Patreon – Page 3 – Amanda Salisbury

I like to pretend money is not a thing. I have sometimes not asked for payment because I thought that might be rude. I have accepted payment lower than I should have at times because I didn’t want the other party to think money was my primary motivation. I had problems charging people for legal work because it was something so necessary to those people.

This is all well and fine if one is independently wealthy. This one is not independently wealthy.

When the crossroads inevitably arise on the horizon, I hope and I pray and I want for a clear path to be, well, clear. I’m at one such crossroads now.

Amanda Palmer, a singer/writer/other, has written about the art of asking. She is not the first to highlight both the task of asking and the fruitfulness thereof.

It’s hard. And I want to think people will pay for my art and writing without my asking. I want to think if I work hard enough that people will notice and want more.

But I am at a crossroads.

After tomorrow, May 2nd, 2016, this website will go away if I don’t renew it. I thought I would be able to, but I’m not.

I can, of course, reopen a site that is free. But I’m tired. In this moment, I am tired of pushing into a dream that seems to stay as far away as ever. I’m tired of waiting to be a provider for my family. I’m tired of wanting this creative life so badly that I would risk so much.

My throat constricts and my eyes burn as I type this. Because I want to do it all on my own. And I cannot. No one can. And I never ever have.

So I’m setting aside my unworthiness and my guilt and my independence, and I am begging tonight.

I beg you to support this site and me if you find any value at all in its contents or my continued making of art. My Patreon site is the best conduit for your support, because you get stuff in return, like art and words, my two favorites.

Begging is unseemly. Most of my neurons are funneling me to the exit. But I am reinventing myself. And begging is merely asking. Asking is what we all need to do more. I tell my boys – actually, it’s a posted family rule: Ask for help. Instead of mentioning Patreon and saying my time is running out and hoping you understand and respond, I’m going to practice my own rule.

Lovers of the arts and creation, will you please help me? Will you please help me to transform my efforts into more art accessible to more people? Will you please help me to choose art over other vocations? Will you please help me?

Thank you. Regardless of your answer, thank you. I don’t always help my boys when they follow the rule. Sometimes, I know they will succeed without me. Tonight I question whether I will. I question how much longer I can hang onto my words and line, to my art.

None of this is your problem. And I don’t want it to be your problem. My job is to make and keep making. My task is to ask for help. Yours is to answer, however you may.

And, if I don’t see you before I’m gone – mad love to you all!

If you’re new to this blog you might wonder about reinvention, my theme for 2016. For me, reinvention is a journey of self discovery that I don’t think I really understood when I decided the theme. Reinvention is not a look at the things healthfully working in my life but at the broken pieces; after all, that which works needs refinement rather than reinvention (I sense a theme for 2017…).

Reinvention is also a reckoning of the estranged pieces of my life and consciousness so that I can regain unity within myself.

Wow. That sounds dramatic! Though if I’m honest, it has been dramatic. I won’t rehash here the reinventions, but you can go read some of them in the archives.

I’ve held a prisoner of war for many long and haggard years. The war is with the brothers Success and Failure. My POW plays both sides, or has played both sides. What I realized quite on accident: I am not at war with Success OR Failure. They aren’t nations or planes of existence but tools. And I need both.

Who is this prisoner? Her name is Perfection and she exudes a cocktail of frenzy mixed with hesitation and shaken with absolutes. I call her my prisoner, but in truth I have behaved as her prisoner. No more.

I could let her go. Strictly speaking, she lacks the form and personage of mercy. She must die.

But how? Not as quickly or surgically as I’d like. Unfortunately, Perfection carries immunity to fast, total, easy termination. [Note: I’ve never killed an actual body, just words with capitalized names and pretend people in my stories. Some of those seem to host antibodies to removal, too. If you are a person-killer, don’t tell me if it’s the same with persons because then I’d have to notify the authorities and, I mean, I’d do it, but…Alas! say what you must, person-killer-reader.]

Focus, Amanda. Okay. Perfection, she is a perfect little…Wait. That’s not back on track. What was I saying?

Oh, yes, the long, torturous killing of Perfection. [Spoiler: I can’t actually kill Perfection for you. Or you. Or you over there. It’s like a nine-lives thing, only infinite.]

Perfection has done me no favors. I’m not even sure Perfection has been minimally effective. She has kept me from moving forward and kept me holding back. She has undermined my intelligence, my education, and my experience. She has restricted my writing and my art. She tells me – constantly – that I’m a fraud and if I don’t do her bidding then everybody will know.

It sounds like I’m her prisoner, doesn’t it? But I’m not. I know I’m not because I am the one with the power. She is the one at my mercy. But guess what? There are no Geneva Conventions for this kind of prisoner.

Something I started last year is a serialized novel called The Right to Be Forgotten. It started as an experiment – what if I just wrote a portion and posted it and wrote from that base each time? I recently reread the whole thing, and I was shocked how much I enjoyed it. That’s when I figured out that I could make-and-release as a weapon against Perfection. When I write and retain, which I do often, Perfection whispers things to me that have me doubting and overthinking and hesitating.

I’m still working on a way to kill Perfection in my art and writing, but I think the practice of make-and-release increases my power.

The Right to Be Forgotten will be (has been) continued. And I started a new serialization on my Patreon account for patrons (of which there is one). That story is called Stab/Slab and it’s a dark comedy about a mob based out of a funeral home. You can read the first installation here.

You decide whether the make-and-release method is working for me to kill Perfection and revive authenticity with strong storytelling.

Bye-bye, Perfection, your last meal has been consumed.