On the Many Deaths of Amanda Palmer (16 page)

This remains to this day the only known example of a fatality caused directly through the enacting of a mock-funeral.

 

 

¹
Featherstone is first known to have used this term in a letter to his friend, Emily Watson, dated January 21st 1891. The original letter now resides in the collection of St. Ambrose College, Exeter.

²
Featherstone's journal number 16, page 161.

³
The
Totness Times
, February 29th, 1894.

⁴
Journal number 16, page 156.

⁵
These letters were found in a small box stowed in the attic of his family home at 21 Westland Row, Dublin, in 1996, and remain in the possession of his family.

⁶
Brighton Evening Argus
, November 17th, 1916, page 4.

⁷
This letter, now lost, was published in an article entitled “The influence of the death of Oscar Wilde upon the evolution of the Dadaist movement” by the eminent art historian Dietricht Hossbaum,
Archipelago
magazine, Spring 1961.

⁸
Translated from the original French.

⁹
This bill was finally overturned in January 2007 in time for the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People to hold a much publicised mock-funeral for the word “nigger”, the only known example of such an event being held for a word, and, ironically, an event which led to a considerable upsurge in the use of the “N” word in reports of that same event, and thereafter, as the reports themselves seemed to have somehow legitimised the use of the word by people who had hitherto deemed it politically incorrect and indeed offensive.

¹⁰
From an interview in the television programme “The Death of Jim Morrison”, ABC Television, 1997.

¹¹
Ibid.

¹²
New York Times
, March 22nd 2002.

¹³
Ibid.

 

By
XXX XXXXXXX

Well this certainly isn't a true
palmeresque
, or really any kind of
palmeresque
, but having read over eight hundred of the damn things, most of them very similar, derivative and frankly pretty poor, this positively leapt from the page at me, screaming “at last, something different, with a bit of imagination!” I was immediately taken with the format: that of an academic essay complete with footnotes and yet describing something obviously invented and largely absurd—not an approach I have come across before, and delivered with considerable confidence and some occasional flair.

Overall it is a highly original, and at best, wonderfully comic piece, although at times the academic tone is in danger of becoming a touch arch. As a literary venture it is ambitious, setting itself up, as it does, as a pastiche of celebrity that functions both as
homage
and critique of the genre, but largely succeeds in juggling these two functions without dropping either ball. The piece is often wildly inventive and very amusing, the formality of its tone and the
faux
references only adding to its sense of veracity—the reader is never quite fooled but occasionally he/she does start to think “Well, yes, this
could
have happened” (the use of real names is partly responsible for this, and the author's evident knowledge of the different cultural movements that have dominated the last hundred years also helps create authenticity).

The piece explores, indeed is obsessed with, ideas of authorship, invention and imitation; the purity of artistic invention and its subsequent debasement through ever more ignorant derivations. The writing style itself is very confident and draws together influences from the Romantic tradition, the Gothic, HP Lovecraft, Poe, Blake, Baudelaire, the macabre, and the supernatural. Despite
the essay format, the tease at the top combined with the historic chronological pattern creates an overall strong narrative drive.

But most of all it is the subject itself that attracted me: the notion of the ritualised staging of one's own mock funeral replete with artistic intentions, bells and smells. I am certainly tempted. And it would be the perfect opportunity for me to wear that papal robe I had made last year. Hmmm . . .

 

TEXT NUMBER SEVEN

Like so many other twelve-year-old girls Amanda Palmer dreamt of fame, celebrity and fashionable parties. However, unlike so many other twelve-year-old girls, by the age of seventeen she had it all; and unlike so many others who had it all, it really did seem to be everything she had ever dreamt of. But seeming isn't being, and youth is a dangerous thing for it knows no endings. To the young Amanda this was just the beginning; to the cruel hand of Fate her ride was soon to be over. Had she been older and wiser she would have noticed the signs, she would have been watching for them. As it was she bathed each day in the adoration of her fans and read her soul in celebrity magazines. The world had become her magic mirror, and she truly was the fairest of them all.

Certainly she had worked hard to get there; nobody could deny that. From the age of five she had been dancing and singing at various after-school and Saturday clubs and had spent every spare minute practising the skills that had ultimately catapulted her to semi-stardom. And she had missed out on so much along the way. In place of friends she had had rivals; in place of play she had had hard work; in place of love she had had stern encouragement; and in place of education she had had ceaseless scales and dance-steps. But in the end it had all been worth it. She had steered her steady course toward glamour and celebrity and now, finally,
she had arrived. And how she did love the glamour of it all: the exclusive invitations, the famous faces, the flash of cameras and the screaming fans; why, even buying a pint of milk from the corner store had become a thrilling adventure. Just so did her youth slowly pass upon a merry-go-round of concerts, parties, hotels, paparazzi and the steady adoration of her devoted audience. But alas, had she looked up glamour in a dictionary she would have known it was nothing but a hollow enchantment, a spell cast upon the naive and unwary by those potent forces who silently plot in the background, maintaining the status quo whilst making themselves oh-so-very rich.

Meanwhile, each morning at 10am her assistant, Jamie, arrived wherever she happened to be staying, with coffee and the morning's press cuttings and magazines. These she read through with all the enthusiasm of a child on Christmas morning, and with every photograph, every mention of her name, her colour seemed to ripen, just a touch. But then one day, on a crisp October morning in Seattle, at the age of 27, the previously unthinkable happened.

“Jamie . . .” There was the smallest hint of anxiety in her voice. “Jamie!”

An over-enthusiastic and richly moustachioed young man entered the sitting room of her hotel suite through a Japanese-style sliding screen, although on this occasion his enthusiasm was channelled more towards cowering.

“Jamie. Have you got this morning's cuttings?”

“Erm . . . no Amanda . . . We couldn't get hold of . . . errr . . . there's been a problem . . . with the delivery . . .”

Amanda gave him a look, the kind of look that is impossible to describe but were you ever to receive such a look you would know it immediately.

“Are you lying to me, Jamie?”

He seemed to stoop just a little lower, and cast his eyes to the floor.

“Err . . . yes Amanda.”

“Well what the . . . ! Is there something you don't want me to see?”

“Yes . . . and no . . .”

“Then spit it out boy!”

“There weren't any.” The words burst out like the cap on an over-pressurised boiler.

“What?”

“There weren't any.”

“What? . . . not any?”

“Not a single one.”

“What? . . . but that's . . . impossible! . . . not even . . .”

“Not even the smallest, most cursory of sideways backhanded comments. Not one.” Now he was beginning to enjoy the moment, though not so you, or rather she, would have noticed.

“Oh,” and her face seemed to measurably contort as if trying to fit around the alien idea. In the silence that followed it was easy to imagine the creaking sound a wooden bridge might make in the moments before its collapse. Then suddenly the room erupted in a chaos of shouts and breakages. Jamie had seen this happen many times before and wasn't the least bit thrown. Experience had taught him to stand back, wait for the inevitable exhausted calm and then address the situation. He glanced at his watch. Later he would note how long the tantrum had lasted in his diary.

Now she was in tears. Six minutes, forty two seconds. The calm would be here soon.

When it arrived, ten minutes, thirty seven seconds after her tantrum had started, she was sat on the edge of the sofa, rocking back and forth repeating over and over “What am I going to do?... What am I going to do?” Jamie looked down at her. She was visibly paler, and seemed somehow smaller than before. He sat next to her on the sofa, reaching across with a comforting arm, and at its touch she crumpled into him. He cherished these brief moments, and took a minute to soak it up.

“Right,” said Jamie, suddenly appearing decisive and authoritative. “The first thing we do is get you a new publicist. Hell, let's
get you a whole firm of publicists. That'll be all it needs. You know how the game works. We'll simply up the ante.” And then he launched into a stream of uplifting rhetoric which, though utterly meaningless and therefore not worthy of presentation here, she nonetheless found most comforting and he considerably enjoyed purporting.

The following afternoon at 2:15pm they were sitting on expensive chairs in a large and rather plush office of the PR firm of Alcott & Filch. Mr. Filch himself was holding forth before them, explaining laboriously the many benefits of hiring his company. After five minutes Amanda impatiently butted in.

“So okay, we've had the hard sell, you're on . . . so what's the plan? What can you do? . . .”

“Hmmmm.” Mr Filch leant back in his chair and stretched out his legs. He smiled, just a little, causing his weaselly grey moustache to turn up awkwardly at the ends, and the large boil on his nose to redden. “Well, Miss Palmer, we can certainly get you back at the centre of things, for a time, but you have to understand, as with everything else, there are natural laws that govern the publicity industries. These can be bent, pushed to the very limits, but ultimately they cannot be broken. I am a great publicist, possibly even the best, but I am not a god. I can manipulate, but I cannot control . . .” Here he paused, for dramatic reasons.

“As I see it, your assets are worn out. Sure, you still have your talent, and your looks, for now, but nobody cares anymore. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, the CDs, the biographies and memoirs and photo-albums, the dress-up dollies . . . However extraordinary you may once have been, you have now been normalised. The quirkiness that once excited so much interest has become a tired cliché . . . It's time to change the brand! Be dangerous again, unpredictable . . . go crazy, murder your mother, no, scrap that one . . . but do something utterly unexpected and out of character. I can get the cameras there. What happens next is up to you. But make it good. If you're gonna maintain their interest it'll have to be good. And you must be prepared to follow through . . . Think
about it and get back to me.” And with that he turned to the side, picked up the phone and dialled a number. “And make it soon. Every day you're out of the scene makes it trickier. I'll be hearing from you.” Then he turned his back entirely and began talking on the phone, making it clear that the meeting was over.

For the following week Amanda kept herself largely unobtainable only deigning to see Jamie briefly each morning for any updates, but alas, no press cuttings. It was as if the tap had suddenly been turned off; not even the smallest of drips leaking out to pool at the grungy bottom of the sink. Whilst Jamie got on with the job of running the company that
was
Amanda Palmer, its namesake sat and sulked and mused and brooded as only a gifted prima-donna ever could. But even she eventually tired of self-pity, and by day ten of anonymity her resolve was complete: she would have to become dangerous, unpredictable . . . She would sell her soul to Alasdair Filch. It was her only real option, or so she felt.