How I learned to stop worrying and let people help by Amanda Palmer (2014-11-11)

Read this book because… she gets “it”. Life that is. Amanda Palmer’s experiences and insights in “The Art of Asking”, kept me awake for hours, scribbling notes and making highlights and noting ‘aha’ moments. It reminded my of those epic weekends as a kid, getting my hands on a stack of really great books and being unable to go to bed until I’d finished all of them. It’s been quite awhile since I’ve read something this addicting and this review is my attempt to understand why. In short, Amanda Palmer is an authentic, visceral, and vulnerable human being whose insights hit on universally experienced emotions making them comforting to read. “Someone out there feels the same way!”

People hardly ever share their weak, sad, confused, lost, maddening moments because they are so personal and intimate. Yet, Amanda has the bravery to articulate so beautifully these human moments - her pain while going through a friend’s illness, her sense of rejection as a street artist, her struggle to be herself yet be a true partner to her husband. As a performing artist she also has such an incredible way of transforming these human moments into hilarious, unique, and entertaining stories that make her life seem more like fiction than reality - many of these stories expanded my thinking about what was even possible in creating human connections. (There’s a story about swimming in a human sized aquarium full of yellow page papers that made me think- “ I gotta try this”).

Throughout the book I found myself nodding and tearing up, thinking “she GETS it. she knows what its like to be human!”

One of the most highlighted quotes in the book is:

“from what i’ve seen it isn’t so much the act of asking that paralyzes us - it’s what lies beneath: the fear of being vulnerable, the fear of rejection, the fear of looking needy or weak. the fear of being seen as a burdensome member of the community instead of a productive one.”

Later in the book, through stories and direct advice, she addresses this fear with a solution. Essentially, she asks of her readers and her fans to go out and give more to those around them. To invest and tend to the needs of each other whenever they can. To let others be vulnerable to them. And hope the investments will pay off when her readers and fans will themselves need compassion, need to be vulnerable, need to ask their network for help, support and understanding.

“asking for help with shame says :you have power over me. asking with condescension says: i have the power over you. but asking for help with gratitude says: we have the power to help each other.”

Gratitude. Yes.

http://lilyc512.tumblr.com/post/116480846875/amanda-palmer-gets-it-so-read-the-art-of

I plan to gift this to several people. It touched my heart, and is, in my opinion, very insightful to human nature. I wasn't sure what to expect, having not heard Amanda's TED Talk, but I am very happy to have read it.

Never really got into the Dresden Dolls' or Amanda Palmers' music. As someone who's been struggling to make something of a living out of making music though, I have huge respect for what Amanda is doing. This book gives so much inspiration for people about life in general. Much love.

Amanda Palmer's the Art of Asking is a brilliant, informal analysis of how society views artists, how artists view themselves, and how both views could be improved. The writing is witty and heartfelt. The thoughts are insightful and moving. And, the anecdotes and stories told are woven into a beautiful tapestry of relatable and engaging tales that made me laugh, cry, and shout, "THAT'S ME!"

I enjoyed every page, and I feel as though I now owe Amanda a long letter about all of my personal struggles as an artist and human being. However, it sounds as though she gets those all the time, so perhaps I'll spare her.

I recommend this book to everyone, but particularly to anyone involved in the arts. Writers, musicians, visual artists, anyone and everyone who makes a living off of their creativity (or tries to) should read this book. It's like a 352 page hug.

Amanda Palmer, I see you. Thank you.

Amanda Palmer -- indie musician/artist/blogger/frequent exhibitionist/formerly half of the punk cabaret band The Dresden Dolls -- is a polarizing figure. Her army of adoring fans follow her every move; her detractors are ready to pounce on her every public misstep, which she provides via the simple expedient of rarely filtering anything she thinks, says or does.

If you have an opinion about Amanda Palmer, reading her new book “The Art of Asking” will very likely reinforce it, many times over.

“The Art of Asking” (subtitle: “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help”) is an expansion of the popular TED talk she gave in 2013 of the same name, in which she described her early days working as a “living statue” street performer and how her lifelong business model developed out of the relationships she built with fans. When your work means something to someone, she found, that person will want to pay you for it.

“I think people have been obsessed with the wrong question, which is ‘How do we make people pay for music?’” she said then. “What if we started asking, ‘How do we let people pay for music?’”

Over three million people have since watched that video. Her book takes it farther, delving even deeper into the value she’s found that people place on art when it speaks to them and the transactional nature of human connection. Just as importantly, it’s a master class on how an artist can build, maintain and grow an audience in a new social media environment where record labels rarely promote anyone these days who’s name isn’t Beyonce or Taylor Swift.

“How do we create a world in which people don’t think of art just as a product, but as a relationship?” she asks. And she answers, in detail. For some readers, her description of the trials and triumphs of her record-breaking Kickstarter campaign where she asked for $100,000 and received $1.2 million may be worth the price of the book.

It’s also a memoir, as it has to be because to be Amanda Palmer is to expose yourself completely. If there’s anything that Palmer watchers can agree on, it’s that she puts everything out there, for good or bad, whether it’s on Twitter or Facebook or Tumblr or Instagram or her blog or in her songs or, now, in this book. “The Art of Asking” is as emotionally open and blunt as everything else she does.

But is it any good?

Unquestionably, fans will love it. Palmer has an easy writing style that lends itself perfectly to stories told while sitting around the kitchen table or hanging out by the bar and she opens up here as never before, skipping around her life out of order to talk about influences, seminal moments, important people such as the next-door neighbor who became her mentor, and, throughout, her relationship to her husband, author Neil Gaiman. For that matter, Gaiman fans will appreciate the glimpse into their private life. Anyone who wondered what these two very different people saw in each other may gain some insight as to how they grew together and how they make it work.

If you’re not a fan, you may become one. If you dislike Amanda Palmer you may find your assumptions validated, however, as she occasionally sinks into self-indulgence and skips over a few of the smaller controversies in her life.

She talks about her early life and her decision to become a street performer standing on a box in a wedding dress as “The 8-Foot Bride,” holding motionless until someone dropped a bill or some coins in her hat. She describes the surprising, almost tangible feelings of connection as she offered a flower or made eye contact and how she discovered that such connections had value.

Palmer went on to form The Dresden Dolls with drummer Brian Viglione, seeking “salvation through volume” with their pounding, screaming Victorian punk rock style. Their audience grew, helped in part by her insistence on meeting fans after the show and her use of mailing lists and parties -- early social media -- for more fan interactions. She began building a community. When touring, the Dresden Dolls regularly asked for volunteers, food, crash space, and for local musicians to get up on stage and open for them in exchange for merchandise table space and hugs. Palmer found that asking for help almost invariably resulted in success and an artistic community of people who were joyously looking out for each other.

When the Dolls were signed to a label, their first album sold well but not to the label’s expectations. They also wanted Palmer to stop talking to her current fans to go court new ones, she said. It took her years to finally break away.

“The whole point of being an artist, I thought, was to be connected to people,” she said. “To make a family. A family you were with all the time, like it or not. That was the way we’d been doing it for years, whether or not we had an album or a tour to ‘promote’.”

Not everyone saw it the same way. When she took asking to a whole new level with a Kickstarter campaign for her new album, “Theater of Evil” (disclosure: I was a contributor at the CD level), she broke the site’s record at the time and went on to launch the tour for the new album. As she had for the past decade she asked for local musicians to sit in, but this time the request was coming from someone recently famous for getting a million-plus dollars -- never mind that most of it was for pre-orders and shipping -- and she was soundly castigated for ripping off musicians. She posted a breakdown to prove it wasn’t all profit, and ultimately paid the musicians, but the damage was done and her reputation took a hit. Soon after she wrote a poem empathizing with Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev that brought a firestorm of criticism.

She writes about those events, as she writes about everything. Palmer’s intimate relationship with her fans has, from the beginning, been based on trust. Crowd-surfing, asking for help, couchsurfing, letting people pick their own price for her music... all of it relies on the goodwill of fans to pay her to make more art for them.

Ultimately the book is about learning how to ask.

“Often it is our own sense that we are undeserving of help that has immobilized us,” she said. “Whether it’s in the arts, at work, or in our relationships, we often resist asking not only because we’re afraid of rejection but also because we don’t even think we deserve what we’re asking for.”

Excellent read and inspirational message for artists of all kind (and artist is a fairly broad net--any sort of creating). It's the art of asking--AND giving AND receiving. She hits on how social media can be a connection, not a divider. Her personal stories (which illustrate each lesson/conclusion--great show not telling!!!) are interesting and entertaining. The audio version included some songs, and I enjoyed them so much I bought a few.

Excellent read and inspirational message for artists of all kind (and artist is a fairly broad net--any sort of creating). It's the art of asking--AND giving AND receiving. She hits on how social media can be a connection, not a divider. Her personal stories (which illustrate each lesson/conclusion--great show not telling!!!) are interesting and entertaining. The audio version included some songs, and I enjoyed them so much I bought a few.

Amanda Palmer seems to write the way she lives, fears and all, and surprise, surprise, it seems to work. She's asking the reader to think about asking along with her. The book may appear to lurch in one direction and then another, and I note this because the process she describes of writing the book exemplifies the process of asking that she's describing, and yet it's absolutely cohesive like a single life is made up of many disparate moments that somehow come together in one person. The author credits her editor for pulling it altogether, but I appreciate Palmer's speaking aloud and articulating the things that have caused her the most discomfort and her ability to bring immediacy to these feelings in her writing. They're a good team.

This Book has already changed the way I think about my role as an artist, educator and collaborator. It gave me so much to think about and turned my head around in ways that I needed, especially where the economy of art is concerned. Amanda is mind for our time. I am practicing asking, but I am also giving more, because this is how it should work (and does work) if we let it.

Brave heart, brave artist: thank you. I will look forward to her next book. Meanwhile, I've recommended this one to many of my friends and students.

Utterly Delightful -- I really good read. A lot of wonderful teachings here -- How to be real on the internet -- Step 1 - Be Real! An incredibly fascinating book, by an incredibly fascinating woman. I bought this based on the image in Neil Gaiman's Tumbler feed (who knew he was her husband?), I had seen her TED talk and was totally enchanted. I am so the opposite of her, but I think I've learned quite a bit from reading her stories -- I can't recommend this enough!

With this book Amanda Palmer inspired me to create new relationships with the readers of my weekly online magazine, "On Pasture." In a world where we sometimes seem to be at each others' throats, she renewed my faith that we can build relationships based on openness and trust. I learned a lot about asking, and what makes it different than begging, and the important exchange that occurs when we ask and when we give. Though I won't be taking off all my clothes and letting people draw on me as a sign of how much I trust my readers (and being farmers, they probably would be uncomfortable with that anyway), I am exploring ways to be more open and ask for help from the people I'm helping. Thanks, Amanda! I really appreciate this book!