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

Thank you… I see you .

In those moments I felt like a genie of compassion, able to pay attention to the hard-to-reach, hidden cracks of someone else’s life—as if I were a specially shaped human-emotion tool that could reach way under the bed of somebody’s dark heart and scrape out the caked-on blackness.

Just by seeing someone—really seeing them, and being seen in return—you enrealen each other.

What is possible on the sidewalk is unique. No song needed, no words, no lighting, no story, no ticket, no critic, no context.

It cannot get any simpler than a painted person on a box, a living human question mark, asking:

Love?

And a passing stranger, rattled out of the rhythm of a mundane existence, answering:

Yes .

Love .

It would rain, sometimes.

If I woke and saw the rain on a vaguely scheduled Statue Day, that meant a day off. I felt deeply in tune with nature—like my distant hunting-and-gathering forebears from ancient Scotland (or wherever my ancient forebears hunted and gathered). New England weather is known for its fickleness, and many days the rain would vanish as quickly as it came.

Sometimes I’d be up on the box when the rainclouds rolled in. I was usually happy to stay up there in the drizzle, but people were far less likely to stop. Trying to decide when to get down was always an interesting game I played with myself, and sometimes I’d just stay up there and get soaking wet, as some kind of random statement to the Performance Art Gods. I would fix my eyes downwards and watch the bricks on the sidewalk as they discolored with the rainwater, first a smattering of little specks, then lots of dark splotches, and eventually, they’d turn all-dark-red wet. The bridal costume, which I washed only occasionally in the Toscanini’s bathroom sink, would emit an odor that you could smell for miles around.

Sometimes waiting it out was worth it. The rain would come, then go, the sidewalk would dry and the sun would come out and dry me off, leaving only the faintest trace of Eau de Wet Bride.

Inviting my friends to watch The Bride was difficult, because there was never any set start or finish time. Just a noncommittal:

I’ll be Bride-ing in the Square today, probably around fourish .

Anthony came by one day and set up a chair at the café across the sidewalk, a good thirty feet away. I was so excited he’d come; he could finally see what I was doing. I connected with people especially deeply that day, because I knew he was watching. I wanted him to see the seeing.

He watched for a long time. After I was finished, we went out for a falafel at Café Algiers, and he reported the conversations he’d overheard.

This one guy, this regular chess-player type who says he’s there every day, says, “She is the Madonna of Harvard Square.”

I laughed.

Then the guy next to him says, “Yeah, and she’s Asian, I think she’s actually Korean.” And another guy leans over and whispers to me, “No word of a lie, she has combat boots on under that dress.”

I laughed again.

And another guy tells me, “I’m in love with her.”

Aww. You know , I said, I think even I’min love with her. She’s… you know. She’s perfect .

I looked directly at him.

So you liked it? You really got it?

It was magnificent, clown. And I got behind you a couple times, so I could watch those faces, up close, of the people looking at you. I saw the love, the longing, all of it. I mean… it’s the most powerful and basic of all things. You were right. It’s the human encounter, all happening right there, beauty. And when that little kid came up, the scared one? Oof. I almost cried .

You almost cried? For real?

I almost cried , he said.

I WIN! I said.

You win. How do you feel?

LIKE A MILLION DOLLARS .

What you’re doing up there is art, my girl. You’re really doing it. I’m proud of you .

He paid the check. He always paid the check.

So I’d done it, sort of.

I felt like A Productive Member Of Society in my own weird way, a Real Artist.

But honestly? I didn’t want to be a statue. I wanted to be a musician. I wanted to be vulnerable. Not as a character, but as myself.

Facing the street as a statue had its challenges, but truthfully, it all felt like cheating, because I wasn’t actually showing myself. I was hiding behind a blank, white wall.

I loved the connecting. I loved the seeing. But it wasn’t enough. People loved The Bride because she was perfect and silent.

Anyone.

I wanted to be loved for my songwriting, the musical dot-connection I’d been privately plugging away at for years, which showed me for what I actually was.

Imperfect.

And very, very loud.