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

Afterword

by Jamy Ian Swiss

At the risk of stating the obvious, Amanda Palmer is a complex person. I can, at least, state this with some up-close-and-personal authority, knowing her as an artist, as a friend, and also now as a creative collaborator. I lent a hand and an ear when she was preparing her TED talk, and have spent much of the past year in the role of what she has dubbed her “book doula,” helping her to birth this book in your hands. (It’s all in the breathing.)

As passionate as the affection is that Amanda’s friends and fans have for her, there are some outside those circles who seem to have difficulty understanding what makes her tick. When the media asked her to explain how her music Kickstarter became so successful, they came expecting answers about business plans and social media strategies.

But that’s not where the answers will be found.

Her fans already understand that her relationship with them is inseparable from her art. Her remarkable songs and music are the artistic end product, but really, it is all a part of the messy dish that comprises her indefinable specialty: mixing, blending, cooking up, hosting, and serving a passionate stew of human connection.

Social media is not a separate piece of her. It is her—just as the songs are her, the music is her, the blog, the communicating, the hugging and hand-holding—the empathy is her. Her friend and mentor, Anthony, taught her the empathy part and much more, and she keeps trying to explain it to the rest of us, and acting on it when she is most severely tested—within her most intimate relationships or out in full view of the public eye. As I worked with her to help shape the book she was writing, we practiced everything she preaches in these pages.

In a culture that routinely sees creativity, art, and the human body as mere commodities, many find it difficult to grasp that there might be another point of view. Those who live in a world of cynicism and marketing can’t quite wrap their heads around the idea that Amanda can be who she claims to be. That she can be exactly who she really is. That she can be that true, that authentic.

Perhaps, with this book, they can believe she is real.