Amanda Palmer On Abortion, Cancel Culture, And Having “All Of The Sex, All Of The Drugs”
"One of the things that's making it really hard to be on the internet nowadays is that everything is so extreme."
Amanda Palmer is undeniable.
The musician has a dedicated fanbase like few others on the planet, a legion of supporters who fund and inspire her. In turn, that allows Palmer to take the kind of risks only a handful of other musicians could ever afford. Like, for instance, travelling around the world with a “four hour solo piano show” mostly “taken up with talking about abortion.”
That tour, called There Will be No Intermission, has drawn Palmer to our fair shores, and to the Music Junkee offices, where she sat down as part of our Artist Alphabet series to share her most intimate and surprising stories.
Unsurprisingly to those who have followed Amanda Palmer since her days in the goth-troupe The Dresden Dolls, many of those stories proved uniquely honest. Beginning the conversation with a discussion of “the crazy ambivalence you can feel about having kids”, mid-life crises, and the horror of our political moment, Palmer reflected on hitting middle age and realising that her life had a new direction to take.
“I decided, ‘Fuck, I’m 38. I have done all of the drugs, had all of the sex, gone to all of the places, but there is this one thing I haven’t done. So I had a kid.”
From there, Palmer offered her stance on the current political moment with regards to the internet, and in particular, digital pile-ons.
“One of the things that’s making it really hard to be on the internet nowadays is that everything is so extreme,” Palmer said. “So binary. So many people I know .. are like, ‘I can’t anymore. It’s just too hot in there. People are yelling too loudly. There’s just too much anger. Even from the places that are supposed to be the most passionate, and the pure of heart, and the most woke.’
“And this is the one of the things that’s killing us right now.”
Watch the entire interview below: