The Art of Asking: How I learned to stop worrying and let people help
It was about the value coming from the taker of the flower, the hearer of the song, the heart of the beholder. Being painted white and standing on a box, the crowdsurfing, the Kickstarter, ringing a stranger’s doorbell in the middle of the night: I no longer see these things as risk. I see them as acts of trust. I think the real risk is the choice
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I’d learned that it was pointless trying to tell these people what their music had meant to me. It meant everything. Their songs were the landscape of my inner life. I was modeling my own style of songwriting after theirs. It would just sound trite if I tried to explain it out loud. But I could make them eggs.
Amanda Palmer • The Art of Asking: How I learned to stop worrying and let people help
THINKING OF A NINJA GIG AT TED! WHO’S GOT IDEAS?
Amanda Palmer • The Art of Asking: How I learned to stop worrying and let people help
Hi. It’s Amanda Palmer from The Dresden Dolls. I know you don’t really know me, but I need to ask you for advice. It’s a phone call, not an email.
Amanda Palmer • The Art of Asking: How I learned to stop worrying and let people help
cannot happen on a safe stage with a curtain. Magical things can happen there, but not this. The moment of being able to say, unaccompanied by narrative: Thank you … I see you. In those moments I felt like a genie
Amanda Palmer • The Art of Asking: How I learned to stop worrying and let people help
We put a shoebox at the door of the house with a sign suggesting (but not requiring) a ten-dollar admission, and set up a bar in every kitchen, spending the rolling donation money on wine, beer, and vodka. Anybody could bring…
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Amanda Palmer • The Art of Asking: How I learned to stop worrying and let people help
If you want to know what you believe, ask the people you taught.
Amanda Palmer • The Art of Asking: How I learned to stop worrying and let people help
that ninja gigging solved an irritating problem that I’d been battling for years: the dearth of all-ages venues. I’d battled many promoters and agents to ensure that my gigs would be all-ages at all costs, because a good handful of my fans are teenagers. The ninja gigs are always free, always all-ages, and generally never announced more than a day
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It has to start with the art. The songs had to touch people initially, and mean something, for anything to work at all. The art, not the artist, is what fundamentally draws the net into being. The net was then tightened and strengthened by a collection of interactions and exchanges I’ve had, personally, whether in live venues or online, with member
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