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

You aren’t stupid . He sighed. And I don’t think you’re crazy. I think maybe you just trust and love people extremely easily, and that gets you into trouble sometimes .

It does. On the other hand , I said, it got me married to your ass .

That’s a very good point , he said.

I was recently in the Bay Area at a small back-garden hot tub where I’ve been going for years with a local friend. The property is private, but the backyard is a kind of gift from the owner to the community. He prunes the beautiful little Japanese garden, keeps the tub clean, and maintains a little shower and places for people to leave their clothes. Only women are allowed to attend alone; if a man goes, he must be accompanied by a woman. There’s a passcode-locked door, and if it starts to feel like the rules are being broken, the owner just changes the passcode and starts the trust cycle over again. Talking is not allowed. People do yoga on wood platforms under towering trees.

I was naked in the dimly lit changing shed, freshly showered and about to get in the tub, when a naked girl on her way to put her clothes back on caught my eye and recognized me. She took in a quick breath and remembered we weren’t supposed to speak, so she flailed her arms at me in a way that indicated, I KNOW YOU! I LOVE YOUR MUSIC . I flailed back and then opened my arms to her, asking for a hug.

She stepped towards me, and we embraced; two silent, naked strangers who didn’t feel like strangers at all.

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

Once I canceled my tour, and explained why, Anthony started getting fan mail . Girls in Denmark knitted him socks and mailed him chocolate. People in Russia sent him books. A collection of fans in Boston folded him a thousand origami cranes and framed them in a giant glass box. All over the world, people were sending him their love and well wishes. He was amazed. He started a Facebook page.

What did you do to them? he asked.

I loved them. And they love me. And I love you. So they love you .

He’d been writing up some memoirs about his childhood and daily emotional struggles, and I needled him to self-publish them. A few of his friends who were also writers stepped in to help, and he put out a book called Lunatic Heroes and set up shop online. It actually sold really well.

The best marketing plan in the world , he said dryly. A terminally ill author .

I kept darting out of Boston for occasional out-of-town appearances and batches of house parties—trying never to be away for longer than a week at a time. People started asking about Anthony everywhere I went, bringing me little gifts to pass on to him. I’d carry them home.

Staying in the Harvard Square rental house with Neil, while the world seemed to keep turning without me, was hard. I didn’t have the things that usually made me happy and strong. The crowds. The constant love from uncomplicated strangers. The signings. I missed it. It made me feel selfish.

My band waited patiently and found other work.

Everybody waited to see which way the fifty-fifty was going to fall.

We were safe in bed, and I thought up a game.

I’m going to ask , I said, and you answer .

Okay , said Neil.

What are you afraid of? Like really, truly afraid of?

Getting old .

Okay. What else are you afraid of? Be specific .

Getting old and losing my memory , he said, and added, and not being able to write anymore .

Okay. What else are you afraid of?

You leaving me alone , he said.

I hugged him.

Okay. What else are you afraid of?

Not being able to have sex anymore .

I shuddered. Okay. What else are you afraid of?

Being ugly. Not being attractive enough to hold your attention .

This game went on for a while.

Then we traded.

What else are you afraid of? he asked.

Turning into an actual drunk someday , I said.

Okay. What else are you afraid of?

Losing control at some point and going off the deep end and hurting someone beyond repair .

Okay. What else are you afraid of?

Everybody hating me , I said.

What else are you afraid of? he said. Be honest .

People thinking I just married you for your fame or money .

Okay. What else are you afraid of?

My friends thinking that everything the critics say is true but nobody having the balls to tell me. People actually thinking I’m a cheap bitch who doesn’t think about anybody but herself .

Oof, dear. Okay. Anything else?

I swallowed. People thinking I don’t work hard enough. People thinking I’m a shitty musician who just tweets all the time. People thinking I’m an ugly, flaming narcissist. People thinking I’m a fake .

He drew me close into his chest.

Oh, darling. You’re really very worried about what people think, aren’t you?

I buried my face in his armpit.

Ya think?

The next time I saw Yana was a long while after the Melbourne house party, when I returned to Australia to work on this book. I’d taken a ten-day residency at the Sydney Festival, playing a show each night in their wooden, stained-glass, merry-go-round-esque Spiegeltent, and was trying to make progress on the book during the daytime. The publisher’s deadline had become suddenly breakneck, but the shows had been booked months in advance, so I juggled a monastic schedule: wake, yoga, coffee, write, play show, sign, sleep, repeat. Yana, along with a small group of hardcore Australian fans from different cities, had tickets for the entire run of ten shows, and they’d bonded over the Internet and became a clan of friends. Yana dropped me an email just as I arrived, asking if I’d have time for a cup of coffee. I told her that I was antisocially buried in the book, but not to take it personally. I said I’d see her soon, at the shows, and looked forward to giving her a hug.

On my way to soundcheck one day, I saw Yana and a group of five or six fans by the fountain near the tent, and I went over to say hello. Yana seemed out of sorts; she wasn’t acting like her warm, friendly self. I couldn’t tell if she was angry at me, or just in a globally dark mood, and though I didn’t address it at that moment, I felt bad. Maybe I’d screwed up my priorities. Maybe I was a jerk for saying no to the coffee.