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

We’d been together for a year, and Neil started asking me to marry him.

The idea of marrying Neil terrified me.

He asked and asked. We’d wake up in the morning and he’d ask. We’d bed down at night and he’d ask. We’d get ready to hang up after a long phone call and he’d ask. It was a running joke, but he also meant it.

I felt my hard insides, my desperation to stay independent, and the irony of it all: the girl who’d stood on the box for five years, falling in love and merging with a million passing strangers, yet remained staunchly resistant to an actual human merger. My inner feminist was also rolling her eyes. Just date, for chrissake. Maybe move in together. What is this, the fifties?

But he wanted to get married. There was a practical level (he was dating a rock musician sixteen years his junior, and introducing me as “wife” instead of “girlfriend” meant that—as annoying as it was—people would take me seriously). And the fact that we were both constantly traveling meant we couldn’t take the halfway step of moving in together.

And apart from the practical reasons, he simply wanted to get married. He said I made him feel safe.

I didn’t care as much about being taken seriously. But I figured we could make a deal.

I asked him a battery of questions.

I want to live and work alone. If we get married, do I have to live with you?

No , he said. Will you marry me?

Do I have to act like a wife? I don’t really want to be a wife .

No, you don’t need to be a wife , he said. Will you marry me?

If we get married, will we be able to sleep with other people?

Yep , he said. Will you marry me?

Can I maintain total control of my life? I need total control of my life .

Yes, darling. I’m not trying to control you. At all. Will you marry me?

I probably don’t want kids .

That’s fine. I already have three. They’re great. Will you marry me?

If I marry you and it doesn’t work, can we just get divorced?

Sure , he said brightly.

I’ve yet to ask the Internet for tampons, but I’ve asked for just about everything else.

Twitter is the ultimate crowdsourcing tool for the traveling musician; it’s like having a Swiss Army knife made up of a million people in your pocket.

Back when I had only a few thousand followers, I could ask anything, or ask for anything, in 140 characters at a time. The responses poured in. I answered. I thanked people loudly and publicly. Waving my gratitude like a flag is part of what keeps the gift in motion.

Sharing the broadcasting power is part of the fun, and also part of what makes it work. When people—anyone, really—twitters at me asking if I can share their need for a crash pad, I share, and I feel like a magical switchboard operator. I watch the fanbase surf on the waves we’ve collectively created. I watch them jump, I watch them fall, I watch them trust, I watch them catch one another. I watch the story unfold. I applaud.

A list of things I’ve asked for on Twitter:

Advice. I was on an Australian tour, in a small coastal town, and found a growing red spot on my thigh that I assumed was an infected bug bite. I snapped and posted a picture and several people, including one EMT from Canada, warned me that it looked more like a staph infection than a bug bite. I got myself to a doctor. They were right. Staph infections, if untreated, can lead to amputated limbs and death.

Song lyrics. I’ll ask things like, What’s a three-syllable word for something naughty that you’re not allowed to take to work? Stress on the first syllable. Please be as creative and surreal as possible. (I needed only two things to fit in the lyrics, but so many answers were so perfect that I changed the nature of that entire song, “The Ukulele Anthem,” to accommodate twenty-three of them.)

Pianos everywhere. I’ve practiced and written songs in people’s houses and apartments, and borrowed at least fifty digital keyboards for ninja gigs and practice. (Also crowdsourced: guitars, basses, violins, wah pedals.)

Car rides to the airport. (I call it “twitch-hiking.”)

A neti pot. I asked where I could buy one in Melbourne, and a nurse who worked at a local hospital grabbed one from the supply closet and drove it over to the café that I was twittering from. I bought her a smoothie and we had a wonderful chat about nursing, colds, and death.

I once crowdsourced a wedding gown for an impromptu music video I shot while on tour in Texas. I’d come up with the idea to walk into the ocean dressed as a bride, so I twittered to see if anyone knew a good thrift shop I could hit. Instead, a woman who’d just gotten divorced volunteered to drive three hours to deliver her own wedding gown. I invited her to the shoot itself, and hitched a ride with her to Galveston instead of with my film friends. Along the way we went hunting to find a veil. The only one we managed to find was in a roadside novelty shop that sold bachelorette items. It was covered with little glued-on plastic penises. I peeled them off. [7] That night, before the doors opened for the show in Houston, I hid all the penises in different locations around the venue—the bathrooms, the bar, the lobby—and twittered photo clues as to their whereabouts. Every few minutes, from my dressing room backstage, I could hear a giant cheer coming from the house as one by one, each penis was discovered. Driving to the beach, my new friend told me about her divorce (long story, short: he was a dick ). She watched the video shoot from the pier above the beach, and I felt her eyes on me as I traipsed her long, flowing gown into the waves, where it got covered with sand and sea scum.

That was pretty fucking liberating , she said when the shoot was over and we were wringing out the dress in the parking lot. Thank you .

No, thank YOU for the dress. It was perfect. I think we should find a plastic bag for it… it’s pretty gross. What are you going to do with it?

I was thinking about that , she said. I think I’m going to dye it blue and cut the train off. Recycle it into something I can dance in .

EXACTLY , I said.

I was still trying to figure out if marrying Neil Gaiman The Writer was a good idea.

I was in love with him, that much was clear to everybody around us, even if it wasn’t always clear to me. I kept coming up with reasons that it just Wasn’t A Good Idea. Our lives were too different. I would slowly drive him crazy. He was too old. The list went on.

Luke was a musician I’d met at the Edinburgh fringe festival two years before. We’d fallen in fast friend love, a fall made only slightly awkward by the fact that the night we met I’d convinced him to make out with me (and, somewhat confusingly, succeeded) not knowing he was inarguably, 100 percent gay. He still claims I am the only woman he’s ever snogged. I’m proud of that.