Аманда Палмер - The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

Every pair of gazing eyes that locked with mine, a reminder:

Love still exists .

When Neil and I first met, long after my street-performing days were over, we were both in relationships with other people, and we didn’t find each other all that attractive. I thought he looked like a baggy-eyed, grumpy old man, and he thought I looked like a chubby little boy. (A photograph taken on the day we first met provides credible evidence.) I now think he’s smashingly handsome, and he calls me “the most beautiful woman in the world.” Ain’t love grand?

We were introduced over email by my friend Jason Webley, whom I’d met when we were both busking at an Australian festival—me as The Bride, him scream-singing over his pirate-y accordion songs. I was crashing in Jason’s houseboat in Seattle the week Neil posted one of Jason’s homemade stop-motion videos to his own blog, causing the view-counts to soar into the tens of thousands.

Do you know Neil Gaiman? Jason asked. We were working on a songwriting collaboration: a weird side-project record based completely on puns called Evelyn Evelyn , in which we wrote, played, and sang as conjoined twin sisters with the same first name.

Neil Gaiman. Doesn’t he write comics? Isn’t he the Sandman dude? I’d never read anything he’d written, but I’d definitely heard his name.

Yes, him! He posted my “Eleven Saints” video on his blog yesterday and it got like fifty thousand hits. I just wrote him a thank-you note and he wrote back ten minutes later. He seems really nice .

A few days later, Jason and I were working on a radio-play-style script for our album, a ten-minute spoken account of the fictional twins’ horrific upbringing (their mother died in childbirth, then came a stint in the circus and a string of unseemly guardians, etc.). We were having a blast writing it, coming up with absurd details, but we wanted to run the text by someone to make sure the storyline was clear. Jason suggested we ask Neil.

But isn’t he kinda famous? I asked. Why not? Go for it. Ask .

It couldn’t hurt. He asked. Neil said yes, took a look at the radio play, and suggested a few changes. I wrote him a thank-you note. He was in Ireland at that time, he said in his response, alone in a borrowed house trying to finish a book about a little boy who grows up in a graveyard, and he had been sick with the flu for a full week. A few days later, I emailed and asked him how he was getting on. And a few days after that, I emailed and asked him who he actually was. He started telling me about his life, his book, his flu, his divorce. I told him about my life, my career, my record label troubles.

I was slaving over a book for the fans at the time, a compilation of macabre photographs to go along with my new album Who Killed Amanda Palmer . I’d gotten excited about the concept, and already had five or six great dead/naked-Amanda photos (I was, of course, mining my past and including the pictures from my dead/naked-Amanda performance-art college thesis), but had been told by my label that they didn’t have any budget to add artwork to the CD packaging. Instead of fighting them, I decided to simply publish the photos separately, in a book, and sell it directly from my website as a companion to the record. I figured it would be fun—and useful—to get a famous writer to create clever captions for the photos. I asked Neil. He said yes. A few months later, he came to Boston to work on the book. He didn’t want to write captions, he said; the photos looked more like whole stories to him, which would take more time to write. And he wanted to meet the corpse in person.

On our first day together, we took a walk to the Public Garden to get to know each other a bit before we hunkered down to work on the book. I asked him how his life was unfolding, how it felt to be him, and I was surprised at how readily forthright he was; he seemed so shy and guarded at first glance. He was going through a rough time. Our week was friendly and platonic.

We finished the book and stayed in touch every so often, getting on with our real lives and respective relationships. I released my album and embarked on a long tour. A few months later, Neil and I both happened to be in New York on his birthday and agreed to meet up for coffee. I was flummoxed about what to give him for a birthday present. What does one get Neil Gaiman, Celebrated Writer Of Fantasy And Science Fiction Novels? A special pen? A fancy journal? A fossil of a Tyrannosaurus rex tooth? A map of a black hole?

The Bride .

It was perfect . When I’d told him about my years as The Bride, he’d been delighted, and emailed me a story he’d written years before about a male living statue who stalks a woman, writing her creepy letters that he mysteriously leaves in her apartment.

He was having lunch with his literary agent that day, and would be free at four o’clock, so I asked him to come to Washington Square Park when he was done. I told him I’d be reading on a bench. It was November, and cold, so I waited a bit before setting down a locally filched milk crate in front of an empty fountain, ducking behind a tree, and putting on my Bride getup for the first time in a few years, inhaling its familiar cakey smell of sweat and makeup, and feeling floaty. I stepped up on the box at ten minutes to four, figuring I wouldn’t have long to wait.

After twenty minutes, I started to shiver and kept wondering if I should give up, but I didn’t want to get down and ruin the surprise, and I’d already suffered too long to let it go. There was construction in the park. Maybe he couldn’t find me. A few people stopped to get a flower. After thirty minutes, my fingers went numb, then my hands went numb, then my legs and arms froze. After about an hour, he appeared, accompanied by a woman, and approached me cautiously.

…Amanda? Is that you?

The Bride stayed silent. I stared at him and cocked my head. This was weird. He had come with someone, and I felt like I was embarrassing him. I’d noticed he was easily embarrassed.

He put a dollar in my hat and I gave him a flower. I tried to make eye contact with him, and he smiled goofily while the woman stepped back and laughed at our little exchange. I hopped down. I still felt like I was embarrassing him.

Well, er, Amanda, this is Merrilee, my literary agent! Merrilee, this is Amanda, you know, the… rock star lady. With the dead naked book… and all that . Merrilee smiled at me.

I pushed the veil out of my face, reached out my numb, gloved fingers, and shook her hand.

Hi .

The uncomfortableness lasted a few more minutes before Neil and I walked off to a nearby café, where I told Neil I would buy him a birthday hot chocolate. I took off my wig and Neil helped me carry the three milk crates.

My god, you’re freezing , he said. Your teeth are chattering . He took off his overcoat and draped it over my shoulders.

I didn’t have any cash in my wallet, and the café was cash only. But I had made eight dollars doing The Bride, and I insisted on buying our hot chocolate with those crumpled-up bills, which I fished out of the can I’d used to collect them. The bill for two hot chocolates came to eleven dollars. Fucking New York. Apologizing, I hit Neil up for the rest of the money.

It’s okay , he said. What you did out there was wonderful .

Ah, thanks. Yeah. Sorry it got all fucked up. I should have planned the surprise better .

No , he said. It was perfect. I think it’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me, actually .

What? Really? I said.