Amanda has now left the Q&A to perform an impromptu gig in the Guardian US office. More news as we have it ...
Nathan Dobson poses the question:
Amanda says:
Guardian contributor totally down for a tardis.
i recently touched on the taylor swift thing-thang here....
....and the quote kind of sums it up:
"people want me to ride in and lop off Taylor Swift’s head with my crowdsourcing sword and I won’t do it."
kme9177 has a question from our Facebook followers:
“Have you ever considered working with your husband, Neil Gaiman, on a piece of work combining your talents?”
Amanda says:
Guardian contributor we've done a few things together....:
this book was the reason we met:
http://www.whokilledamandapalmer.com/book.php
and then we made a record:
http://amandapalmer.bandcamp.com/album/an-evening-with-neil-gaiman-and-amanda-palmer
and i just wrote music for this film that neil made with the UNHCR:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIolTbJ_K5U
....and we're going to collaborate on some journalism in the UK this coming year. stay tuned.
Suzie Mason asks:
Hey Amanda! I love your work, can't wait to read your new book :)
Two questions: which is your favourite song (that you've written/sung) and when are you visiting us in England?! <3
Amanda answers:
Guardian contributor EASY
1) my favorite songs rotate all the time. i'm currently engaged in a love affair with "the bed song", which i've been playing live on the book tour and it just works wonders at the moment....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sW4dwXXX7Q
2) HOPEFULLY THIS SPRING.
anthony, my best friend, is still very sick with cancer, and i'm currently leaving all plans on hold until he stabilises. when/if you read the book, you'll understand why.
The aptly named MeAlanPartridge asks
If it wasn't gratuitous in any way, and it was tastefully done, would you consider keeping your clothes on in a live show?
Amanda:
Guardian contributor i'll consider it, but only if the entire audience shows up naked.
ollybee has an interesting question:
Hi Amanda,
I know you & Neil have an open relationship - have you always been poly, and how have you and Neil navigated this aspect of your relationship (especially when you're apart a lot!). Do you have certain rules / things you are or aren't allowed to do outside of the relationship? How do you make it work?
Amanda replies:
Guardian contributor we make it work by constantly talking and making our number one priority to Not Hurt One Another. it's not a choice i'd recommend you make unless you have an incredibly strong/tight relationship that isn't easily threatened by tempers and jealousy, and even then, neil and i have our weak moments. we do have rules (i've voted down certain lovers of his, and he's done the same) but we are in a constant state of learning and evolving...the main rules remains: us first, compassion first, honesty first. when those go away, we start floundering.
baileybaileybailey asks:
Hi Amanda,
I love your work and your performing - best gig ever was the Union Chapel when I managed to meet you and Neil after. Thank you.
I just wanted to ask whether you heard anything back from the Daily Mail? I was fortunate enough to be in the Roundhouse that night, and thought you rocked your response. Did they ever print anything about that or you again?
Also, just finished the book and loved it. Keep on being you. You're a gift to the world.
She’s referring to this story.
Amanda says :
Guardian contributor
OttoMaddox asked:
Any plans for writing and staging a(nother) musical?
Amanda’s reply:
Guardian contributor the one i just workshopped ("the bed show", at bard college last week) is still in its infancy...and when i'm done with this book nonsense i'll hopefully dust it off and keep working on it....
JustinGeoffreys wondered:
Any plans for more poetry?
Amanda responded:
Guardian contributor i've been posting poetry inspired by instagram moments lately.
it's kind of wonderful.
Heather New asked
How did you become so brave? Did you ever fake being fearless? What are your fears?
Amanda replied:
Guardian contributor you should read the book, where i go into depth about this topic.
i am scared shitless of:
-being unloved
-being alone
-being misunderstood
-being invisible.
....and oh the list goes on.
Andrew Wang said:
Amanda - Congrats on your success. The music industry and compensation structure seems really messed up. Just wondering what your thoughts are on crowd funding today. Has crowd funding gotten too crowded and competitive? Does one have to be outrageous to get attention and funded? Has your approach to "The Art of Asking" and crowd funding changed over time? What is your best advice today? Thanks.
Amanda responded:
Guardian contributor i think crowdfunding is definitely wearing people out at the moment, on both sides...and there's kind of a grand balance happening in the AMOUNT of crowdfunding projects out there: there's a kind of crowdfunding-fatigue i see happening, because so many people are using it....BUT on the flip side, now that people are UNDERSTANDING how it works, it's becoming an even more powerful too. i think what we're starting to see is the drop off of "OH MY GOD COOL SYSTEM LET ME SEE HOW IT WORKS AND FUND EVERY FAMILY MEMBER AND ARTIST AND FRIEND!!!" to "ahh, ok.... i understand how this works, and these are the artists and friends and family members i need to prioritise, because they are the ones i want to help, and i only have so many resources"
And Paddy Foran asked:
If I want to get a hug from you at the B&N signing tonight, what's the best way to do that?
Amanda said:
Guardian contributor just come and hang out. i will leave no human unhugged.
(for people in NYC, TONGIHT....i head there after here: http://store-locator.barnesandnoble.com/author-events/Amanda-Palmer/50433007)
NotJohnHubinger inquired:
Do you think there's something hypocritical about your championing of crowdsourcing given the fact that you had the support of a major label for so many years? What I mean is, most artists don't have the benefit of traditional channels when building their fan base, so relying on donations isn't going to be as effective for them, or effective at all. How can you put your experience forward as an ideal model when it's so far from what's feasible for the vast majority of people?
Also, because you're already successful, and already have access (or could have access if you chose) to tradition funding channels, do you think there's something exploitative in asking your fans to pay, participate in, and promote your work for free?
Amanda’s riposte was:
Guardian contributor no, i don't think it's hypocritical at all. i think crowdsourcing tools are for EVERYBODY....form the garage band down the street to....well, lady gaga or justin bieber, should they choose to use them.
"asking your community for help" is not a privilege reserved for....anybody. i talk about this a lot in the book. part of the problem with the idea of "privilege" is this: if you define very strictly who is and isn't allowed to be loved, helped, seen, heard, and supported, you're ALWAYS going to be leaving someone out of the human ecosystem. i'm a maximalist in this sense, and these ideas apply to my approach to feminism, as well. basically: everybody has the right to ask for what they need, and if you deny anybody that right - for any reason - you're silencing their voice and making the human family more dissociated and detached from one another. some of us need food, clean water, political voices, less sexism, more sexual understanding, more emotional understanding, the list goes on and on and on.
we're all in this one together. and to deny the tools of community-gathering and asking to anyone doesn't get us ahead, it puts a wrench i the works.
The excellently named AGameofScones asked:
Can you sum up being married to Neil Gaiman in 5 words?
P.S. I loved The Art of Asking!
Amanda replied:
Guardian contributor
SarahGalo asked
Could you talk about the process of writing your book? How did you come up with the focus?
Amanda replied:
Guardian contributor oh good lord. this is a long answer, but i'll try to condense.
i signed my deal with hachette after doing the TED talk....a lot of publishers came to me saying BOOK? BOOK???BOOOOOOK??? and i was like: "sure, book." the editor emily griffin was actually the very person to hunt me down and although i talked to a bunch of other people, i wound up going with her. (and she was perfect).
i was going to take my time writing the book...i was still on tour at the time i signed the deal, and getting any writing on tour was a joke: the tour schedule is brutal enough as it is, and it's a terrible environment for sitting down and collecting your thoughts. when i'm on tour, i'm lucky if i can read a newspaper for brain-deadness.
and while i was getting ready to slowly, relaxedly dig into the book, exactly a year ago (nov 2013) hachette came to me asking if it was humanly possible to get the book written by spring, so they could put it out this fall. it meant i'd have to unplug my ife completely after getting off tour around christmas and produce an entire book between the months of, oh....february and may. four months to write and edit a whole book. i'd never written a book. it SOUNDED possible. so i asked the dude in my social circle who knows the most about books: mr neil gaiman.
"do you think i can write an entire book in four months if i do nothing else?".
"yes", he said.
so i believed him.
i'm not sure whether it was a monumental mistake or not, because my entire life (marriage, business, friendships) all got thrust to the backburner of my existence and i strained the patient seams of even the strongest fabric in my life....but i decided to go for it. i took a plane to Australia, played hte sydney festival, cleanred my inbox as best i could, and then sat my ass in a chair in melbourne every single day for about 7 weeks, and wrote about 2-5,000 vomit-style words a day. i literally did nothing else. i drank coffee, went to yoga, and wrote. and ate falafel.
i wrote in no particular order....i created hundreds of note cards and pasted them on a wall....and every day i'd pull down five or ten and just try to write on those topics....anecdotes, stories, trains of thought. i had no outline for the book.
then i started the long arduous editing process with jamy ian swiss, one of my best friends (also a professional magician and speaker) and we hung out between new york (my home) and san diego (his home, he has kids he didn't want to be too far away from) and we worked non-fucking-stop on putting the book into some kind of order.
http://instagram.com/p/pWrbN0QWzi/?modal=true
and then we CUT. i gave the first manuscript to neil and he lopped off - i shit you not, in a two-day sitting - 50,000 words.
i sent that next draft, minus neil and jamy's cuts, to twelve or fifteen friends, asked them to read it, and kept cleaning up the text. they all weighed in (they're all thanked at the back of the book if you want to know who weighed in, but the group included some amazing writers...seth godin among them, who was indispensable) and i kept editing down.
i handed the book in at the eleventh hour: literally on the last date the publisher said they could receive it and still get it out on november 11th.
then i drank wine and took a picture of myself ecstatic in my underwear.
And another view:
Amanda and Guardian US’s Kayla Epstein hard at it.
This is the Instagram post Amanda links to:
Thiefree asked
Dear Amanda,
Thanks so much for the book. I'm sorry to hear about the publisher / Amazon troubles - I got mine from Amazon UK without a hitch, so I wasn't aware of an issue until I saw some mention online.
I've been really excited by kickstarter, patreon, and what this means for people like me who want to support artists, but even I go for the easiest purchasing option sometimes.
Given your passion for crowdsourcing - and not in the buzzword sense, but in the real, they-are-my-source sense - do you think that monoliths like Amazon will fall, and people will buy more directly from artists? Or is this more of an eternal struggle kind of deal?
Amanda replied:
Guardian contributor for those not following: my book is out on hachette...(or an arm of hachette, grand central publishing)
if you missed it, there was champagne popping yesterday, because amazon and hachette finally struck a deal (buried the hachette?? *badoom chng*)....
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/13/amazon-hachette-end-dispute-ebooks
(i was happy: http://instagram.com/p/vWxMy5QW-2/?modal=true)
honestly, i think this is a long long discussion, but from what i can tell, amazon realy does have a frightening upper hand. having signed with hachette and felt for the past year what it's like to work inside of a giant publishing house, i have to say: it's felt INFINITELY better than my tenure over at roadrunner records. they haven't fucked with my content, they haven't told me what to do or who to be, and they haven't tied my hands in bafflement when i tried to go directly to my fans for help or information. it could also be that at this later point in my career (and a track record that proves that i'm not *totally* crazy) the big machine is more likely to just shrug and say "well, she must know what she's doing"....but honestly i think there's a fundamental difference between major labels and major publishers: the major publishers seem to have a more concrete understanding that artists are people, not products, and that books come from writers, not from machines, and that taking care of the artists' longevity is in everybody's best interest. that was a totally foreign concept to the label i was on: i really felt, most of the time, like my band was simply looked at as the product-of-the-month, with a sell-by date quickly approaching.
i think the biggest revolution happening is that the MAINstream of human beings are starting to understand the workings-behind-the-curtains of the artistic pursuit - how much time, effort, energy, money it takes to create a book/an article/an album/a tour/a play....and now culture at large, human beings, are making real concrete choices about what kind of art they want to see manifested in their worlds. as far as i'm concerned: there will still be a need for big entities (large publishers, editors working in offices, journalists at places like, oh, say, the guardian, actually on a salary to bring us things we need) but the system is going to hopefully start favoring the direct voice and needs of the people, not so much the needs of the corporations who dictate from above what we read, listen to, see, and love by default.
sorry if that rambles, not editing and typing in real-time, but hopefully that made sense.
Dave Cussons asked:
Amanda replied:
Guardian contributor i assume you're asking about the song "leeds united". :)
it's actually....not about the football team, sadly.
it's a song about losing shit. i was on tour at the time, and i was in the UK, and i was losing everything, everywhere, because i was moving so fast.
i was dating a leeds dude at the time, and went to visit him. he gifted me a leeds united football top, and i loved it, became sentimentally attache, wore it on stage one single night, and promptly lost it.
that was what prompted the song...which then spilled into a few other subject territories. and the video was a riot - we dressed everybody up in leeds uniforms and threw pies at each other in london: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlJ9z_LowBI
(the dude in question, by the way, since enough time has passed, nor do i think he'd mind in the least, was ricky wilson from kaiser chiefs. i still maintain that unemployment is one of the best records ever. and he repaid me with the song "admire you". we're still friends. i love his band.)
Amanda Palmer is online now
Emily Victoria Dunford asked: Dear Amanda,
Your work is a fantastic platform upon which to start conversations about gender politics, societal issues, the nature of art and so on. My friends and I are currently discussing your song Oasis as a satire on the way women are often treated, as well as using it to branch out into other topics. Can you give us some input into our discussion on this complex song and the issues surrounding it?
Amanda replied:
great first question to start with...and thank you for asking.
my take on oasis isn't that it's so much a satire on "the way women are treated" so much as a self-satire about the way women can wind up feeling around the issues of rape, abortion and sexual violence: sometimes, especially when we're young and completely confused by what the rules are, the easiest way out can be to simply DISMISS and laugh off the things that are happening to us. it isn't a particularly popular topic, because it's so dicey....but i certainly have friends (boys and girls alike,....and i include myself here) who have experienced that "if i just treat it like it's a joke then it isn't going to emotionally effect me!!!HAHAHA *secretly weep*" this is the strange thing about humor - and art - and the internet. humor is such a powerful powerful tool when dealing with hurt, with the darkness, with any sort of difficult situation, sometimes i think it's our most powerful tool as human beings. it's also a landmine of potential misunderstanding. see: every good comedian ever pushing the lines and pissing people off. it's part of the risk of the job, and it's an important risk. "oasis" was sort of like my satirical/sarcastic portrait of myself as a 17-year old who wasn't taking herself seriously - and it wasn't supposed to be any kind of political statement other than to say: this is the way one girl dealt with her weird, difficult feelings. i got a lot of grief at the time for being accused of "making light" or "joking" about abortion. and i think that's a bit off. or if it was joking, it was really earnestly joking, with a point. as i said back that and still say now: "when you can't joke about the darkness, that's when the darkness takes over."
Updated
Street performer, living statute and crowdfunding enthusiast Amanda Palmer isn’t easily pigeonholed. The idiosyncratic artist took the spirit and approach she acquired from Boston’s punk-cabaret circuit and injected it into the relatively mainstream alternative-rock world while in the Dresden Dolls.
She started her artistic life as the Eight-Foot Bride on the streets of Boston before forming the Dresden Dolls in 2000 while at a Halloween party with drummer Brian Viglione. The duo were divisive, dismissed as the “gay mimes” by some in the Boston scene, but they were also embraced by an audience of loyal and committed fans. Palmer has also played in the duo Evelyn Evelyn, as well as maintaining a successful solo career. Since releasing her first solo album he has performed around the world to an ardent audience of devotees, releasing her first album Who Killed Amanda Palmer in 2008.
She’s been embroiled in several controversies: the Oasis, about a fan of the Manchester band who is raped, was accused of dealing with the subject matter in a glib manner, and some people were outraged by her poem for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombing suspect. The singer also created a performance art piece that took aim at the anti-gay marriage amendment, Proposition 8.
Recently, Palmer has extolled the virtues of crowdfunding and raised almost $1.2m from more than 24,000 donors for an album with the Grand Theft Orchestra. She also gave a Ted talk where she spoke about how simply asking for things on platforms such as Twitter has enabled her to maintain her independence as an artist and connect with her fans.
Her book The Art Of Asking: or How I Stopped Worrying and Let People Help, is out now. Palmer will be answering your questions in an hour-long live webchat on Friday 14 November at 12pm EST. Post your questions in the comments section below.
Updated
Hey Amanda,
It's Nate, formerly from Gitane. Look forward to seeing you tonight. Don't know if you've chimed in, or even have thoughts, but was wondering what you thought about the TSwift vs. Spotify debate?
P.S. What are the odds you'd have time to draw a Tardis tonight at the signing for down the road tattoo purposes?