And I looked back into her eyes, deeply, for the first time, and saw a lot of sadness in there.
She looked tired. Hurt.
And you, I said, are really good at giving.
That broke her.
She grimaced and her eyes filled with tears.
We stood there, just looking at each other.
So… I said, you’re a musician? I saw the piano.
Yeah, I’m a singer-songwriter. Can I give you my CD? Consider it a birthday gift.
I took the gift.
LOST
I lost my wallet
I lost my wallet
And I’m lost, dear
I swear I had it
I had it on me when we got here
Let’s go to Vegas
Let’s get a karaoke back room
I’ll never find it
I wanna shout into the vacuum:
That nothing’s ever lost forever
It’s just caught inside the cushions of your couch
And when you find it
You’ll have such a nice surprise
Nothing’s ever lost forever
It’s just hiding in the recess of your mind
And when you need it
It will come to you at night
Oh!
I miss the yellow
I miss the yelling and the shakedown
I’m not complaining
I got a better set of knives now
I miss my drummer
My dead stepbrother
And the pit crowd
And Chuck and Matty…
If they could see me, they’d be so proud
But nothing’s ever lost forever
It’s just caught inside the cushions of your couch
And when you find it
You’ll have such a nice surprise
Nothing’s ever lost forever
It’s just hiding in the recess of your mind
And when you need it
It will come to you at night
Oh!
The wake is over
We gotta leave because they said so
I want to tell you
I want to tell you
But you’re dead, so…
Golden light
So way up high
So wave good-bye
Tonight you’ll find:
That no one’s ever lost forever
When they die they go away
But they will visit you occasionally
(Do not be afraid)
No one’s ever lost forever
They are caught inside your heart
If you garden them and water them
They
make
you
what
you
are
—from Theatre Is Evil, 2012
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 wante
d 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.
The Art of Asking Page 29