Elephant/Ele-over

I hate to go on like a jilted junior high girlfriend. Not really. So ask me again why I am so fed up with Amanda Palmer! I become very attached to music. It represents a lot of things to me. However, everything about her lately has tainted her music for me. Now with the whole Evelyn Evelyn nonsense...I am afraid this break-up is complete. And I get it. IT'S ART! IT'S ART!! Art can be edgy. Art can even be offensive. Sometimes art has to be offensive. Since I am much more an observer than a writer I found a response (the section I have made bold) to her Evelyn Evelyn story post that sums it up:



LCG
Okay, I am decidedly NOT an uptight hand-wringing office of the politeness police, but I have problems with the way this Evelyn Evelyn project is presented here.

I'm a casual Amanda Palmer fan; I like her music, "Yes, Virginia" is in heavy rotation in my car, I dig her. I'm not a rabid fan who would follow her to ends of the earth, though. I'm not such a huge fan that I will toss around accusations of "betrayal" or defend her just because she's Amanda Fucking Palmer.

The problem I have with this whole scenario? THE WRITING.
Oh dear god, Amanda.
Obviously you've read "Geek Love" and enjoyed it immensely. Awesome. But if you're going to go to the trouble of concocting an outlandish, elaborate story about practically feral conjoined twins who escape the circus and achieve indie rock stardom with the help of yourself and your pal Jason Webley, and you're creating dummy MySpace and Twitter accounts to flesh out the fantasy, couldn't you have had you fiance proof-read this blog or something? This is written like poor Harry Potter fanfiction or something. I'm sorry, I have a problem with people defending something such as this as "art" when the "art" in question reads like a 15 year-old pounded it out in the Livejournal at 3am. Maybe if you had put more thought, and more writerly skill, into presenting this story, it would be better received.

And maybe if you learned how to edit yourself and punctuate properly, your blogs would be something approaching readable.

This kind of reads like, "OMG YOU GUISE! I met these crazy conjoined twin musician sisters and we're totally helping them in laif and they are releasing an album! It's so awesome!"

I mean, especially if you are going to bring up issues such as exploiting the disabled and child pornography and sexual abuse, put some pith behind your words. All we have is a cobbled together bare-bones story with no substance. And, jeez, if you're going to use the I Am An Artist defense, write like an artist writes and give your words & actions the thoughts an artist would.

I happen to agree with the blog on Disabled Feminists and many of the comments below. I think it's distasteful and crass and insensitive toward a lot of different people.
I was willing to accept that you weren't being disrespectful or making fun until I watched this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCPnTHXj8b0

Dude, you're making fun. You are GIGGLING ABOUT IT while you are performing. Isn't this absurd?! Isn't this grand?! And that vacant, glassy-eyed, mocking look on Jason's face is the final nail in the coffin. You're making fun. You think the whole thing is hilarious and fabulous and oh-so-creative. It's really not, though. Maybe it's a clever way to get out of your contract with your record label, but in every other respect, it's a total creative failure.

Also, in this case, a little bit of mystery could have gone a long long way. Maybe start studying The Residents next time you want to undertake a project like this. If you had been more careful, and more studied and calculating, this could have been a fantastic project.
Not to mention part of me is somewhat sad that Neil Gaiman was a part of this. I never thought there were actual conjoined twins who sang and played the ukulele. But I did not expect this whole thing to be so offensive and sour. And maybe I am just selfish. Before her Twitter/blogs all I had was her music. That's all I wanted. I was happy someone could formulate things I had thought about/experienced into such amazing songs. Now it's all tainted with these...exhaust fumes.