The idea of Thoreau gazing thoughtfully over the expanse of transcendental Walden Pond, a bluebird alighting onto his threadbare shoe, all the while eating donuts that his mom brought him just doesn’t jibe with most people’s picture of him as a self-reliant, noble, marrow-sucking back-to-the-woods folk hero. In the book An Underground Education, Richard Zacks declares: Let it be known that Nature Boy went home on weekends to raid the family cookie jar.
Thoreau also lived at Walden for a total of two or three years, but he condensed the book down to a single year, the four seasons, to make the book flow better, to work as a piece of art, and to best reflect his emotional experience.
I told this story to Sam over our coffees.
Poor Thoreau, said Sam, shaking her head. The donuts are totally the mai tai.
Taking the donuts is hard for a lot of people.
It’s not the act of taking that’s so difficult, it’s more the fear of what other people are going to think when they see us slaving away at our manuscript about the pure transcendence of nature and the importance of self-reliance and simplicity. While munching on someone else’s donut.
Maybe it comes back to that same old issue: we just can’t see what we do as important enough to merit the help, the love. Try to picture getting angry at Einstein devouring a donut brought to him by his assistant while he sat slaving on the theory of relativity. Try to picture getting angry at Florence Nightingale for snacking on a donut while taking a break from tirelessly helping the sick. It’s difficult.
So, a plea.
To the artists, creators, scientists, nonprofit-runners, librarians, strange-thinkers, start-uppers, and inventors, to all people everywhere who are afraid to accept the help, in whatever form it’s appearing:
Please, take the donuts.
To the guy in my opening band who was too ashamed to go out into the crowd and accept money for his band:
Take the donuts.
To the girl who spent her twenties as a street performer and stripper living on less than $700 a month, who went on to marry a best-selling author whom she loves, unquestioningly, but even that massive love can’t break her unwillingness to accept his financial help, please…
Everybody.
Please.
Just take the fucking donuts.
You can never give people what they want, Anthony said.
What do you mean?
We were lying by the side of Walden Pond in Concord, two towns over from Lexington, where we’d created a ritual of ambling around the circumference of the water, then lazing under the trees with a picnic for a nice long grok.
People always want something from you, he said. Your time. Your love. Your money. For you to agree with them and their politics, their point of view. And you can’t ever give them what they want. But you—
That’s a dreary worldview.
Let me finish, clown. You can’t ever give people what they want. But you can give them something else. You can give them empathy. You can give them understanding. And that’s a lot, and enough to give.
As Sam and I sat in the café, pondering the donut and mai tai dilemmas of all artists, we were joined by Xanthea, who had first introduced us to each other. Xanthea and I had met a few months before, bonding at a wonderful Kickstarter house party she’d organized in her parents’ backyard in Perth.
Xanthea was twenty-two, worked at a bookstore, didn’t want to finish college, organized indie rock shows in laundromats, wrote songs on various instruments, and was a living statue on the side, clad all in white, wearing an old-fashioned sundress, handing out flowers. I’d gone to see her a few days before, where she was performing on Flinders Street, and watched from a distance as she was ignored, loved, ignored, loved again. When I finally dropped some money in her hat, we shared a conspiratorial gaze—the secret statue society. I was proud of her. At the house party, we had shared tales of living-statue hardships, and she’d told me about being harassed by perv-y drunks, and about the time a girl poked her hard in the ribs with a flute. She toughed it out. My kind of girl.
She sat down next to Sam and ordered a coffee, and we explained Thoreau and the donut kerfuffle. Xanthea said she could totally relate. She was just starting to play small gigs and didn’t know how to handle the business side.
I’m getting offered all these gigs in Perth, they’re offering me actual MONEY to play my stupid songs, not a LOT, but I don’t feel like I should take any money…not yet. I think I’m not ready. And it’s even less fair because I’m not, like, a BAND yet. I’m just a person.
I got what Xanthea was saying about the Band Thing. Taking money on behalf of a group, a band, a company—any entity larger than yourself—feels very different from taking money on behalf of YOU.
When I took the step from playing my few-and-far-between solo shows to playing in The Dresden Dolls with Brian, I felt a huge difference between asking people to listen to ME and MY songs and help ME ME ME, versus helping our BAND. It felt very different to hand someone tapes whose front cover proclaimed AMANDA PALMER as opposed to saying: I’m in a band, here’s our CD.
One felt selfish, the other felt legitimate.
Right before I met Brian, I’d started putting “Amanda Palmer and the Void” on my gig flyers. I figured nobody could argue with that on technical grounds. I had a backup band of approximately no people. (I’m not the only one who’s done it. See: Marina and the Diamonds, Tracy and the Plastics.)
I discovered more recently that this experience has been studied, and not surprisingly, it’s a particularly female problem.
In 2010, Emily Amanatullah, a graduate student in management, did a research simulation in which men and women had to negotiate starting salaries in different scenarios.
When the women negotiated for themselves, they asked for an average of $7,000 less than the men did. But when they negotiated on behalf of a friend, they asked for just as much money as the men did. Amanatullah found that women were concerned about “managing their reputation,” worried that pushing for more money would “damage their image.” And other research shows it’s a justified fear, that both male and female managers are less likely to want to work with women who negotiate during a job interview.
On the other hand, when they had to negotiate on behalf of someone else, they presented far higher counteroffers. The upshot? Women were in fact excellent negotiators. They didn’t feel comfortable using their negotiating skills for themselves, but they felt fine asking on behalf of others.
And the other thing, said Xanthea, sighing. I have friends who’ve played like a gajillion more open mics than me, who are taking it more seriously and gigging every single weekend. I mean, I get what you’re saying. But it doesn’t feel fair.
What do you mean it’s not fair? I said. They’re offering you the money because they like you…and your music, right?
I just mean…like, there’s an ORDER of things—a progression, she said miserably, looking guiltily at me, and then at Sam. And I’m not at that place where I feel like I’m allowed, you know, to get paid.
We both just looked at her and said, in unison:
Xanthea. TAKE THE DONUTS.
In the early days, The Fraud Police seemed to keep pace with my career. Despite write-ups in bigger magazines, airplay on radio and TV, and playing larger venues, the growing fame and all the outside eyes just made me feel more insecure, like I was pulling a bigger one over on everybody. On a bad day, the success did the opposite of reassuring me. Instead, it compounded my fears of not being real.
The volume of those voices in my head blaring you’re a total phony weren’t diminished by compliments from other artists, or by congratulations from my mentors, or even when my parents stopped asking me what I was really doing with my life (due, I feel sure, to the first time I had a show listed in the New Yorker, a press outlet that they actually KNEW).
What at last began to quiet the voices and dismiss the deep-rooted psyche-bashing work of The Fraud Police was simply this: after hund
reds of signings, after talking to thousands of fans, I started to believe that what I did was just as useful as what they did.
They spoke to me directly. In the signing line. Over Twitter. A lawyer loved listening to my music on her long commute to work. An ecologist said my first album got him through final exams. A young doctor had a psychotic break during med school, and said that listening to my song “Half Jack” over and over again in the hospital had helped get him through. A professor had met his wife years before at a Dresden Dolls concert, and now she was in a coma following a car crash; he sent me a necklace of hers as a keepsake.
These were “real” people with “real” jobs, making society work. And there were a lot of them.
I would take in all these stories, and one by one, ten, a hundred, a thousand stories later…I had to believe it. I would hold these people in my arms and I would feel the whole synchronicity of life and death and music envelop us.
And one day I turned around and it had just happened without my realizing it.
I believed I was real.
I had just finished a gig in Perth and was driving to a fan’s house, to crash with the Australian crew, when Neil called me from New York.
He said, My dad just died.
What?
He died. My dad just died. He was in a business meeting, something happened with his heart, and he fell over, and he’s dead.
Oh my god, Neil.
What could I do? I was about as physically far away from him as I could possibly be. We had only been dating for about three months, but it was long enough to have started falling in love.
Do you want me to come to you right now? I’ll get the first flight out, I offered. I’ll just get on a plane and come be with you.
No, darling. He sounded like a zombie. Stay there. Finish your tour. Go to Tasmania.
No. I’ll come. Really. I want to.
No, don’t. I’m asking you not to. Stay there. Go make the people in Tasmania happy.
I felt so incredibly helpless. He was in New York City, literally about to start a signing for his new children’s book. It was midnight in Australia and eleven in the morning there.
I talked to him for a while longer, then hung up, feeling useless.
I was given our host’s master bedroom that night—I was feeling disoriented, and I slept with the phone clutched in my hand. Neil had as deep a connection to his fanbase as I did. I could just imagine him there, those first people coming up with their books in hand, and I imagined him losing himself in their stories, their faces, their details.
I imagined him signing every book very deliberately, focusing on the task at hand, thinking every once in a while, as the ink touched the page and he got lost in a millisecond of space: My dad is dead. I called him the minute I woke the next morning, but I got his voicemail.
I called Cat, Neil’s old friend, who was helping him out with the signing.
How is he? I asked. How was the signing? Is he okay?
You’re not going to believe this…but he’s still at it.
He’d been signing for seven hours straight, for 1,500 people.
I didn’t know what to do. Write him a long, heartfelt email? Send flowers? Both seemed ridiculous.
So I called my assistant at the time—wonderful, helpful Beth, who was also in New York—told her about Neil’s dad, and gave her instructions. She raced around the city to accomplish several tasks, and stepped up just as Neil was dedicating the very last book to the very last person, after eight solid hours of signing.
She placed a tomato, a schedule, and a banana on the table in front of him.
From Amanda, she told him.
Cat, who was standing off to the side, texted me:
You did it. I don’t know HOW you did it.
But he just actually smiled for the first time.
AMPERSAND
I walk down my street at night
The city lights are cold and violent
I am comforted by the approaching sound of trucks and sirens
Even though the world’s so bad
These men rush out to help the dying
And though I am no use to them
I do my part by simply smiling
The ghetto boys are catcalling me
As I pull my keys from my pocket
I wonder if this method of courtship
Has ever been effective
Has any girl in history said
“Sure! You seem so nice! Let’s get it on!”
Still, I always shock them when I answer
“Hi, my name’s Amanda”
And I’m not gonna live my life on one side of an ampersand
And even if I went with you, I’m not the girl you think I am
And I’m not gonna match you
Cause I’ll lose my voice completely
No, I’m not gonna watch you
Cause I’m not the one that’s crazy…
I have wasted years of my life
Agonizing about the fires
I started when I thought that to be strong you must be flame-retardant
And now to dress the wounds goes into question
How authentic they are
There is always someone criticizing me
She just likes playing hospital
Lying in my bed
I remember what you said
There’s no such thing as accidents
But you’ve got the headstones all ready
All carved up and pretty
Your sick satisfaction
Those his and hers matching
The daisies all push up in pairs to the horizon
Your eyes full of ketchup
(It’s nice that you’re trying)
But I’m not gonna live my life on one side of an ampersand
And even if I went with you, I’m not the girl you think I am
And I’m not gonna match you
Cause I’ll lose my voice completely
No, I’m not gonna watch you
Cause I’m not the one that’s crazy
I’m not the one that’s crazy, yeah…
As I wake up—two o’clock
The fire burned the block
But ironically stopped at my apartment
And my housemates are all sleeping soundly
And nobody deserves to die
But you were awful adamant
That if I didn’t love you
Then you have just one alternative…
And I may be romantic
And I may risk my life for it
But I ain’t gonna die for you
(You know I ain’t no Juliet)
And I’m not gonna watch you while you burn yourself out, baby…
No, I’m not gonna stop you
Cause I’m not the one that’s crazy, yeah
I’m not the one that’s crazy, yeah
I’M NOT THE ONE’S THAT’S CRAZY
—from Who Killed Amanda Palmer, 2008
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.
The Art of Asking Page 18