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People loved giving us art they’d made.

Amanda Palmer • The Art of Asking: How I learned to stop worrying and let people help

the label, and also explaining transparently that we, the band, were seeing absolutely no profit from the records

Amanda Palmer • The Art of Asking: How I learned to stop worrying and let people help

but I was obsessive about maintaining an email-based newsletter for the band and for the house parties. I could send out an email to fifty Boston friends, they would spread the word, and two weeks later, hundreds

Amanda Palmer • The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

This combination of Ukulele Freedom and Twitter Freedom led to the birth of the Ninja Gig, which was the name I gave the flash events I started creating once I realized how easy it was to whip a crowd up to any place at any time. Before and after official gigs, on off days when I was in the mood, or when I was visiting cities where I didn’t have an

Amanda Palmer • The Art of Asking: How I learned to stop worrying and let people help

When I reflect on the last fifteen years of my life in music—all the touring, talking, late-night signing, blogging, twittering, couchsurfing, crowdsurfing, and all other variety of eye-to-eye, soul-to-soul, hand-to-hand connection I’ve shared with the members of my crowd—I see it as a net.

Amanda Palmer • The Art of Asking: How I learned to stop worrying and let people help

HANDS UP IF YOU CAN LET US SLEEP AT YOUR HOUSE TONIGHT.

Amanda Palmer • The Art of Asking: How I learned to stop worrying and let people help

The art of asking can be learned, studied, perfected. The masters of asking, like the masters of painting and music, know that the field of asking is fundamentally improvisational. It thrives not in the creation of rules and etiquette but in the smashing of that etiquette.