic package, in a painting, in a song, in a dance, in a story, and then you send it over to your fellow human being, it somehow works. It somehow works in a more powerful way than if you just give the information directly.

And there have been a lot of studies about how we take on information, how we store information, how we remember, why stories are so important for memory. And I think both things are true. Because I look at the work of really powerful artists, especially traumatized artists, many artists work straight out of their trauma, and need to set it all on another planet for a reason. And this gets into what we should talk about, which is what’s at stake if you’re just gonna tell the direct truth, and usually there’s a lot.

Noor: Thank you so much, what an artist perspective. As a journalist, it’s a little bit different. I understand the need to alchemize the trauma and the pain to turn it into art that’s digestible and moveable, something that you feel more in your bones and spirit than you do just on the surface level. And a friend of mine who is an amazing write, Mairi Andrew, I interviewed her, and she mentioned how sometimes just talking about unprocessed trauma isn’t even productive, you have to kind of move through it to get to the beauty, to get to the reason that it’s worth being shared in that moment. How can non-artists, or non-musicians,

engage with the music that we consume and know when an artist has actually done the work to process, versus spiritually bypass? I think that’s really what I’m trying to get at, I get that you don’t have to sit there and directly say, but I still want to be engaging with the person’s truthiest truth, even if it is powerful and beautiful and metaphorical. And I think that one of the things that happens, now especially with social media, where you’re seeing more of the insides of your favorite artists’ minds, sometimes you’re like, you ain’t shit. Sometimes you just say stuff and I’m like, I really prefer your... You’re like yeah, I’ve noticed that lately, I just prefer the lyrics. So how do we still engage with the artist that way?

Amanda: That’s such a great question. And I don’t know how I would have felt at 15 if Robert Smith had been tweeting. Seriously! I kind of love that Robert Smith and PJ Harvey have just never entered the arena of ‘and let me tell you a little bit more about myself’, fucking ever, really.

Back then there were magazine interviews. And you would read those, I would pore over interviews with Robert Smith, trying to glean more information that I could apply to the man I was certain I would marry. But this is the thing, and this gets into a whole other conversation about the artist and the art, and what our job is, if we have a job, to separate these two things. Because oh my god, nowadays it’s super complicated.

And I think it’s so dangerous to expect our artists to be good, pure, correct. Because that’s not what art is about! And of course, anyone choosing to be an artist is fucking batshit to begin with, it’s such a weird job, especially to do as a profession, right? To make money and pay your rent being an artist, it’s strange on a million levels.

And it almost is like we’re on the flipside of the way a certain segment of, let’s say a certain segment of at least American culture in the 60s, expected their artists to be badly behaved. And now, we expect our artists to be...

Noor: What happened?
Amanda: You tell me! I don’t know!

Noor: Is it social media? Is it accountability? Is it that now we realize, man, there was a lot of harm that was being done, and we don’t wanna tolerate that?

Amanda: Yes. I think yes, and.
Noor: But I wanna know when did you transition from being like, I can do whatever, sex,

drugs, rock and roll vibe, to... oh.
Amanda: Well, I was never in a sex, drugs and rock and roll band. Noor: Vibe. It’s a vibe.

Amanda: Well, also, I was a woman. No one really wanted, or expected, Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls, 25, to be backstage doing coke, fucking the groupies. No one looked at

me and said of course that’s what you’re going to do, you’re a rock star. No one knew what to make of me. People were confused. I think it’s still confusing.

And the fact that I was in a band with a man really helped. I spoke about this one night at the Bowery, that if I had been just a female solo singer-songwriter banging on a piano, I would have had a completely different relationship with the media, a completely different audience, a completely different demographic. I would have been a more punk Tori Amos type. But because I was on stage with a dude, and this is no disrespect for Brian, this is onl respect for Brian, the drummer in the Dolls.

Noor: He’s so amazing.

Amanda: He is amazing. Because patriarchy, he absolutely authenticated me. Because while I was banging on the piano, singing my truth, and my songs about sexual assault, and mental health, and confusion, and anger, a man was right there, hitting a thing, basically saying listen to her! Right?

Noor: Wow, yeah.

Amanda: That’s what the band was. Is.

Noor: Yeah, it’s fire.

Amanda: And so our audience was half male, because also it was no uncool to go see The Dresden Dolls, because there was a boy and a girl, and it wasn’t scary.

Noor: But it was also punk rock cabaret, which is its own very niche experience. I feel like you’re going to a dark circus show when you’re going to a Dresden Dolls show. Guys, I have gone to... I’ve watched you perform three or four times in the last couple months.

Amanda: Sorry.
Noor: So I’m very intimate with this process. It’s great.

Amanda: But there is a thing about, if you wanna get back to the rock and roll, why that all happened, I do think that culture moved on in general. Total annihilation, and excess, and the idea of throwing a television out a dressing room window kind of lost its appeal, I think, when we also realized that it wasn’t really helping matters.

And people still have so much romance around musicians, artists, poets, what it means, and I have had my own internalized romance around what an artist is supposed to be, look like, act like, speak about. And a lot of it is really unhealthy, still, in both directions. Especially our relationship with money, our relationship with...

Noor: Let’s talk about that. I wanna talk about money with you. Amanda: Let’s do it. So sexy.

Noor: Amanda, I’ve never met anybody who can openly talk about money the way that Amanda does. Raise your hand if you’re a patron of her Patreon. Wow... You guys are so loyal! We gotta find people like you.

Amanda: Thank you.
Noor: I think that it’s so incredible. So your Patreon, your community, that’s a huge

foundational part of how you make a living, right?

Amanda: It’s how I make a living.

Noor: It is how you make your living. And I wanna know what your relationship with money was when you were purely only making money form touring, on the record label, blah blah blah, and then trusting that you had enough of a community to actually be like, you know what? I actually want to be on your team. What’s the word for when people co-own...

Amanda: Oh, in...

Noor: When everybody’s a part of the business? Shareholder? Yeah, shareholder vibe, co- op, that. So how did you transition from that? Because I also, when it comes to labels, and making money through streaming, and making money through tours, most of my friends who are artists really, really struggle. No matter how successful they look from the ouside, it’s so hard, and so what was that transition like for you?

Amanda: Well this is a very apt conversation right now, because musicians especially are freaking out. Freaking out at their inability to make ends meet. Because the math just isn’t working any more. Streaming isn’t paying enough money. And it used to be that you could make up the shortfall. People are no longer dropping $20 on a CD, so you can’t really make money on an album that way the way you could 10, 15, 20 years ago. And it used to be that you would make up for the shortfall touring merch. And now touring has become too expensive. Price of gas, price of lodging, price of crew, Covid cancellations, whatever. And unless you’re the 1%, unless you’re Taylor Swift, U2, Billie Eilish, Phoebe Bridgers, you’ve raced ahead of the pack and you’ve figured it out, and you’re playing to thousands and thousands of people every night, you cannot make a living.

And to back up to the actual question, my veer towards crowdfunding was actually more about my disillusionment with my record label and the music industry than about a direct... What do I wanna say? I wound up crowdfunding because it was the only alternative I saw to the way I was supposed to be doing it.

Noor: Can you take us back to the first time you had the idea, and how uncomfortable it was in your body? Or how comfortable it was, when you were like, wait, what about this?

Amanda: I was just excited. Noor: Really?

Amanda: But I am a famously optimistically naïve person. Which is maybe why these things occasionally work, because I had no doubts. I was so... there’s a word for that. No cavalier, but I was sure. I was confident.

Noor: With a little delusion.
Amanda: Probably.
Noor: Because you need the magic of delusion.

Amanda: But also, the magic key is when you’re that confident and deluded, everyone follows you. Because they’re convinced that you have it figured out. Because you think you do, and so it goes.

Noor: I wanna ask, (points to audience member) can I ask you a question? So you’re a patron of Amanda’s? Can I ask you why, and how that happened? Are you comfortable with that?

Amanda: Take my mic, because then Noor can talk to you.

Molly: I mean, I’m gonna try and make it concise, but it was maybe ten or twelve years ago I discovered you. And I’m 64 now, and I hadn’t cared about music the way I did when I was younger for a long time. And I saw...

Noor: What’s your name?

Molly: Molly.

Noor: Hi Molly. Thanks.

Molly: I saw the video of... Fuck, I can’t remember the name of the song. The one about your family...

Amanda: Runs In The Family?

Molly: Runs In The Family. And it just went right to my soul, right to everything about my childhood, and healing, and trauma, and therapy, and everything, and I just embraced it, so that I just followed your career at that point, and then I just feel like you’re a kindred spirit, and I need to support that in whatever way I could.

Noor: Thank you. Amanda: Thank you.

Noor: I feel like the second you hear from people like Molly, it gives me so much hope in community, and building community. I feel like we see the numbers on our screens, we see

people as numbers, and the seeing people as numbers, period, in general has become a plague amongst humanity in general. And that’s why it’s so important to come to things like this, to be able to make eye contact with people, and be like, I see you, I’ll never forget you, Molly. Thank you for sharing that, I’ll never forget you. I’m so serious, to me it’s so important to be in community and to be gathering, because it gives me hope that maybe we don’t need the systems, maybe we just need each other.

Amanda: So this is such an important thing to talk about right now, as Twitter is collapsing, and...

Noor: What’s that?
Amanda: Exactly.
Noor: I refuse to go back there.

Amanda: And literally as this week, I just ran into Sophie in the street this morning, and I’ve been talking to Noor about it, I have seen an activity, and a lack of activity, on the internet – and by the internet I mean Facebook and Instagram – this week that I’ve never seen before.

Noor: Amanda found out I’m heavily censored on the interwebs.

Amanda: And also, who knows? We are left in the dark about why things happen, and how they happen, and the algorithm is getting more and more frightening to artists. I think probably to all human beings. But for we who have used that as a medium, like oh, we’ll take control, we’ll talk directly to our communities, we will use these amazing internet tools, and we will grow our followings, and people like Molly will come into my community on Facebook, and I will be able to tell you that I’ve put out a new song about New Zealand, and I’m going on tour there, and then I put it up on the internet and it just reaches nobody.

And the fear that is involved in that is not unlike the fear, and the anger, that I felt when I was on the major label, where I was like, wait a second, I’m really not in control here. I am not fucking in control, and you don’t actually care about me, and Molly, and our relationship, you give no fucks. You ind of have to give no fucks, you’re a corporation, you’re a company, you have to make fourth quarter, but I don’t wanna be involved. I just wanna make music, and give it to people who want it.

Noor: Because it becomes an entire other job. By the way, being an artist is one job, but cultivating and keeping up with the community, the fact that you’re doing these regular webinars, and Zooms, and gatherings in person, and all that stuff, it takes a lot to do that. It takes so much energy, and it becomes very hard to turn off.

I feel like when it comes to the whole algorithm stuff, I’ve been very vocal in reporting about what’s happening in Palestine, and I have obviously seen the censoring that’s happening, and I’ll have people be like oh, your thing isn’t showing up, this isn’t happening. And I see how people react to that, and they take it like this thing is happening to me, and I’m directly being censored and all of that. And for me personally it feels like a waste of

energy, because I feel like if you choose to use the internet as your medium, you just have to engage in a level of trust. Be like, whoever sees this story is who’s meant to see this story, whoever sees this invitation to the event is meant to see it. And even with this event, every single person who’s in this room is exactly who’s meant to be in this room, and we’re all so happy and honored that it was you that came. And the rest of it I feel like it’s just a series of letting go.

But as somebody who also makes money off of social media, and I don’t have a Patreon any more, but I’m building a media company outside of the system of traditional media, and so it feels like... I don’t know, I would actually love to throw this question to somebody in the audience. I’d love to know from you, how you engage. You have pretty hair. Just how do you want to engage with stories online? Where are you looking to for your stories, for your news, for your truths?

Amanda: Use the mic.

Noor: Also I love your necklace.

Melissa: Thank you. It’s huge and obnoxious, as it’s supposed to be. I actually appreciate you bringing up that point, because I have a dear friend of mine who also was in the Arab Springs, and is also finding a lot of his stories about Palestine are being censored. So I am definitely mindful of that, so I definitely try to get my sources from a variety of things. I use Instagram a lot, so that is part of it, but I do ry to go closer to the source.

Noor: Do you enjoy following independent journalists? We were having this conversation before the event, actually. Even when I wrote that poem, and I was only a couple of years into my journalism career, whenever people would ask me, who are the news sources you follow? Even twelve years ago, I will never say I blatantly just follow CNN, or follow New York Times, I say I follow and engage with independent journalists who have built trust with me. As a consumer of stories, you have shown me your transparency, you have shown me your intention, you have interrogated your own biases in your stories, and as people who are misrepresented I feel like you end up learning that the hard way, because you realize there is no such thing as true objectivity, until you do self-interrogation.

Melissa: Yeah, absolutely. And same thing with that friend I mentioned, I engage in conversation with him almost daily at this point about what’s going on, because I know he will interrogate me and that he will not let a single thing I say get by without him commentating on it. So for me some of it’s first hand, I just go straight to my friends that are in Israel, or here and there. And then other times, maybe more independent journalists that I have at this point come to trust. Or I’ll just do the bigger ones, like HEretz, or Al Jazeera for those live updates. But something about them too is unlike a lot of Instagram things, they’ll name their source, and you go from there.

So I definitely kind of do case by case, but I try to give it a variety.

Noor: Do you find that anything is missing in the way that you’re consuming stories, where you’re like, I wish there was a little more of this?

Melissa: Empathy?
Noor: Woo!
Amanda: Hallelujah.
Noor: Thank you. What was your name? Melissa: Melissa.

Noor: Thanks Melissa.
Amanda: I wanna push back on something you said. Noor: Okay. I love that.

Amanda: I love that. I love this for us. I think it’s a good conversation, because I wholeheartedly agree with you at some level, that we are always meant to be where we are, and that whatever the algorithm winds up pinballing synchronistically into existence is what it is. And...

Noor: Tell me. I need this.
Amanda: We have to fight for direct, and more authentic, and more integrated connection. Noor: Yeah.

Amanda: Because if we just passively allow the algorithm to take us where we need to be, we are only in a profit-centered situation. And it’s more dangerous now, and I think we’re all starting to understand what we didn’t know, twenty years ago maybe, about the internet, even though a lot of... what do you call those people who are like, no!

Noor: Virtue signallers?

Amanda: The alarmists? I mean, they weren’t alarmists. They were the people that I remember reading about and seeing in the early days of the internet, who were like, this isn’t quite gonna work the way you think.

(Audience shout suggestions)

Noor: Wow, we’re really good at language in this room!
Amanda: Whistle-blowers? Well, I mean the prescient seers who could see the way the

internet is designed isn’t going to be sustainable the way you think. Noor: Yeah.

Amanda: It is going to turn into a profit-centric, non-egalitarian problem.

Noor: But it already has. That’s what I’m saying. I hear you on all of this. When I say that I feel like I just have to trust whoever gets it is gonna get it, it’s because it was debilitating to have to care, and to be like, this post only reached 300, 400, 1000 people? But how many people are in this room? Probably less than a hundred? You guys are a lot of people, I’m good with that.

Amanda: Well you kind of have to do both. Because putting information in any way out into the world, whether it’s independently, on a radio station, through a magazine, through any broadcasting channel at all, is faith-based. And then as an artist, as a journalist, as a person who wants to create something and share it with the world, it is always a little bit faith- based. But there is an incredible danger to just allowing the algorithm to do its work.

And I assume I irritate the fuck out of my community by constantly banging on, constantly banging on about how I need your email. I want to be able to reach you when Facebook melts, when Instagram melts, when the algorithm decides we’re just not gonna push any of Amanda Palmer or the Dresden Dolls information this month, for whatever mysterious reason. I have to have another way of reaching you directly. So please, for the love of god, give me your email, so I can find you when I have a tour! And I say it every week on some post or another.

Noor: But does anybody actually find that annoying? I feel like it’s so sincere... Amanda: I don’t know if you would tell me.

Noor: No, I feel like they would tell you. But does anybody have a suggestion... Oh my gosh, hi! Sorry, I just saw a friend. Does anybody have a suggestion if we were to move off of social media, what’s next? How do we actually connect with you all? How do we make this happen? Yes, I would love to hear from you. And tell us your name, please.

Jackie: Hi, I’m Jackie. Noor: Hi Jackie.

Jackie: I want a publicly owned public space. Because Twitter isn’t public space, and Facebook isn’t public space.

Noor: Wow!

Jackie: I want a virtual, actually publicly-owned open source space. Because the reason we keep absorbing into the atmosphere is that every tech bro solution is not publicly owned, it is not open source, and it is always going to end up needing to make money to exist, because actually, the data to run Twitter, whether it sucks or not, or Facebook, or Google, is so utterly insane it’s melting the ice caps. So we do have to actually invest, while we’re

investing in all the other climate solutions, how to own digital space in the way that we own a park. Because it is actually possible.

Amanda: Or the postal system. Or the road system.

Jackie: Sure, right. The trust in email is an example of actually, my email address is the closest thing to a physical address that is about me as a person, instead of me as a commodity. Because sending mail has always been a thing. We’ve been writing letters to each other since before we had written language, or trying to.

Amanda: That’s a great point.

Noor: Jackie, do you think that if this space were to exist, that humanity would surprise us and actually be kind, and make it... No, honestly, I’m kind of like yes, in an ideal utopia world, I love it. When you first said that, I thought of an actual, physical space. What do you think?

(Audience member inaudible)

Amanda: And let me add, there are lots and lots and lots of people out there, working on technology to moderate and regulate public space. And we all know that we need the tools, the same way the mail needs to be safe, and you can’t just stick a bomb in the mail to your neighbor. It’s illegal. And the roads need to be safe, the water needs to be safe, the social media space also needs to be safe.

Audience: One of the things that I think about is that we’re all the commodity. Noor: Yeah.

Audience: And in the postal service, we’re not the commodity, we’re the customer. And we pay for that, we pay for every letter, we pay for the salaries through our taxes of the postmen and the trucks and all that kind of stuff. And we need a social media where we again are the customer and not the commodity. We’re not the profit center.

Amanda: Yeah. Five cents per angry comment.

Audience: I have a question for Amanda. So to the Patreon and patron-funded work, what do we need all of us as music listeners and consumers to rethink? Because I think about when Napster came out, and it was not okay. But now everything is Napster, and we can just pay a fee for all of the music, and in 20 years suddenly it’s okay, and everything changed. But in order to be a patron, I’m sort of paying a Spotify subscription fee to each individual artist I like. So what would you encourage all of us ot rethink with our relationship with how we pay for art, and consume art?

Amanda: That’s such a good question. There’s several answers there. There’s my pie-in-the- sky, if it were all perfect... My pie-in-the-sky, if it were all perfect, would be that there would be some incredible blockchain technology that would follow any song anywhere it went,

people would pay some kind of premium for the privilege always of listening to music and consuming art, but it wouldn’t feel like it was breaking anyone’s personal bank, but the money would always come back, not only to the performer, but the bass player, and the engineer, and everyone who helped in the creation of this art. If the art then goes out to constantly live a life where it’s constantly appreciated, and constantly enjoyed, then there would be a constant stream of income back to the creators. How incredible would that be, if that were possible?

And right now, there’s a very sloppy system, there’s ASCAP, and there’s BMI, and there’s mechanicals and stuff, and if you write a huge hit song, you’ll see this kind of vague residual trickle-down of we think the song is getting played and enjoyed by people, so here’s some money. But it’s really inexact, really sloppy, and really isn’t very effective.

The real answer to your question is that – and my TED talk was about this, and my book was about this – we need a complete societal rehab about the relationship we have with the value of art and artists. Because we really do expect it to just be there. We just expect it to be there, we expect to be able to open a device and just go, it’s all free. Without really understanding...

Noor: There’s also an intense pressure on artists, and on storytellers, to provide it for free. I closed my Patreon after three months because I felt so guilt-ridden for taking money from people.

Amanda: Well that’s your problem!
Noor: No, I’m saying that because it absolutely is my problem, I couldn’t move through that.

Amanda: Well, and so the evil twin of flipping your computer open and going, of course all art will be free, all images will be free, everything will just be free, free, free, yay the internet, it goes hand in hand with this other insidious problem, that artists should just feel gratitude that someone even just wants to enjoy their work.

Noor: No.

Amanda: And it’s like, ugh! People really just don’t understand the mechanics of having the time, energy, and inspiration to write a song, and then learn how to write the song, play the song, record the songs, get the song into your laptop so you can listen to it. I think people, highly educated people, still kind of think it happens magically, and that the artists are just happy, and that the artists should just be happy to have been in a recording studio to make their art, and should just be happy to be being enjoyed. And it doesn’t sustain. You have to have an understanding around the cost of art, and the cost of being an artist.

And it’s weird, right? Because how do you measure the value of a song? How do you measure the value of a painting? A dance? You can’t. So the artists have to call upon he audience to be generous and creative in their support. And with my Patreon, I write constantly about how weird, and inexact, and strange it is that none of this really has a price tag, and I’m looking at Mollie, we can all kind of agree it’s all kind of made up. But guess

what? So is the fucking art. So if you can enjoy the inexactness of my song, and not be able to tell me exactly why it’s making you feel what you feel, or why it’s good, or why you want to listen to it, I can also say I can’t tell you exactly that you need to give me 15 or 50 or 500 dollars, but I can say just give me something. I need the money to make the art. So give according to your ability. Give me what you can, so that I can keep doing this.

And it takes a huge amount of hutzpah to just say, I need your help. I’m not gonna tell you how much. I’m gonna just say, give me 5 bucks, or give me 5 grand if you’re really rich, I will take it.

And a lot of people watched what happened to me in 2012 when I was like, just give me your money, I need to make a record, and I was excoriated. I was the most hated woman on the internet, for begging for money for my record. So it went well, but it also was very expensive, emotionally, to get up and say that.

audience: Can I ask a follow-up? Noor: Yeah. Name, please. Lana: Hi, I’m Lana.
Amanda: Hi Lana.

Lana: And the follow up is for both of you. So where do you guys think that the disconnect happens? Because none of us usual consumers expect to go to a coffee shop and get a coffee for free, or go to a restaurant and get a meal for free, or watch Netflix for free, or cable TV for free. So where do you guys think there is the disconnect of this intrinsical expectation that art needs to be free, and it just needs to be available for us to enjoy, at the expense of the artist, at the suffering of the artist, that we need to be able to enjoy what is produced. And not only by artists, but also by journalists and intellectual production. I’m in academia, and there is also this notion that research needs to be readily available, that you don’t need to pay for any content that is entertaining you beyond the mass media that you’re already paying for. So where do you guys see the breakage there?

Noor: So I thought of two words when Amanda was talking, kind of a breakthrough, and I’m so happy that you asked the question in that way. I think about what Melissa brought up about empathy, and the second thing is transparency.

Okay, so I oftentimes am funding my documentaries and my podcast out of my pocket. Thank you so much for that support. Because it hurts, and I always tell people, if you’re going into journalism, you have to do that shit, you have to be willing to die for that, because that is not going to make you any money. I have always put my own money into my storytelling. But I’ve never been transparent about the fact that I do that. I think that you guys are the first people that I’ve ever told that to. Wow, this is a breakthrough I’m having, shit.

I don’t know why that kind of makes me emotional, but I feel like part of it is wanting to be legitimate, and wanting to be seen as serious, and at the calibre of CNN or MSNBC or whatever. But also, I’m not trying to be like them! They are so uninteresting, and honestly they have failed us in so many ways. I have literally stayed up for nights for weeks, because I was so afraid to release a story that I thought about over and over and over again.

Last year I released a story for my investigative series called Rep, a story about the stories we tell, it’s literally about the stories we tell, and it was about how the dehumanization of Palestinian people has led to the way that American people think, and how it has shaped our culture and society, and I think I thought myself sick for weeks, for weeks I was so afraid to release this story. And I had to examine this fear in my body, and be like, why am I so afraid to talk about the fact that I was so afraid to do this?

And that level of transparency, to me, is so sacred. If I don’t find that in the stories I am consuming, I am not interested any more. I need to know that you actually care about telling the truth. That you are not imposing on me, that you are not trying to control me, that you are not trying to manipulate me, that you are simply seeing me as a human, and wanting to tell the truth, and I feel like that level of transparency needs to be talked about. The amount of work and money that goes into these productions needs to be talked about. I’m saying all this to myself, so thank you very much.

And then the level of empathy. This is what I’m hearing, because we can say all of this stuff in this room, and I know that in this room, obviously I trust and believe that nobody hates me, and I don’t hate anybody, and that’s the ground level at which we’re entering. But for some reason, as soon as we go on the internet, empathy doesn’t exist, and we assume the very worst of everyone. So when Amanda here is telling you all that she crowdfunded to make her album, we’re all snapping and clapping, but the second she says that online, we’re like, who do you think you are, and what are you gonna do with every cent of that money, and you’re an artist, why do you need to make a million dollars, and that doesn’t even make sense, and all of a sudden, that to me, that lack of empathy, is not a lack of empathy towards Amanda, it is a lack of empathy upon the person. I think that we dehumanize ourselves before anybody and anything. And until we have done the work of interrogating our own stories, our own biases, the lens in which we see the world, we will never be able to tap into the empathy that is radical enough to actually create the world that we want to live in.

And so the disconnect comes from, we need to be inspaces like this in person, where we look each other in the eye, where we hug each other, where we hug strangers, where we say I love you, and I see you, no matter who you are, no matter what blood runs through your veins. And we also need to be like, and hey by the way, I’m working on this project, and I really think that you would be a great fit.

And I’m just starting, just now – side note, and little announcement, we’re trying to bring back the Oprah, Phil Donoghue-style show. As you can see, you all are the guinea pigs. And we’re doing it ourselves. And we’re trying to bring back town hall discussions that exist like this, where everybody can just speak freely. But I really feel, as from what you’re saying, it’s gonna take us. It’s just gonna take us, and it’s gonna take guts.

Amanda: That’s gonna be such an important medicine to the way the internet has aloned us, the way the internet has seemingly, superficially connected us, but has really created a disorienting separation between people. And then Covid did not help.

So there’s a second, kind of more boring answer for you, just about the music industry. Because you don’t see things quite so bad in, say, the literary world. People do expect to pay for a book, even if it’s on a computer. And so why wouldn’t that translate to people saying, well of course I’m gonna pay a dollar for this song, or even 50 cents for this song, it’s a song. It has a value. And the boring and unfortunate answer is unfortunately the music industry really fucked up. And when the literary industry, the book industry, saw what happened to the music industry, they were like, oh no. No no no no no! Books will not be free! And everyone was like... okay.

Noor: Except at the library!

Amanda: But it was too late for the songs! The songs were free, and the books stayed caged on the shelf with a price tag, and everyone accepted it. Think about your biases. Think about how you would feel if you went onto the internet tomorrow, and every song that you expected to just flow freely in your car, and while you were making breakfast, and while you were at a party, all of a sudden it was like no no no, every song that you listen to is gonna cost you a quarter. You’d be pissed!

And then things changed. So the disconnect also was a failure of the industry. A huge failure of the industry.

Tell us your name?
Jackie: I’m Jackie, I’m talking again. Amanda: Oh, it’s Jackie again! Hi Jackie!

Jackie: Hi! I worked at an independent book store for three years. And so yeah, books cost money, and. One of the reasons I wanted to respond was the book thing. I think one of the reasons we don’t have a concept like we have of books of music, is that when you go to the coffee shop, when you go to the restaurant, there’s just free music playing. You’re paying the barista for being your DJ, to have a vibe in your favorite coffee shop. And the only place that doesn’t really happen is in the library, where they give you the books for free.

Amanda: That’s a good point!

Jackie: So it’s a pretty weird... right? It’s a pretty weird situation that we don’t do ambience without music, so music as this thing that just happens has a little bit more of that. And then I think that yes, thank god the publishing industry tried at all to be an industry that wasn’t gonna stop having artists. And there is only one price you get to pay for a book. It is super regulated. That means most of your independent book stores can’t afford to be open, because they can’t actually pay a living wage, because they cannot make any money that

the publishers haven’t decided they’re making. And it is really, really hard. And I wanted to bring that up because it goes back to the independence, but also the public space, and the notion that ownership isn’t the only model, and it can’t be the only model, when conglomerates have eaten the whole world.

Amanda: Agreed.
Noor: Jackie, thank you! Love hearing from you.

Amanda: I have never really thought about the fact that the library is the only place where you don’t get free music, but you get free books. I just had a breakthrough!

Noor: You mean you’ve never rented a CD or a tape from the library? Amanda: No, it’s just a beautiful poem!

Noor: Honestly, protect libraries at all costs, libraries are the most important thing. As a child, I’m still obsessed with libraries, especially because they have free crossword puzzles, that’s where you can get the free crossword puzzles. As a child, it used to be my biggest fear that libraries would one day make you pay for books, because I remember thinking, it’s so important to have these books accessible.

Accessibility is also a huge thing that I feel like for me is so important. I’ve always felt like my stories feel like, for me, that they save lives. I produced a documentary about the sex trade, I spent four years investigating the sex trade, and I remember one woman messaged me and said that she had realized that she was being trafficked, sex trafficked, after listening to my podcast. And I sent it to my team, and I was like, if this woman was the only person who had listened to this story, that this was who it was for. And I feel like that has always really stayed with me.

And so even when we do want to charge for an event or whatever it is, or for a virtual event, I try to do the sliding scale, so that if somebody cannot actually pay for this, you never have to. But if you can, I want people to want to. That’s where I’m at. I haven’t figured it out, I don’t know. But it feels tricky for me.

Amanda: Well, it is very tricky. And the indulgence that I ask from my patrons is, please join me in this incredibly inexact exercise. Because a song will never be worth a dollar, or a thousand dollars, or a hundred thousand dollars. A song will just be of value, and I need to live, eat, and survive, which is gonna cost money. Let’s make a deal.

And you have to be very brave to say that, because we live in a society that wants, that demands an exactitude around value. And man, you just can’t do it with art. And, I mean this gets into a whole conversation around can you put a value on parenting? Can you put a value on raising a child well instead of slaving away at something else? And I think when we are able, I’m looking at Adam again, when we’re able to even talk about this, and recognize what’s going on, we’re already miles ahead of where we are right now. Because I think so many people, so many smart people, don’t really think about where it comes from.

Noor: Yeah.

Amanda: Where the child-rearing comes from, where the art comes from, where the research comes from. And we are spoiled right now. I feel like when we look back at this society, the embarrassment around us not understanding where things were coming from is gonna be the giant shame over this culture.

Noor: But I think that that is changing, and evolving. And the way that I am seeing it right now, especially with Gen Z, and even I would say myself, I am completely re-evaluating where I put my dollars. I am actually asking, if you were to look at my outfit right now and ask me where I got everything, I would be able to tell you where, and why, and how, and the story behind it. And this part of the, I want people to be excited to support my work. I really, really, really want them to be like, I see myself in this, I want to be a part of this too. And I think that that is gonna take a lot of guts from the storytellers and artists themselves, and you do that really, really amazing. I don’t know anybody who does it like the way that you do, because you’ve been able to actually live off of this.

Amanda: Well let’s bring the conversation back around to the beginning, and the cost of having any kind of power, platform, celebrity, reach. Because it gets tricky once you have the mic, once you have a power and platform. Because then telling the truth is very different than when you’re just raging at 15 or 17 in your bedroom, and you just don’t have a ton to lose.

Noor: Well now you do, if you’re posting online as a teenager.

Amanda: Yeah, that’s true actually. But to me, this is the juicy part of this conversation, which is what’s happening, someone like me, someone like you, doing risky work in journalism, I would call some of my work risky songwriting, songwriting that takes risks and demands a lot of myself in the truth-telling department, and a lot from my audience in the accepting it department. And I see the whole world turned upside down right now, just in terms of what’s allowed, what’s expected, what’s appropriate, what’s punished, what’s rewarded, both in journalism, and in music.

And I think if we’re gonna be having a really big, important conversation about this stuff, about the songs, about the art, about the journalism, the thing – and I would love you to just riff on this and talk about it – we have to examine, and again it comes back to do we expect our artists to be politically pure, pure of heart, never make a mistake, never make a gaffe, never say something offensive on the internet. And it feels like right now, truth has never been more expensive. The cost, the risk of telling the truth is going up, it’s hitting a premium. And this has always been true, and also depends who, when, where in history, which group, because of course people have been punished for telling certain kinds of truths from the beginning of time, and I don’t think either of us are going to leave this room frightened that we’re gonna be arrested outside the Rubin and beheaded.

But those times do exist, and have existed, and will continue to exist. So what do we think about that right now, and what’s the antidote?

Noor: Raise your hand if you know for sure, if you have witnessed with your own two eyes, exactly what happens after we die?

No matter what... You’ve seen?

Amanda: You just got a question, a follow up.

Noor: You have a really big...

(audience member inaudible)

Amanda: Can you hold for the mic? Just because we’re recording, and we don’t want it to get lost.

Audience: I work in hospice, and I’m around death a lot, and I’m personally fascinated with death, and what I’m doing is I am preparing myself as much as I can for the ultimate moment of whatever it is. But it’s interesting you asked that, because no. I wish, right? I wish. There is so much knowledge, and so much information from that experience in itself, and it would be so amazing to come back and say, hey. I’ve been there.

Amanda: I would be very, very careful about wishing this. Noor: Can I share with you why I ask?
Audience: Yeah.

Noor: Because it’s this question, this thing, this obsession with death, this fear of dying, that I believe we are at the place that we are today in the world. I think that if you were to peel this shit back over and over and over again, it’s because people are trying to control what is going to happen after, what they choose to believe about what happens after, because most people in their convictions around that are very, very strong, and sometimes when you start to hammer at it or pick at it, and then you’re like, yeah but nobody actually knows, it kind of shakes people’s world.

And when I thought about this the first time and blurted it out to a group of a hundred people, I facilitated a ten week program called Rep Club, which studied the investigative project I did. And the reason I ended up blurting it out was because my follow-up to that is I believe that the reason that we are on his planet is to ask questions, and to examine the concept of truth. Because at the end of the day, the one truth that is for sure for every single one of us, none of us actually have it. And so maybe the point isn’t to actually know the singular truth of what happens after, maybe the entire point is just to embark on what I like to call the quest of the question. To actually just go on the journey.

And I feel like, to bring it back to what you were saying around the cost of telling the truth, yeah sure the cost of telling the truth is gonna be expensive every time, but that is why we are alive. We are alive because we get to have the choice to put everything on the line to

tell the truth. And this is what I realized in the last month, as we’ve been seeing things happen, is that there is a deep-seated fear that people have around examining their own concept of truth, and what they believe. And if you feel afraid, if you feel afraid to tell your truth, or to witness the truth of another, then my question to you is, do you actually believe you are a free person? Because to me, my experience, why I want to be human, is to experience true liberation. To experience what it really means to be a free, independent thinker, and human, or soul, existing in this flesh suit that I happen to be wearing on this life. And I think that telling the truth, and engaging with the opportunity to tell the truth, is the whole point.

I’m down to lose everything, if it means that I can say what I truly believe, and what I have seen with my own eyes, and to actually witness the people in front of me. I don’t care. And that’s why I feel like today, standing on this stage before you all, freer than I ever have in my entire life, and this has been the hardest year of my life, I have asked questions I never thought I could say out loud.

Up until May, for the last 15 years of my life, I was covering my hair. And then I finally decided, you know what, maybe I should examine that, I don’t know about that choice. Just right now, for me, right now. But it ripped apart my world, and my reality, and I realized, oh. Duh. No matter how much people tell you that you are weak, that you lack faith, that you don’ tknow what you’re talking about, no, you actually have the answers, and you have the opportunity and the birthright to ask questions, so don’t be afraid to ask.

Amanda: I posted this the other day, I did a benefit called Remembering Sinéad a couple weeks ago, here in New York, at City Winery. And I didn’t write a big speech beforehand, but I thought before I went on stage that evening about what I wanted to say. And watching you tonight, and listening to what you just said, makes me think so much about her. So much about her, and what she said, and what it cost, and what happened.

And one of the things that I said to the audience that night was it doesn’t matter if people around you are telling you that you are brave, for getting up and shaking your fist, and telling the truth, and ripping up a picture of the pope, or whatever. What mattered, I think, in Sinéad’s case, is that people told her she was brave, but she didn’t get the call for the next gig. And she was also navigating the 90s, where her ability to directly reach anyone who loved her music was in a stranglehold.

And I don’t mean it at all disrespectfully when I wonder what would have happened with Sinéad if she had had the tools that we have. If she had been able to say, you know what, fuck you record label, I didn’t want you anyway. Fuck you 90s equivalent of LiveNation, Ticketmaster, whatever promoters, agents, gatekeepers, all gatekeepers of every stage, and every recording studio, and every CD manufacturing plant. If she had been able to walk away from that with all of the goodwill that was felt towards her, all of the goodwill that was everywhere around the world, who wanted to hear her voice, her voice, her story, her take. If she had been able to directly reach those people, I think we would have had a very different artist. And we didn’t get that.

And I think the appreciation that we should have right now, and the responsibility that you have, that an audience has, a reader of news, of music, is to not take for granted the power that we can harness if we just do it together, and we skip over the mainstream dictate, the mainstream narrative.

And it really is as simple and as uncomfortable as Noor’s saying I need you to sign up to my channel, and here is how to do it, and here’s a pen, well a digital pen, and actually follow along. And me saying I want every single one of you to consider joining my Patreon, so that I can pay rent next month, and make songs like the one you heard, and this is gonna fund The Dresden Dolls album, and the money’s not gonna come from the sky, it’s gonna come from people like Molly, it’s gonna come from you. And if we can work on making the tools, the fear at least from the artist and from the journalist around telling the truth, and being buried by the system, by the algorithm, by whatever, is going to lessen, and the power of our connection, and the power of the truth and the sharing will grow. And then we will have progress.

Noor: It goes without saying that I really believe that us, in our bodies, and who we are today on this stage, wouldn’t be without the doors somebody like Sinéad O’Connor opened. And everything Amanda said just now, I know we have it in us. I know we have the empathy, I know we have the ability to see one another, it’s there, we feel it. It’s such a funny thing, this whole empathy thing. Because it’s like every single time, every single time I see people face to face, that is the thing that they feel like they’re desperately yearning for, but then the thing that we use the most, that we pretend engages us with actual community, somehow it has completely lacked.

And when Sinéad passed, there was this brilliant, beautiful photo, which I wish I could hang in my house. It was a photo of her, with her hair covered in a hijab, whilst smoking a cigarette. Her face is a face of lifetimes of pain, and of journey, and of self-interrogation and awareness that many of us will never know.

And on that photo, somebody put, stop treating women like shit while they’re alive. Amanda: Stop treating women like shit while they’re alive.
Noor: I love that. Good job.
Amanda: Oh my god. That said it all.

Noor: That’s it. We have it in us. Because every single time one of our favorite artists passes away, that’s when we decide to write our eulogy, their eulogy, we decide to tell them how much we love them. Tell the people you love that you love them now. If you appreciate someone’s work, tell them. I promise you...

Amanda: And give them money! Noor: That’s what Amanda says!

Amanda: I’m gonna say it! We need to wrap.
Noor: Yeah. Anyway, I feel like we just both quoted stop treating women like shit while

they’re alive, and that was a good wrap.

Amanda: That was a good place to drop the mic. We have to wrap because we’ve already gone over time.

Noor: We’re not allowed to take one question, I wanna know their voices. Amanda: Do we have time for one more quickie question?
Noor: Tim!
Tim: Always time for one more.

Noor: Please!
Amanda: Okay, one more. Don’t ask us the meaning of life. Just a quickie. Noor, pick

someone and we’ll run the mic out. Noor: Hi. Yes.
Amanda: Over here.

Desi: Hi, thank you. My name is Desi, and I wanted to actually respond to Amanda. I’ve been a follower of The Dresden Dolls, and Patreon, and Kickstarters, and all of that, and I don’t pay for songs. I pay for your truth-telling. I pay for your humanity, I pay for the connection.

Amanda: Thank you.

Desi: And I think this is the same. There’s so much, so many of us here who are voting not just with our money, but with our time, with our love, because you give us strength, because you make us feel less alone, because your humanity is a reflection of ours, and it goes back and forth in this virtuous loop of connection. And so, it’s not about the commodity of the songs. It’s about the relationality of what we create both here, and online, and everywhere. So please do ask us for money, we will give whatever we can.

Amanda: I will. And here’s my ask, and this is a great way to wrap, is an ask from me, and Noor, and those like us who are willing to put our own money down, not work with the giant corporations, fund our own projects, risk our own money in order to hope that on the other side the support is gonna be there to catch us. It relies, the whole thing working, relies on a shift of consciousness, and a room full of people like this, going alright, I’m gonna follow Noor’s channel, I’m gonna consider being Amanda’s patron, even for a dollar.

But more importantly, in discussion, at dinner tables, with co-workers, with friends, and on the internet, consider adding to the narrative. I saw that you liked this article, I saw that

you’re a fan of The Dresden Dolls, do you support the Patreon? Do you give them money? I do, it’s great, you should. You should consider that. To continue to normalize this, what it is that at the end of the day we really need. Because at the end of the day, journalists, artists, independent anythings working outside of tech-bro world, and major label world, and the total for-profit world, we need funding. And it needs to be normal.

And so, a group of people like this going, I’m gonna actually spend a little bit of time on that, I’m gonna talk to people about that, I’m going to address it, I’m gonna leave a comment and say, how can we fund it? How can we help? How can I help? Do you need money? And if that shift in consciousness continues, and Kickstarter became normal, patronage hopefully becoming normal, this person can make a living, and eventually if the pile is big enough, you’ll just have 50 grand, 100 grand, to be like, I’ve hired the team, we’re going to investigate this story, because the trust will be built over time, the way the trust with an artist is built over time.

So go be those people. This room. Go be those people.

Noor: I guess that’s how we also get the art and the stories that we actually want. We’re all sitting here complaining about the way that the media is running, or mainstream music as well, and I’m just like yeah, well if you really want that, then you have to support the people who are willing to put everything on the line to be of service.

And with that, I’m Noor Tagouri, at your service.

Amanda: Ciao! Thank you very much. And I would just like to thank the people, I know there are people who have come to every talk, I want to give one last huge shout-out and thank you to the tech team, and to Tim here at the Rubin, for hosting this incredible conversation series, every single one of these talks has been interesting, and challenging, and beautiful, and thank you to Noor for coming tonight, and thank you all. Support the museum! And please come back to the museum, and come back to more events. This didn’t happen by accident, Tim invited us, so thank you.

Tim: And Amanda curated this series so exquisitely, to give us facets of how we can responsibly and with awareness work through this world. And we’ve talked a lot about taking things for granted tonight, and this conversation in a way has been a metaphor for the condition of the world, that we’ve taken a lot of sources for granted. We need to enquire where they come from, we need to know what the application is of our responsibility, and how the cost of being unaware bleeds out into a fractured society.

And so, what has this got to do with the Rubin? Well, Noor and Amanda, you created a town hall tonight, rather exquisitely, having shared opinions and experiences, and that’s exactly the experience that we want to encourage up on the sixth floor in the exhibition Death Is Not The End, where you can share out your fears about death, or indeed your hope for the afterlife. So go and do that before you leave this house, and engage with these things that we fear, because that’s the only way we’re gonna work through them, and we’ve got two extraordinary exemplars on stage about how that can be done. Thank you both so, so much.