This is a fun read with a profound message.

Click on the photo to link to the book on Amazon.

The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help
Amanda Palmer

Girls, for the record, almost always took the flower. The ones who refused? Sometimes they seemed to think they were doing me a favor by rejecting the flower, gesturing: No, no! I couldn’t possibly! Keep it for someone else! But they didn’t understand that they were breaking my heart. Gifting them my flower—my holy little token—was what made me feel like an artist, someone with something to offer, instead of a charity case.
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It was essential to feel thankful for the few who stopped to watch or listen, instead of wasting energy on resenting the majority who passed me by.
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I liked giving permission to people to look at my face. Not so much because I wanted them to LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME, but because I wanted them to feel invited to meet my gaze and share a moment. And I knew the game worked. I knew that, having invited them into my face like a host invites a guest into a kitchen, I would be equally invited to look back into theirs. Then we could see each other. And in that place lies the magic. I see you. BELIEVE ME.
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A farmer is sitting on his porch in a chair, hanging out. A friend walks up to the porch to say hello, and hears an awful yelping, squealing sound coming from inside the house. “What’s that terrifyin’ sound?” asks the friend. “It’s my dog,” said the farmer. “He’s sittin’ on a nail.” “Why doesn’t he just sit up and get off it?” asks the friend. The farmer deliberates on this and replies: “Doesn’t hurt enough yet.”
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In both the art and the business worlds, the difference between the amateurs and the professionals is simple: The professionals know they’re winging it. The amateurs pretend they’re not.
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Those who can ask without shame are viewing themselves in collaboration with—rather than in competition with—the world. Asking for help with shame says: You have the power over me. Asking with condescension says: I have the power over you. But asking for help with gratitude says: We have the power to help each other.
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Asking is an act of intimacy and trust. Begging is a function of fear, desperation, or weakness. Those who must beg demand our help; those who ask have faith in our capacity for love and in our desire to share with one another.
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The opposite of “Indian giver” would be something like “white man keeper”…that is, a person whose instinct is to remove property from circulation…The Indian giver (or the original one, at any rate) understood a cardinal property of the gift: whatever we have been given is supposed to be given away again, not kept…The only essential is this: The gift must always move.
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Just by seeing someone—really seeing them, and being seen in return—you enrealen each other.
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I loved the connecting. I loved the seeing. But it wasn’t enough. People loved The Bride because she was perfect and silent. Anyone.
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As artists, and as humans: if your fear is scarcity, the solution isn’t necessarily abundance. To quote Brené Brown again: Abundance and scarcity are two sides of the same coin. The opposite of “never enough” isn’t abundance or “more than you could ever imagine.”
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When you are looked at, your eyes can stay blissfully closed. You suck energy, you steal the spotlight. When you are seen, your eyes must be open, as you are seeing and recognizing your witness. You accept energy and you generate energy. You create light. One is exhibitionism, the other is connection. Not everybody wants to be looked at. Everybody wants to be seen.
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Unfortunately, some people try to use crowdfunding not understanding this concept, hoping that somehow there’s magical “free money” out there. There isn’t. Effective crowdfunding is not about relying on the kindness of strangers, it’s about relying on the kindness of your crowd. There’s a difference.
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They weren’t looking to me as a leader to follow blindly, there to dictate their choices. They were looking to me as a connector, a coordinator, which was the role I wanted.
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I emailed a pal at Kickstarter to see if they had any hard evidence to support this, and indeed, they had the numbers: Since Kickstarter began, 887,256 backers have asked for the artists to refrain from sending them any kind of reward—which represents a little over 14 percent of their user base.
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It reminded me of the shiver you get in the split second after leaving the edge of a diving board, knowing that your every pore is about to experience a shocking, full-body sensual assault: you brace…with joy.
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I guess the point is, there is no trust without risk. If it were EASY…I mean, if it was all a guaranteed walk in the park, if there wasn’t a real risk that someone would cross the line…then it wouldn’t be real trust. Now I know it’s real. She proved how much I could trust everybody else. Her stupid drunk move just reminds me how safe I am.
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I kept the eyebrows—I found, to my delight, that it had the unintended side effect of causing people to look me in the eye. When you have creatively painted eyebrows, people will assume you’re approachable and affable, and talk to you. It’s like having a funny mustache.
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