Amanda Palmer is the indie rocker’s indie rocker - a couch surfing, ninja show performing, almost entirely fan-funded punk with undeniable eye brows and an undefinable musical style that ranges from Radiohead on a ukulele to Muppet tunes over near screamo. She may not be entirely well known, but to those who know her, she is known well. Outside of her rabid fan-base, she’s known best for two things:
1. She had the largest music Kickstarter campaign of all time, and
2. She’s got a theoretically open marriage with author Neil Gaiman.
Neil Gaiman, on the other hand, is an award-winning (mostly) mainstream author with credits across the entire spectrum of written and visual media. While Amanda Palmer is the cocaine, Gaiman is the ecstasy.
I discovered Amanda Palmer through her TED talk “The Art of Asking.” It’s about the shifts taking place in the music industry in the wake of her Kickstarter success and how people in do great things for each other when they connect. The TLDR is that people want to be part of a community, and will do things voluntarily to support their communities if asked - and that means that artists don’t necessarily need record labels and publishing companies to become successful if they can grow and utilize communities around themselves.
Personally, “community” is something I struggle with. Even when I am undeniably at the center of a group of people, I tend to feel like I am on the outside. I am not Palmer’s White Bride, making instant connections with everyone who walks past, nor am I Neil Gaiman, whose work built its own fan community. Even when I am an integral part of some machine, I still feel like some individual spring - full of potential but kind of useless on my own, and unable to find the right nut to connect myself to the larger system.
I recently listened to Amanda Palmer’s audio-book, built off the TED talk and also titled The Art of Asking. It’s one of the best uses of audio-book as a medium, incorporating song fragments and guest voices at thematically appropriate moments. It’s part memoir, part self-help book, tracing Amanda Palmer’s life from when she finished school to her marriage while providing guidance on how to build a community and keep yourself engaged.
Her book led me back to Neil Gaiman, starting with Stories, an anthology he edited which I will forever associate with my cross country trip from Florida to California, and later to his books. Gaiman is an exceptional storyteller, both in the writing and in the actual telling of his stories. Even his nonfiction sounds like some magical romp through worlds similar to, but not quite like our own.
And that lead me to a realization - I have, with few exceptions, stopped reading stories. I made a rule for myself that any book I read electronically had to be non-fiction, and when the whole world is there at my fingertips, there’s not as much motivation to get up and go to the library or the bookstore. I think that has made any mental/emotional health. Gaiman quotes Einstein in one of his lectures: “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales.” I have been denying myself imagination.
So what do I learn from Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman?
1. Build community and ask for help, at the same time if possible.
2. Know where your core community is - the reason why their marriage works is that they know their primary “partner” is their fans.
3. Don’t let people put you in a box. Amanda Palmer is not just extreme cabaret, Gaiman is not just a comic book writer.
4. Read fairy tales and fiction. Allow yourself to escape the confines of your own consciousness every once in a while.
5. Imagine your partner’s death. If possible, meet that way.
6. Art, in whatever form it takes, is important and it brings people together.
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