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

Right around the same time, I was with Jason Webley in New York doing a weeklong run of shows in a small theater in the West Village. We were performing in character as the conjoined-twin Evelyn Evelyn sisters, wearing a custom dress lovingly hand-sewn for two people of considerably different heights by our seamstress friend Kambriel. I was the right Evelyn, Jason was the left Evelyn, and we each used a single hand to play one side of each instrument—guitar, piano, and accordion. We wore matching wigs, Jason shaved his beard and wore lipstick, and the result was absurdly unconvincing. Our friend Sxip played the role of our sleazy Svengalian stage manager, and our actual tour manager, Eric, pulled double duty playing the role of the silent, oppressed, and worrisome stagehand. The twins were reluctant performers. The shows were shambolic and perfect.

As usual, I was crashing with Josh and Alina across the river in Brooklyn. One day I realized that our show and signing wouldn’t be over until eleven thirty, and I had a meeting next door to the theater at ten the next morning. It seemed pointless to spend an hour getting to Brooklyn just to sleep, get up, and turn around again, but it also seemed ridiculous to splurge on a hotel. Without giving it much thought, I twittered:

Who’s got a couch/decent bed anywhere in/near West Village? Need crashspace. Will be low-maintenance, in and out. Will trade tickets for the @EvelynEvelyn show

Which is how I arrived, six hours later, at the doorstep of Felix and Michelle. In the moment my finger touched the buzzer, I started to worry that perhaps I was taking this whole Twitter-crowdsourcing thing too far. I’d only ever couchsurfed with Brian, or with the Australians, or with Jason by my side. What if these people were axe murderers?

Axe murderers don’t follow me on Twitter , I reassured myself.

But think about what the neighbors say about certain killers , I argued back, as they’re being interviewed by the local news. “They seemed so normal.”

They said in the email that their names were FELIX AND MICHELLE. How could a nice-sounding couple like FELIX AND MICHELLE be axe murderers?

Bonnie and Clyde , I argued. Bonnie and Clyde. Plus—

The door opened and there was Michelle.

Hi, Amanda! She threw the door open and ushered me into the kitchen of the apartment. Jesus, you must be exhausted. How many shows have you done in a row? Five? Sorry we couldn’t take you up on the ticket offer, we had some stupid museum benefit to go to. Let me show you the guest room… I’ve just changed the sheets for you and… wait, before anything… WINE. Red or white? Or Scotch? Felix just brought back a special bottle from Scotland…

And she bustled me into the guest room, where fresh towels were folded on the bed.

I stood there in awe, wondering how I ever could have doubted the universe.

In 2011, I was on tour in New Zealand, an hour from boarding a small plane bound for Christchurch, when the giant earthquake hit. My flight was canceled. All the flights were canceled. My show, which was scheduled that night in central Christchurch, was also canceled. The venue no longer existed.

I spent that entire day—and most of the next few days—on Twitter, talking nonstop with my Christchurch fans. All of them were okay, but a lot of them were freaked out, and everybody knew someone who knew someone who’d been killed, since it’s a small community. Some people had traveled there for the show and were trapped with no place to stay. And everybody shared their stories, and I shared the stories back out to the worldwide crowd. We tightened.

One of the New Zealanders, Diana, had suffered an unbelievable loss. Her entire family—mom, dad, and two brothers—had been killed in the earthquake. I reached out to her online and asked for her address and phone number. She was staying with cousins in Australia, and in too much turmoil to talk, but I told her to stay in touch, to call if she needed me, to use me, to use the whole community.

A few days later, I played a show in Melbourne, and over a thousand fans decorated, kissed, and markered love-wishes for Diana on a bedsheet-sized blank poster I arranged to have hung in the lobby. I mailed it off to her. A few days later, she did call and we spoke for about an hour while I paced around a friend’s backyard in Melbourne.

What could I say? She’d lost everything. Her family. Her home. Her whole life. Her Australian cousins were being kind, but she was having difficulties sorting out her head, and I asked her gentle questions, comforted her, tried to distract her and make her laugh. I assured her that she was loved, that she had a whole human family around her that would not let her fall or feel alone. She sounded strange, despondent, distant, confused, which wasn’t surprising.

A day later a friendly newspaper journalist called me from Auckland. He was a fan as well, and had done some research because he wanted to do a story about this phenomenon: the girl, the fans, me, the net. He had just talked to the Christchurch Red Cross, asking for the details of the teenage girl who had lost both her parents and siblings.

No such girl existed.

All of the people in Melbourne who’d turned the lobby into a group art-therapy project had felt something real. They’d been deceived. I’d been deceived. I didn’t tell them that the tragedy was fictional. (They’ll know now, though, and I wonder if that girl will read this book. I hope she is okay.)

The saddest thing about Earthquake Girl was that either way—truth or fiction—the story was tragic. Anyone who was unhappy and unhinged enough to pull a stunt like that clearly needed love.

Oddly enough, her lie had pulled us all together. She was like a broken thread in the net, hanging down.

A lot like art , I thought, like any work of fiction .

The story was fake, but the impact was real.