Dear Ms. Palmer,
I admit that I’m one of those people who knows far more about the controversy you’ve stirred up than the actual
work you’ve produced. I’m really sorry, and I’m trying to fix that by listening
to your stuff (which I'm really enjoying, by the way, although please forgive me if I don't listen to "Do it With a Rockstar" at the middle school library that I run, let alone watch the video while I'm working there; cool video though, and props to Wayne Coyne).
I’ve read a lot about you, and I couldn’t
help but notice that much of it was heated, angry, and just plain mean. It had little constructive value, and, because I found myself
thinking about it (and because I like to think and write), I wanted to offer my
thoughts. I hope they are more intelligent and tactful that some of the other essays I've read.
Of course I’m perhaps thinking way too much of myself to believe that anyone outside of my loyal fan base of about 25 people is going to read my thoughts (let alone you), but
still, a man can dream.
To offer my thoughts, I need to do two things first, so be
patient with me:
The first thing is give people who don’t know
about you a brief background. This will help them understand who you are.
The second thing is to offer an opinion that I
have about the way giving and receiving (which goes hand in hand with asking)
works. This will “set the table” for my
thoughts on this whole controversy thing.
First, a bit about you, for the uninitiated (you and your
fans can skip the next eight italicized paragraphs, of course):
Amanda Palmer is a musician/performance artist best known
for being one half of a group called The Dresden Dolls. The pair were a kind of
cabaret act, half music, half theater. After they broke up, Palmer pursued a
number of solo projects, and also began a relationship with fantasy writer Neil
Gaiman that blossomed into a marriage.
Lately, in addition to her fame as a musician and performer,
Palmer has become just as famous—if not more so—for having an almost mystical
mastery of social media, making use of it to publicize her work, build her
fanbase, and sell her material. Recently a TED presentation by Palmer, “The Art
of Asking,” became a viral video sensation. In the presentation, which you can
watch below, she talks not only about how she developed a rabid following, but
also how she made use of social media to ask for, and get, lodging,
possessions, and services (for example, she mentions, at the 4:23 mark of her TED
talk, soliciting for a neti pot in Melbourne, and having a nurse drive to the
cafe she was in to deliver it personally).
Finally, she discussed how she launched one of the most
successful Kickstarter campaigns in history. She turned to her fans to fund her
newest music release, and they responded in droves (and it’s not like they were
doing it to get the music, as Palmer gives away all of her music for nothing).
Palmer sought to raise $100,000 in this enterprise, and she ended up raising
$1,192,793.
And this is where Palmer became embroiled in controversy.
Throughout her career, Palmer would invite people to come on
stage and play with her. People would take her up on it, and in exchange,
they’d get some food, some drinks, and some merchendise.
They did not, however, receive money.
This raised the ire of people, particularly after Palmer
raised so much more money than she expected in the Kickstarter campaign. People wrote scathing pieces, each with a blunt message: Amanda, you should have paid these people.
Compounding this was the fact that Harlan Ellison—a good friend of her
husband’s— has some strong words for anyone who provides services for no money:
Many argued with this, saying that those who played with
Palmer were perfectly fine with getting what they got, because they also
received the chance to play with Amanda Palmer, which was clearly priceless to
them. In the same vein, those who put her up when she tweeted that she needed a
place to stay got to enjoy the company of an extremely interesting person for a
few hours, one who they greatly admired (which again, was of high value to
them). And as for that nurse who gave her the neti pot: Palmer sat with her,
and the two of them had a wonderful conversation, which that nurse will no
doubt remember forever .
Okay. Now that everyone has the 411 on you, let me get the
following paragraphs out of the way (they are in yellow). These are some thoughts
of mine that are important for an understanding of my thoughts on the
controversy concerning you. These are paragraphs I ask you (and your fans) to
read, and, once again, bear with me; it really is important, so here goes:
One:
Everything has three values: the material, the practical,
and the spiritual (or aesthetic, for those who don’t believe in spirits).
Here’s what I mean.
—My wedding ring cost about 1100 dollars (material),
—is about a quarter ounce of gold (which has a variety of
practical uses), and…
—is my wedding ring (which gives it immeasurable
spiritual/aesthetic value to me).
Two:
Everything is a transaction; “free” just means that money,
or tangible barter items didn’t exchange hands. If I give money to someone on
the street, I’m getting something in return for this: the satisfaction of having
helped someone less fortunate than myself. If I give my uncompensated labor to
a friend by helping them move, I’m getting the satisfaction of helping a friend
(and may get his or her labor in return, someday).
(This by the way, is why, despite what Harlan Ellison says,
I’m okay with making no money for writing this. For me, the value of simply
having a number of people reading my writing—because, remember, unlike you, I’m
nobody—is huge. For someone like Harlan Ellison—who’s a professional writer and
a celebrated one, and whose services as a writer are far more valuable—it
follows that he’d never write for no money, because the spiritual value of
simply being read simply isn’t worth anywhere near as much to him as it is to
me.)
(In other words, my writing, moneywise, just isn’t worth what his
writing is. That will change in the future. Sorry if that comes off as arrogant, but the only way to succeed at something is to fake it till you make it.)
So. Okay. We have a system of exchange here:
People give you:
--Time and labor
--Possessions
--Lodgings
--Food
--Great memories
--Great stories (which often include anecdotes about how your
music has changed their lives, which also means that you get...)
--The satisfaction of having affected people with your work
…and in exchange, they get:
--Great conversation
--Great stories
--Great memories
--The satisfaction of having given to someone they greatly admire
And this is a big, big deal, and as someone who works with
adolescents, I can’t begin to tell you how respect I have for you if you give
even one young adult a sense of self worth. And I know, of course, that there
are legions of young adults who you have inspired to harness their own
creativity. For those people, the chance to meet you and play with you is a
commodity whose spiritual value is, in my opinion (and I mean this) infinite.
Nowhere was the value of the intangible but vital things
that you give to people more apparent than in an anecdote you told at the five
minute mark of your presentation. You discussed how a poor family of
undocumented immigrants from Honduras put you up in their apartment and
insisted that you and your band use the beds while they used the couches. You
then discussed how you asked yourself: was this fair?
The next day, you told us, the mother of this family kept
wanting to give you things, telling you that nothing they could do would equal
what your music had given their daughter. Clearly, for her, your presence in
their home—and the experiences and memories that came with it—were of an almost
infinite value. Because of that you said to yourself: yes, this is fair,
because, as you said in the TED talk, you clearly gave them a great deal (some
time with you) in exchange for what they gave you (food and lodging, and a
great story to tell at TED).
So now that we’ve gotten to this point:
Okay.
I know that to those who read Forbes, the response, of
course is: hey, she has this commodity—herself—and she knows how to market it.
Good for her. If someone is willing to give her all of that for her presence,
more power to her.
I get this. If I had dinner with your husband and you and
footed the bill, I’d still feel like it was a good deal, because I would get
some great conversation with two people I admire (I love your husband's writing, by the way).
But if you were asking yourself, in that bed, if it was
fair, I think it’s fair to ask this: if you got far more for something than you
planned to get, what would you do with all that extra stuff you got?
Because maybe there have been times where you did get more than
you gave, or, at least, more than you expected to get. And if that has happened, it will happen again. When it does, you have a couple of choices.
One of them is to justify it to yourself. “Hey,” you can say
“someone gave me this freely, so I should have no compunctions about accepting
it.”
The other is to look beyond a gesture that you made when you
were discussing your stay with the family from Honduras.
“It’s about this,” you said, moving your hand back and forth
so as to say “I gave them this, they gave me that.”
I think it’s more than that.
You’ve created a community that has a chance to move beyond
back and forth. It can be a web of giving and receiving, in which you are not
merely the recipient of giving but, also, a conduit for it.
Just follow me on this, please:
You made almost one million one hundred thousand dollars more than you planned to
on your Kickstarter campaign. And yes, you can keep it all. It’s yours.
And I honestly don’t think you have to pay those musicians
if they agree to work for no money.
But consider this:
If you got more than you expected, what if you took a large
chunk of it, and practiced giving on a scale that none of us could ever
accomplish ourselves?
An immigration lawyer costs about 1000 dollars for services
that include being present at the citizenship interview, and the application
fee for citizenship is 675 dollars. Can you imagine helping that family from Honduras become
U.S. citizens, and then being able to tell your fans, at one of your concerts,
that their contributions allowed you to do this? You would be giving your fans--your community--something so valuable that they would remember it always: the satisfaction of
having helped some members of the Amanda Palmer community (which often feels like a family) become U.S. citizens.
And, of course, we can’t even measure the value of the U.S. citizenship you
would be giving to that family. What, I wonder, would they give to the world
after you were our conduit for giving that to them? It’s a dazzling thought.
And what if there were some young women who would never have been
able to go to the Rock and Roll Camp for Girls who were now able to go because
you took some of that money and set up some scholarships? Can you imagine how
your fans would react if you told them that their generosity allowed that to
happen?
No, I’m not saying that you have to do this with every
dollar above that $100,000 that you were hoping to raise. Keep a whole lot of
it. All I’m saying is that you’re in a position to give all of us so much more
for some of that extra money.
You’ve been fortunate enough to experience the powerful feeling touching many lives for the better, and you have the chance to help a
lot of other people get that same experience, that same feeling.
Look, you got what you got, and you get what you get. And I
don’t deny that you give.
All that I’m saying is that you could give all of us more of
a chance to feel like we’re giving as well.
That’s all I’m asking.
Yours Truly,
Derek Leif
Black Belt Librarian
Yours Truly,
Derek Leif
Black Belt Librarian
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