Eccentric's Corner: The Exchange Artist

Amanda Palmer

PROFESSION: Singer, writer, performance artist, lightning rod

CLAIM TO FAME: Raising $1.2 million on Kickstarter from 25,000 fans to produce her last album

To her many fans, Amanda Palmer is a rock star, a poet, a houseguest, even a confidante. To her critics, she represents everything that's wrong with an oversharing, Kickstarter-abusing celebrity culture. Now, in The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help, the former lead singer of "Brechtian punk cabaret" band The Dresden Dolls—and onetime human-statue street performer known as "The Eight-Foot Bride"—shares the lessons she's learned about giving, taking, and connecting.

You and your fans have an intense connection. You've performed at their house parties and even let them draw on your naked body. Do artists owe fans such openness?

I put my relationship with my fan base in the metaphor of the relationship that you have with a lover or spouse. Do you "owe" your lover your time and energy? Well, yes, but I don't like to think of it that way—it's a relationship, and if it's real you spend time together. That is the relationship. There are moments when I literally owe my fans a hang in their basement because they bought it, but it doesn't feel obligatory, because I extended the offer.

You've also gone into a closet and let fans, one at a time, come in and confide in you. Is it hard to convince people you're that accessible?

You have a choice if you're a celebrity: You can either disconnect and live in a rarefied world of other celebrities, or you can learn how to live in relationships with people who may have an idea about you because you've written very personal things. But if we're sitting across from each other, they must throw that out the window because I am real, and I'm just a human being. It's a lot of work—and normal people don't have to do that work. Normal people are just taken at face value. There's no baggage, no controversy, you're just ... Steve. But if you keep a very open, human attitude with people, they'll respond in kind. And if you distance yourself and act like a celebrity, you'll be treated like a celebrity—which is actually no fun.

It seems counterintuitive when you write that what you liked about performing in people's houses is that the events aren't about you.

It's similar to church: It's not about the minister, it's about the communion. Music is not about ego. Music is this age-old human activity of resonating with one another. You may have one person in the circle around the fire playing the instrument, but it's not about that person. That person is providing the soundtrack for all the others to have their experience. It's a service position.

Your book details the things you've asked from your fans, from hosting you on tour to sitting in with your band. With all you've asked for, is it hard for you to say no?

No. If you're a good negotiator, you know how and when to ask, and how and when to say no, with grace and compassion. It's the same skill set. You have to be able to empathize with the other person, and you have to make yourself vulnerable. But then you win—then you connect. And everything becomes possible.

How did you react to the criticism you received after you raised $1.2 million on Kickstarter to produce your last album?

Some people are very uncomfortable with the idea of direct exchange. It just mystifies me that they don't get it: There is nothing wrong with asking for something, even something absurd. Nobody has to answer the call. The people who are giving are forming a human community around the absolutely essential notion that human beings are allowed to be absurd. It's not up to anyone to judge—it's only up to you to support or not support. It's as simple as that, but that's so messy for some people that it freaks them out.

Soon after the Boston Marathon bombing, you posted "A Poem for Dzhokhar" [Tsarnaev], which led one columnist to write, "This trend of empathy has to go away."

The worst thing about that was reading comments from within my own fan base saying, "This is not the time for empathy. We believe in compassion, but not for these people." I wanted to scream. I just thought: You've entirely missed the point, because the minute you decide to be selective about compassion and empathy, you've lost. I was taught as a teenager that [people like the Marathon bombers] are exactly the people you need to practice compassion with, that wherever it is hardest you must go. That's the real work of being human, because if you only connect where it's easy, it's just not as deep.

You said the poem took just minutes to produce and that had you, say, gotten a phone call at that moment, you may never have written it and no one would have seen it—which seems to epitomize your career: You're always "on," and you're constantly sharing whatever you create.

It could be that my desire for instant gratification is on the high end, which has actually made the Internet really handy and really delicious. I have tried to create an existence in which I can work as impulsively as possible without bad consequences. I've set my lifestyle up that way. I've set my marriage up that way. [Palmer is married to British author Neil Gaiman, though they do not live together.] I've set it up so I can make split decisions about when to write, how to write, when to connect, and how to connect.

And you tweet while you work.

I really don't like solitude. I used to see that as a flaw, but now I see it as a feature, not a bug. And like anything else in my life—my need for attention, my desire to cuddle everybody, my desire to be constantly connected to humanity—I try to see it through the lens of how it could be helpful to me and to others. But I also don't know many authors or songwriters or painters who aren't anxious to share the work they're proud of.

Is tweeting an art form?

It is. It's just words and communication, and anytime you have words and communication, you can have art.