ash, 4: “mama, who is dada’s dada?”
me: “david.”
“where is he?”
“he died, ash.”
“how?”
“ask dada”
*ash finds
@neilhimself
*
“mama said your dada died!”
*neil sighs*: “get into bed with mama & i’ll tell you the story of how my dada died.”
ash: “no. NOT a story. tell me the TRUTH.”
this is a reminder in case you need it. everything is going to change. people will leave. they will die. objects and plans will be lost. your script as you wrote it will be ripped or burned again and again and again. you are not alone. it’s happening to all of us. and i love you.
Sinéad’s daughter, Roísín Waters, singing “Nothing Compares 2 U” at Carnegie Hall last night in tribute to her mum.
Oh man…I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house. Every other performer was crammed side of stage to watch this bittersweet majesty unfold.
And my god,…
just walked into a coffeeshop here in aotearoa new zealand and everybody behind the counter, not really knowing me but knowing i was american, erupted in spontaneous applause
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
this is a hard thread to write.
i am on a plane bound for chicago, then i fly to st. paul, where i will sit in giant theaters & tell several thousand people (spoiler, sorry) each night about my abortions.
yes, abortions.
plural.
i’ve had three.
whatever forces conspired - british people, weddings - to get millions of humans on the planet to simultaneously listen to a black preacher in a white ol’ church & ponder the words of MLK on the redemptive power of love & 1 human family...fuck it. i’m in. good job,
#royalwedding
landed in australia. jetlagged.
a family walk to get breakfast at 7am.
ash (4), out of nowhere:
“i want everyone to be dead.”
his father,
@neilhimself
:
“yes. i know the feeling.”
me:
*opens mouth to speak, pauses, thinks better of it, says nothing, continues to breakfast*
new zealand is moving to level 4 lockdown (7 days for auckland, 3 nationally) at midnight because a single case of covid - likely delta - has been detected in the community.
nobody i know is complaining.
there has been a total of 26 covid deaths in NZ since the pandemic began.
happy birthday,
@neilhimself
. you are the most wonderful, lost in space, handsome, hangry, multi-pocketed, gentle, fierce, introverted, extroverted, tea-worshipping, interesting, wonderful and loving man i know.
i love you so much.
and so many others do, too.
📷
@charlieclift
if it isn’t feeling right, don’t play a support role in somebody else’s fantasy, no matter how habitual it is.
you’re allowed to be the star of your own fucking life.
get on it.
💫💃⭐️
me, from the bathroom, to
@neilhimself
: “i have a question!”
neil, from other room: “ask me, earth woman”
me, after pause: “i cannot believe i married such an actually serious dork”
neil: (says nothing, comes into bathroom, smiling like a total weirdo)
me: ok i love you anyway
when you are quarantine-gardening with
@neilhimself
and a group of entangled young carrots brings a stifled sob to the back of your throat.
to everybody out there quarantining alone and missing human touch, i am sending you the biggest, tightest, longest heart-hug i can muster.
wait a second. wait a second. is this neil "Was The Lead Singer In A Glam Punk Band Called 'Chaos' When He Was Fifteen And I Have The Photos of Him Wearing Silver And Blue Eyeliner To Prove It" gaiman speaking? don't pawn this one off on me buck-o
It's almost midnight here. I took Ash aged 4 to see
@alicecooper
in concert. I figured he'd last a song or two before demanding to be taken home. He watched the whole gig rapt, danced and clapped and stared and loved it all. One of those "this is
@amandapalmer
's son" moments.
literally 300+ nice old vintage books in the bookcases at this air bnb on a hilltop in the middle of effing nowhere and this is the one the four year old pulls off the shelf and chooses to relax with
i’m getting out of here
oh wait i can’t
#lockdownnz
i couldn’t find him. i searched the whole house only to find him in the guest bedroom, reading a
@neilhimself
-penned batman comic he must have found on the shelf somewhere.
the seal is broken.
here we go.
georgia’s governor just signed a bill effectively banning abortion after 6 wks -before many women know they’re pregnant. i play georgia may 17 @ the cobb energy center in atlanta. i will tell my own abortion story to a thousand people. i’ll also play some disney songs. please RT.
i am grateful to all the people on the internet who are being kind. to me. to my family. to one another.
we are all having a hard time.
keep being one of the kind people.
♥️
happy easter, aotearoa, from me,
@neilhimself
, ash &
@xantheahere
. to all the kiwis: thanks for having us as we navigate these accidental strange times, esp
@jacindaardern
, one of the sanest compassionatest politicians on the planet, who sent this downloadable coloring egg. 🐣♥️
our unlikely little family. so grateful for these two in my life. i never saw any of it coming. ash is 3 today. tomorrow i fly to LA to record my first big album since 2011. neil stays here. we make it work as best we can, and we get by with a little help from our friends. ♥️💥
mr
@neilhimself
took this picture of me after i spent a weekend reading news about the global state of covid and the climate crisis and trying to decide when we could or should get on a plane back to america. i didn’t know he was taking it. he calls it “amanda faces the future”.
my family in its natural habitat.
@British_Airways
flight
#1445
direct from edinburgh to london. i compose emails about a patron pop-up this weekend in camden,
@neilhimself
works on the 2nd draft of a script for a secret TV thing, ash watches the muppet movie for the 14th time.
that day your $100k-budget video premiers and in an ironic twist of internet cruelty your husband
@neilhimself
is instead trending on twitter for no real reason. feel my pain & watch my incredible video. i heard neil gaiman thinks it is the balls.
eventually the guy from the barber shop next-door came to the rescue. this is daniel, the guy from the barbershop next to the hotel who knew how to tie a bow-tie. he is the reason neil attended the premiere of good omens tonight. thank you, daniel. neil. clip-on. or plan. (4/4).
i have never read all of the sandman.
@neilhimself
just gave me all of the sandman. i am going to read all of the sandman this spring while i tour. it is time.
ash, 5, just watched “the incredibles” - a film about a superhero family - then spent two hours zooming around and lifting chairs, pretending he had mighty powers.
i asked him: “if your dada had a superpower, what would it be?”
he thought hard, then said:
“throwing BOOKS.”
things are getting very, very, very bad right now.
global fascism and religious extremism are on the rise. we know our history. the FIRST THING THEY GO AFTER is a person’s right to control their own body and destiny.
control the wombs and you control the political agenda.
ash, 4, seeing a period bloodstain on the bed: what’s that?
me: it’s blood
a: from where?
me: it’s from my pagina. women bleed, it’s normal & has to do with babies
a: is THAT what makes the babies RISE? and then they turn from zombies into humans & come out of their graves?
me:
to all of the people coming to this thread to shame me, insult me, and call me a killer...hi. i’m happy to talk with you. i don’t feel shame about these decisions i made. none. it’s taken me a long time to understand how much shame i carried. and i’m not afraid of you anymore. 🙏🏼
i was just lambasted by someone from the states for staying here in new zealand while they were back home in new england “actually being brave”.
i am homesick in a foreign country living in an air bnb so my kid can go to school. it feels like the bravest thing i’ve ever done.
that sweet & slightly awkward moment when you are at the check-out counter of a bookstore in denver and are confronted with a basket of these and you say “is this what i think it is” and one of the clerks blushes and says “er yes that is your husband”. many of him. hi neils
mr
@neilhimself
, who almost never drinks, got drunk on scotch tonight and when i kicked him because he was snoring he woke up, looked at me & said:
“you are a cyclops”
not sure whether he meant that in his drunken haze i appeared to have one eye or...something else.
#DrunkNeil
four and a half....hasn’t played with a kid his age in four weeks, but we are trying our best to entertain and distract him.
this is a tree he clambered in the local graveyard.
{thread} we were late to the london premiere of good omens because
@neilhimself
does not know how to tie a bow-tie. nor would he attend the premiere without a bow-tie. we were at a standstill. i didn’t know how to tie a bow-tie. neil’s agent didn’t know how to tie a bow-tie.(1/4)
i love you.
wherever you are and whatever you’re doing and whatever decisions or feelings you are struggling with right now, just know i love you.
i really love you.
i love the shit out of you.
yes you.
one breath and moment at a time.
holy moly. marriage tensions at an all-time high here in the palmer gaiman household, kicked off by, of all things, a heated argument about whether people in the UK know what “duck duck goose” is. there was shouting and plates nearly thrown. day 15 of quarantine, signing off. ♥️
today we used the avocado scissors to cut avocados off the avocado tree. this is
@neilhimself
, with the avocado scissors. i didn’t even know there was such a thing as avocado scissors. they are amazing. i don’t even know if they are called avocado scissors. 🥑✂️
dear
@neilhimself
, i love you. just a reminder in case you took that whole the-end-of-the-patriarchy-is-nigh thing personally. it’s not personal. it’s just time. fondly, your wife.
this is the emergency alert just sent to all phones tonight in new zealand, the country in which i’m currently quarantined. lockdown begins now.
as an american, i am not used to a government that communicates with compassion.
“kia kaha” is māori for “stay strong”.
😭
my entire life and career has been spent mastering the art of being less and less concerned about what people think of me while becoming more and more concerned with who i actually am.
hell hath no fucking fury like a musician who is on tour singing openly about abortion being told by a late night TV show that the invitation to play the show no longer stands because she wanted to do the song about abortion
👋🔥💃
if this doesn’t warm the cockles of your heart....
@neilhimself
, reading his book “pirate stew” in the garden of the kiwi pre-school ash has been attending since after april lockdown.
now ash is 5; it’s time for big school. i can’t believe it’s been a almost a year here.
🎡
laws like this disproportionately effect poorer folks, women of color, and LGBTQ folks. it will screw folks who cannot afford to travel, leaving them no choice other than to carry out a pregnancy - and have a child - they cannot afford.
it’s stupid. it’s sexist. it’s racist.
mr
@neilhimself
told me last night that he was slightly grumpy with this thread.
for the record:
neil gaiman is a great writer, a great feminist & most importantly, a great feminist writer.
he has supported me like mad. it’s the media i’ve got beef with, not the husband. :)
dear everybody. channel your anger. if you have time today, make some art. anything. you don’t have to show it to anybody and it absolutely does not have to be good. make sounds. paint shapes. write something. take plants and arrange. anything. make some art. love, amanda
a reminder.
you are worthy of love even when you feel exhausted, ugly, unlovable, empty, confused, wrong, horrible, fragile, depleted or broken.
want your mind blown? you are even more especially worthy of love when you feel these things.
that is what love is.
i love you.
we didn’t mean to wind up in NYC for father’s day, but.
@neilhimself
got to spend a lucky morning w/ ash &
@maddygaiman
dear neil: i love this ride with you & this strange amazing family we’ve woven. to all the fathers out there who are Doing The Thing: thank you. i see you. 🎡
favorite moment of the red carpet for
@neilhimself
’s leicester sqaure premiere last night for
@goodomensprime
: david tennant (who plays crowley) and
@michaelsheen
(who plays aziraphale) competing to impress a 7-year-old british journalist. clearly, david is
#winning
.
leaving washington DC, i wind up squished on an airport bus next to a US ambassador to zimbabwe. he is wearing a trench coat; i am carrying a ukulele case. we regard one another. i explain the difference between a ukulele and a banjo; he explains coup d’etats. a fair trade.
one when i was 17. and two in my thirties, after i got married.
in none of these cases was i raped. in one case, the fetus wasn’t viable. in the other two: i chose.
i wasn’t ready.
in each case (in massachusetts, edinburgh and NYC) i had access to a safe, legal abortion.
so many people i know right now are surrounded by people and yet feeling alone. so wherever you are right now, whoever you're with, whatever is going on, i hope you see this, and you feel for a moment that you aren't totally alone in your aloneness. we're all together...somehow.
i went to wake him for camp. i opened the curtains and gazed for a moment at his innocent 3-year old body before lying in bed next to him. his soft hair, his sweet breath. he stirred, flutter-opened his lids, stared straight into my eyes and said “MAMA. I NEED TO BREAK A GLOBE.”
just feeding a baby and having a laugh with michael sheen on the set of
@GoodOmensPrime
about a million emotional years ago in london.
blessed are all the film and acting and theater people - at all levels - trying to keep it together right now.
♥️🙏🏼♥️
A heart-breaking moment captured in an SS photograph of a group of Hungarian Jews near gas chamber IV at
#Auschwitz
II-Birkenau in or around May 1944.
A child found a flower & is giving or showing it to an older boy.
All the people in the picture were gassed moments later.
my cousin in scotland just died of covid. she broke a bone and went to the hospital. the break was mending, but meanwhile she contracted the virus and she didn’t make it.
she had nobody to hold her while she died.
just one of hundreds of thousands of stories.
i love you.
hey darling. i hear you. i'm going to follow the lead of thousands of trusted and knowledgable scientists when making a decision about vaccinating my kid. and please be mindful that telling any parent that they are "killing" their child is a really harsh, harmful thing to say. 🙏🏻
i just have to tell somebody
that richard o’brien
the creator of the rock horror picture show
emailed me to say stop by and visit since i’m in new zealand
and regarding the turn of world events, he says:
madness takes control
true that
my son requested a portrait “of dada”. did you know i used to be an obsessive etch-a-sketcher? i’d forgotten. my mom has photos of some of my masterpieces from 1983-7...i should dig them up.
you can do nothing.
or you can do something.
if you do something, you will be scolded for getting the tone wrong, the timing wrong.
do it anyway.
the only alternative is to do nothing.
i am amanda palmer and haven’t brushed my hair in a long time and i believe in you.
no.
being an artist is a real job.
our sick culture pays artists poorly and generally takes terrible fucking care of us.
we get poorly treated for the important and irreplaceable work we do for this society.
do not forget what a world without art would feel like to you.
this morning we attended our first funeral altogether as a family, for a dead mouse we found in the closet. i dug the hole with a pitchfork,
@neilhimself
mumbled some profound words about how it was a good mouse who’d lived a full life, and ash chose the gravestone (a rock). 🙏🏼🐀
when i was in college, i was depressed & on zoloft for four years.
when i left college the depression lifted and never returned.
the whole time i had thought it was just me.
but sometimes it really is your situation, your surroundings.
look around.
where you are is real.