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

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After the Birthday Massage Of Absolution, Neil flew home from Seattle, and I rented a car and drove off to spend the night and share some wine, Thai food, and friend-commiseration time with Jason Webley on his houseboat.

I woke up the next day ready to drive three hours to Portland for a six p.m. collectivist-style house party at someone’s home on the outskirts of town. I had a few hours to kill before I embarked, so I went to a café in Seattle to work and check my email. As I was ordering my coffee, I got a text from Eric, my manager, asking me to call him.

I’d just received a death threat through the website.

It’s probably just a crazy person, Eric said. We don’t know. We’re trying to track down the email ISP. Can you get to a local police station? It needs to be reported, and we can’t call it in. You need to go.

I refused. It just seemed too silly.

What was the threat, exactly? I asked.

You don’t want to know. And we don’t want to send it to you. We don’t want to worry you.

Seriously… what did they say?

They said they were going to find you and kill you. I’m not going to tell you the details. They’re disturbing.

I looked around the café. I’d just twittered my location. Was my life going to turn into a stalking nightmare? It wasn’t impossible: some crazy chick had driven her car into the side of the singer of Pearl Jam’s house. It was almost definitely just a random crazy person. Anybody can email a death threat. But as I washed my hands in the café bathroom a few minutes later, I noticed they were shaking.

The three-hour drive to Portland took seven because of traffic, and somewhere around the Columbia River crossing, I lost it. A John Lennon song came on the radio and I lost it even more, crying as I drove along.

When I finally arrived at Susan’s house, everybody was already drinking and carousing on her porch and, as I crossed the lawn, they gathered around me and applauded. Someone thrust a beer in my hand. Susan, the hostess, was a loving eccentric who used to work designing animated film sets and now handcrafts intricate jewelry and headpieces using wood, plastic flora, and rhinestones, and makes her living selling them on Etsy. She crowned me with a bejeweled antler headdress. I looked at all of them.

Hi, everybody. Thank you all for coming, and I just wanted to apologize if I’m in a totally fucked-up mood tonight. I just drove seven hours and I’ve had a terrible, terrible week. Did you guys follow the poem thing?

They all nodded solemnly.

It’s been… I don’t want to bring the party down, you guys. But I just…

Someone asked, Amanda, do you need a hug?

I nodded.

Susan said, You’re here now. We get it, Amanda.

And they did. The wine flowed, the food was shared, I talked with everybody, I felt at home. I got into long conversations about empathy, violence, love, and pain with handfuls of strangers at a time. The sun set. I went into camp-counselor mode and organized a group parlor game called Mafia in Susan’s shag-carpeted basement.

I didn’t tell them about the death threat until much later that night, playing ukulele in the basement, all of us crammed in and huddled on floor pillows and cushions.

I couldn’t tell if people in Portland, a land of extroverted hippies, were just inherently warm and wonderful, or if something about my breakdown had in turn broken down everybody else’s defenses, but strangers were hugging, laughing, and singing together off in corners, and somewhere a neck-rub circle had started. If they were doing it all just for me, I didn’t mind. It worked.

The party continued on into the night, and I bowed out on the early side, hugging people good night on my way to bed. Susan followed me upstairs and showed me to my room, taking us on a detour through her studio, an enchanted wonderland of sewing machines, pincushions, and glittering piles of gems and objects-in-progress. She went off to find me a clean towel for the morning. Then she all but tucked me into bed.

This is my daughter’s room, she said. She’s off at college now, and she is in agony over missing this party. But she’ll be so happy you slept in her bed. I’ll see you in the morning. I’m making muffins.

I gazed at her.

Thank you, Susan. For everything.

You’ve had a rough one, honey. Feel better, okay? She pulled the blanket over my shoulders, closed the door, and went back out to the party.

I shut my eyes and let the day disappear as I drifted off to sleep, feeling more loved, understood, and safe than I’d thought possible.

The chemo worked, they said.

Anthony was okay.

At least, they said, for now.

He was okay for now.

He’d beat the fifty-fifty, but the cancer might come back within the next few years. Impossible to tell, they said.

I held my breath and rescheduled my postponed tour dates, announcing very cautiously that my friend had made it out of the woods but might be chased back in… who knew. The fans were, as usual, totally understanding. They rebooked their flights, remade their plans, and got ready to come see me… six, eight, ten months later than planned.

A couple of publishers had approached me to see if I wanted to write a book.

Neil and I packed up our Harvard Square rental house. I hadn’t been writing any songs. Usually when I was angry or upset about something, it made for great writing material—a perfect therapy to shake the demons out. But the controversies, the bombing, the cancer… it didn’t make me angry or upset anymore. It just left me feeling tired and empty.

Anthony was still battling symptoms and on all sorts of medications, and our walks resumed, but they weren’t as long; he was always tired.

I kept thinking that his cancer prognosis should be this ongoing celebration of cheering, aliveness, fireworks, and popping champagne. But there was the lurking specter that it might come back, and everybody was just too exhausted to be jubilant. Even Anthony. He was driving his own car again, and I was tagging along on a trip to get his blood tested, which he had to do every few weeks. He was grumpy. He had a crushing headache from the steroid medication. They’d dropped his dose too quickly. A car in front of him was in the wrong turning lane, and he leaned on his car horn and didn’t let up.

Jesus, I said, take it easy on humanity. We’re not even in a hurry. Who cares?

Who taught this clown to fuckin’ drive? He leaned on the horn again and the light in front of us turned red.

FUCK, he said. We sat there, unmoving. He was fuming.

You know… at least you’re alive, I said optimistically. Remember when you were dying? Eh? Remember dying?

I’d rather be fucking dead than have this crushing headache. I’ve had it with people. I don’t care that they’re all in pain. I hate everybody.

You’re such a hypocrite. I laughed. What about compassion for all?

He turned and looked at me. Don’t argue with me when you know I’m wrong.

You’re not wrong. You’re just being a dick.

Well look at you, little miss fucking enlightened. Then he finally smiled at me.

You know what I always say, beauty. If you want to know what you believe, ask the people you taught.

I got a book deal, I told Neil grumpily. I’m going to write a book about the TED talk. And all the… other stuff I couldn’t fit into twelve minutes.

He was writing at the kitchen table and looked up with delight.

Of course you did.

They’re paying me an actual advance, I said. I can pay you back now.

That’s wonderful, my clever wife. I told you it would all work out.

But I’ve never written a book. How could they pay me to write a book? I don’t know how to write a book. You’re the writer.

You’re hopeless, my darling, he said.

I glared at him.

Just write the book, Amanda. Do what I do: finish your tour, go away somewhere, and write it all down in one sitting. They’ll get you an editor. You’re a songwriter. You blog. A book is just… longer. You’ll have fun.

Fine, I’ll write it, I said, crossing my arms. And I’m putting EVERYTHING in it. And then everyone will know what an asshole I truly am for having a best-selling novelist husband who covered my ass while I waited for the check to clear while writing the ridiculous self-absorbed nonfiction book about how you should be able to take help from everybody.

You realize you’re a walking contradiction, right? he asked.

So? I contain multitudes. Can’t you just let me cling to my own misery?

He looked at me.

Sure, darling. If that’s what you want.

I stood there, fuming.

He sighed. I love you, miserable wife. Would you like to go out to dinner to maybe celebrate your book deal?

NO! I DON’T WANT TO CELEBRATE. IT’S ALL MEANINGLESS! DON’T YOU SEE?

I give up, he said, and walked out of the room.

GOOD! I shouted after him. YOU SHOULD GIVE UP! THIS IS A HOPELESS FUCKING SITUATION! I AM A TOTALLY WORTHLESS FRAUD AND THIS BOOK DEAL PROVES IT.

Darling, he called from the other room, are you maybe expecting your period?

NO. MAYBE. I DON’T KNOW! DON’T EVEN FUCKING ASK ME THAT. GOD.

Just checking, he said.

I got my period a few days later.

I really hate him sometimes.

Seeing each other is hard.

But I think when we truly see each other, we want to help each other.

I think human beings are fundamentally generous, but our instinct to be generous gets broken down.

The Bride taught me more than I realized, and I still learn from her.

Sometimes people would only toss a penny into my hat. I’d still always give them a flower. That was the rule. Sometimes I used the flowers to thank people for helping me: the value was not fixed by outside entities.

The flower always had a value, but it was never an absolute value; sometimes it was a twenty-dollar flower, and sometimes it was a free flower. But it was always a gift.

The money was a gift. And the flower was a gift.

And often, though it had already been paid for, be it with a quarter or a five-dollar-bill, the value of the flower would increase the moment I handed it over to its buyer—and as we held each other’s gaze, I could feel the value rising, like an emotional stock ticker. The value of the gift rises in transit, as it is passed from hand to hand, from heart to heart. It gains its value in the giving, and in the taking. In the passage.

When I became a musician, the music worked the same way. Once I allowed people to share the songs, and there was no fixed price enforced by the label (or the store, or any other broker), things changed. People trusted me, and one another, more than before.

I kept faith. Giving away free content, for me, was about the value of the music becoming the connection itself.

It was about the value coming from the taker of the flower, the hearer of the song, the heart of the beholder. Being painted white and standing on a box, the crowdsurfing, the Kickstarter, ringing a stranger’s doorbell in the middle of the night: I no longer see these things as risk. I see them as acts of trust.

I think the real risk is the choice to disconnect. To be afraid of one another.

We make countless choices every day whether to ask or to turn away from one another. Wondering whether it’s too much to ask the neighbor to feed the cat. The decision to turn away from a partner, to turn off the light instead of asking what’s wrong.

Asking for help requires authenticity, and vulnerability.

Those who ask without fear learn to say two things, with or without words, to those they are facing:

I deserve to ask

and

You are welcome to say no.

Because the ask that is conditional cannot be a gift.

How do we create a world in which people don’t think of art just as a product, but as a relationship?

As art returns to the commons and becomes more and more digital, uncaged, freely shareable, we need to figure out how people can sustain a new artistic ecosystem. The Internet is wonderful, and crowdfunding has opened up new worlds of possibility. There are terrific new tools, but they’re only tools. They’ll improve, they’ll go away, they’ll evolve, but even the perfect tools aren’t going to help us if we can’t face one another. If we can’t see one another.

The entertainment industry, reflecting the world at large, has been obsessed with the wrong question: how do we MAKE people pay for content? What if we started thinking about it the other way around: how do we LET people pay for content?

The first question is about FORCE.

The second is about TRUST.

This isn’t just about music.

It’s about everything.

It’s hard enough to give fearlessly, and it’s even harder to receive fearlessly.

But within that exchange lies the hardest thing of all:

To ask. Without shame.

And to accept the help that people offer.

Not to force them.

Just to let them.

I decided to go to Australia to write the first draft of this book all in one breathless, two-month marathon. Neil was planning to come for the first three weeks, but the book deadline was barrelling towards me, and he saw the terror in my eyes. I had no idea how I was going to juggle being with Neil for three weeks while simultaneously turning myself into a book monk who did nothing but write for ten hours a day. We had tried getting things done together while being in the same space and failed miserably—and this was an extreme case.

I can tell you’re freaking out, Neil said, about a month before the trip. I’m not going to come. Just go write your book. If anyone understands a writer’s need to tell everybody to sod off, it’s me.

You’re serious? It means we won’t see each other for almost three months.

I’m serious. All I ask is that you make me feel loved and reassured. You’re not always good at that. In fact, you were terrible at it when you were making your record there two years ago.

Was I really that bad?

Yes, darling. You were awful. You went days without texting, weeks without calling. Then again, I took all that time and wrote a really good book.

Right? But to be fair, I’d warned you, I argued. I told you I was going to disappear into my recording cave.

He looked at me and said nothing.

I felt like such a selfish failure of a human being. A Bad Wife.

I’ll try harder this time, I said.

Ben Folds, a piano-slaying, songwriting friend of mine, wrote a song called “Free Coffee” about the irony of being showered with certain kinds of help once you don’t need it as much. It’s a kind of Murphy’s Law. Let’s call it Ben’s Law: Once you’re a well-known artist who can afford to buy coffee, some percentage of the independent coffee shops you walk into will be staffed by a fan who will offer you free coffee. You will want to scream, I DON’T NEED FREE COFFEE! I CAN FINALLY AFFORD COFFEE, I COULD EVEN BUY LIKE TWO HUNDRED COFFEES AND NOT FEEL THE FINANCIAL STING or NOW? NOW YOU OFFER ME FREE COFFEE? And you will realize you’re staring down the barrel of your past, being offered free coffee by a previous incarnation of your barista self, the one who worked at Toscanini’s and had $26 in her bank account. And you will look at yourself and remember how you used to give free coffee to the people you admired and liked, to your friends, to your family, to the old professor of yours who walked into the shop and barely recognized you.

And so you will take the coffee, because the truth of the matter is that your acceptance of the gift IS the gift. And if you’re not in a hurry, you will also draw the barista a picture, or draw a picture for his friend who’s a huge fan, or tell her about the Ben Folds song. And when he’s not looking, you leave a ten-dollar bill in the tip jar. Because you can. And because you remember how fucking amazing it used to feel to empty out the tip jar and see a ten-dollar bill.

The gift must always move.

I finally wrote a new song. I realized, while I was writing it, that it had been almost a year since I’d written… anything. Not since the Kickstarter launched, the band hit the road, the cancer hit Anthony, the bomb hit the marathon, and my whole plan fell apart. I hadn’t been spending very much time by myself. I’d been spending it with the fans, with Neil, with Anthony. I hadn’t even wanted to connect the dots. There were too many. And collecting them was hard enough.

I find it really hard to write around people, physically. Even Neil. I’m too self-conscious. One day while we were still in the rental house in Cambridge, I got an idea for a new song. Neil was writing in the house. Though he was two rooms away, I still felt like finding privacy was impossible. I went outside into the corner of the garden of our rental house with my ukulele, and tried to see what would happen. The garbage collectors came by to pick up the recycling and waved hello. I went and hid behind the neighbor’s garage.

Behind the garage, I wrote a song. The year. The hurt. The hate. The fans. Anthony. Blender setting = 1.

I recorded it into my phone. I called it “Bigger on the Inside.”

Our first job in life is to recognize the gifts we’ve already got, take the donuts that show up while we cultivate and use those gifts, and then turn around and share those gifts—sometimes in the form of money, sometimes time, sometimes love—back into the puzzle of the world.

Our second job is to accept where we are in the puzzle at each moment. That can be harder.

I know people who support their spouses, their families, or their recovering/destitute/unemployed friends. When speaking off the record, sometimes they say they resent it. They have an uneasy feeling of obligation.

And I know others who are rich in the same kind of wealth or power, and who make an art of being able to help those around them. It takes a lot of work to get it right.

On the other side, I know people who accept support from their friends, families, or spouses but really can’t get comfortable with it; they avert their eyes, they refuse to discuss, they feel a huge shame. Others accept the help offered to them with grace and humility, and announce with a smile that they’re living at home while they figure shit out. Humor is key.

Some days it’s your turn to ask.

Some days it’s your turn to be asked.

Neil was going to take me to the airport to catch my flight to Australia.

I had spent as much time as I could with Anthony before I left. He was doing better, finally off the last dose of steroids and cancer drugs. He had just been to the hospital, where he’d had a battery of tests: he was officially in remission and getting ready to self-publish his second volume of his memoir-stories.

We went for a long walk around Lexington that ended in our regular coffee shop stop. The kid behind the counter asked for my autograph and told me he’d just emailed my TED talk to his mom. He tried to give me my coffee for free. I refused. Anthony rolled his eyes.

Mrs. Huge, he said, poking me in the ribs as we sat down. I took his cane and after whacking him with it, leaned it carefully against my coat, where it wouldn’t fall over.

Ha, I said. Mr. Big. You know I owe you everything? My whole soul?

You don’t owe me nothing, he said.

I’ll be back in April, I said. Enjoy the evil, soul-numbing, sucking torment of the Boston winter.

You’re a pussy, he said. There’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing choices. You just can’t learn to wear a fuckin’ sweater.

He knew I hated it when he said that. And he said it every single time I complained about the cold.

I glared at him. I hope it blizzards on you all winter. I hope you have to shovel ten feet of snow every day.

Ha. YOU. YOUUUUU, he said, in his gravelly godfather voice, pointing at me. YOU… I love. You helped me.

I’m going to miss you, I said. I’m so glad you’re not dead. Have I mentioned that lately? That I’m so glad you’re not dead? I am. And maybe I’ll write about your sorry ass in my book.

Make me famous, okay? he said, brightly. Maybe I’ll finally get some free coffee around here.

I’m kind of afraid to write it, I told him. I feel like there’s all this pressure to get it perfect. It took me like two months to write the TED talk, and that was only twelve minutes, and even then I fucked up and went over and it was more like thirteen minutes, and I’m worried the book will suck, and it’ll be convoluted and self-centered…

Shut up, beauty, he said. You’re going to do great. Just tell the truth. And don’t forget what I’ve always told you about people.

You’ve always told me, like, seven hundred things, I said.

You can’t give people what they want. But you can give them something else.

Ah.

You can give them understanding. Just tell the story. Tell it all. They’ll understand. He smiled at me. You’ll be fine.

I’m going to miss you. Please don’t get cancer again while I’m away, okay? Please? Promise?

Can’t promise that, beauty. But I can promise to love you. That’ll have to be enough.

That’s enough, I said.

I stretched over the café table to hug him.

It’s enough.

Blake (remember him? the ex-boyfriend ex-white-angel statue?) emailed me this story.

As Neil pulled the car up to the departure gates, I looked at him, worried.

Are you sure you don’t want to come? I said. Maybe this is all wrong. Maybe you should.

He helped me put my bags and ukulele case onto a luggage cart.

I love you. I’ll see you in nine weeks, darling.

Maybe while I’m writing the book, I’ll figure out my life. And our marriage, I said. If I do, can I write about you and all your innermost personal details? Or will you divorce me?

He sighed. I won’t divorce you. You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried. It’s like Anthony said. You hit me. I stay hit.

I laughed.

It was freezing cold outside the airport, and the wind whipped at us. I didn’t have gloves or a hat on, and was only wearing a thin coat, since I hadn’t wanted to bring a heavy one to Australia.

He shut the back door of the car.

Just make sure you stay in touch during your book marathon, he said.

Promise. I’ll miss you, I said, and put my freezing hands under his sweater, warming them in his armpits.

He gasped, then smiled.

I tucked my mouth into the crook of his stubbly neck, and whispered:

Thank you. Thank you for letting me go. Why are you so good to me?

I don’t know, darling. Because I love you, I think.

We stayed in our hug.

I’m proud of you, he said. I’m proud of you for finally letting me help. Even if it took Anthony getting sick for you to ask. I’m still proud.

You know, I didn’t ask for the money just so I could stay home with Anthony, I said, pulling out of our hug and looking at him. I think I thought that, then. But I don’t think that now.

What do you think now?

I think I asked… because I trust you enough to let you help me. I mean it.

I love you, he said.

Then I turned away from him and pushed my baggage cart towards the glass automatic doors, looking behind me only once to blow him a kiss. He stood next to the car, waving. He looked happy. I believed him.

The glass doors slid open, and shut again behind me. I wheeled the cart over to the international check-in kiosk. I looked back through the doors, though the mess of people. He was gone.

Now I have to write a book, I thought. How the hell am I going to do that?

As I stood in the line, I realized I was crying. I wasn’t really sure why. I knew the story, I knew what I had to say, but it all felt too disconnected, even though it wasn’t.

I pictured Anthony sitting in the café, during the million-dollar Kickstarter day, looking at me and shaking his head, trying to be patient.

I thought about everything I was leaving behind. The cold, the winter, the cancer, the hate, the past year.

Can hate grow back if it goes into remission?

My brain started to flood with images as I stood there with my passport in my hand.

All the dots. The Kickstarter, the backlashes, the bombing, the poem, the house parties, canceling the tour, sitting on Anthony’s hospital bed while the chemical bag dripped into his body, the TED talk, the massage girl. The book deal.

Neil.

All the nights I held him as he told me his secret childhood stories, all his fears and worries.

And all the nights he’d held me, when I was lost in my own paralysis of terror, afraid to take his help, afraid for Anthony, afraid that I was doing the wrong thing, afraid of looking weak to everyone. The Queen Of Asking, too ashamed to ask.

The fanbase, the chaos of complicated, creative ways we’d asked and helped each other, comforted and made space for each other. All the bizarre exchanges of money, songs, tears, food, beds, gifts, writing, stories.

All the people I had hugged. Touched. Who had touched me. All the little places we’d found strange solace in one another… the massive, connected, heartbreakingly human messiness of the whole fucking thing.

I wiped my eyes, took my phone out of my pocket, and sent Neil a text.

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

A few weeks after I arrived in Australia for the book marathon, I found myself walking through the packed and drunken streets of Melbourne during White Night, an overnight festival where pedestrians and revelers can wander freely throughout the city center all night long, until daybreak, as it explodes with performance, music, and artistic light projections illuminating all the downtown buildings.

After hours of wandering, happily lost, through the chaotic magic of the all-night museums and the churches filled with inebriated, ecstatic crowds of people, I was heading home when I spied a living statue working across Flinders Street, near the Town Hall. I can spot a living statue a mile away.

I walked across the street and watched him from a distance. He was crouched in a gargoyle pose; his body was completely purple in a costume that clung to his skin. His face was covered with an intricate handmade mask, which revealed just his eyes. It was decorated with little glued-on mirrors that made his muzzle look like a disco ball. He was majestic, dragon-like, beautiful. When a passerby put money in his cup, he un-froze and encouraged them to pat him as he made serpentine movements of pleasure. It was nearly dawn, and I wondered how long he’d been working there. I was tired, but I wanted to watch. I leaned against a tree across the sidewalk.

A group of drunken people stumbled over, jeering and laughing, and took a bunch of pictures of him. I felt my pulse quicken.

They stumbled away, and another group, drunker than the first, took over. Even though one of them gave him a dollar, the girl who went to pose with him shrieked so loudly I saw him flinch slightly. Then she took the can of beer she was holding and, giggling, tilted it above him, pretending she was going to pour it on his back. Her friends laughed loudly, and she darted away. Then they loitered in front of him, gabbing riotously and ignoring him.

I crossed the sidewalk, and as I crouched down and put in a two-dollar coin, I looked into his eyes. He came to life and then stopped for a moment. Then he lowered his head.

It was odd. He froze in that position and I stayed there on my bent knees, waiting to see what would happen.

Then his whole back started slowly shaking.

He raised his head back up and I looked into his eyes, which were brimming with tears.

We crouched there, for a moment, face-to-face.

I reached my hand out to touch his cheek, before taking him into my arms.

He buried his head in the crook of my neck, sobbing without a sound.

I closed my eyes. I tightened my arms around him. He tightened, too.

The drunken crowd who had just been tormenting him stared at us, and went silent.

We stayed, attached, on our knees, for what felt like two or three minutes.

I held him.

He held me.

He finally raised his head and looked at me through the slit in his mirrored mask, with his wet, red eyes. I felt his breath slow down.

I whispered in his ear:

Get back to work

…and I walked up the street without looking back.