How to promote your shitty art, Amanda Palmer-style
Write a poem about a recent world-news-worthy tragedy and post it on your blog, to gain attention. When the huge response still isn’t enough to satisfy your ego, write a blog entry about the poem you posted on your blog, just to make sure everyone has noticed you. Who are these bombers stealing the limelight, anyway?
Post a link to the poem. Don’t re-post the poem itself. The poem isn’t the focus, your thoughts on it are.
Before posting a single thought, mention exactly how many negative comments you’ve received (exact numbers now, don’t round up or down to the nearest 100, 10 or even 5) to make sure everyone knows you’re controversial. You’re nothing if you’re not controversial.
In the same sentence, state that the poem only took you – no exaggeration – 9 minutes! to write. This is so if you receive thousands of comments telling you how shit your writing is, you can pull the “well if I had more than 9 minutes to work on it, it would be a masterpiece, wouldnt it moron?” card.
Don’t decide on a title until the very end, so you can use the very latest headline grabbing tragedy to promote yourself.
This pretty much sums it up: “i could have titled “a poem for dzhokhar” a million things. i could have called it “the past 48 hours”. or “everything in my brain right now”. You probably shouldn’t include this, because it just tells everyone that you’re only talking about yourself. But then again, if you’re really bored, including a statement like this can lead to an amusing experiment on how many moronic loyal followers you can gain/retain by being an obvious fucktard.
“this is the best thing that art can do – any art, good art, bad art, 9-minute art and 9-year art….reveal things.”
Shit, give this woman an honorary degree. This is the most profound analysis of art I have ever heard.
“it tells you a lot about how people work, how they think things should work.
it tells you what they hold dear, and what they are afraid of.
it can be a very good litmus test for which way the wind is blowing.”
In this paragraph, Palmer blows away every professor of Psychology and Behavioural Science, ever. Fuck the honorary degree, give her a fucking PhD!
Then we get to the dot points (well they’re hyphen points, but you know what I mean). Picking her fingers, going to New York, feeling her legs in yoga class… notice the similarities between the blog and her poem? Which is supposedly about Dzokhar… but sounds weirdly a bit like herself..?
“…(note: “sympathy” is defined as “feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune.” and “empathy” is defined as “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings”. know the difference. it’s subtle…but important.)
so….people are afraid to say, in public, that they feel empathy?
this scared me so much.”
Here, Palmer looks up the definitions of “empathy” and “sympathy” in a dictionary for the benefit of her readers who are presumedly too stupid to know the difference, then proceeds to use the wrong one in her following question.
And THEN:
“and may you find a way to feel empathy towards everyone.
EVERYONE?
yes, everyone.”
Yep, no understanding of the meaning of the word. You don’t feel empathy toward someone. You feel empathy with someone. If you understand the meaning of the word, you will understand what I am saying here.
(I’d like to point out here I am not picking on single words in Palmer’s sentences for the sake of picking on her. What I’m getting at is that there is nothing substantial behind her words. She has no idea what she is talking about).
Sympathy: acknowledging anothers feelings. Yes, I can see that the guys accused of the Boston bombings had an interesting upbringing and way of thinking, and I acknowledge that.
Empathy: understanding through experience another’s thought process: no I can’t empathise with the guys accused of the Boston bombing because, even though I have been through some very black periods in my life, I have never been through those sorts of experiences or expressing my rage in such a way.
You don’t “choose” to feel empathy, as Amanda purports.
Anyway, I’m getting off track… this is supposed to be all about Amanda…
So dribble on for a bit longer (I did read her entire poem AND blog entry, although I did run out of sedatives three-quarters of the way through). BUT, make sure you end your blog post with something super-profound. Such as:
“when you cannot make art about the chaos, that’s when the chaos takes over.”
It’s all about the art. If you are an artist, then you know that, in the words of Metallica (amazing artists), “nothing else matters”. What is human suffering, if great art cannot be made from it? If no amazing art is made from it, did the suffering even happen at all??
To end your blog post make sure you remind people that what they just read/skimmed wasn’t about some loser bombers or some shit but about YOU, an ARTIST, with a casual throwaway line like “happy national poetry month”, and then a webcam selfie where you’re doing the peace sign thing.
Put your donate button directly underneath with a full-length explanation of why it i$ there $o that people don’t reali$e you’re ju$t after their money. They won’t think you’re being defen$ive or anything.
And… that’s it! Make note, you’re going to have to be super-edgy to pull this off, considering you can’t actually sing or write for shit.
❤ Luv u all xxxxxxxxx
Kitten of Doom 