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

Yep. Just as we’ve always said. She’s a bullshit narcissist with a rich husband. She’s not a real artist at all .

Next to them, I could hear the feminist bloggers:

Are you kidding? She’s no fucking feminist. When it comes down to it, she’s an irresponsible wreck who goes running to hubby; she’s a hypocritical fraud who falls back on the patriarchy .

I could hear an imaginary version of Neil, a year down the line:

I should have known you were a user. Remember when I loaned you thousands of dollars to cover your ass? I never should have trusted you. I’ve had it .

I could hear my family:

You always were selfish, little miss attention-getter. You’ve never thought about anybody but yourself .

I put my hands over my ears.

SHUT UP .

SHUT UP .

SHUT UP .

JUST STOP IT .

And I called Neil.

Hi, darling .

Hi. I love you. Say tomato?

Tomahto .

Okay, I’m ready .

Ready for what? he said.

I’m going to need the loan to cover me for the next few months. I need you to help me .

He sighed as if I’d just said “I love you” for the first time.

Of course I’ll help .

I’m not going to go back on the road. I’m going to crowdfund this fucking record instead. I can probably pay you back in three months .

If it takes longer, it’s fine , he said.

I really hope it doesn’t .

Amanda, I love you. I’m proud of you .

I love you, too .

I paused. Then I added, That was really fucking hard .

Listen, love. We’re married. We’re a team. And I’m glad you’re finally over it , he said.

I’m not over it , I said. I fucking hate this. I hate that I have to ask you for this. I hate it, and I hate myself .

Is there anything I can do? Neil asked.

No .

And I wasn’t over it, not really. I was terrified.

But I’d done it. I’d achieved asking enlightenment. I’d accepted a massive donut. I was on my way to being a fully fledged… something.

But it didn’t feel fine. It felt terrible. I felt like an asshole.

And I wondered why.

Doesn’t hurt enough yet .

I’d set the Kickstarter goal at $100,000, which felt conservative to me. I’d sold $100,000 worth of vinyl albums with five Radiohead songs directly from my website—and now what I was looking to fund was a full-length record of my own songs. It had to work.

The night we launched, Neil and I were staying in my apartment at the Cloud Club. I was nervous; I had no idea how many people were actually going to hop on board the Kickstarter bandwagon. It launched at midnight—my whole staff stayed awake and we twittered, facebooked, and blogged the link to high heaven. We asked everybody who backed it to share the link. I refreshed the page a few minutes after midnight, and it had about $200 in backing. I checked the site again after an hour: $600. Neil and I went to sleep. I woke up at about four a.m., in a mild panic, staring at the ceiling, certain that I’d asked for too much.

Don’t check the computer .

Don’t check the computer .

I checked the computer. Four hours later, the Kickstarter had only made about another $500, pulling it over $1,000. I’d asked for a HUNDRED GRAND, for fuck’s sake. If you don’t make your minimum goal on Kickstarter, you don’t get anything.

I shouldn’t have checked the computer. I went back to bed.

It’s a failure , I thought. What if this Kickstarter only makes forty thousand dollars? How am I going to pay everybody? How am I going to face society? What the fuck am I going to do?

By the end of the next day, it had cleared $100,000. The word had spread. I had hit my goal in under twenty-four hours. I wondered how I ever could have doubted the universe.

As the number continued to skyrocket, I was more inseparable than usual from my phone, checking the Kickstarter status and thanking people via Twitter for backing the project, every day, every hour, every minute.

Thank you .

Thank you .

Thank you .

My Twitter feed, blog posts, and backer updates to the new Kickstarter community were a conveyor belt of gratitude. The more people backed the campaign and shared their pride in supporting it, the more people found out about the project, the more the numbers grew, the more I thanked. It ballooned.

About three weeks after launching, the campaign had almost twenty thousand backers, and at the very moment it hit the million-dollar mark, I was—coincidentally—with Anthony.

We were, at that point, three weeks into the monthlong campaign, and I’d been running between Boston and New York, doing press, holding production meetings with my office, getting ready to manufacture the record and all the other Kickstarter rewards.

I knew the million-dollar mark was going to be symbolic. It’d be the first time a musician had raised a seven-figure amount using crowdfunding.

Anthony and I had set up a grok date the week before. We were going to do our usual thing: meet for coffee and then drive to Walden for a grok and a walk around the pond.

My visits with Anthony had grown more intense since his illness and scare at the hospital, and I started looking forward to them with equal parts joy and worry. I wasn’t just hanging out with my best friend; I was hanging out with a sick person. His latest blood tests and symptom complaints joined our usual topics: the universe, relationships, zits, how we couldn’t stand when people offer to massage our feet then don’t bother to pay attention while doing it.

But the friendship was still a two-way street. Anthony would sometimes tell me, over the phone, that he didn’t want to talk about his latest list of ailments and the new side effects of the new medications prescribed to alleviate the side effects of the other new medication.

He’d say, You talk. I’m done. Distract me, please. Tell me anything .

And I’d prattle on happily about the new song I’d finished, or how I was hiring my PR team to help distribute the new Kickstarter record in Europe, or about the stupid argument I’d had with Neil… and Anthony would slip back to where he was most comfortable: advising.

Some days, it felt like asking for his help was the best gift I could give him.

I’d been celebrating online every time the Kickstarter hit a new hundred-thousand-dollar marker, or had attained another thousand backers, by scrawling the amount of money or the number of backers somewhere on my body with a Sharpie and posting the photo to Twitter.

Earlier that morning I’d checked the Kickstarter page, which stood at about $990,000 and was ticking along at the rate of a few thousand dollars an hour. It was likely that it would hit a million within the day. I walked up to Lee’s apartment, where Michael Pope was editing a film on his laptop in the corner and Lee was cooking an omelet. I announced my news giddily. I wanted to celebrate with more than just a Sharpie design on my hand. Pope, a master body painter, created a piece of calligraphy on my belly proclaiming “ONE FUCKING MILLION,” and Lee did the photo shoot up on the top floor of the Cloud Club. I saved the photo on my phone, ready to upload it to Twitter at the magic moment, and drove off to meet Anthony.

He was already waiting patiently at a table at Peet’s Coffee & Tea, his cane resting against the wall. He’d started needing one due to his vision loss and balance problems.

GUESS WHAT GUESS WHAT? I said breathlessly as I plopped down next to him and knocked his cane onto the café floor.