The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

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We’d been together for a year, and Neil started asking me to marry him.

The idea of marrying Neil terrified me.

He asked and asked. We’d wake up in the morning and he’d ask. We’d bed down at night and he’d ask. We’d get ready to hang up after a long phone call and he’d ask. It was a running joke, but he also meant it.

I felt my hard insides, my desperation to stay independent, and the irony of it all: the girl who’d stood on the box for five years, falling in love and merging with a million passing strangers, yet remained staunchly resistant to an actual human merger. My inner feminist was also rolling her eyes. Just date, for chrissake. Maybe move in together. What is this, the fifties?

But he wanted to get married. There was a practical level (he was dating a rock musician sixteen years his junior, and introducing me as “wife” instead of “girlfriend” meant that—as annoying as it was—people would take me seriously). And the fact that we were both constantly traveling meant we couldn’t take the halfway step of moving in together.

And apart from the practical reasons, he simply wanted to get married. He said I made him feel safe.

I didn’t care as much about being taken seriously. But I figured we could make a deal.

I asked him a battery of questions.

I want to live and work alone. If we get married, do I have to live with you?

No, he said. Will you marry me?

Do I have to act like a wife? I don’t really want to be a wife.

No, you don’t need to be a wife, he said. Will you marry me?

If we get married, will we be able to sleep with other people?

Yep, he said. Will you marry me?

Can I maintain total control of my life? I need total control of my life.

Yes, darling. I’m not trying to control you. At all. Will you marry me?

I probably don’t want kids.

That’s fine. I already have three. They’re great. Will you marry me?

If I marry you and it doesn’t work, can we just get divorced?

Sure, he said brightly.

I’ve yet to ask the Internet for tampons, but I’ve asked for just about everything else.

Twitter is the ultimate crowdsourcing tool for the traveling musician; it’s like having a Swiss Army knife made up of a million people in your pocket.

Back when I had only a few thousand followers, I could ask anything, or ask for anything, in 140 characters at a time. The responses poured in. I answered. I thanked people loudly and publicly. Waving my gratitude like a flag is part of what keeps the gift in motion.

Sharing the broadcasting power is part of the fun, and also part of what makes it work. When people—anyone, really—twitters at me asking if I can share their need for a crash pad, I share, and I feel like a magical switchboard operator. I watch the fanbase surf on the waves we’ve collectively created. I watch them jump, I watch them fall, I watch them trust, I watch them catch one another. I watch the story unfold. I applaud.

A list of things I’ve asked for on Twitter:

Advice. I was on an Australian tour, in a small coastal town, and found a growing red spot on my thigh that I assumed was an infected bug bite. I snapped and posted a picture and several people, including one EMT from Canada, warned me that it looked more like a staph infection than a bug bite. I got myself to a doctor. They were right. Staph infections, if untreated, can lead to amputated limbs and death.

Song lyrics. I’ll ask things like, What’s a three-syllable word for something naughty that you’re not allowed to take to work? Stress on the first syllable. Please be as creative and surreal as possible. (I needed only two things to fit in the lyrics, but so many answers were so perfect that I changed the nature of that entire song, “The Ukulele Anthem,” to accommodate twenty-three of them.)

Pianos everywhere. I’ve practiced and written songs in people’s houses and apartments, and borrowed at least fifty digital keyboards for ninja gigs and practice. (Also crowdsourced: guitars, basses, violins, wah pedals.)

Car rides to the airport. (I call it “twitch-hiking.”)

A neti pot. I asked where I could buy one in Melbourne, and a nurse who worked at a local hospital grabbed one from the supply closet and drove it over to the café that I was twittering from. I bought her a smoothie and we had a wonderful chat about nursing, colds, and death.

I once crowdsourced a wedding gown for an impromptu music video I shot while on tour in Texas. I’d come up with the idea to walk into the ocean dressed as a bride, so I twittered to see if anyone knew a good thrift shop I could hit. Instead, a woman who’d just gotten divorced volunteered to drive three hours to deliver her own wedding gown. I invited her to the shoot itself, and hitched a ride with her to Galveston instead of with my film friends. Along the way we went hunting to find a veil. The only one we managed to find was in a roadside novelty shop that sold bachelorette items. It was covered with little glued-on plastic penises. I peeled them off.[7] Driving to the beach, my new friend told me about her divorce (long story, short: he was a dick). She watched the video shoot from the pier above the beach, and I felt her eyes on me as I traipsed her long, flowing gown into the waves, where it got covered with sand and sea scum.

That was pretty fucking liberating, she said when the shoot was over and we were wringing out the dress in the parking lot. Thank you.

No, thank YOU for the dress. It was perfect. I think we should find a plastic bag for it… it’s pretty gross. What are you going to do with it?

I was thinking about that, she said. I think I’m going to dye it blue and cut the train off. Recycle it into something I can dance in.

EXACTLY, I said.

I was still trying to figure out if marrying Neil Gaiman The Writer was a good idea.

I was in love with him, that much was clear to everybody around us, even if it wasn’t always clear to me. I kept coming up with reasons that it just Wasn’t A Good Idea. Our lives were too different. I would slowly drive him crazy. He was too old. The list went on.

Luke was a musician I’d met at the Edinburgh fringe festival two years before. We’d fallen in fast friend love, a fall made only slightly awkward by the fact that the night we met I’d convinced him to make out with me (and, somewhat confusingly, succeeded) not knowing he was inarguably, 100 percent gay. He still claims I am the only woman he’s ever snogged. I’m proud of that.

How long have you and Todd been together? I asked. We were sharing a late breakfast in Sydney, where we both happened to be touring at the time. I was grilling him about his long-term relationship, hoping I could find my own clarity.

About five years, give or take.

And how much older is he?

Ten years, about.

What’s the difference in your incomes? I said. If you don’t mind me asking.

It’s not massive… but it varies. We’ve agreed to split certain things and float each other when we need help. I spent almost half a year out of work last year when Todd took that huge gig in Vegas and I followed him there. It hasn’t been easy, but we’ve found a balance.

It doesn’t worry you, I said, that he might, I don’t know, always be ahead of you? Not older… or richer, per se… but just, like, ahead of you in terms of aging, and life experience? It’s morbid, but don’t you think about the fact that he might DIE on you? And then do you feel like an asshole for thinking it?

Well… you know that Todd is HIV positive, right?

But I hadn’t known. I looked at my tofu scramble, feeling like an idiot.

Jesus. Luke. Nobody ever told me.

No, no, I’m sorry. I thought you knew. I figured someone would have told you. And I’m still negative, in case you were wondering.

I asked nervously, gently, because I wasn’t sure if you were supposed to pry about this stuff:

When did you guys find out?

Oh, he said offhandedly. Todd was HIV positive when I met him.

What?

Todd was HIV positive when I met him, he repeated.

And it wasn’t… a deal-breaker? I felt ashamed even as I said it.

Amanda… it wasn’t a question of deal-breaking. I was in love with him.

And then Anthony got sick.

Really sick. And nobody could figure out what was wrong. He was losing his balance, he was having trouble hearing, he was losing his vision in one eye. The doctors didn’t know what to tell him. His calves hurt. His arms hurt. Anthony looked about twenty years younger than his age, and had always been the picture of health; walking everywhere, kayaking, doing yoga. I called him from the road every day, and every day there was a new mystery ailment, a new pain alien that had landed somewhere in his body to launch a fresh attack.

I felt bad bringing him my own stupid problems, but I knew he loved helping, so I continued to lay my life at his feet. My business was an unwieldy mess as usual, and as my fanbase had grown I’d tried out several hotshot managers who worked in big offices running the careers of the famous, but finally gave up on that idea: I pared things back down to me and a dedicated staff of three people who understood me. My income was neither huge nor predictable, but I was getting along fine and able to pay everyone, mostly because I performed relentlessly: it had become a running joke among my Cloud Club housemates that for six years I’d been announcing my impending break from touring, during which I would finally clean up my apartment. I was off the label but unsure of my next step; I had accumulated a pile of great songs but wasn’t certain how I was going to release them. Neil was waiting for his youngest daughter to graduate from high school in Wisconsin (where he had raised his kids with his first wife), so that we could move nearer to each other… probably in New York. Every time I came home to Boston for a break it seemed I was battling the flu, a post-tour depression, or a bout of existentially harrowing PMS.

But while my problems felt mundane compared to the frightening and undiagnosed pain my friend was in, he listened patiently, laughed with me, and advised wisely, as usual. For a few months, Anthony went to every doctor, every specialist. The eye doctors treated his eyes, the hearing doctors puzzled over his ears. Nobody could figure it out. We were all getting more scared. One day, his eyes and head started to pound so badly that Laura rushed him to the hospital. I raced back from a show in New York.

They took a biopsy from his temple and they told him that he had giant cell arteritis, a whole-body inflammation of the arteries that strikes people at random.

He was pumped with a giant bag of steroids, taking in enough prednisone in one day to supply a bodybuilder for an entire year.

Watching Anthony in the hospital that night was hard. He likes being in control of any given situation and gets anxious when things don’t go according to plan. I’d always viewed him as a worldly, jet-setting adult when I was younger, but as I circled the globe and kept boomeranging back to him, it was becoming more clear to me: he’d built himself a little office in a little town surrounded by things he had known all his life, things he could trust. He was strong on the outside—he had his black belt in karate—but he was fragile and sensitive to sudden change on the inside. Anthony had been abused physically and emotionally as a kid, and he’d told me the stories, a few here, a few there, and had even started writing some down. They were frightening. But whether he was writing or chatting, I was always impressed and struck by his sense of humor about the abuse and its aftershocks.

It hurt to see him there, hooked up to strange machines, vulnerable in a blue hospital gown as the doctors and nurses came and went, poked and prodded. Laura spent the night, curled up next to him in the adjustable bed. Friends took turns bringing food.

It wasn’t fatal, thank god. His vision and hearing were damaged, but he’d live. I exhaled. I didn’t think I could handle it if something truly bad happened to him.

I used to play a game with myself in high school and college, my own self-taught version of method acting, and it came in handy for a few theater productions.

If I ever needed to cry on command, I had a trick.

I would just think about Anthony dying.

It never failed. I’d burst into tears no matter what.

I don’t really have stalkers.

In order to have a stalker, you need to be a decent stalk-ee, and I’m terrible. I don’t think you can stalk somebody who’s available after every show, and who announces which café she’s writing in and tweets pictures of her coffee, telling you to drop by and say yo. It’s not really interesting to go through someone’s trash when they’ve already twittered pictures of it.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want stalkers.

I’ve had fans follow me, and occasionally bug me. If I feel stalked, I deal with it in the most direct way I can: I go to them. I tell them what I’m up to at the moment, ask what they’re up to, humanize myself, and then ask them respectfully… could they please stop sneaking covert photos from across the café, and just come over and say hi, give me a hug, and then leave me to work?

Anthony called me this morning, Neil said.

I hadn’t talked to Anthony in a few days—I was on the road. In my absence, and because of the sickness scare, he and Neil were becoming closer—texting, connecting.

I knew that Anthony was doling out relationship advice when Neil needed it—the same way he’d been doling it out to me for years. We were both relying on him for under-the-table, nonstop marriage counseling. We started referring to him as “The Godfather.”

He’d even given Neil a phone therapy session on How To Deal With Amanda And PMS, and talked Neil off the ledge a couple of times when our relationship would hit an impasse and we’d march off to our separate corners, unable to cope with each other. My PMS can be brutal: I transform from a pretty reasonable person into a black hole of doubt, despair, and existentially flailing Muppet arms. To be safe, I bought Neil a book about the chemical workings of hormones and the feminine brain, which he studied like a set of stereo instructions, hoping that he might be able to understand the finer settings of this Monthly Irrational Icequeen. Miraculously, it worked. He downloaded an app to his phone that indicated when my period was due to arrive, and around that time he stopped taking things so personally.

How’s he feeling? I asked. I haven’t talked to him since Monday.

Anthony had been recovering, but in and out of doctors’ offices and hospitals for the past month. I tried to call him at least every other day, to get the sick-friend weather report.

He gets more test results back next week, said Neil. He’s annoyed with the steroids they’re making him take, and he’s angry about everything. I can relate. I once had to take the same steroids for a week, and I just remember thinking everybody around me was incredibly stupid and irritating. And we talked about you. He told me a funny story about you and one of your ex-boyfriends.

Oh NO. Which one?

Aaron, said Neil. He told me about the time that you and Aaron were having some kind of problem, and Aaron went to him for advice. Anthony told him, “Whatever you do, just give her some space. Leave her alone. And for god’s sake, don’t throw yourself at her feet or bring her flowers or anything.” And how the next day Aaron showed up at your house with a giant bouquet of flowers.

Ha. Yeah, I said. Aaron wasn’t a very good listener in general.

He also said something very wise. He said: “Once she hits ’em, they stay hit.”

I laughed. Yeah, that’s a thing he’s been saying for years.

He also said: “You’ve got a tiger by the tail, Neil-i-o.”

Ha. That’s such an Anthony thing to say. He actually called you Neil-i-o?

Yes, Neil said somewhat proudly, setting me off into a giggle fit.

Darling, I really like Anthony. I was worried in the beginning that he didn’t like me. I think he wants to be my real friend. Do you think so?

I stopped laughing. Neil was being so serious about it.

Yeah, I think so, honey. I think he does want to be your real friend. I think he loves you.

What? Why? Neil sounded amazed.

Well, first of all, because you love me. But more… because you keep offering to help. You’re buying the ticket. That’s what makes you a real friend, to him. But even more… because you ask him to help with our relationship stuff. He loves to help his friends with their problems—that’s his thing, it’s his gift. And if he wants to help you, and you let him help, it seals the deal.

Really? said Neil. I was worried about being a bother. Then, puzzled, Buying what ticket?

As I was really hitting my couchsurfing and crowdsourcing Twitter stride, I booked a ticket to London on Icelandair at the start of a long tour. The catch was that you had to connect through Reykjavik, where they hoped you might stay a day or two to pump some money into the Icelandic economy.

We landed in the tiny Reykjavik airport and my connecting flight was delayed, so I went, like you do, in search of a power outlet and a sandwich. The sole airport café was out of sandwiches. I sat on the airport floor emailing for about an hour, and when they still hadn’t posted a new departure time, I approached the information counter.

As I stood in line, I looked up and, cartoonlike, one by one every single flight switched its status to CANCELED.

The volcano had just erupted.

We were on the opposite side of the island, so there was no imminent danger, but there was no saying when planes would be flying again. A day? A week? They didn’t know. I was supposed to be in London that night, doing press for the BBC, and then flying to Glasgow the day after to start the tour. I emailed my crew, who were scheduled to meet me in Glasgow. They were all grounded in America. All air traffic to Europe had been canceled. Things did not look good.

Everybody stranded at the Reykjavik airport was given a hotel voucher, and the airline started organizing shuttle buses.

I was stuck in Iceland, a place I’d never been and where I didn’t know a single person. Standing at the baggage carousel, somewhat stunned, I twittered the situation. BAM: someone volunteered their bar for a ninja gig that night, the fans in Iceland made themselves known, and a folk songwriter who’d once opened up for me in New Zealand saw my tweet and introduced me via text to her childhood friend Indiana, who screeched up to the airport terminal wearing a cowboy hat and blasting classic rock from her car stereo.

As everybody else glumly queued for the shuttle bus, I felt like some kind of lottery winner when Indiana jumped out of the car, hugged me, threw my luggage in the back, and whisked me away me into the lunar Nordic landscape.

You’re a friend of Hera’s! she shouted over the Jethro Tull. So I love you! Where do you wanna go?? You’re in Iceland! You have never been?? You make music?? I’ll take you anywhere!!!

Let’s go to those thermal baths! I shouted.

Yes! To the Blue Lagoon!!! she shouted.

Who are you!? I yelled back. And what are you supposed to be doing today instead of babysitting an American stranded by a volcano erupting on your island?!

I’m a grad student!!! My thesis is late! Fuck my thesis!!!! she replied, and proceeded to host me for the entire day, asking me about the music I made, taking me to the thermal baths, and enlightening me with stories—over a dinner she let me buy her in a local restaurant—about how everybody our age in Iceland was fleeing to mainland Europe due to the current economic climate.

After dinner, Indiana drove me to my ninja gig, which I’d been twittering and texting into existence for four hours straight: I’d twittered back then texted the guy who knew the bar owner who was keen to host the gig, I’d twittered then texted the person who was willing to loan a keyboard, and I’d twittered everybody in the world to please tell Iceland that I was playing a free, all-ages volcano-inspired show that night at Kaffibarinn at nine p.m.

That night was one for the books—or at least for this book. When we pulled up to the bar, the piano and speakers were already set up, the whole room cheered, and the place was so jam-packed that I had to crowdsurf over the crowd from the front door to get to the piano in the corner. I went straight at it, pounding out songs by request and trying every variety of vodka that was being passed from the bar to the piano, and twittered pictures from this glorious accidental moment all night (#StrandedInIceland #SoAwesome). The audience was made up of a few dozen hardcore fans who couldn’t believe I had suddenly materialized in this country I’d never toured in, a few dozen people who’d never heard of me, and a handful of Americans, Europeans, and Australians also stuck in Reykjavik who had twittered their situations and been flagged down by fans who told them about my spontaneous gig.

It all happened on just half a day’s notice, and it had the camaraderie of an international outpost bar, like a fleeting whiff of Rick’s Café in Casablanca. I enjoyed enough Icelandic vodka that evening that I didn’t even bother to make a mailing list. The country is small. If I came back, it seemed a single tweet would probably suffice to gather all of Iceland on a moment’s notice.

I finally told Neil I’d marry him on New Year’s Day of 2010, as we took a pause from a long late-morning walk. I was nursing a brutal hangover, having played a New Year’s Eve show the night before with the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall and consumed two bottles of champagne over the course of the evening: the first out of nervousness, the second out of triumph. We’d had brunch with my dad, his wife, and my half brother—they’d all come to town for the show—and I was now staggering down Newbury Street in Boston, trying not to project my breakfast smoothie onto the sidewalk.

Neil was holding my hand, casting no judgment.

No patronizing you shouldn’t have drunk so much, darling.

No chiding well, this is what you get for not having any dinner last night.

My head was plenty busy casting those judgments upon itself. He was just being sweet and helpful, holding my arm as I lurched towards a lamppost to get my balance and resist puking.

I realized, in that moment, that I wasn’t afraid to, quite literally, lean on him.

As if

perhaps

maybe

possibly

I wasn’t afraid to ask for his help.

He went down on one knee, in the snow. He didn’t have a ring, so he took out a Sharpie from his jacket and drew one on my finger.

At least I’d never lose it.

I loved being the center of attention when I was a kid, and I still do.

Sometimes it made wonderful things happen, like when I convinced the neighborhood girls to enact an a cappella production of Fiddler on the Roof on my back porch. (I played Tevye, obviously.) Sometimes it made terrible things happen, like when I wore a bra to school, Madonna-style, on the outside of my dress and got sent to the principal’s office. (The principal delivered a lecture that I would absolutely kill to have a recording of, just to be able to use the line you think you’re so special, Amanda, but you are not special in my techno-remix of “Creep” by Radiohead.)

As I moved through my life as a statue and later as a musician, I started to understand.

There’s a difference between wanting to be looked at and wanting to be seen.

When you are looked at, your eyes can stay blissfully closed. You suck energy, you steal the spotlight. When you are seen, your eyes must be open, as you are seeing and recognizing your witness. You accept energy and you generate energy. You create light.

One is exhibitionism, the other is connection.

Not everybody wants to be looked at.

Everybody wants to be seen.

Following the success of my TED talk, Microsoft called. They were offering to fly me to Seattle to speak to a group of women who worked there (apparently a whopping 16 percent of the employees at Microsoft were female).

I asked the speaker coordinator what I would be speaking about.

Whatever you want, she said.

I started to panic—I had no idea what I’d talk about. Crowdsourcing? Music? Surely I could wax poetic for a half hour about something. But these women were smart.

The Fraud Police were paying me a call.

For two months, I avoided coming up with an idea worth Microsoft-ing.

The night before the talk, I was pacing frantically around Jason Webley’s Seattle houseboat, still having written nothing, when it occurred to me: my mother. She’d been retired for a decade, but she’d worked as a freelancer for almost forty years, applying her math-whiz brain to the emerging field of computer programming.

Growing up, I had no idea what she actually did all day after she threw her heels in a bag and drove her car into rush-hour traffic. Whenever she started to explain to me what her job entailed, the words blurred into a wall of noise.

I hadn’t called my mother in a while. But now I had something to ask her. I needed her.

She talked for two hours straight while I furiously scribbled notes about what it was like for her to be one of the only female computer programmers at various companies around Boston in the sixties and seventies. I poured myself a glass of wine. On the other end of the phone, on the opposite side of the country, so did my mom. For the first time, in earnest, it was like we were drinking together. I listened to her stories about the sexism, the judgment, the weird harassment.

She told me a story about the guy she programmed with who got fired for looking at too much porn on his office computer.

In nineteen seventy??

Oh no no no. This was way later, when we were working on a Y2K conversion. There was Internet porn by then.

I couldn’t believe my mother had just said the words “Internet porn.”

I wanted more stories.

Well, you had to work harder than the men just to keep the job, she said matter-of-factly. And, she said, you know… you had to be perfect.

The way she said it hit a nerve.

Perfect? What kind of perfect?

Well, if a guy messed up a project, there was always another job waiting for him. But a woman? Forget it! You’d never get a job in that town again. And Boston was a small town. There were only a few of us. The men all stuck together.

She told me the story of the accountant, Jerry, who paid all the male freelancers on time but kept withholding her paycheck, claiming offhandedly that she “had a husband” and probably didn’t need the money as badly as the men did. She asked nicely for months, persistently, and still it didn’t arrive. One day she called him up (at 6:02, she said, when I knew the switchboard operator had gone home for the day and I would get him directly). She said, Hi Jerry! Just wondering when you’re going to be able to process that check! It’s eight weeks late. And when Jerry made some grumblings about how they would send it out as soon as possible, my mother said, What are you having for dinner tonight, Jerry? Jerry said, Excuse me? My mother said, I need that money to buy groceries to feed my family. If you don’t cut my check, I’m coming to your house for dinner tonight. And I don’t like salmon. And I don’t like peas. The check was on her desk the next day.

I’d never known any of this stuff. But then again, I’d never asked. As we were wrapping up our two-hour conversation and were well into our second (third?) glasses of wine, she said, You know, Amanda, one thing always bothered me. Something you said when you were a teenager.

Oh, no. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. I was a terrible teenager, an explosion of hormones and nihilism.

Um… what?

She can do this imitation of me as a teenager that makes me want to crawl under a table. She did it now.

You said: “MOM, I’m a REAL ARTIST. You’re NOT.”

Oh, god.

Then she added, more kindly, You know you, Amanda, you were being a typical teenager.

I winced, and felt my neck tighten and my teeth grit down into mother-fight-or-flight mode.

She continued, But you know. You would say, “I’m an ARTIST… fuck you, Mom! What do you know?! You’re just a computer programmer.”

I had to admit… I could totally imagine myself saying that as a teenager. Maybe not the “fuck you, Mom” part. But still.

And then my mother said something that absolutely demolished my defensiveness. I don’t think, in all the years I’ve known her, that I’ve ever heard her sound more vulnerable.

You know, Amanda, it always bothered me. You can’t see my art, but… I’m one of the best artists I know. It’s just… nobody could ever see the beautiful things I made. Because you couldn’t hang them in a gallery.

Then there was a pause.

I took in a deep breath.

God, Mom. Sorry.

And she laughed and her voice turned cheerful again.

Oh, don’t worry, sweetie. You were thirteen.

As I related this story the next morning to a small theater filled with two hundred Women Of Microsoft, I added a confession. In all my rock-and-roll years of running around, supporting people, advocating for women, giving all these strangers and fans permission to “embrace their inner fucking artist,” to express themselves fully, to look at their work and lives as beautiful, unique creative acts, I’d somehow excluded my own mother.

And maybe, by extension, a lot of other people. I looked out at the Women Of Microsoft, seeing present-day versions of my 1970s programmer mother. Maybe they all felt thoroughly misunderstood by their own bitchy, teenage wannabe-poet daughters. Who knew?

So I thought about all the things she’d told me over the phone, I said to the room, and I thought about her work that I couldn’t possibly comprehend, about the actual creative work she had done. All that delicate, handmade programming she did into the dead of night to switch one platform to another on some critical company deadline, how outside of the box she would venture to fix a problem… and how insanely proud she felt when it worked, and the true… beauty of that. And the sadness, too, because nobody ever, you know, clapped for her at the end of the night.

As I looked up into the audience, I saw that three or four women were sniffling and dabbing their eyes. My own throat tightened up.

She couldn’t hang her work on a wall. I can. I do my art in public. People applaud. My mom never really got that… and she’s retired now.

After the talk, I hugged a handful of the Women Of Microsoft, got back in my rental car, turned the radio up to eleven, and peeled out of the office park.

Take that, Fraud Police.

I called Anthony and told him that Neil and I had gotten engaged.

ENGAGED?

Yeah.

You’re not joking? You’re going to get married?

Yeah.

He was silent, then said, softly, You didn’t talk about it with me.

No, I said.

Anthony didn’t say anything.

I didn’t need to, I said. You’ve already told me everything I need to know.

Ah, that’s the perfect answer, beauty. Now go have your life. I’ll be here.

I gradually lined up a great band of musicians to help me make my next record: Jherek Bischoff, a bassist and composer/arranger who had toured with Jason Webley; Michael McQuilken, a drummer and theater director who had toured with Jason Webley; and Chad Raines, who’d never heard of Jason Webley—he was sound designer, and a keyboard/guitar-playing friend of Michael’s from the Yale School of Drama. (We briefly considered calling the new lineup Amanda Palmer and the Yale School of Drama, while toying around with possible band names one night, but then someone on Twitter suggested Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra. It seemed fitting, given the crowdsourcing and everything. We took it.)

My public song-delivery system, post-label, had been experimental up to this point, and I was deliberately saving my best material until I was ready to go to the fanbase for help with a full-length, brand-new record, to be released with grand fanfare. I didn’t want to just release this album into the Internet abyss with a blog post; I wanted it to feel bigger and realer, but without a label, my options were limited. After thinking about it long and hard, and strategizing with my office staff, we decided to use Kickstarter. We’d already used it a few times for smaller projects, and the fans seemed to understand, even love, it. Kickstarter also had its own little ecosystem of supporters, and I’d met and liked the guys who ran the company. My staff and I cooked up a schedule. I decided I would take the band into the studio, record all the songs using the last of my cash, then launch the Kickstarter to pay myself back. If we timed things perfectly, it should work out without a hitch. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

Neil and I eloped in our friends’ living room in San Francisco, and used their children as impromptu flower girls and ring bearers. It happened suddenly. We had been trying and failing for months to solve the impossible puzzle of how to throw a Wedding The Right Way. We’d been looking forward to a simple dinner party with our friends, but called ahead to ask if they wouldn’t mind hosting a wedding before dinner. I brought three outfit possibilities in a bag, and let the kids pick. They chose the old Eight-Foot Bride dress. I’d made sure to wash it first. Jason Webley came along to officiate the ceremony with a poem, I wrote up some vows sitting in the upstairs bathroom, and everybody got tipsy and ate pie.

Someone had seen on Twitter that we were in San Francisco, and had offered us a free tango lesson. We showed up at her house the morning of our elopement. Neil was panic-stricken, and I wasn’t sure whether the panic was brought on by the impromptu wedding plan or the impromptu tango lesson.

I CAN’T DANCE, he kept insisting. I DON’T DANCE.

We didn’t tell our volunteer tango instructor that we were getting married in a few hours.

She gave me a pair of tango shoes. I had never tangoed. She positioned us chest to chest, put on a record, and waved her hands around, examining us from all angles, giving us directions.

No, no, no, Neil… you need to GRAB her… this is a dance about trust, and control!! It’s a whole dance about the difficulty of love!… Good!… Yes!… She needs to feel you leading… and Amanda, Jesus, relax… let him lead… trust him… you keep trying to lead and you’re messing him up… STOP TRYING TO CONTROL THE DANCE! Foot BACK!!! GOOD! Now… trade!

I didn’t tell her why I was crying.

The Bride never spoke a word. I learned from her.

There is a difference between simply “being able to ask” and “asking gracefully.”

Sometimes asking gracefully means saying less.

Or saying nothing.

You can move your mouth to ask, but what is the rest of your body saying? What is the message behind the words? Everybody knows how it feels to be asked in a way that creates discomfort, whether the asker is a drunk homeless person on a street corner or the naked person in bed beside you.

Can we have sex? It’s been a month.

Could you spare any change?

Both can be asked with a sense of trust and graciousness, or with a sense of force and gracelessness.

Anthony once told me: It isn’t what you say to people, it’s more important what you do with them. It’s less important what you do with them than the way you’re with them.

You trust people too much, Amanda.

I always figured it was GOOD to trust people too much. Better than the other way around. Right?

One of my favorite ninja gigs of all time was on Hermosa Beach in Los Angeles. I was staying at my cousins Katherine and Robert’s cottage-like house a few blocks from the ocean, and I was beside myself to discover that Robert, age eighty-seven, could not only play the ukulele, he could shred the ukulele. He was like the HENDRIX of the ukulele, and better yet, he knew kinky songs from the Prohibition era about booze and women.

I twittered the next morning that I would play on the beach that afternoon, joined by my ukulele-shredding cousin, and requested people come dressed for a group photo shoot.

My request was granted, hundreds of Angelenos converged in all sorts of costumes, and after I’d played for about two hours (and cousin Robert slammed out a few songs on his old, splintered ukulele), I tried something new. I told people that the gig was, of course, free of charge, but if they felt moved they could toss money in my ukulele case (a wonderfully shabby antique trumpet case I found in the trash, and that also serves as a really handy purse, which is nice, because I don’t do purses). I left the case wide-open on the sand, tossed my treasured kimono down next to it, and gave my ukulele to a volunteer guardian. As the evening wore on I chatted, signed random things, hugged people, and took pictures. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the first person drop a few dollars in the ukulele case.

When I finally went back up the beach to the case, the last of the revelers were packing up their blankets. What I saw was shocking.

My ukulele case was filled with offerings—about $400 in rumpled bills (including a few twenties), flowers, love notes, and loose change. But that wasn’t what shocked me.

What shocked me was this: in my flakiness, I had left my cell phone, keys, and wallet right in the case, in plain view.

And nobody had taken them.

So. Right around the time of my insomniac meltdown as the sun rose and the sheep mourned before that Scotland family wedding party, I had also been battling a nasty urinary tract infection. By the day after the party (which went fine, by the way) it had morphed its evil, sneaky way into a full-blown kidney infection. I found an emergency health clinic in the rural Scottish Highlands to treat me.

Before the nurse gave me the extra-high-powered antibiotics I’d been prescribed, she asked, was I allergic to anything?

Nope.

Was I pregnant?

Not a chance.

Taking any other medications?

Well… I wanted to make a joke about how she might want to refer me to a psychiatric professional, because I felt like I was losing my fucking mind, but she looked so nice and Scottish and helpful.

She handed the antibiotics over.

They worked. The kidney infection cleared up within a few days, which was good: we’d rented a big place in Edinburgh for a month to accommodate a ton of houseguests, plus Neil’s kids, plus my band. I had a string of shows booked, and a bunch of rehearsing to do to start prepping the Kickstarter recording. We’d been looking forward to this monthlong working vacation for a while, anticipating a nonstop parade of dinner parties, theater outings, and spontaneous fringe-festival adventures.

But I wasn’t in the mood for fun. My body hurt, my soul hurt, my skin was breaking out, and I’d been listlessly staying in bed. That wasn’t like me. That night before the family wedding party had frightened me, and I couldn’t shake the crazy-feeling. One afternoon, while Neil was off doing press and all our guests were off at fun fringe activities, I didn’t have rehearsal and decided to peel myself out of bed and go for a jog. It was a frigid, foggy day, the type you keep thinking just shouldn’t happen in the month of August (no matter how many times you’ve been to Scotland). I stepped outside, bundled in running gear, a sweater, and a scarf, and started to run. I felt the life force slowly oozing back into me. I looked like shit, I felt like shit, but goddammit, I had left the house. I took a deep breath, looking at the beauty of the old Scottish architecture, and felt my mood finally lifting.

Four blocks later, I slipped on a loose brick of the sidewalk and twisted my ankle. Badly.

I lay there sprawled on the bricks, emitting a small moan, while ready to explode with laughter at the poetry of it all. Really?

I couldn’t put any weight on my foot. I was going to need to ask a passing stranger for help. I had nothing on me—no phone, no money, just my house keys. It was a quiet street, but a woman about my age wearing a smart raincoat saw me and stopped to help. Then another woman, an older one, stopped as well. My fellow humans were coming to my aid.

You all right there? one of them asked.

No—actually, I’m not, I said, trying to look amiable. I’ve twisted my ankle and I can’t really walk.

Oh dear, said the older woman.

A third woman wandered up behind them.

Do you need an ambulance? the first woman asked.

I tried to get up, to put a little weight on my ankle, but it shot back lightning signals of agony.

I don’t know, I said, trying not to cry. I think it’s just twisted, I don’t think I need a hospital. But I can’t walk.

How can we help?

Yes, is there anything we can do? They huddled around me in a concerned triptych, like a bunch of mother hens.

I grimaced as a new searing pain shot up my leg, but tried to express my gratitude. Well, thank you… yes, sorry. You’re so kind. Can one of you just grab me a cab and hop in it with me? I don’t have any cash on me, but my house is literally right around the corner. I’ll need someone to just help get me inside so I can pay the cabdriver.

The three women all looked at one another, then at me, then at one another.

Um…

no,

they said collectively.

But is there anything else we can do to help? one of them asked.

I was dumbstruck. And humiliated.

Are you sure you wouldn’t like us to call an ambulance? said one of the women.

Did they think I was trying to… scam them? Trick them? I was a thirty-five-year-old woman in jogging clothes with a twisted ankle on a quiet street in Scotland. We weren’t in a Dickens novel, for fuck’s sake.

One of them was at least kind enough to help me hobble over to a passing cab, and I threw myself at the mercy of the driver, who drove me the four blocks, took my arm, and half carried me up though our front door and into the kitchen, where I thanked him profusely and gave him a twenty-pound tip.

Ya’right, love? he asked, kindly. I knew I looked like hell. You’re sure?

Yes, I’m fine, really. Fine. I’m great. Thank you so, so very much.

He left, closing the door behind him.

Then I hopped over to the sink, ran some cold water over my leg, and started sobbing uncontrollably. In that moment, I couldn’t tell which hurt more, my ankle or my heart.

Brené Brown writes:

I was walking around Edinburgh on crutches. I was an emotional mess. And to cap it all, my period was really late.

While Neil waited at a table, I peed on a stick in a restaurant bathroom and sat there absolutely stunned, and strangely relieved, by the result.

So that’s why I have become a crazy person. I’m a hormonal mess.

I’M PREGNANT.

All of a sudden my flailing worries about whether or not to take a business loan from my husband—or whether or not I was crazy to be grappling with the dilemma in the first place—seemed completely insignificant. What did it matter whether or not I was going to be a few grand short and borrowing money from this guy? I was carrying his child. Neil and I left the restaurant, walked home, and cuddled each other in bed for the next twelve hours, in shock.

It wasn’t until the next morning that the nurse’s question echoed back into my head. I googled the name of the antibiotic I had taken. Pregnant women were very strictly warned to avoid it. Birth defects.

I called our family doctor.

It’s not good, Amanda. Very risky. Especially in the first trimester. That antibiotic blocks the effects of folic acid, which is crucial to the fetus at the beginning of pregnancy.

What do you mean risky? I asked. How risky? HOW not good?

Really, really not good. He hesitated. As your doctor, I’m afraid I’d advise you to terminate the pregnancy.

Neil and I spent a hard few days in bed together, talking, accepting the decision, spooning each other. I cried a lot.

The day of the abortion itself was a nightmare: I don’t remember it very clearly. I lay in a hospital bed in Edinburgh, having taken the pill I was prescribed. I threw up and slept, then woke and threw up again, feeling powerless, my whole body and heart in pain. I didn’t know what to feel.

Neil sat there beside my bed the whole time, holding my hand and saying nothing.

Then I hid away and spent a few weeks in bed with a hot-water bottle on my abdomen, trudging out for rehearsals and shows and trudging back to bed, staring at the ceiling, feeling like an empty shell of a person.

Neil was just as sad as I was, possibly sadder; he withdrew from talking, he got quiet and distant. My usual life of colorful online back-and-forth became anemic. I told the band, and told a few of the friends who were staying with us. But I didn’t want to tell the world. I wasn’t ready for that. Keeping it seret made everything feel even lonelier. I wanted to reach out to everybody I knew online, I wanted to blog and tweet the entire, harrowing story to my fans, but there was no way I was going to do that. I just stopped doing anything, feeling more and more broken.

And, as the days wore on, I got more and more upset with Neil. I knew that he was having a hard time, but I was the one stuck in bed, bleeding, nauseated, and weak. He brought me Scottish-style hot-water bottles, and things to eat and to drink, but he was really quiet. I didn’t need a selfless faucet of sympathy, but I wanted him to stroke my cheek, ask how I was feeling, give me a good cuddle. He stayed silent. With every passing day, he felt further and further away.

I started wondering if I’d made a horrible mistake, getting married. What had I been thinking? Who was he anyway? Didn’t he care? He was physically there, but he felt like a ghost. I knew what I needed, but asking for specific emotional things felt impossible and obnoxious. He was a human being. He should just instinctively know how to take care of an emotionally exhausted, sick, post-abortion wife.

He ought to just know, I thought.

I shouldn’t have to fucking ask.

Once, in London, at the very beginning of my relationship with Neil, I had decided to do a ninja gig because my official show at a church had sold out. There was a pub called The World’s End near John and Judith’s house in Camden where we were staying, and one of the bartenders was a fan. It had a concert space in the basement. Perfect. I asked if they’d be game to host a secret free show, which I was eager to do since my official show had sold out. They giddily agreed to do a lock-in.

I twittered a teaser photo of the secret late-night location the morning of my official show. The ninja gig filled the basement to its capacity of about five hundred, and I showed up with Neil, high from my success at church. (I’d played Bach! On a big pipe organ!) The bar staff all came down and pulled pints for the collected crowd. A violinist friend from Ireland who’d seen the announcement on Twitter joined me onstage, plucking out improvisations for a song or two while the room cheered her on. An artist named Robin hopped on the stage with a terrifying life-sized Amanda-Doll he’d made and gave a puppet lip-syncing dance routine while I played requests. The puppet’s head came off. Everybody was riotous and drunk on cider and the magic of being hidden underground, singing, sweating, and making new friends.

It was one of those nights where I felt my heart open and stay stuck open, like it had grown a size bigger. There was a backstage dressing room but no security, given the nature of the night, and the guest musicians, random friends, and puppeteers had left their shit all over the tables and couches. We left at four a.m., tired and happy. As we walked out the door, it dawned on me.

Someone had stolen my red ukulele.

I was crushed. I loved that ukulele. And I loved that ratty trumpet case it lived in. It was the very first ukulele I’d ever bought, and it had traveled the world with me for four years. It had resisted theft on the beach in Los Angeles. I had even started writing songs on it, regularly. It was MAGIC, that ukulele.

The heartbreak wasn’t so much in the loss of the object, it was in the fact that someone in Our Crowd had crept off with it. I’d seen and talked to, hugged and kissed, sweated on and toasted every single person who’d been drinking in the dressing room. Who would do such a thing?

I wept a little on our late-night walk home, feeling my flowering faith in humanity wither, and then slither, lifeless and trampled, into the London gutter. I was a fucking fool. People sucked.

Neil soothed me, reminding me that everyone had been very drunk, and that people do stupid shit when they’re drunk.

I know, I said. I’ve been one of those people. But I still can’t believe it. You were there. We were all in love. What the hell? Did someone think it would be funny?

You’ll ask Twitter tomorrow, darling, he said. I bet it’ll turn up.

I woke up. I twittered.

I AM REALLY SAD. SOMEBODY TOOK MY RED UKULELE AT THE NINJA GIG IN CAMDEN LAST NIGHT. IF YOU KNOW ANYTHING, TELL ME.

A few hours later, someone twittered back. They knew who took it. The thieves were sorry, this person said, and they wanted to give it back. My heart soared. I direct-messaged my phone number to the intercessor via Twitter, and the thieves texted me soon after, to arrange a drop-off. I told them not to be scared; I wasn’t angry. I just wanted my ukulele back. I texted the address of the friends’ apartment where I was staying, and waited.

A few hours later, the doorbell rang, and there stood two British teenagers, a boy and a girl, looking like the two most frightened people I’d ever seen. They started babbling:

Oh my god oh my god Amanda we’re so so so soooooo sorry

We were really drunk

We love you so much you’re our favorite musician

We thought it would be funny

We were really REALLY drunk

I shushed them. I hugged them. I told them to come inside for a cup of tea.

We sat down.

I have done some very stupid stuff while drunk, I said. I have had meaningless sex. I have gone to strange people’s houses when I shouldn’t have. I have drunk dialed ex-boyfriends and ruined perfectly cordial breakups. I have stolen the CDs of my favorite band when I was selling their merchandise as a teenager, which took me ten years to confess to them, and they laughed and totally forgave me. And I totally forgive you. Okay?

They looked at me.

Oh my god. It was so stupid.

We’re so so sorry.

We can’t believe you’re not madder at us. Oh my god.

It wouldn’t help anything, I said, being mad. Now hug me and go home and please. Try not to steal any more ukuleles.

We won’t. It’s really cheeky but, um… can we give you our CD? We’re in a punk zydeco band.

And I took their CD, and they hugged me and I closed the door behind them, and I looked at my ukulele, and I watched my faith in humanity not only crawl back up from the gutter but blossom a new little flower I’d never seen before.

For our wedding anniversary, Neil and I decided to spend a low-key, romantic night in New York City. We were both in town for work and staying in a hotel.

It was two nights after New Year’s Eve. We walked through the cold, dark streets of SoHo to a little sushi restaurant and lingered there, reflecting on our life, marriage, the abortion, our friends, writing. The summer and fall had been painful and turbulent, and we were just starting to settle down and heal.

I lost my appetite quickly for reasons I couldn’t figure out. I love food. I even turned down dessert.

We bundled up and walked out into the freezing winter night, and I’m not sure who puked first, but it doesn’t really matter: one of us vomited, Exorcist-style, into the street, and a minute and a half later, the other one did. Was it the oysters? The salmon mousse? We’ll never know. It was a fifteen-block walk home. One of us would puke in the gutter, or in a trash can, and the other one would feel sorry for the puker. Then, half a block later, the roles would reverse. Neil stayed up until five a.m., throwing up every twenty minutes. I fell asleep and resumed puking the next morning. By noon, Neil had mostly recovered, but I was trembling, couldn’t keep down any water, and was starting to get worried. I lay on the bathroom floor next to the toilet, while Neil read a newspaper. I dragged myself back to bed and waited to be patted and soothed. But Neil was acting sort of distant. Silent. It was that thing he did. That was worrying me, too.

After I hadn’t been able to keep water down for twelve hours, we went to the hospital. Neil sat with me, holding my hand without saying a word. The doctors rehydrated me and I started to feel human again, like a dried-out sponge plopped back into the sea. But my blanked-out husband was scaring me.

We hobbled back to the hotel on foot for the fresh air, just as the sun was starting to set.

Neil drew the curtains and seemed to have returned to normal. I was lying in bed, feeling flattened.

Honey, I said. I need to ask you something.

Yes, darling?

Earlier today, when I was puking, you were acting really… strange. You did it in Edinburgh, too, when I was sick, after the abortion. And you just did it again. It’s kind of freaking me out. I looked at him. It’s like you couldn’t see me.

What do you mean?

I don’t know. There’s just this thing I expect my lover or my friend to do when I’m really sick… you know?

I felt stupid and childish all of a sudden.

What thing?

I don’t know. Cuddles? Talking? Love? Patting my head? Telling me everything will be fine? You stopped talking to me. Why? I said. I’m not angry. I swear. I’m just… asking.

He looked confused. Then deep in thought.

Well… he said slowly. Maybe it has something to do with what I was taught growing up, about sick people.

Tell.

The way I was taught to deal with a sick person was to just… be very quiet around them. I was taught that you’re not supposed to say anything, or show any sympathy or anything. You’re just supposed to be very quiet. He blinked his eyes at me. Is that wrong?

My throat clenched and I took a deep breath.

You mean, I said, that all this time you’ve just been trying to leave me alone… because you think it’s RIGHT? Not touch me because you think it’s… good for me? Are you serious?

He looked at me.

Well… yes. He blinked. That’s how I was raised.

You didn’t get cuddled and talked to and smothered with love when you were hurt or sick?

No, darling… that wasn’t really the way it worked.

Oh, baby. I sat up in bed. Do you know how weird that is?

No. Is it weird?

Well, no. Well, YES, it’s weird for me. Jesus.

I sat there, trying to make sense of this, while Neil stood at the foot of the bed, looking apologetic.

Wait wait WAIT, I said. Is this why I lost my shit in Edinburgh last summer? When I thought maybe I’d made the biggest mistake of my life marrying your ass because you didn’t know how to take care of a sick person?

He looked lost. Then found.

Maybe. Well… probably. I dunno.

Oh god, Neil. I got up and put my arms around him. We stood there at the foot of the bed, silent for a second.

I guess it’s a stupid question, I said. But… did you ever ask?

Ask for what?

For the THINGS. Did it ever occur to you to ask for… like, a cuddle when you were hurt, when you were a kid?

He stared at me.

Amanda, darling. You can’t really ask for what you can’t imagine. You can’t ask for what you don’t know. That was my world. It was what I knew.

I shook my head, tightened my arms around him, and stood there holding him and not wanting to say anything stupid.

I love you, he said.

I love you, too.

We were silent for a while.

I thought about Abortion Month. When I’d needed him so badly, and been so infuriated that he wasn’t acting the way I’d expected. I tried to remember if I’d even asked him. I must have asked. But maybe I just assumed that my state of being was a ball of asking in itself. I couldn’t remember just outright asking him for the things I needed, the simple things. To be held. To be cradled and patted… it seemed ridiculous to ask for that.

Maybe it wasn’t ridiculous. Maybe it had just been a communication breakdown. Maybe it had been both of our mistakes. He’d been in pain, too. Had he asked me for anything? I couldn’t remember.

I think, I said, I’m going to ask you, from now on. When I need the things.

He cocked his head and said, tentatively, Can you show me?

Show you… what?

He sat on the bed. Can you show me what you mean? For when you ask? For the things?

I sat down. I closed my eyes, took his hand, and put it softly on my face. I guided his fingers down my cheek, up my cheek, and pressed his palm into my neck, opened his whole hand, lay it on my chest, and held it there. He paid close attention, like a focused child, as if I were teaching him how to spell a word or tie a shoe.

Like that, I whispered, my eyes filling with tears,

…like that.

We have a fucked-up relationship with artists.

While artists are, on one hand, applauded for their awe-inspiring, life-changing works of art, they’re simultaneously eyed with suspicion, disdain, and other sentiments of the GET A JOB variety. Look at the media: we deify artists one second, demonize them the next. Artists internalize this and perpetuate the cycle; artists do this to each other, and they do it to themselves.

It’s no wonder artists have such a difficult time maintaining the romantic standard they try to achieve not just to please others but to hit their own internal bar that was set early on, when they were just starting to grasp their artistic identity. It’s no wonder that so many artists crack under the pressure, go crazy, do drugs, kill themselves, or change their names and move into hiding on remote islands.

Artists can get mentally trapped in The Garret, that romantic vortex where painters, writers, and musicians find themselves stuck in a two-dimensional nightmare starring their own image. You know The Garret. It’s a candlelit attic room, where the artist sits with a pen, a paintbrush, slaving away. Alone. Drunk. Chain-smoking. Creating. Agonizing. Probably wearing a scarf.

The artistic workspace is real and necessary, but it takes on every shape imaginable, and it wasn’t until I started twittering that I realized I’d created very strict, superstitious rules around my process: I need to be at home. I need total privacy. I create in silence. I need to look like an artist.

Then one day I broke my own rules with “The Bed Song,” which took me about two hours to write, by leaving my computer open and my phone on. I’d always had a rule about that: no twittering while songwriting. Only bad artists do that. This time, though, I announced on Twitter that I was heading into a songwriting session and I updated the feed with in-progress photos and scrawled lyric drafts at the piano. People cheered me on. It wound up being one of the best songs I’d ever written. Who knew?

A balanced artist knows when to hide in The Garret, when to throw the windows open, and when to venture out into the hallway to the kitchen, where society exists. Most important is the understanding that there are no rules—what works on one day, for one song, won’t work the next.

Once the art is finished there is a new challenge. Down to the ground floor and out the front door, you have the marketplace. It’s loud down there. The stalls of exchange, the sound of bargaining and bartering and clanging cash registers. It’s crass and mundane compared to The Garret—no matter what your version of The Garret looks like—where the art gets dreamed up.

Some artists need to create in complete peace, but all artists are now empowered by technology to open the front door and chronicle their backstage and behind-the-scenes working processes. More importantly, they’re equipped to distribute the work themselves, sharing their writing, their music, and their digitally reproducible wares infinitely and at their own will—without printing presses, without CD manufacturers, without movie theaters. The art goes from the artists’ lips or pen to the audiences’ ears and eyes. But in order to share directly, the artist still has to leave The Garret and head down into the bustling marketplace, and that’s the catch: the marketplace is where you have to deal with people. To many artists, people are scary.

In The Age Of The Social Artist, the question echoes everywhere: what about the introverted or antisocial artists who have no desire to leave The Garret and enter the marketplace? What about the singers who don’t want to tweet, the novelists who don’t want to blog? What will happen to the reclusive J. D. Salingers of the world?

The marketplace is messy; it’s loud and filled with disease and pickpockets and naysayers and critics. For almost any artist, carrying your work through the stalls of exchange can be painful.

But there is another option, which is to yell from your window. You can call down to your potential friends outside, your comrades in art and metaphor and dot-connecting, and invite them to a private party in your garret.

This is the essence of crowdfunding.

It’s about finding your people, your listeners, your readers, and making art for and with them. Not for the masses, not for the critics, but for your ever-widening circle of friends. It doesn’t mean you’re protected from criticism. If you lean out that window and shout down to find your friends, you might get an apple chucked at your head. But if your art touches a single heart, strikes a single nerve, you’ll see people quietly heading your way and knocking on your door. Let them in. Tell them to bring their friends up. If possible, provide wine.

If you’re not social—and a lot of artists aren’t—you’ll have a harder time. Risk is the core cost of human connection. In most cases, the successfully independent antisocial artist pairs with an advocate to shout the message down to the street. Sometimes it’s a record label. Sometimes it’s a patron. Sometimes it’s a best friend.

Art and commerce have never, ever been easy bedfellows. The problems inherent in mashing together artistic expression and money don’t go away, they just change form. Nowadays a lot of apples get chucked at artists who try to get help through crowdfunding: Stop self-promoting. It’s shameless! Those words poke at the emotions most artists are already struggling with. That fear of being called shameless is what makes us think twice about sharing our work with ANYBODY in the first place.

No art or artist exists in a vacuum. Although artists may have access to all the latest social media tools, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all eager to use them. At least now there is a choice: you can either leave The Garret, or you can invite everybody in with you, or you can send somebody out on your behalf to round up your crowd and drag them up the stairs.

A warning: With every connection you make online, there’s more potential for criticism. For every new bridge you build with your community, there’s a new set of trolls who squat underneath it.

I was in the study, sharing an evening grok with Anthony, depressed and bitching to him about the Problem Of Neil. My Kickstarter was delayed and I was facing the looming cash shortage. He was offering to help, and I wouldn’t bend.

What is it you’re so afraid of? Anthony asked. What do you think is going to happen?

I don’t know. I guess I’m just afraid it’s going to bite me in the ass. At some point in our relationship he’s going to slam a door and scream, “BUT I LOANED YOU ALL THAT MONEY, YOU UNGRATEFUL BITCH.”

That sounds very unlike Neil, Anthony said.

I know, I said. I’m not saying my fears aren’t totally deluded.

He isn’t the problem, beauty. You are. You preach this whole gospel of asking and accepting help, you make your friends hitchhike with you, you sleep on all these couches, but you’re holding out on your own husband, who wants to help you. You somehow don’t want to give him the gift.

I sat there, smoldering, then I tried to switch topics.

I just never expected that I’d wind up with a shy, British writer sixteen years older than me. You know?

Well, Anthony said, you did. You know, I remember asking you, a few years before you met him, what you were looking for in a partner. You said “I want an expert.” You got one. He’s an expert in making things up.

But he can’t dance, Anthony. Like, not even a little. And when he tries, he kind of goes into a panic, I said.

So what? said Anthony.

So… I miss dancing. And ANOTHER THING, I said. He doesn’t go to bars. And he can’t drink more than a glass or two of wine without getting obnoxious or falling asleep. AND…

But you drink and dance with everybody else, said Anthony. What are you trying to accomplish here?

Why did I marry this guy? I asked.

I don’t know, said Anthony. You tell me. Because from where I’m sitting, you’re just not that into him.

That’s not true!!

So why did you marry him?

I thought hard. Anthony was not going to accept a bullshit answer.

I think I married him because… I love him?

Nice dodge, beauty. Why do you love him?

Because… he sees me?

Does he?

Yeah, I think he actually really does. I think he really, really does.

As I said it, I realized it was true.

And also… I think I see him. It’s dark in there, he hides so much. But I see him. And… I don’t know, I said with a shrug. I think that’s enough.

Anthony looked at me. I felt like a disappointment. I didn’t expect my vague answer was going to cut it.

Then he smiled.

You’re turning out good, my girl. You’re getting it.

Conditional love is:

I will only love you if you love me.

Unconditional love is:

I will love you even if you do not love me.

It’s really easy to love passing strangers unconditionally.

They demand nothing of you.

It is really hard to love people unconditionally when they can hurt you.

It finally got to the point where I couldn’t put it off. I was down to the wire, about to launch the Kickstarter, but I needed to make sure everybody got their paychecks on time. I needed a loan to bridge the gap. I weighed my options. I sat paralyzed for a few days, battling the imaginary voices in my head.

Yep. Just as we’ve always said. She’s a bullshit narcissist with a rich husband. She’s not a real artist at all.

Next to them, I could hear the feminist bloggers:

Are you kidding? She’s no fucking feminist. When it comes down to it, she’s an irresponsible wreck who goes running to hubby; she’s a hypocritical fraud who falls back on the patriarchy.

I could hear an imaginary version of Neil, a year down the line:

I should have known you were a user. Remember when I loaned you thousands of dollars to cover your ass? I never should have trusted you. I’ve had it.

I could hear my family:

You always were selfish, little miss attention-getter. You’ve never thought about anybody but yourself.

I put my hands over my ears.

SHUT UP.

SHUT UP.

SHUT UP.

JUST STOP IT.

And I called Neil.

Hi, darling.

Hi. I love you. Say tomato?

Tomahto.

Okay, I’m ready.

Ready for what? he said.

I’m going to need the loan to cover me for the next few months. I need you to help me.

He sighed as if I’d just said “I love you” for the first time.

Of course I’ll help.

I’m not going to go back on the road. I’m going to crowdfund this fucking record instead. I can probably pay you back in three months.

If it takes longer, it’s fine, he said.

I really hope it doesn’t.

Amanda, I love you. I’m proud of you.

I love you, too.

I paused. Then I added, That was really fucking hard.

Listen, love. We’re married. We’re a team. And I’m glad you’re finally over it, he said.

I’m not over it, I said. I fucking hate this. I hate that I have to ask you for this. I hate it, and I hate myself.

Is there anything I can do? Neil asked.

No.

And I wasn’t over it, not really. I was terrified.

But I’d done it. I’d achieved asking enlightenment. I’d accepted a massive donut. I was on my way to being a fully fledged… something.

But it didn’t feel fine. It felt terrible. I felt like an asshole.

And I wondered why.

Doesn’t hurt enough yet.

I’d set the Kickstarter goal at $100,000, which felt conservative to me. I’d sold $100,000 worth of vinyl albums with five Radiohead songs directly from my website—and now what I was looking to fund was a full-length record of my own songs. It had to work.

The night we launched, Neil and I were staying in my apartment at the Cloud Club. I was nervous; I had no idea how many people were actually going to hop on board the Kickstarter bandwagon. It launched at midnight—my whole staff stayed awake and we twittered, facebooked, and blogged the link to high heaven. We asked everybody who backed it to share the link. I refreshed the page a few minutes after midnight, and it had about $200 in backing. I checked the site again after an hour: $600. Neil and I went to sleep. I woke up at about four a.m., in a mild panic, staring at the ceiling, certain that I’d asked for too much.

Don’t check the computer.

Don’t check the computer.

I checked the computer. Four hours later, the Kickstarter had only made about another $500, pulling it over $1,000. I’d asked for a HUNDRED GRAND, for fuck’s sake. If you don’t make your minimum goal on Kickstarter, you don’t get anything.

I shouldn’t have checked the computer. I went back to bed.

It’s a failure, I thought. What if this Kickstarter only makes forty thousand dollars? How am I going to pay everybody? How am I going to face society? What the fuck am I going to do?

By the end of the next day, it had cleared $100,000. The word had spread. I had hit my goal in under twenty-four hours. I wondered how I ever could have doubted the universe.

As the number continued to skyrocket, I was more inseparable than usual from my phone, checking the Kickstarter status and thanking people via Twitter for backing the project, every day, every hour, every minute.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My Twitter feed, blog posts, and backer updates to the new Kickstarter community were a conveyor belt of gratitude. The more people backed the campaign and shared their pride in supporting it, the more people found out about the project, the more the numbers grew, the more I thanked. It ballooned.

About three weeks after launching, the campaign had almost twenty thousand backers, and at the very moment it hit the million-dollar mark, I was—coincidentally—with Anthony.

We were, at that point, three weeks into the monthlong campaign, and I’d been running between Boston and New York, doing press, holding production meetings with my office, getting ready to manufacture the record and all the other Kickstarter rewards.

I knew the million-dollar mark was going to be symbolic. It’d be the first time a musician had raised a seven-figure amount using crowdfunding.

Anthony and I had set up a grok date the week before. We were going to do our usual thing: meet for coffee and then drive to Walden for a grok and a walk around the pond.

My visits with Anthony had grown more intense since his illness and scare at the hospital, and I started looking forward to them with equal parts joy and worry. I wasn’t just hanging out with my best friend; I was hanging out with a sick person. His latest blood tests and symptom complaints joined our usual topics: the universe, relationships, zits, how we couldn’t stand when people offer to massage our feet then don’t bother to pay attention while doing it.

But the friendship was still a two-way street. Anthony would sometimes tell me, over the phone, that he didn’t want to talk about his latest list of ailments and the new side effects of the new medications prescribed to alleviate the side effects of the other new medication.

He’d say, You talk. I’m done. Distract me, please. Tell me anything.

And I’d prattle on happily about the new song I’d finished, or how I was hiring my PR team to help distribute the new Kickstarter record in Europe, or about the stupid argument I’d had with Neil… and Anthony would slip back to where he was most comfortable: advising.

Some days, it felt like asking for his help was the best gift I could give him.

I’d been celebrating online every time the Kickstarter hit a new hundred-thousand-dollar marker, or had attained another thousand backers, by scrawling the amount of money or the number of backers somewhere on my body with a Sharpie and posting the photo to Twitter.

Earlier that morning I’d checked the Kickstarter page, which stood at about $990,000 and was ticking along at the rate of a few thousand dollars an hour. It was likely that it would hit a million within the day. I walked up to Lee’s apartment, where Michael Pope was editing a film on his laptop in the corner and Lee was cooking an omelet. I announced my news giddily. I wanted to celebrate with more than just a Sharpie design on my hand. Pope, a master body painter, created a piece of calligraphy on my belly proclaiming “ONE FUCKING MILLION,” and Lee did the photo shoot up on the top floor of the Cloud Club. I saved the photo on my phone, ready to upload it to Twitter at the magic moment, and drove off to meet Anthony.

He was already waiting patiently at a table at Peet’s Coffee & Tea, his cane resting against the wall. He’d started needing one due to his vision loss and balance problems.

GUESS WHAT GUESS WHAT? I said breathlessly as I plopped down next to him and knocked his cane onto the café floor.

Slow down for cry-eye, Rocket Girl. Jesus. He leaned over and picked up his cane, examining its glass knob for damage. One thing at a time, you. Now, you getting coffee? I already got something, he said, pointing to his pot of green tea and fishing his plastic Peet’s card out of his bag. He still loved paying for me.

I checked the Kickstarter from my phone while I was standing in line for my coffee. It was a thousand dollars short of a million. I refreshed. Eight hundred dollars short. I checked my Twitter feed. People were getting excited. It was going to hit. I ordered an espresso, and a scone for Anthony. He waved his coffee card at me and started to get up to try to pay for us, and I shooed him away, paying in cash, refreshing my phone again, bursting with excitement. I headed back to the table.

Listen, I said, I know I’ve been explaining this whole Kickstarter thing to you, and I know you don’t totally get it—

I get it, he said.

Well, I know you get it, but it’s about to hit a million dollars in backing, and it’s the first time anything like this has ever happened in the music business, so it’s kind of a big deal. Not just to me, but it means crowdfunding is working, it means you can put out a record like this and not have to have a label and stuff. It’s, like, news. You know what I mean.

Anthony listened.

When it happens… it’s going to be an exact MOMENT, you know, an important one, and it’s going to be happening ANY second now… and I don’t want to be an asshole sitting here on my phone, but there’s a picture I want to upload. I need to acknowledge it. You know?

He said nothing and buttered his scone.

I glared at him.

Don’t get pissed at me. I’m just SAYING, I said. I just need to do a thing.

He leaned back in his chair, and raised his eyebrows.

Do whatever you gotta do, doll.

I refreshed the Kickstarter page. It was still eight hundred dollars away.

Well… it’ll take a second. No biggie. So. Anyway. How are you?

He didn’t say anything for a second, as if he didn’t trust me to pay attention to the answer, then he settled in and shrugged his shoulders.

I hate the steroids. I’ve got a crushing headache. And I hate this stick, he said, gesturing at the cane. I fucking bumped right into a lady with a stroller on the way in here. She came up along my right side, which is the side I’m not seeing well out of, and she—

My phone buzzed. I glanced down at it. It was my manager Eric, sending a group text to me and the rest of the team, saying, ABOUT TO HIT 1 MILLION, READY FOR THIS FUCKING MADNESS?

Anthony cocked his eyebrows at me.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. I got a text. It’s the Kickstarter thing. Sorry. Keep going.

My phone vibrated again. I glanced down. It was Hayley responding to the text saying we were almost there.

Listen, said Anthony, leaning back. Do your thing. This was code for: Don’t half pay attention to me, you clown. He wasn’t angry. He was just slightly annoyed and amused.

Then the text came from Eric: WE DID IT. HUZZZZAHHH. $1 MILLION. YAY TEAM!

I texted back gleeful congratulations, posted Lee’s painted-tummy photo to my Twitter feed, and said,

Okay, okay. It’s over. It’s done. My Kickstarter just hit a million dollars. I uploaded a naked photo. I’m all yours.

I settled into my chair and took a sip of my coffee, feeling like the queen of the universe. Now, finally, I could focus on my sick friend.

Anthony just looked at me.

Then he picked up his phone and started to fiddle with it, ignoring me.

I sat waiting for him to finish whatever he was doing, wondering if he was going to torture me for this entire day because I’d been such a distracted asshole.

My phone buzzed with a text.

It was from Anthony. I looked at him. He ignored me.

I read the text. It said:

If you love people enough, they’ll give you everything.