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

I lost my appetite quickly for reasons I couldn’t figure out. I love food. I even turned down dessert.

We bundled up and walked out into the freezing winter night, and I’m not sure who puked first, but it doesn’t really matter: one of us vomited, Exorcist -style, into the street, and a minute and a half later, the other one did. Was it the oysters? The salmon mousse? We’ll never know. It was a fifteen-block walk home. One of us would puke in the gutter, or in a trash can, and the other one would feel sorry for the puker. Then, half a block later, the roles would reverse. Neil stayed up until five a.m., throwing up every twenty minutes. I fell asleep and resumed puking the next morning. By noon, Neil had mostly recovered, but I was trembling, couldn’t keep down any water, and was starting to get worried. I lay on the bathroom floor next to the toilet, while Neil read a newspaper. I dragged myself back to bed and waited to be patted and soothed. But Neil was acting sort of distant. Silent. It was that thing he did. That was worrying me, too.

After I hadn’t been able to keep water down for twelve hours, we went to the hospital. Neil sat with me, holding my hand without saying a word. The doctors rehydrated me and I started to feel human again, like a dried-out sponge plopped back into the sea. But my blanked-out husband was scaring me.

We hobbled back to the hotel on foot for the fresh air, just as the sun was starting to set.

Neil drew the curtains and seemed to have returned to normal. I was lying in bed, feeling flattened.

Honey , I said. I need to ask you something .

Yes, darling?

Earlier today, when I was puking, you were acting really… strange. You did it in Edinburgh, too, when I was sick, after the abortion. And you just did it again. It’s kind of freaking me out . I looked at him. It’s like you couldn’t see me .

What do you mean?

I don’t know. There’s just this thingI expect my lover or my friend to do when I’m really sick… you know?

I felt stupid and childish all of a sudden.

What thing?

I don’t know. Cuddles? Talking? Love? Patting my head? Telling me everything will be fine? You stopped talking to me. Why? I said. I’m not angry. I swear. I’m just… asking .

He looked confused. Then deep in thought.

Well… he said slowly. Maybe it has something to do with what I was taught growing up, about sick people .

Tell .

The way I was taught to deal with a sick person was to just… be very quiet around them. I was taught that you’re not supposed to say anything, or show any sympathy or anything. You’re just supposed to be very quiet . He blinked his eyes at me. Is that wrong?

My throat clenched and I took a deep breath.

You mean , I said, that all this time you’ve just been trying to leave me alone… because you think it’s RIGHT? Not touch me because you think it’s… good for me? Are you serious?

He looked at me.

Well… yes . He blinked. That’s how I was raised .

You didn’t get cuddled and talked to and smothered with love when you were hurt or sick?

No, darling… that wasn’t really the way it worked .

Oh, baby . I sat up in bed. Do you know how weird that is?

No. Is it weird?

Well, no. Well, YES, it’s weird for me. Jesus .

I sat there, trying to make sense of this, while Neil stood at the foot of the bed, looking apologetic.

Wait wait WAIT , I said. Is thiswhy I lost my shit in Edinburgh last summer? When I thought maybe I’d made the biggest mistake of my life marrying your ass because you didn’t know how to take care of a sick person?

He looked lost. Then found.

Maybe. Well… probably. I dunno .

Oh god, Neil . I got up and put my arms around him. We stood there at the foot of the bed, silent for a second.

I guess it’s a stupid question , I said. But… did you ever ask?

Ask for what?

For the THINGS. Did it ever occur to you to ask for… like, a cuddle when you were hurt, when you were a kid?

He stared at me.

Amanda, darling. You can’t really ask for what you can’t imagine. You can’t ask for what you don’t know. That was my world. It was what I knew .

I shook my head, tightened my arms around him, and stood there holding him and not wanting to say anything stupid.

I love you , he said.

I love you, too .

We were silent for a while.

I thought about Abortion Month. When I’d needed him so badly, and been so infuriated that he wasn’t acting the way I’d expected. I tried to remember if I’d even asked him. I must have asked. But maybe I just assumed that my state of being was a ball of asking in itself. I couldn’t remember just outright asking him for the things I needed, the simple things. To be held. To be cradled and patted… it seemed ridiculous to ask for that.

Maybe it wasn’t ridiculous. Maybe it had just been a communication breakdown. Maybe it had been both of our mistakes. He’d been in pain, too. Had he asked me for anything? I couldn’t remember.

I think , I said, I’m going to ask you, from now on. When I need the things .

He cocked his head and said, tentatively, Can you show me?

Show you… what?

He sat on the bed. Can you show me what you mean? For when you ask? For the things?

I sat down. I closed my eyes, took his hand, and put it softly on my face. I guided his fingers down my cheek, up my cheek, and pressed his palm into my neck, opened his whole hand, lay it on my chest, and held it there. He paid close attention, like a focused child, as if I were teaching him how to spell a word or tie a shoe.

Like that , I whispered, my eyes filling with tears,

…like that .

We have a fucked-up relationship with artists.

While artists are, on one hand, applauded for their awe-inspiring, life-changing works of art, they’re simultaneously eyed with suspicion, disdain, and other sentiments of the GET A JOB variety. Look at the media: we deify artists one second, demonize them the next. Artists internalize this and perpetuate the cycle; artists do this to each other, and they do it to themselves.

It’s no wonder artists have such a difficult time maintaining the romantic standard they try to achieve not just to please others but to hit their own internal bar that was set early on, when they were just starting to grasp their artistic identity. It’s no wonder that so many artists crack under the pressure, go crazy, do drugs, kill themselves, or change their names and move into hiding on remote islands.

Artists can get mentally trapped in The Garret, that romantic vortex where painters, writers, and musicians find themselves stuck in a two-dimensional nightmare starring their own image. You know The Garret. It’s a candlelit attic room, where the artist sits with a pen, a paintbrush, slaving away. Alone. Drunk. Chain-smoking. Creating. Agonizing. Probably wearing a scarf.

The artistic workspace is real and necessary, but it takes on every shape imaginable, and it wasn’t until I started twittering that I realized I’d created very strict, superstitious rules around my process: I need to be at home. I need total privacy. I create in silence. I need to look like an artist .

Then one day I broke my own rules with “The Bed Song,” which took me about two hours to write, by leaving my computer open and my phone on. I’d always had a rule about that: no twittering while songwriting. Only bad artists do that. This time, though, I announced on Twitter that I was heading into a songwriting session and I updated the feed with in-progress photos and scrawled lyric drafts at the piano. People cheered me on. It wound up being one of the best songs I’d ever written. Who knew?