The Rich Roll Podcast - Amanda Palmer On Radical Compassion & The Power Of Vulnerability

Episode Date: August 8, 2019

Today's guest is many things. A fiercely independent singer, songwriter and musician. A bestselling author and blogger. A playwright and director. A riveting speaker and a viral TED Talk-er. A crowdfunding mom. An ardent feminist. And a fearless activist. Living and breathing at the cutting edge of expression in all forms, Amanda Palmer is an iconic, bold and sui generis performer constantly innovating what it means to be an artist in the modern age. Getting her start as a busking eight-foot bride statue in Harvard Square, she would go on to form one-half of the inventive, punk cabaret act The Dresden Dolls before launching one of the most successful crowd-funded solo careers in music history. Leaning into her devoted audience to support her seemingly endless fount of creativity, Amanda helped resuscitate the ancient art of artistic patronage, giving us all permission to ask. And more importantly perhaps, the encouragement to receive. Further to this idea, The Art of Asking, Amanda's sensational 2013 TED Talk, would go on to be viewed over 20 million times and led to her New York Times bestselling memoir, The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help*. Leveraging her legion of 15,000 Patreon supporters, Amanda’s career is wholly devoted to her adoring fans eager to support her creations. Her latest offering, There Will Be No Intermission, is a beautiful, haunting and powerful solo album and world tour that grapples with the very personal and social emotional landscape of abortion, miscarriage and death. This past May I had the good fortune to witness Amanda's epic 4 1/2 hour show at the Ace Theatre here in LA. I was extremely moved by it. And even more privileged to host this conversation with her the following day. This is a conversation about what it means to be radically compassionate — open-hearted to even those we deem undeserving — and why humanity depends on empathy for its survival. It's about the strength that can be gathered when we're courageous enough to be truly vulnerable. It's about the perniciousness of perfectionism — the true enemy of creative expression. Why asking help is so hard, but crucial — also welcome. And some uncomfortable truths about my hero Henry David Thoreau. Hint: it involves donuts. In the spirit of vulnerability, I'll freely admit I was a bit nervous and intimidated — I mean who wouldn't be? Nonetheless, it was an honor to spend an hour with one of the great creative voices of our time. I'm delighted to share the experience with you today. The visually inclined can watch our entire conversation on YouTube here: bit.ly/amandapalmer459 (please subscribe!) Enjoy! Rich

An artist's job is to offer up some form, some kind of reflection of what's going on. What's going on out there, what's going on inside us, what's going on inside me right now, and to organize it in some kind of way, whether that is painting, dance, sculpture, film, music, you name it, to organize that reflection into an offering back to everybody else. You might see you in this. This might make you feel something. You might recognize yourself in this. For me, with music and art, it's always going to circle back

to why we needed it in the first place. The platforms will change. Who we trust will change. The middlemen will change. The gatekeepers, the filters will change. But why we do it and why we need to feel it, that will not change. Art and music for thousands and thousands and thousands of years of human history were just useful tools

of the tribe. We needed it for ritual, for grieving, for transition, for celebration. None of that was about selling shit. It was about doing and being and connecting. That's Amanda Palmer, and this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. I'm your host. This is my podcast. Welcome or welcome back. Good to be with you here today. Quick reminder, my big live show plus podcast is coming up quick. It's going down Friday, September 27th at the beautiful, the historic Wilshire Ebell Theatre. Special guests to be announced. Really excited about this. We're working hard behind the scenes to craft and create this immersive, entertaining experience.

Tickets are still available, but they're going quickly. So grab yours while they're hot. And you can find them by clicking on the Appearances tab on my website, richroll.com. I'll also put a link up in the show notes as well. And you can sign up for my newsletter, and I'll send you an email about it. In any event, very excited about today's guest, a true artist who in so many ways defies any attempt to define her, but I'm going to do my best. Amanda Palmer is many, many things. She's a singer, a songwriter, a musician, a playwright, an author, a pianist, a director, a blogger, a TED talker.

What else? A feminist, an activist, a crowdfunder, and really a performance artist who lives and breathes at the cutting edge of expression in all forms. Amanda got her start as a busking eight-foot bride statue in Harvard Square and went on to form one half of the inventive punk cabaret act, the Dresden Dolls, before launching one of the most successful crowdfunded solo careers in music history. is super interesting and compelling in this case because Amanda is iconic not just for her fearless artistry, but also for how she has reinvented and embraced and really leaned into her audience to support her creativity. Towards this end, her 2013 TED Talk, The Art of Asking, about this very subject, would go on to be viewed over 20 million times, leading to her New York Times bestselling memoir, The Art of Asking, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help. Now leveraging this legion of Patreon supporters that she has, I think it's about 15,000 at this point. Amanda's career is devoted to her adoring fans. And her latest creation is There Will Be No Intermission. And it's this beautiful, haunting, and really powerful solo album and world tour that grapples with the very personal and social emotional landscape of abortion, miscarriage, and death. I had the opportunity to see the epic four and a half hour show at the Ace Theater here in Los Angeles in

May. I was very moved by it and was fortunate enough to have this conversation with her the following day. More about all this in a minute, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment

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you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, Amanda, what an honor, what a privilege to spend time with this incredible human being.

This is a great conversation. We talked about a lot of stuff. We talked about compassion, the power of vulnerability, the importance of empathy, why perfectionism is the enemy of creativity, and why asking for help is so hard but crucial and generally almost always welcome. We also talk a little bit about Henry David Thoreau, a little myth-busting there, and donuts. Yes, donuts. You're going to have to hear the story. I'll admit I was a little bit nervous on this one.

I don't know if it comes across or not. This was a big one for me. I just, I was geeking out, fanning out on Amanda. I was just so delighted to talk to her. But I think it's a good one. Final note, Amanda had a flight to catch. So this one is a little bit more truncated than my usual conversations, but nonetheless amazing.

So without further ado, let's talk to the powerful and amazing Amanda Palmer. Following you for a long time, but I'd never seen you perform before. And I was deeply impacted by it. But I think the thing that moved me the most was just the love from the audience. Like the connection is so deep with your peeps. Yeah. Well, it's a long-term relationship we've had. Yeah.

You know, I wouldn't be able to do a show like this if I didn't have an audience that I had grown up with for so long yeah I mean it's it's no small thing and it was very very evident the amount of love

that was moving in two directions and four hours. Four and a half. Yeah. I do like, I do, I'm an athlete. I do like ultra distance stuff, like ultra marathon type stuff.

That was the ultra endurance version of Amanda Palmer last night. Well, and ironically, I feel that the show should be a little longer. Yeah, you would have kept going. I had to rush to get to Curfew. I didn't get to play the encore. Right. And in the original draft of the show, I had more songs and stories. They had to get cut and cut and cut.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I loved it. I loved everything about it. And I'm delighted to be able to talk to you today. So thanks for making time. I'm really glad you came. and I were chatting during the intermission, Greg said something that I think is totally on point, which is that you can't be radically compassionate on the level that you are without the vulnerability or the willingness to be as vulnerable as you are.

And so I'm just interested in kind of how you think about that. Well, I think compassion and vulnerability just sort of go hand in hand. And I also think that the thing that makes radical compassion radical is that by definition, you can't be selective about it. I mean, this is the thing, and this is what I see in the feminist movement all the time too, is like you can't decide to be compassionate just for those people or just in this moment. Or I'll be compassionate if everything lines up for me, if it's convenient, whatever. And, you know, in order to empathize with somebody, anybody, especially the difficult people, and by the difficult people, that could be the strange people in strange lands that you have very little in common with culturally or your mom.

You know, the leaps of compassion that are the most difficult do take a certain kind of vulnerability because it's in that moment where you're sort of opening yourself up to potential harm or actually fear, which is like the fear of what's going to happen if you open yourself up to empathizing with this person or what's going to happen in your own head if you open your imagination up to empathizing with someone who could do something terrible to you. Yeah. Being willing to embrace the fringes of what our social contract is willing to endure, right? The idea that we can all agree that compassion is a good thing and everyone likes to think of themselves as compassionate, but how sturdy is that concept, you know, and your willingness to test that at the outer edges of it is, you know, what leads to poem gate. And then that's where you're tested, like your resolve, like is your compassion truly radical enough to withstand the criticism, not just from people from a different political perspective, but your own people. people from a different political perspective, but your own people.

Yes. Well, your own people failing to have compassion for you or your failure to have compassion for the people immediately around you. I mean, I feel like those are the most difficult moments. Yeah. So, maybe explain like the poem thing briefly for people that are listening that might not be familiar with what went down. I'm from Boston. And so in the spring of 2013, my husband Neil and I were renting a place in Boston not far from my apartment. We had just gotten together. Our relationship was still pretty new. And we had moved to Boston because my best friend had cancer and I was taking him to chemo and the Boston bombing happened a few blocks from my apartment where I had lived for many many many years and there's a there's a lot of layers but the I think the most important thing is you know I live on the internet a lot. My community gathers on the internet.

And when the Boston bombing happened, this is also 2013, so I was on Twitter a lot. And we were all told by the government to stay in our houses. I mean, everyone was literally told, don't go outside. And the news was horrific. I mean, there's literally a blood bath at the marathon finish line. And it was just sort of unimaginable, like nothing like this had ever happened in Boston. This was a mass murder. And the images were particularly horrific, you know, these limbless dying people and the manhunt going on at the same time.

I don't know if you remember the news, but, you know, there's a city lockdown and a manhunt for this kid. And this kid, Joe Hart Tsarnaev, was 19. And I grew up in Lexington. He grew up in Cambridge, you know, the next town over. And it was so close to home, like the idea that this, you know, this kid just like me from a lefty liberal town could carry out an act so horrific. friends with kids of my friends like this was someone from my community and we followed as the manhunt happened and you know i finally found him he was found bleeding in the bottom of a boat hiding in someone's backyard in watertown and i i i tried to imagine what it must have been like in that moment to be that kid. I mean, he was a kid. He was 19.

And he had just murdered a bunch of people and was just lying there waiting to be caught. And I wrote this spur-of-the-moment poem on my blog trying to, you know, not even so much trying to empathize, but just sort of doing this exercise of imagination. Like, what is it like to be in the bottom of that boat? And I got crucified by the Boston press for even daring to offer up what appeared to be empathy for this kid. Yeah.

Did you have a sense that that could be perceived in that way, or did that take you by surprise? I was totally shocked. Yeah. And also, you know, I posted it to my blog, which is not a blog with a huge readership, and to a very specific set of people, you know, my tribe, my community, many of whom had been with me on Twitter for the past few days watching this unfold. You know, we were all holding each other in this really horrifying moment. And this was mostly for them. And the poem actually sort of stitched together my own

feelings of lostness and confusion in the world with this kids, which I think was what people found mostly offensive. And, you know, the first comments in on my blog were from my fan base, my community, and, you know, people read it, they liked it, they understood it. But then, you know, when the outside world got a hold of it and this crazy right-wing blog found it and put it up, I was all of a sudden branded a terrorist sympathizer. And there were lots of very, very, very, very, very nasty words and languages that I do not want to repeat.

Do you think part of that was due to timing? Yeah, I think it was all timing. Like if you had done that a year later? Yeah, if I had done it a year later, I don't think anyone would have cared. But this was, I mean, this was like three or four days after the bombing. So it hurt, of course, a little bit to get yelled at by all these right-wing people.

But what really hurt was getting yelled at by my own, by the left-wing people who screamed at me that this was inappropriate and too soon. And especially what hurt the most was that, Amanda, we get that you believe in radical compassion and that's great, but there are people who we do need to exclude. Right, it begs the question

of whether compassion is a zero-sum game. Like if you're apportioning compassion to one person, does that mean that you are neglecting compassion for somebody else? And is compassion tantamount to endorsement, right? That's where it gets sort of confusing and confounding. Yeah, and it's not. And I mean, this was my defense. And I, you know, I felt so wildly misunderstood. And, connects people with their internet trolls and haters. It's a really beautiful podcast. And he has a great maxim that empathy is never endorsement. Empathy is not endorsement. Empathy is just empathy. And, you know, and you've got, I mean, the more I think about these sorts of things and the more I look at it from, you know, through different facets, we have to have compassion for the worst people. Well, I think we're in a cultural moment right now where these, how we talk about these things has become so highly sensitized as we retreat into our silos and, you know, virtue signal to our

respective audiences. And what's kind of interesting is the juxtaposition of that kind of cultural gestalt in that direction versus your relationship with Twitter, which is like this incredibly positive, you know, community oriented kind of collective experience that raises the vibration of all the people that you touch and impact. Yet at the same time, there's this other, you know, ecosystem that's going on on that same platform that's contributing to the problem that ultimately you had to kind of weather through. Yeah. And that's a fear driven system. So what's the antidote keep just doubling down on put your head down and yeah and uh and you know it's it can be very tempting to give into um

you know anger judgment that silo that you were talking about. But it never works. It never pans out well. Yeah, but we're just seeing it continually amplifying like 10x every year. So, we just need more Amanda Palmers on Twitter, I guess. Well, actually, it might be useful to mention that I did not come by that immediately. I learned, you know, I've been on the internet since 1999. And the early Dresden Dolls blog, you know, soon had a forum. And this was all pre-Facebook, pre-Twitter, pre-MySpace even, pre-LiveJournal, like in the old days of the internet.

And I learned gradually that feeding the monsters of hate and judgment on the internet were not really yielding good fruit. And I learned these lessons through my blog, you know, and through all of a sudden through the power that I wielded having this platform. I learned it on Twitter and I would probably be pretty ashamed of some of the things that I posted in the early days because I just didn't get it yet you know and I and I I didn't fully understand yet the importance of not telling other people's stories for them I didn't understand yet the importance of not, you know, like immediately picking up my sword when someone was challenging me and having a go at them. I was very reactive.

And years and years and years on the internet of, and also, you know, my own work and my own mindfulness work finally led me to like realizing that there's a kind of a jujitsu that you can do without leaving the internet and without saying, fuck everything, I'm deleting all my social media. There is a way of reaching back out to people to decharge a situation. Neutralize.

to discharge a situation, you know, to neutralize, to neutralize and, you know, the best, what's the word I'm looking for? You know, the best weapon really can often just be burying your own throat and showing your own vulnerability to someone who's charging at you because they're never expecting that. Yeah. And when people are coming at you with intense hatred, they're never expecting that you're just going to calmly try to engage them in a loving conversation. Right. That's not what they want.

Wait, what? You just changed the rules here. Yeah. And I like that practice. You know, that's not something I was ever expecting to get good at when I got into rock and roll, but that wound up being a kind of a side effect of being a public musician on the internet. How do you feel about the kind of hair trigger that we seem to be on in this kind of cancel culture where a misstep can result in basically the ruination of somebody for something they said or something that gets misconstrued. I think it's very dangerous and in a lot of instances, very stupid.

But it's a reality. Sure. I mean, it is a reality and it is important to keep our hand on the throttle of what gets amplified, who gets attention, what we consume, what stories we want to continue to tell and who gets to tell them? So I would never say like, let's just keep it a free for all and not be discerning. But to just cancel everything that has a whiff of badness would basically mean, ultimately, if we took that to its end game, the cancellation of all art. And I'm not a fan of that idea. Yeah, because- Nothing is pure. It just doesn't exist. And the compassion is the facility and the willingness to be able to see the whole person beyond the misdeed.

Sure. And part of our job, you and I, anyone with a platform as media makers, culture makers, is to always add context. This is what this is. This is where this came from. We have the internet. We can fucking put anything in context if we're not lazy. Right. And so, you know, something of dubious origin, let's say a short film directed by a serial killer, it can still have its place in society, but it needs to be put into context. What is it? What does it mean? What can it teach us? If it has nothing to teach us, fuck it, throw it out, burn it, good. But if it has got something to teach us, and usually, almost always, it does, we need to be more careful curators of what culture is and is going to be. And that means not just throwing everything in the dumpster. Yeah. And an appreciation for subtlety and context, right? Like we've just decided that context is not important, you know, as long as it serves my, you know, agenda or whatever it is that,

you know, I stand for. Well, like everything else in culture right now, there's like, there's a death of nuance. Yeah. right. And a death of satire and a death of irony, and that's not good for anybody. No, it's not. Last night you said there was criticism in the wake of this poem situation. And part of the criticism was that you were accused of like making light. And you said, that's my job.

The job of the artist is to make light. And you then wrote this other more recent poem reflecting back on that same individual in Boston and it was the most beautiful thing. You said, we will stay crippled in the darkness if we cannot feel compassion for the heart that is the darkest. I really did rhyme darkness with darkest. Such a fucking lazy poet.

It's still pretty fucking good though. I love that. And I think we need more of that. Yeah. I will double down on that any day. Yeah. Beyond, you know, making light, like how do you define the role of the artist? I don't.

That's not my job. Yeah. How do you think of it for yourself though? Like if you were to elaborate on that uh i mean an artist's job is to is to offer up some form some kind of reflection of what's going on what's going on out there what's going on inside us what's going on inside us, what's going on inside me right now, and to organize it in some kind of way, whether that is painting, dance, sculpture, film, music, you name it,

to organize that reflection into an offering back to everybody else. You might see you in this. This might make you feel something. You might recognize yourself in this. And, you know, I find myself, especially lately, I've been working through so much of my own grief through making art that I find myself wondering like god like what the fuck do other people do like I'm really lucky I have a full-time job where I get to like work through and try to make meaning of what is happening to me. I get to spend all day and night doing that.

But most people would think of that as a nightmare. Like, most people spend a lot of energy trying to like erect a wall in between themselves and whatever that is. Well, and mostly- Avoiding looking at that. And mostly that doesn't work. No, it doesn't. But people will pursue it to the grave. Yeah, and mostly it doesn't work. You've got to sort through.

You've got to make meaning. You've got to, you know, when grief happens, there has to be space and time to heal. be space and time to heal. It could be through any form of exercise or creation, but you have to do it. If you don't do it and you compartmentalize, we see what happens. We're seeing it all over the place. Yeah. It was Anthony who said to you that those issues left unattended are doing pushups in the dark. Yeah. You said, if you don't deal with your grief and trauma or your demons, they go into the cellar of your soul and lift weights. Yeah.

I've experienced that. I think we all, we all have. Yeah. Yeah. You've got a deal. Yeah. When I look at like what you do and all your various expressions though,

it's, it's, it's almost like you, Amanda Palmer, the person transcends the art. Like you are the art. I think your person is art in its own sense. Like just everything that you are in like a Warholian sense, like you are the expression of all of these things. You're a representation of all of these offerings, but it's a performance in its own right. You know what I mean?

I would say that if that's true, it's no more or less true for me than it is for you or anyone else in this room. What do you mean by that? I mean, we're always performing our own lives. All of us. Yeah. You know, this gets into a really heavy duty philosophical rabbit hole of, you know, what's real? Which one of you is real? Like this one, the one who woke up in the morning, the one who was brushing his teeth, the one who is visiting with his family, like which is, you know, which one is persona and which one is real? Well, we're all multifaceted and we show up with different masks and different persona, you know, for different situations. feeling like when I sit down on stage, I'm the closest version of my authentic self and I'm showing the audience

the closest thing to quote-unquote real that I can come up with. But it's still show business. I still have to be on stage at 7.30 and deliver a show no matter what's going on. And in order to do that, I do what anybody else who has to show up, you know, to their job to deliver,

which is like, you know, pull it together. At the show last night, I was thinking, I had like conflicting thoughts. One was the way that you carried yourself on stage and made yourself comfortable, created this sense of intimacy where it really felt like we were just in your living room hanging out, even though there's 1500 people there or whatever.

Like that was immediately established, that level of intimacy and just the relaxed demeanor that you had and the way that the show unfolded felt like very spontaneous. Like it just occurred to you in the moment. You were just channeling whatever inspiration came to you in that instance. And then I thought, yeah, but she's on tour. Like there's like, I'm sure the show varies a little bit from evening to evening, but essentially she's doing the same thing over and over and over again and having to, you know know try to keep it fresh

but also there's some rehearsed aspect to it of course yeah so when i was putting this show together i um first of all i was incredibly inspired seeing hannah gadsby's show which i saw in london and um i don't know if you've seen it. No. You should see it. She brought a level of authenticity to that performance that I'd just never quite seen before. And her show is purportedly a stand-up show. And she sort of goes meta stand- and she explains comedy and she explains laughter and how it's a physical release

and how she has used laughter and she talks about trauma and she's uproariously funny. And then at a certain point in the show, she tells you about being raped and the laughter just stops. And she allows it to stop. And then this whole room, this whole group sort of goes through a kind of a cataclysmic experience of having to sit with the discomfort of not being able to laugh.

Right. In defiance of all expectations of what this kind of show is supposed to be like. And then she just doesn't let up. And watching her, you know, I thought a lot about her watching the show. I sort of knew her from Australia and from Twitter, and I'd asked her if she wanted to get together after the show, and she wrote back to me and she said, I just don't.

After this show, I need to be not with people. And when I first got that message, I was like, ah, pretentious. And then I saw the show and was like, I get it. I get how you wouldn to just be bubbly and sociable. And I still do it every night, but it takes an immense amount of energy. I mean, in addition to it being four hours, just the emotional toll of having to share, you know, so openly and honestly and vulnerably about, you know, the abortions and all these things that have happened to you at like night after night after night has got to be... Well, there's also a way in which it's really therapeutic. And it actually is like,

I leave a little bit lighter every single night. And one of the other things I was going to mention about the scriptedness is that watching Hannah's show was a reminder, having built my own TED Talk actually sort of set me off on this path. But we have this crazy idea as indie rockers, especially, that scripted is bad, that it really needs to feel that like every night, you know, even if you've got the same set list, your banter between songs needs to just be totally off the cuff and fresh and new. And if you're telling a story, you're just sort of making it up as you go along so that everybody feels comfortable because this is not theater. This is a rock show. And I had to jump that hurdle for this show and remember

that doing this show more or less scripted, and it's not really scripted. I mean, there are beats in the show and I improvise a a lot of the stories. But that's allowed. And that's actually a kindness to the audience, because otherwise the show would be seven hours. Well, also, you have these people's attention for a certain period of time, and you have an intention and something that you want to convey. How do you do that most effectively and concisely? Like, you have to know where you want to take them and the best way to get there. spontaneous self and that I had to be my charming spontaneous self in order to be real. And I learned very quickly that that was the least generous performance I could give,

that actually the best performance I could give was to absolutely script that motherfucker down to the second and to every word and every adjective so that I could deliver the most bang for the buck with the 12 minutes that I had with these people. How long did it take you to put that together? A long time. Did it? Yeah. I mean, it was effectively, it was a 12 minute monologue that I had to memorize. And I had to have it memorized inside, out, up, down, backwards and forwards. So I worked on that TED Talk for two solid months. Yeah. Well, 12 minutes is infinitely harder

than an hour and a half. Oh yeah. There's just no room for anything, right? You have to be completely on. And even after all of that rehearsal, it's still veered towards 13 minutes. Yeah. So.

But you talk about creating in these, I see you as this person who kind of creates in verse and flurries, like you're like, ah, I had a thing and I just banged this song out, or I had two hours and it was the best song I ever wrote. Like, what is that process like for you? Like the writing process and the creative inspiration aspect of like how you, you how you make the things.

Do you have a discipline where you're like, I show up for the page every day, sometimes I don't have it, or you get struck by lightning and you have this gift or this facility and it just pours out of you? It's changed over time, actually. So I used to just wander around getting struck by lightning constantly, like, you know, 10 times a day. And occasionally, I would grab that lightning and run it over to the piano and start a song. But I was very, very bad at finishing songs. And I always carried around a lot of guilt that I was great at starting songs, but bad at finishing them. And finishing a song is no fun.

Starting a song is really fun. It's sort of like a relationship. It's like that first few days of really hot sex. And then you have to actually work on the relationship. That's just no fun. You want a key? You have problems? And I finally, about three years ago, realized that if I was going to get songs finished, that I should really just follow the formula that seemed to be presenting itself to me anyway, which is seeing that the best songs I had

ever written were all written in one sitting. And I wasn't very good at going back to a song unless it was about 70% or 80% done. I just started sectioning off time. And knowing that lightning is pretty much available to me I mean I can turn on inspiration like a faucet

you know give me an instrument and I can write a song that's not a problem it's really

just a question of can I finish it so writer's block is not a thing yeah I've never had

writer's block I mean I think writer's block can be confused for other things

you can always write something it might just be bad yeah you can always write something I think writer's block can be confused for other things. You can always write something. It might just be bad. You can always write something. I think it's a fear thing. It's a fear of thinking you're not good enough or being judged. Perfectionism is definitely the enemy of creation. Yeah.

And so lately, what I have found is really helpful is I just have these blocks of time. I also have a kid now, so I really have to commit to a block of time because my time is just not my own anymore. It belongs to my family. And I sit down and instead of vaguely pondering, is this idea really the one that I want to follow? I guess I could, like, I just have stopped being wishy-washy and I go with the first thought and I follow it and I really shove perfectionism out the door. And I just, I just try to finish the thing. And I think there's also a luxury that comes with being an artist who has made a lot of shit. Because once you've made a lot of shit, you're not so precious about each and every

little offering, because there's thousands of them out there. When you've only offered the world five or 10 songs, any given song is going to be a huge percentage of your catalog. So you're way more precious about it. But once you've proven yourself time and time again, and you've written hundreds of great songs, whether or not this next song is the best thing you've ever written isn't very important. You want it to be. You still hope it will be. But if you were going to do a second TED Talk though, right? Because that was such a sensation, right? It's like that one hit wonder thing. Like, can I repeat that?

Can I catch lightning in a bottle again? Would be probably a different emotional experience. Well, I would never do that TED Talk again. But oh my God, yeah, give me another. I mean, I've got 10 TED Talks I could do. I'd love to do a TED Talk about patronage and the relationship over to give a TED Talk about the stupid rules around breastfeeding. Like I could just go on and on and on. I just don't really want to do that right now. Yeah. Well, can we talk about patronage though? We can talk about anything. Yeah. Like I said at the outset, like your relationship with your audience is like something I've never seen before.

And it really, and I've heard you speak about this, like your, how you think about the, how you think about patronage and the relationship is unique, but it's also more ancient, right? Like what's, what's not functional is the relationship of industry to artists now and how we think about what that exchange looks like. And yours is one of depth over breadth, right? Where the industry kind of is driven by breadth in terms of like, how big is your audience? How many can you sell? And all of that, rather than the intimacy and the connection that you can create with the people that are super into what you're doing? Sure, because capitalism. I mean, we're all, it's just like what's going on with the rest of the country

and the problems that we're running into everywhere, which is, it's not always about growth. It's not always about being the biggest and the best. growth. It's not always about being the biggest and the best. And, you know, we've really been fed a painfully unhealthy diet of unsustainable ways of being. And all of that applies to the art world. Elaborate. applies to the art world. Elaborate. I mean, I grew up watching MTV. That was my education and what it meant to be a performer and a musician. You know, I was like raised on at the altar of Prince and Madonna and Michael Jackson. And, you know, these massive megastars were, you know, my guiding light, light like that's where

you're supposed to head be massive that's what success looks like I didn't have many models even in my immediate little community of musicians just making a living you know musicians just

helping out their tribe members with you know, small, helpful, connective reflections of what life in this town was like, of what, you know, what we are going through now. And, you know, wind the clock back a little bit, and that's how human beings have been using art and music for thousands of years. This scale thing that we have just been experiencing in this teeny sliver of human time is bananas. Well, we forget, and this is what you reminded me of, is that we forget that art and music

really had nothing to do with commerce. No, and we're never supposed to. Art and music for thousands and thousands and thousands of years of human history were just useful tools of the tribe. Yeah. We needed it for ritual, for grieving, for transition, for celebration. None of that was about selling shit. Right.

It was about doing and being and connecting. And so how do you think we lost that initially? I mean, you get capitalism and money in the mix and things start to get very weird very fast. Yeah. But we're in this interesting time now where in the MTV era, look, you either have a video on MTV or you're on the radio or nobody could possibly have any sense of what you were doing. That's all changed. Everything has been disintermediated. The middle man and the gatekeepers are now gone that you can be this massive band, that, you know, that isn't even really a reality except for a few acts these days anyway.

Well, that was always true. I mean, and what I have found fascinating is how little things have changed. Because I think it's foolhardy to say that the gatekeepers are gone. They've just shifted faces. And, you know, we still have our mega pop stars. They're just, you know, the gates have just sort of changed materials. And, you know, in this era, we still have massive stadium pop stars and giant machines. still have massive stadium pop stars and giant machines and we you know we just we've just sort of shifted the way those people climb up the ladders and they climb to the top of the mountain but they still climb to the top of the mountain you've still got right but i think

that the infrastructure is still fractured you know like you said in your book like we are the media like that's a radical concept that's also very true. And we're still in the very early stages of that. But it's undeniable with you leading the charge and we're seeing more and more people kind of blaze the path similar to yours that this is the future. Like finding your tribe and honoring that is the path. Yeah. And I mean, I adopted the internet really early on as a community tool, but none of us saw any of this stuff coming.

None of us back in the 2000, 2005 era could have forecasted that in 2019 we would be talking about deep fakes and talking about, you know, and looking at a generation of kids who it's very possible will never trust an image or even a moving image because who knows if that image is really real and their cultural literacy, their media literacy is going to be so different from yours and mine. You know, we grew up in an era where like, if you saw someone saying it on a TV, it was obviously happening. That's not true anymore. Yeah. So playing that out, like, what does that look like? Very strange. I mean, I don't know. And if I had the answer, oh my God, like that would be my TED

talk. I don't have the answer um but i do think you know it's all for me with music and art it's always going to circle back to why we needed it in the first place the platforms will change who we trust will change the middlemen will change the gatekeepers the filters will change but why we do it and why we need to feel it, that will not change. No, nor will the expression, the impulse to say something and the appetite for story and art and people who are grappling with trying to find meaning in this crazy thing that we're doing called life, right? Amen. Yeah, that's not going away.

Nope. Out of curiosity, it was interesting that you did your book with a traditional publisher, because I would have thought like, of all people, like, why didn't you self-publish your book? I really thought about that. Because I got a lot of attention and a lot of offers and people knocking on my door after the TED Talk. And I knew that I already had a big audience and that I had tended that garden very meticulously and I had a great relationship with my crowd. And that if I wrote a book, they would absolutely be on board to buy it directly from me.

And I knew that I could do that if I wanted. But I had also sort of raced that course once with music publishing and basically starting my own record label. with music publishing and basically starting my own record label. And I know that it is not uncomplicated to learn how to do an entire industry out of your own office, out of your own bedroom. And I knew that book publishing was probably just as complicated, if not more complicated, than record releasing. So I knew that there was, and I just knew that there was and i just knew that there

was a glass ceiling there so was i capable of like finding an editor writing a book making a cover binding it mailing it out to 25 000 people i was probably capable of doing that did i want to learn how to do all of those things and do them really well? And then also probably, you know, not necessarily be able to find a good distributor for that book to get it in bookstores all over the world and get it translated and then have people know that that book was out. And I was like, no, I'll let someone else do that. Yeah. Well, I think also it boils down to your intention too. Like, if you wrote the book just to serve your audience, that's one thing. But when you go with or China, you know, picking up my book, translate it into another language,

connecting with the ideas, coming back to me and telling me on Twitter that something that I said shifted something for them or changed their life. And I don't think that would have happened if I had published the book myself. Yeah. Can we talk about asking? No. No, we're not we talk about asking no no we're not going to talk about that yes i asked i know that's that's why it was funny yeah um you know there's this this idea that

like you're the you're the diy queen like do it yourself queen but it's not about doing it yourself this is about like doing it it's It's the exact opposite of that. I tried to explain this in the book that DIY is such a misnomer. Yeah. You know, what it really means, DIY, especially, you know, as applied to the world that I came out of, like the punk world and stuff. DIY was, you know, we will do it. We're not going to use the system. DIY was, you know, we will do it. We're not going to use the system. Do it without the system would have probably been a better acronym, but not as sexy.

Tell the story about the row and. Because I think that captures it pretty well. That's a great story. Yeah. So, I actually heard that story. Someone else gave a talk at the XO conference and I saw that talk and I actually wrote to him to ask if I could steal the anecdote. It was very upsetting to me. So, Henry Thoreau and, you know, especially Walden, he's seen as this American hero of do-it-yourself, go off-grid, connect with nature, self-reliance, right? And everyone knows who's read Walden or knows this sort of piece of American history. He went and built his own little shack on the side of Walden Pond and just like, everyone knows the quotes, right? I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.

I wanted to suck the marrow out of life. And everyone is just like, punk rock. You know, he just did it himself. Picked his own food, you know. Well, actually, it's bullshit. He was so helped. He did have his little cabin by the woods, and he was sort of off-grid, but also he was a total freeloader.

And he was constantly going over to Emerson's house, where they had great dinners, and he was just constantly welcomed in and hosted. And the donuts story is the best. His mom and his sister every Sunday would bring him a basket of donuts. It's so crushing to hear that. Fucking donuts, man. Spoiled child. I know. But also, you know, I take it one level further in the book. So, there's a few things about Walden

that are really beautiful. One is he actually lived at Walden for three years, but he condensed the story for, you know, the story of Walden is one year. He condensed it down. He took huge artistic liberties with his memoir to deliver, you know, again, like something economically palatable that we could flow with and understand. He was an artist. He took the experience and he made art. And he left out the story about the fucking donuts. It just wouldn't have squared with the Walden brand.

But when you look at it, the book worked. Walden worked. People got on board with the idea. They felt him. They got it. It's not that Walden is inauthentic, but we can also look back and ask, well, like, what fuel fed his ability to send that message into the world, into the canon of American literature. And the donuts are part of that. The generosity of Emerson and his mother and his sister and all the townspeople who just thought he was a kook but helped him out,

they fed that vision. Is Walden authentic? Maybe by some measure it's not. Maybe there's like a little bit of early American charlatan in there. Or maybe it's just art. And art is never, getting back to this conversation from earlier, it's never totally pure. It doesn't work that way. An artist usually has a vision and then, you know, does whatever he or she has to do to create this offering and it's always messy. Always. Yeah, I mean, there's a distinction between truth and fact, right? Like the artist's job is to extract the truth out of, you know, a certain perspective. And that doesn't mean fidelity to a factual timeline. It's about trying to discern from an experience what is universal. universal. So, to take that three years and condense it to one, to speak to something that he was passionate about, I don't think diminishes the work that he did. But it is interesting, you know, because, you know, part of that legacy is, you know, Americana, like rugged individualism.

Right, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and do it yourself. And it's a lie, basically, because everybody has relied on everybody else to make their way in the world. I mean, look at Trump's story about himself as compared to what we now know is the truth of, or whatever, the truth as we could possibly know it. Self-made billionaire, self-made billionaire. It's all just bullshit. But God, his own belief in his story and his ability to just unapologetically stick to his story is what I think people find so incredibly attractive. Well, and larger than that, it's this sensibility that we have that that's what's to be celebrated. Like, we celebrate that rugged individualism and the person that doesn't have to raise their hand and ask for help and did it by themselves is this fabrication that, you know, we've decided is laudable and what we should aspire to. And it's insane.

Yeah. I mean. From, you know, you point out like, well, you look at Steve Jobs, like his parents had to give him the garage, right? Totally. The garage was the donut. There's nobody who didn't, you know, who didn't advance without the help of whoever. Well, and to think that we're supposed to do this life without help, without being interconnected, is insanity. Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I grew up like a lot of people, you know, intuiting that.

I grew up like a lot of people, you know, intuiting that. I mean, my dad, I vividly remember, you know, going on family vacations in the station wagon and my dad getting lost and refusing to ask for directions and just getting into fights with my mom because he just would not go to the gas station and ask the guy where to go. And, you know, that's the, that's the emotional landscape that I inherited. And as you point out in your book, this is right in the wheelhouse of Brene Brown. This idea that to ask for help is to show vulnerability, which in men is very shame-provoking. It makes us feel like failures. And in women, it makes them feel like they're not enough to raise their hands. Yeah, whereas if you just do a quarter turn, you could look at every potential for asking for help as an opportunity to connect, which is what we actually like. You know, this is the, this is, I write about this

in The Art of Asking. When you start asking and you take the charge and the shame out of it, life becomes really bountiful because people generally like being asked. You know, I mean, the gas station attendant who only gets asked, maybe not so much. But people really like feeling useful. People like sharing knowledge. People like sharing, period. I mean, it's the other side of the myth that why would you ask for help? Why would you ask for someone to share their thing? Why would you want to do that? Well, that's actually how we function best, you know, is as a community, as a tribe, as an interconnected tribe. You do that, I'll do this. You know, we'll figure this out together. You know, look at us from the early days of our mammalhood. We're not rugged individuals. We were not physically built to walk through this life alone. No way, no how. This is not the way we're constructed. We're built as tribal beings who are supposed to be interconnected and interdependent. That's literally how we're built. And so, fighting that is just a form of self-annihilation. Yeah, and yet that sensibility is what has driven, I think, this epidemic of loneliness and isolation and everybody, you know, living in their ticky-tack houses separate from each

other and non-communicative and ultimately depressed and medicated. Depressed, lonely, and on opiates. Hooray! Pressed lowly and on opiates. Hooray. But this all begins with you. Like for you, you know, when I think of your story, like it all starts with you making eye contact with one individual in Harvard Square. It's like that intimate connection really created the foundation for everything that you do now. Can you talk about that a little bit?

So I was a street performer for a lot of my early 20s. And I was a living statue and I had a lot of great intimate moments with many, many, many, many strangers. But in the cause and effect of my life, I'm not sure that that was the cause of where I headed after that so much as, you know, that was something that- But like the, sorry, I don't want to project on you at all, but like that idea of like- Project away. Yeah. Like you talk about, you know, making eye contact with people and like,

and seeing them, like in the value of like being seen, right? And that seems to be a theme that resonates throughout how you interact with your audience today. Yeah. Like your willingness to see them. Well, I think you could probably find an answer to my, you know, why I had a hunger for being seen as I think we all really do. But, you know, it might have been amplified in me because I was the youngest of four kids. And I also, for a lot of reasons, felt very unseen as a kid. And also had a talent for performing and for music and loved the stage.

And I really grappled with a lot of pain and agony as a teenager and into my early 20s about my desire to be seen. Because I had been really punished by a lot of different adults for wanting to be seen. Like I got smacked around for wanting to be seen and told that I was being distracting, that I was just trying to get attention, that it wasn't all about me. And so I constantly second-guessed and was suspicious of my own desire to be seen or my desire for any attention because I was afraid of it and I was afraid that it was wrong and bad. I was afraid of it and I was afraid that it was wrong and bad. And so, it wasn't until I really started performing and connecting with people on a profound level that I got to sort of smooth those rough edges away and actually see my desire to be seen as a positive force instead of as this like terrible negative need. Yeah. And when did you kind of begin to really form this sensibility around asking? You know, when you give your TED Talk, it's so eloquently, you know, kind of considered, but was there like a moment where you realized like this is the path for me is laid out in my willingness to you know rely upon these people as patrons of you know what I do I mean I think a lot of it I just picked up from

um the music communities and the art communities that I wanted to emulate. And the music and art communities that I wanted to emulate were the interconnected ones, the ones where I saw people helping each other, where it was about the music and about the connection, about the togetherness and about the progress and the evolution and the folk scene. the togetherness and about the progress and the evolution and the folk scene. That was all based on like, brothers and sisters, let's hold hands and do this together. Let's try to share our truths. Let's try to affect change. The punk scene was the same way. The punk scene was about like, forget about those people, like we'll do this. We have truths to tell. We will do shows in basements. We will carry around our own gear.

We will help each other do this, and we don't need the system. And those were the scenes that I gravitated towards and the people and the systems that I wanted to emulate. And those systems were based on asking. They were based on asking, like, do you have an amp I can borrow? Can we use your basement? Will you come to my show? Will you go, will you get on your bike with me and go around town with duct tape and flyers and put signs up? Like, let's do this.

Let's us do this. Right. And the answer always being yes. Yeah, because it's fun. Right. Yeah. Yeah. being yes yeah because it's fun right yeah yeah yeah i mean one of the things you talk about is is you know this initial desire to be a rock star and then realizing like well rock stars are

the antithesis of what i want to be because they're isolated those rock stars they're disconnected well and now we can actually you know we didn't have a control back then, but we can now look at some of my heroes from the, you know, days of MTV as alter. And, you know, Michael Jackson, my hero, and Prince, my hero, and Madonna, whatever, the jury's out on certainty that those guys were not very happy. That being up on Rockstar Mountain, disconnected and unable to just be among and with the tribe did not make those guys happy. And because happiness is a direct function of your connectivity to the tribe. Totally. Right? And that's like, you're, I mean, you're immersed. It's like your life is crowd surfing with these people that hold you up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, and then the question there becomes like, well, is that scalable? And that's sort of scalable for

yourself or other people you mean oh for anyone yeah why why wouldn't it be why why i mean there's got to be legion of you know young amanda palmer's out there at the early in the early stages of creating what you've created sure and then the question you know, can you hold that level of intimacy and that level of connectivity to the tribe and the normalcy that is required of you and the tribe in order for you to just stand there when you're playing to an arena of 30,000 people? Yeah. Do you worry about that? there when you're playing to an arena of 30,000 people. Yeah. Do you worry about that? No, because I don't think I'm ever going to be playing to an arena of 30,000 people. But if you were to, I mean, has that thought crossed your mind? Like,

I don't want to be that big because I don't want to lose that connection? I like to think optimistically that if I lived in a universe in which this kind of music attracted a crowd of 30,000 people, we'd be living in a universe where I would be okay. Yeah. Well, I mean, you can't fake it either. Like that, you know, that love that you have for your tribe is visceral, right? It's not something you can be fake. And, you know, look, tribe is visceral, right? It's not something you can be fake. And I, and, you know, look, you know, even these words, vulnerability and community and connectivity, like they've been co-opted. These have been commercialized. Like there is a- Gain more connectivity with your fans.

Well, it's like on social media, there's a, there's a, there's a performative vulnerability, like people who are like, you know, sort of oversharing, but really kind of just to build their audience or get clicks, like it doesn't feel real. Like there's a certain lack of authenticity in this seemingly quote unquote authentic post, right? I mean, do you notice that? Do you see that? Sure, yeah.

So there's a difference between the real thing and kind of this rise of, you know. Yeah, and I mean, you'll get back what you put out. You know, you can't really get away with faking it. And for good reason, you know, because you just can't. And it won't feed you back if you put out empty calories, you're not going to be nurtured in return. Yoga and meditation. I'm a fan. Yeah. What is the relationship between those things and kind of your

creative sensibility? Like, how does it fuel that? and kind of your creative sensibility? Like how does it fuel that? Oh, well, I started my yoga and meditation practice in earnest in my early 20s. And I don't think you can disentangle any of my career and my path from my practice. I don't have another one of me who didn't do that, so I'll never know.

Right. But I credit my mindfulness practice to any of the insights that I've had about any of this stuff probably wouldn't have happened. And what does that practice look like? It depends on the time. Typically. Well, I just had a child.

So one of the first things that went out the window was my morning meditation because child. But I still, I sit when I can. I try to go to yoga when I can. I try to go to yoga when I can. And I also am a firm believer that you practice off the mat, that you just try to live mindfully, and that it's possible at any time. It's possible during a podcast. It's possible during a podcast. It's possible while brushing your teeth.

It's possible while driving a car. And actually the danger is in separating and thinking that your practice is, you know, when you're sitting in lotus position being all, you know, meditative. Yeah. Can you take it into the world? Yeah. I mean, that's the only point of you take it into the world? Yeah. I mean, that's the only point of the practice, isn't it?

Right. But I was lucky, you know, in my early 20s, my mentor, Anthony, he gifted and ushered me into meditation retreats. And those were galvanizing experiences, doing silent meditation retreats in my 20s for six, seven days at a time. Like the Vipassana retreats? Yeah.

Yeah, and that also, that plus a regular yoga practice in my 20s, I just had the proof right there that when I practiced, I was more able to deal with life. And when I didn't, I wasn't. And I knew, you know, I could either go left or I could go right. And I chose to go towards practice. Yeah. So we're in an interesting moment right now with reproductive rights and everything that's going on in Georgia.

on in Georgia. And I'm interested in how you see the future of the female empowerment movement and how you see your role in that and, you know, what the next generation of this looks like. How's that for like a really broad question? I wish I had an answer. I have hopes. You it's it may get worse before it gets better um but i'm starting to see people rising up standing up speaking out organizing uh like i have not seen before and it's going to be necessary. It's kind of amazing. Yeah. It's like so many other things happening right now.

I mean, there's going to have to be a revolutionary pushback against the climate disaster. There's going to have to be a revolutionary pushback against the human rights violations, whether it's reproductive or what is happening with immigration. There is going to have to be a pendulum swing as hard and as powerful as the one that's taken us into the dark. And the world is moving really fast right now.

Everything just feels like it is going at sort of a critical, urgent speed. And I hope, I can sense, I might be wrong, but in the art and music world, especially when it comes to reproductive rights and women, that you are going to start to see stories coming out at an alarming rate because it is the sharpest weapon we have right now. And we can take political action of this kind or that, but actually the most important thing women can do right now is just to get up and shamelessly tell their stories, do the same. And it's, you know, it's visceral and it's powerful to hear that coming from you. And, you know, as a white man to really understand like the

universality of this kind of story that you told last night and how many people are impacted by it and from it and sharing it in that kind of very first person experiential kind of way like this is what it's like when you you have to like go on google and find where the place is and then you got again like are you supposed to call anyone like what are you supposed to do like to really like walk in those shoes to feel what that must feel like yeah and to remind people that information is power, you know, and the history books don't lie. I mean, we can look at it across time. When fascism is on the rise anywhere in the world, the first thing to go is reproductive rights. It's just hand in hand. That's the way it works. And never has there been,

that's when the role and the importance of the artist kind of gets pushed to center stage. It's our job to just get up and go like, oh God, we don't really want to have to do this. We'd so much rather be doing other things, but like, fuck this. This is not good for us. Fuck this. Fuck this.

All right. I think that's a good place to stop. Gotta get you to the airport. Thank you. Thank you for everything you do. Keep making all the things. Can't help it. All right, cool.

Talk to you soon. Thank you. Peace. What a beautiful, powerful font of creativity that Amanda is. So much respect. Hope you guys enjoyed that. I really did.

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