Palmer - The art of asking: how I learned to stop worrying and let people help

Amanda has a direct line with her audience a lifeline for them and for her, the codependency all truly great performers surrender to shes capable of anything, incapable of telling anything but the truth Bono

Amanda Palmer joyfully shows a generation how to change their lives Caitlin Moran, author of How to Be a Woman and How to Build a Girl

To read Amanda Palmers remarkable memoir about asking and giving is to tumble headlong into her world. Immediately, you notice that her world is really different from yours and mine. Amandas world is more open, more vulnerable, more fearless, more messy, more surprising, more dangerous, more rich with human encounters and exchanges at every imaginable level. At first, you find yourself thinking, Goodness, what a crazy world that Amanda Palmer inhabits! How does she possibly endure it? Then, gradually, as you read along, a doorway opens up in your heart, and you realize, I want to live in a world exactly like hers. God willing, this book will show us all how to do it Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

Amanda Palmers generous work of genius will change the way you think about connection, love and grace Seth Godin

A story about a life in one dollar bills, from statue to icon, where media doesnt matter, crowds do. Mandatory reading in the digital age, for aspiring artists and their doubtful parents Nicholas Negroponte, Founder, MIT Media Lab

From this beautiful, heart wrenching story of art comes an incredible account of the nature and future of commerce or one part, certainly the most important part, of that bit thats new. Heres a truth that someday the economists might begin to grok, but which meanwhile will define everything thats interesting about how art and culture will thrive Lawrence Lessig, author of Free Culture

This is the kind of book that makes you want to call the author up at midnight to whisper, My God. I thought I was the only one Jenny Lawson, aka the Bloggess and author of Lets Pretend This Never Happened

Published by Piatkus

ISBN: 978-0-349-40810-1

Copyright 2014 by Amanda Palmer

Ukulele photo by Natasha Moustache. Bride photo by Michael Volpe.
Amanda Palmer photo by Pixie Vision. Brian Viglione photo by Pixie Vision.
Crowdsurfing photo by David Aquilina. Kissing Tattoo photo by Hayley Rosenblum.
Piano Ninja Gig photo by Lyndon Hood (scoop.co.nz). Naked Marker photo by
Strangelfreak aka Luis Pedro de Castro. Naked Yana painting by Amanda Palmer.
We Are the Media photo by Shervin Lainez. Blake photo by Shira Shaham. Bride with
Children photo by Michael Volpe. Hermosa Ninja Gig photo by Lindsey Byrnes.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

Piatkus

Little, Brown Book Group

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

www.littlebrown.co.uk

www.hachette.co.uk

Contents

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO MY MUTTI,
who, through her love, first taught me how to ask

by Bren Brown

A decade or so ago in Boston, Amanda performed on the street as a human statuea white-faced, eight-foot-tall bride statue to be exact. From a distance, you could have watched a passerby stop to put money in the hat in front of her crate and then smile as Amanda looked that person lovingly in the eye and handed over a flower from her bouquet. I wouldve been harder to spot. I would have been the person finding the widest path possible to avoid the human statue. Its not that I dont throw my share of dollars into the busking hatsI do. Its just that I like to stay at a safe distance, then, as inconspicuously as possible, put my money in and make a beeline for anonymity. I would have gone to great lengths to avoid making eye contact with a statue. I didnt want a flower; I wanted to be unnoticed.

From a distance, Amanda Palmer and I have nothing in common. While shes crowdsurfing in Berlin wearing nothing but her red ukulele and combat boots, or plotting to overthrow the music industry, Im likely driving a carpool, collecting data, or, if its Sunday, maybe even sitting in church.

But this book is not about seeing people from safe distancesthat seductive place where most of us live, hide, and run to for what we think is emotional safety. The Art of Asking is a book about cultivating trust and getting as close as possible to love, vulnerability, and connection. Uncomfortably close. Dangerously close. Beautifully close. And uncomfortably close is exactly where we need to be if we want to transform this culture of scarcity and fundamental distrust.

Distance is a liar. It distorts the way we see ourselves and the way we understand each other. Very few writers can awaken us to that reality like Amanda. Her life and her career have been a study in intimacy and connection. Her lab is her love affair with her art, her community, and the people with whom she shares her life.

I spent most of my life trying to create a safe distance between me and anything that felt uncertain and anyone who could possibly hurt me. But like Amanda, I have learned that the best way to find light in the darkness is not by pushing people away but by falling straight into them.

As it turns out, Amanda and I arent different at all. Not when you look close upwhich is ultimately the only looking that matters when it comes to connection.

Family, research, churchthese are the places I show up to with wild abandon and feel connected in my life. These are the places I turn to in order to crowdsource what I need: love, connection, and faith. And now, because of Amanda, when Im weary or scared or need something from my communities, I ask. Im not great at it, but I do it. And you know what I love more than anything about Amanda? Her honesty. Shes not always great at asking either. She struggles like the rest of us. And its in her stories of struggling to show up and be vulnerable that I most clearly see myself, my fight, and our shared humanity.

This book is a gift being offered to us by an uninhibited artist, a courageous innovator, a hardscrabble shitstartera woman who has the finely tuned and hard-fought ability to see into the parts of our humanity that need to be seen the most. Take the flower.

WHOS GOT A TAMPON? I JUST GOT MY PERIOD, I will announce loudly to nobody in particular in a womens bathroom in a San Francisco restaurant, or to a co-ed dressing room of a music festival in Prague, or to the unsuspecting gatherers in a kitchen at a party in Sydney, Munich, or Cincinnati.

Invariably, across the world, I have seen and heard the rustling of female hands through backpacks and purses, until the triumphant moment when a stranger fishes one out with a kind smile. No money is ever exchanged. The unspoken universal understanding is:

Today, it is my turn to take the tampon.

Tomorrow, it shall be yours.

There is a constant, karmic tampon circle. It also exists, Ive found, with Kleenex, cigarettes, and ballpoint pens.

Ive often wondered: are there women who are just TOO embarrassed to ask? Women who would rather just roll up a huge wad of toilet paper into their underwear rather than dare to ask a room full of strangers for a favor? There must be. But not me. Hell no. I am totally not afraid to ask. For anything.