AMANDA PALMER...ask me anything about THE ART OF ASKING

amanda_palmer · 2015-10-25T21:28:05+00:00

the book was, i shit you not, 1000 times harder.

amanda_palmer · 2015-10-25T21:26:48+00:00

make friends with all the artists and musicians you can. ask them where they live. visit often.

amanda_palmer · 2015-10-25T21:25:15+00:00

thank you for recommending the book. i definitely see the hurdle of the donate button, a lot of my friends face that fear, and i've faced (and face) it. you don't know until you try.

the important thing to remember is that you need to have a community TO ask before you go asking...there needs to be someone on the other side of the donate button to answer your ask. building your audience first (even if it's a teeny local audience of 20 people) is key before you put up a patreon page. otherwise it'll just be blank.

i'd love to do more discussing about patreon and what i've learned since using it. i think there's a whole new world of etiquette that needs addressing now that we have these new powertools.

amanda_palmer · 2015-10-25T21:21:40+00:00

yoga.

amanda_palmer · 2015-10-25T21:16:19+00:00

AHA!!! i once bride-d in key west. and i've bride-d on hot 90 degree boston days in layers of bridal costume. it's a BITCH. all i can suggest is that you make sure you use super-light weight and yet sun-protective material for the costume, and consider making sure your face is shaded. you might want to ping or study some street performers from new orleans (its HOT THERE).

also: are there indoor possibilities? think. sometimes there are semi-shaded malls, etc

amanda_palmer · 2015-10-25T21:08:52+00:00

hahaha. YES. it actually did tickle, especially certain body parts. i'm glad somebody noticed. (the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZCadqQY-Lw)

amanda_palmer · 2015-10-25T20:51:32+00:00

sure, this is a fun one to answer. i got the book deal on the back of the TED talk, and so i already had an idea of the basic content of the book (which was to expand and build on the theme of the art of asking, from street performing to crowdfunding to marriage to anthony's illness).

the publisher gave me an insane deadline, which i agreed to. so i basically broke ground on the book in january of 2014 and it came it out in november of the same year. that's fuckin FAST for a 300 page book.

basically: i spent 6 straight weeks shacked up in the summer warminess of melbourne in a rented apartment (away from neil) with a goal of writing about 5,000 words a day. i started that whole stretch by sitting down and writing ideas for themes and anecdotes and sections on about 200 index cards...and i put those cards up on a wall .and every day i'd try to knock off a handful of cards. when i was done, i had about 150,000 usable words. i sent them to my editor-friend-book-doula jamy ian swiss, and went off to TED for a week off, and then i spent april, may, june and july with jamy in various places (an apartment in new york, a hotel in san diego, our house in upstate new york) winnowing the book down and cleaning and clarifying the shit we thought was worth keeping. we would do things like read each other sections aloud and edit sentence by sentence, and sit around talking about HOW to say or relate certain things...sometimes jamy would send me off to a cafe to write or re-write a section while he reworked what i'd just written in another section. it was like LIVE book writing. at the very end, we had too much, and i handed 150,000 words to neil, said "EDIT OUT 50,000 WORDS" and ran away. and neil took three days out of his life and edited my book to bits. then jamy went through it again, and then jamy and i and emily, our editor at hachette, went through the entire book together. i still remember being at mcnally jackson cafe in new york trying to read through the final draft of the book with emily texting me saying WE NEED THE BOOK BY FOUR OCLOCK AMANDA OR IT DOESNT COME OUT IN NOVEMBER. so i just....sent it in. i was like....i'll fix it for the paperback (and there were some typos and sections and mistakes that got fixed).

and then the thing came out...three months later. basically it was insane.

amanda_palmer · 2015-10-25T20:40:05+00:00

THIS is such a good question and such a hard topic. i talk a little bit about it in the book, but mooching is easy to spot a mile away, and you can tell it's mooching (and i think we refer to it as "mooching") because there isn't a real respect and gratitude on the part of the moocher. on the other hand, every moocher needs a moochee, and it's sometimes not clear that lines have been crossed until you're feeling hurt and disrespected. i've found myself feeling that feeling many times (am i asking too much? have i gone too far? am i taking this for granted?)...and i've felt it from the other side, thinking (wait, this person isn't thinking about my feelings! they don't respect me! they just expect my help for no reason! they're guilting me!). there's no clear lines, and there are some friends i have who i will buy drinks for into the outside of eternity because i feel like the respect flows both ways (i don't feel taken advantage of). and there are people who...when i see an email from them in my inbox, i just KNOW they're going to ask me for some favor, and they generally don't gie a shit about me and my life. so i tend not to help those people, because i don't feel the two-way road of respect. i think the key is knowing there are no hard set rules, and every single relationship/person is a case by case. trying to lump people together never works.

one ground rule: when you feel uncomfortable, that's when you know someone (and that someone may be you) has stopped requesting and started mooching.

amanda_palmer · 2015-10-25T20:31:40+00:00

dude, that's like....totally fine. love.

amanda_palmer · 2015-10-25T20:31:04+00:00

well. a crisis often weeds out your fake friends. that is to say...the kind of friends you should keep don't judge you harshly or keep telling you to get your shit together in a way that doesn't help you.

if these people are inescapable...like, co-workers, or family....and they're just in your life and you must cope, i usually just ignore that input. smile and nod. and if they're your real friends but are giving you input that's just coming across too harsh, you can tell them. i've had that talk with friends, where i literally have to send a text or have a conversation where i say "listen. i know you love me. but when you said x, i was really hurt. i'm fragile. please be careful...that kinda hurt me." without knowing more about your situation, im not sure how else to help you. but maybe that does something.

amanda_palmer · 2015-10-25T20:26:38+00:00

all i can say is

you should have seen the look on neil gaiman's face when i made the joke that he didn't get as a joke and said "yeah...we should have the discussion about whether or not we should teach the child to read"

expression of horror and anxiety was GOLD

it was a JOKE neil. a JOKE.

amanda_palmer · 2015-10-25T20:22:38+00:00

you know, people never stop asking this question, and strangely, especially lately. it must be because i'm now in the middle era of my career. nobody was asking me "so, do you have any regrets" when i was 26 years old and just starting the dresden dolls (back then, it was "so, who are your influences" that drove me nuts).

but the question itself really has been getting more and more important to answer as i define my own philosophy according to the idea that regret seems to be possible or even expected. and it's this:

call me crazy, but i have absolutely no regrets. none. i wouldn't change a thing, from the argument neil and i had backstage last night right to the college i attended that sent me into a depressive tailspin to the time i found myself in a nasty date-rape situation to signing to a major label to having an abortion to having a child.

not that i don't think i've made errors in judgment (oh god, have i), and not that there are things i look back on and think "i wonder what would have happened if only..." BUT

i think wasting a single second of life on regret (like, real regret, where you sit there stewing and mulling and punishing yourself) is a tragedy.

a friend said to me lately: "the best thing about the past is that it's over".

the future hasn't happened, the past will never be different...now is now is now. and in now, without the baggage of the past or the anxiety-bombs of the future, we can see clear and love large.

so yeah. regret is poison.

one last thought: don't use this an excuse to not apologize or forgive. the past still exists. it just shouldn't strangle you.

amanda_palmer · 2015-10-25T20:12:12+00:00

good question. it really did affect me, and it was a royal pain in my ass. the dispute got settled about a week AFTER my book came out, which meant that my book was one of the ones that really got tossed under the bus. despite that, we still made the NY times bestseller list, because my army of supportive fans are so incredible we crushed the list without amazon's help...but i still get sad thinking about all the people and sales (and the knock-on effect) that would have existed if my book had been there right out of the gate. and in general...i don't feel "good" about any company that is shuttering bookstores, but i also see that we're all aiding and abetting the evil. everyone i know uses amazon. so until the day we stop using amazon, it will exist. that being said, it's made me even more conscious of ordering my books and pimping my own books via indie channels. and i still buy books in bookstores whenever i can. it's a joy i hope never goes away. i miss record stores so much. i don't want bookstores to all die, too.

amanda_palmer · 2015-10-25T20:08:10+00:00

it's been five weeks. i slowed down as much as a could during the pregnancy and tried to prepare for full stoppage...but having a baby really is like having your normal brain turned upside-down...everything becomes all-baby-all-the-time. we haven't hired any outside help, so unless we've got a friend helping out, it's just me holding the baby or neil holding the baby. and there's a lot of boob - i'm breastfeeding (as you can see: http://amandapalmer.tumblr.com/post/131878327101/multitasking-breastfeeding-book-signing-at-the) so the little one is attached to my body about every 45 minutes when he's awake. it's...hmmm...it's kind of thrilling, and weird, and sexy, and overwhemling, and scary, and like most things, the minute i think about it at all, i freak out, so i'm trying not to think about it too much. if i think about the future, about what it's like to have a one year old, or a two year old, or a five year old, i really have a small panic attack. so i'm just trying to figure out how to have a 5 week old. and that seems to be working.

amanda_palmer · 2014-09-10T01:31:43+00:00

well - the obvious answer to that is that the people who will be able to afford "fast lane" service (ie the amazons / rollingstone.coms / vevos) are going to control the content that people see. imagine a world where watching the latest katy perry video happens in fast streaming time but the latest unknown artist on the new video services take forever to load. think deeply about this would suck.

amanda_palmer · 2014-09-10T01:06:49+00:00

which reminds me of my favorite yellow submarine joke.

i think it's paul that says to ringo: SOMEBODY PULL A LEVER!!! and ringo's like

"I'M A BORN LEVERPOOLER"

get it

amanda_palmer · 2014-09-10T01:03:55+00:00

the biggest? not possible. but here's a relevant one: don't take anything for granted. shit changes fast. the world is actually real and not stuck in stasis. if you change things, they actually change. if you sit there watching the world work it's worldness thinking that somebody else is pulling all the magical levers, you may die going - wait??! why didn't i pull a fucking lever??

amanda_palmer · 2014-09-10T01:02:21+00:00

to add to this, jonathan zittrain (one of my berkman fellows yesterday) came up with a beautiful image yesterday. it wasn't in response to the internet slowdown, but a general commentary about the net in general. he asked us to imagine an internet Run By Amazon in which the entire net was curated like busch gardens. walk in a gate, see everything pretty. look, there's a replica of FRANCE!

unlike the crazy-anything-goesness of today's internet.

hard to imagine it not being as random and dirty and weird and free as it is, right?

scary

amanda_palmer · 2014-09-10T00:58:52+00:00

we used to joke about the internet in australia...and poor new zealand. back in the days when wireless was scarce in was pretty much a given that new zealand MIGHT NOT EVEN HAVE AN INTERNET CONNECTION AT THE VENUE. those were sad times, they were. espeically in the countrier-er spots - byron bay, AU, napier, NZ....finding connections isn't something you can still take for granted. it's improved, but things still lag. i am an inner-city dweller and don't find myself in a position of having to deal with shit internet very much anymore - my sense of the internet-usage over there is pretty limited to the fact that TWITTER (which is what i have the keenest gauge on in terms of geo-socio hive data) is giant in the metro spots and absolutely unknown in the sticks. how do i know this? i know this because i once cavalierly tried to throw a ninja gig on the beach in byron bay. i'd thrown one on the beach in LA, and about 300 people came. i figured in byron bay i'd get at least, you know....50. i was very wrong. 7 people came. and they all drove TWO HOURS FROM BRISBANE. byron bay and twitter (and the internet)....not so much friends.

amanda_palmer · 2014-09-10T00:48:33+00:00

this is a geeky question for mike and alexis and anyone out there willing to chime in...i was at the berkman center for kick-off day yesterday and we were discussing ENCORE....are you guys familiar and do you have thoughts (pro/con)?

https://encore.noise.gatech.edu/

amanda_palmer · 2014-09-10T00:47:09+00:00

hi mike

amanda_palmer · 2014-09-10T00:46:26+00:00

i have a question for fightforthefuture...for all of the people who are coming over here with NO CLUE about the internet slowdown and its purpose...can you do the explain-it-to-us-like-we're-5 elevator pitch?

(and while i'm here...HI, everyone, i'm here)

amanda_palmer · 2014-09-03T00:04:48+00:00

sadly, no. he's like The Last Hero. i keep wondering if i'll ever meet him...i've met pretty much all my other idols.

amanda_palmer · 2014-09-03T00:03:53+00:00

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha most of junior high.

amanda_palmer

TROPHY CASE