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

I lay awake that night in Jacky’s comfy little bed with the purple quilt, staring at her moonlit dressing table covered in tiny perfume jars and books and the necklaces she’d hung on the mirror.

How is this fair? I thought. These people have so little. I’m being treated like royalty by a family living in poverty .

It wasn’t guilt that I felt; that would have been an insult to their generosity. It was an overwhelming gratitude, more than I knew what to do with. I thought about how I used to feel as The Bride, when people would throw in a ten- or twenty-dollar bill. Or when a homeless person would give me a dollar, and all I had to give them in return was my gesture of thanks, my gratitude, my stupid token flower. And sometimes it would feel so small.

We woke up the next morning, and tortilla lessons were under way. They tried their best to teach us, Jacky’s mother gesticulating helpfully in Spanish. My tortillas were terrible and fell apart immediately. Jacky’s and her mother’s were perfect. My tortillas, even after many tries, did not improve. Everybody laughed. Breakfast was delicious.

We hung around the kitchen for a little while, and Jacky told me the complicated story of her dad—who was stuck in Honduras—and how everybody was living on a knife-edge of worry that he wouldn’t be able to get back to Florida because of immigration issues. Jacky’s mother called out from the living room.

Ooh! My mother wants to give you a present , said Jacky. She’s all excited .

Jacky’s mother took me aside and pressed a teeny little Bible, the size of a pack of cards, into my hand. Then she said,

For you. Thank you, for stay here. Your music, helps Jacky. You make her so happy, you help her. Thank you, thank you .

I felt my insides cringe.

How is this fair?

This is fair , I realized.

This isfair .

The music is the flower .

Things you get when you couchsurf that you don’t get in a hotel:

The rattling sound of pots and silverware in the morning. Bathrooms with ratty, beloved mismatched towels. Leftover birthday cake. Dark hallways humid with the smells of baking. Looking at the weird shit people keep in their medicine cabinets. Cats to pat, who are at first standoffish then decide they love you at four a.m., when you’re finally asleep. Walls of Elvis plates. The recaptured feeling of having a sleepover party. Dodgy electric blankets. A chance to try on hats. Morning coffee in a wineglass for lack of enough cups. Children of all ages and temperaments who draw pictures for you. The ability to make your own toast. Record players. Wet grass in the backyard sunrise, where the chickens are roosting. Out-of-tune pianos and other strange instruments to fondle. Candles stuck to mantelpieces. The beautiful vision of strangers in their pajamas. Weird teas from around the world. Pinball machines. Pet spiders. Latches that don’t quite work. Glow-in-the-dark things on the ceiling.

Late-night and early-morning stories about love, death, hardship, and heartbreak.

The collision of life. Art for the blender.

The dots connecting.

I assumed that because Neil had poured out so many details of his life the second time we met, he must be, like me, a chronic self-sharer. In fact, he was the opposite. Shy and guarded about his real feelings most of the time, he had a lot of friends, but hadn’t told many people about his past and his own personal stories. That surprised me.

You tricked me , I said. Why did you tell me so much about yourself when I first met you?

Because you asked me , he said.

Asked you… what?

How I was doing. About my life. Nobody else had ever asked me before , he said.

That’s totally ridiculous , I said. You’ve been surrounded by people all your life who love and worship you. You have friends. You’ve had a million girlfriends. I’m sure you’ve been asked relentlessly. Like, to the point of being annoyed .

No , said Neil.

Nobody ever poured you a Scotch and said, “So, hey, Neil, how the hell are you really doing?” No girlfriends ever asked what was truly going on? That’s utterly impossible. I’m sure they were asking but you weren’t hearing them .

Maybe , said Neil.

Maybe you just weren’t ready to be asked , I said.

Or maybe , he said, I found the person I could answer .

Back in music-release-land, I decided to stay totally independent. I’d had it with labels. I decided to see what would happen if I released everything direct to the fanbase, posting digital downloads using pay-what-you-want and sending CDs and vinyl straight to their mailboxes. I recorded two experimental little records: Amanda Palmer Goes Down Under , a mishmash of live recordings from Australia and New Zealand (including a song about how much I detest Vegemite), and Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radiohead on Her Magical Ukulele (featuring “Creep” by Radiohead, of course, and four more songs I’d proudly added to my burgeoning Radiohead-ukulele repertoire). I hired a publicist so that the newspapers wouldn’t forget I existed, but other than that, I flew under the radar and went straight to the fanbase, using the golden email list, my blog, and my Twitter feed to spread the news of every release. As I’d do later on Kickstarter, I released both of these records along with Bundles of Extra Things: $15 for the CD, $25 for the CD plus a personalized Polaroid sent from the Australian tour, $35 for the vinyl + T-shirt + button, $100 for the CD + the pillowcase + screen-printed tie + poster + pilsner beer glass + neoprene beer cozy + T-shirt + orchestra patch + three stickers + two buttons. (That’s not made up. That was an actual package.)

It was also my first experiment selling house parties. When I released Amanda Palmer Goes Down Under , $3,000 bought you All The Things plus a show in your own home; I sold half a dozen of these, and had a blast delivering them throughout my next Australian tour. I took these preorders well in advance of manufacturing the goods so that we didn’t over- or under-order and wind up with an excess of neoprene beer cozies (the realities of price breaks meant, unfortunately, that I am STILL the proud owner of about 500 neoprene Amanda Palmer beer cozies—these are the joys of small-business entrepreneurship).

I coped with the gargantuan task of manufacturing and shipping all of these releases with the help of my office staff of three or four people, some part-time, some full-time, all working in different parts of the world, on the Internet, from their own kitchens.

Neil and I also did a quick tour together, recording a bunch of live songs and stories we released as An Evening with Neil Gaiman & Amanda Palmer . I was very proud: Neil sang onstage for the first time since getting a full beer can thrown at his face (requiring stitches) during his very brief tenure as a punk singer in the 1970s.

Instead of selling that record straight from one of our websites, we decided to try using Kickstarter, which indie artists were just starting to use as a way to finance and ship records. I chatted constantly online, and listened to input and feedback from the fans. If they wanted high-end lithograph posters, I made high-end lithograph posters. If they wanted 180-gram vinyl, I made 180-gram vinyl. If they wanted Things—pillowcases with hand-drawn art on them, T-shirts that came in gray in size XXXL—I made the Things. The only department where I wasn’t open to input was the writing, the music itself. That’s my job, not theirs, but I tried to involve them in every other facet of the new world of independent artist-hood. They were now officially along for the ride.