book stack tuesday : the art of asking

My head nodded in recognition throughout this book. So far, I’ve read it twice. There is more to say, but I’ll start here:

I’ve had some experience with asking*, which taught me a lot about generosity, and giving, and community, and vulnerability, and expectation, and judgment. So I was interested to read Amanda Palmer’s take on it–what has she learned about asking and giving in her life before, during, and after her million dollar Kickstarter campaign, which is how many people know her.

First, I felt such a kinship with her in the ways she described her relationship to her community of “fans” who were more friend than fan. Her descriptions of a community built around relationship, not numbers (to the chagrin and befuddlement of her record label’s “business plan”), mirrors my own. Having embarked on a 43-city U.S. tour for my book Life is a Verb from the ground up, by readers asking me to come to their cities and opening their homes to me, I nodded through much of the book. Having my publisher’s publicists make decisions based on numbers and not relationships, and having hired a “business manager” who couldn’t understand relationship, I could see myself in her dilemmas, and in her choices. By the end of the book, I was convinced that she and I are long lost sisters.

What is it to ask for help? Or to receive the help that is given?

What keeps us from asking? Of what use are those stories we are telling ourselves about shame or worth?

She writes: “Often it is our own sense of help that has immobilized us. Whether it’s in the arts, at work, or in our relationships, we often resist asking not only because we’re afraid of rejection but also because we don’t even think we deserve what we’re asking for.”

When our friend Amy raised $100,000 to pay John’s medical expenses when he had a very fast-growing, and aggressive kidney cancer, I knew it was necessary because it would save his life, and it did. We paid for surgery and expenses related to his medical care, and we gave away the rest to other cancer patients in need, people we didn’t know and didn’t need to know to see they were in need, just as we had been. Yet, every purchase I made in that time period was scrutinized and criticized by one or more people: “How can you afford haircuts if you can’t afford your medical bills?” “Sell your damn house!” “I suppose you’re using this money to buy your precious organic produce.”

In addition to the amazing amount of generosity there is in the world, there is also a lot of rage in the world, and misdirected anger that stems from comparison and from perceived lack.

She writes: “When artists work well, they connect people to themselves, and they stitch people to one another, through this shared experience of discovering a connection that wasn’t visible before.”

That is what my Camp is, I thought to myself.

She writes, “Asking, at its core, is a collaboration.”

Sometimes giving is seen as an act of power–that’s what can drive people to make demands of those they have given to. This is not true giving. If I give you a gift and there are strings attached, that is not a gift.

This is important:

“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.”

My need for John’s surgery was tinged with shame: We should have been better savers. I should give up writing and get a real job with benefits. I shouldn’t be in this situation at this age. It was only after this experience that I came to truly understand that we do have the power to help each other when we ask for help with gratitude. In profound ways.

Amanda Palmer writes of her deep connections to her audience:

“I couldn’t outsource it. I could hire help, but not to do the fundamental things that create emotional connections: the making of the art, the feeling-with-other-people at a human level. Nobody can do that work for me–no Internet marketing company, no manager, no assistants. It had to be me.”

“The recorded songs, the tangible CDs, were only the tip of the iceberg: the perfect, frozen, beautiful soundtrack for something far bigger, and far deeper. The connection beneath was everything.” Yes, oh so much yes.

She writes of being seen, and how hard that is:

“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.”

Perhaps it is the job of the artist, the writer, the community-builder to offer safe space for seeing.

You’ll want to watch this.

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* – one of my favorite interviews is this one with Susan Piver about thankfulness, giving, and receiving–and about a model for giving that goes far beyond reciprocity.