Are You Neil Gaiman?

A Question From The Theatre Of The Absurd

Ryan Stanley's indentured servitude in Season 1 of the 2017 STARZ series, American Gods

In 2016, I was offered free tickets to attend “An Evening With Amanda Palmer” at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Toronto. I’d devoured her book “The Art of Asking,” which I procured from the Parkdale branch of the public library when I was pregnant in 2015, noting the synchronicity between her pregnancy (with its musician-specific implications) and my own. I kept up on her blogs, but otherwise, wasn’t by any means a devoted fan. Regardless, I knew that I would enjoy seeing her perform live, solo with a piano and ukulele, infamously reading “Goodnight Moon” to a nostalgic adult audience and building an impromptu altar for recently deceased Canadian iconoclast, Leonard Cohen. Below is an excerpt - a tongue-in cheek pro/con list - from Palmer’s prescient Medium essay, “No, I Am Not Crowdfunding This Baby.”

And I’ve spent years weighing the pros and cons of having a child:

PROS:

• It’s not like anything I’ve done before, and I like new things.

• Possible spiritual enlightenment?

• Possible deeper bond with my husband once we’ve mixed our genepools.

• Most importantly, if I believe all the people I’ve anxiously polled, especially female artists, it’s a decision that’s nearly impossible to regret, even if having a kid is a total pain in the ass. So…that’s good.

CONS:

• Complete loss of personal freedom and spontaneity.

• A whole new world of potential disagreements and drama with my husband, since we’re both control freaks (…undoubtedly followed by divorce proceedings, ugly custody battles and the sorrowful life of a single mother).

• All that poop.

• But the worst one is actually this: The loss of my identity as an artist.

I shared many of these hopes and concerns as I approached the threshold to motherhood, with one, albeit naïve, exception: never once did I consider that my partner and I would disagree on anything kid-related. And I sure as hell didn’t envision a marital dissolution on my own humble horizon; I was too wrapped up in love with my husband and baby-to-be. Nevertheless, the essay spoke directly to me to the point that I was downright eager to attend an Amanda Palmer show, certain that piano-led catharsis was imminent.