The Art of Asking: How I learned to stop worrying and let people help
Signing fixed that, because we got to meet a pretty decent percentage of the audience every night.
Amanda Palmer • The Art of Asking: How I learned to stop worrying and let people help
Cyndi Lauper—my childhood hero (eight-year-old me was beside herself)—invited The Dresden Dolls to open for her on a summer package tour called True Colors,
Amanda Palmer • The Art of Asking: How I learned to stop worrying and let people help
I asked everyone if they would pitch in up to $5,000 for the recording and printing of the record, with the promise that we would pay the money back within a year, sooner if possible.
Amanda Palmer • The Art of Asking: How I learned to stop worrying and let people help
we only needed a few dozen at a time to sell at shows: five songs for $5.
Amanda Palmer • The Art of Asking: How I learned to stop worrying and let people help
Everybody has access to different tools, people, resources, situations, opportunities. If you’re privileged enough to have family well-off enough to loan you money for your first recording? TAKE IT. If you have a friend with a shack on the beach who’s offering you a quiet place to write? TAKE IT.
Amanda Palmer • The Art of Asking: How I learned to stop worrying and let people help
If you take those questions and turn them into statements, they look like this: Artists are not useful. Grown-ups are not artists. Artists do not deserve to make money from their art. “Artist” is not a real job.
Amanda Palmer • The Art of Asking: How I learned to stop worrying and let people help
All artists connect the dots differently. We all start off with all these live, fresh ingredients that are recognizable from the reality of our experiences (a heartbreak, a finger, a parent, an eyeball, a glass of wine) and we throw them in the Art Blender. My songs are personal and intimate; a lot of them chronicle my inner life. I mine the depths
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There is something about silence. One night in a candlelit restaurant in San Francisco, shortly after we got married, I asked Neil if we could just write each other notes during the whole meal. In real time, like texting, but with pens and paper. The waiter thought we were slightly strange, but by the end of the meal we’d shared a degree of intimat
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His Kickstarter didn’t get funded. It more than didn’t get funded: it only raised $132 of a $7,000 goal, from three backers. I was one of them. Hundreds of thousands of people had enjoyed Walt’s work on YouTube, but he hadn’t cultivated a long-term relationship with them, he hadn’t yet built a bridge of exchange between himself and his potential su
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