Have you ever wondered what the story of street performers is? The individuals standing for hours without moving, covered in gold or silver, or dressed in white?
Amanda Palmer was one of them (“the eight-foot bride”). A successful musician now she said that she learned the basics of the interaction between the crowd and the performer (“the art of asking”) during her time as a street artist.
She raised more than a million dollars from her fans and pushes boundaries of what an exchange between an audience and the performer is like. This talk (and certainly her music) is provocative. However, the very way she explores and personally lives the art of asking is fascinating in my opinion.
The talk also gives us an inside view on an artist’s struggles, especially during moments when she was critiqued heavily for her fundraising and crowdsourcing campaign.
About the critics she says in her talk:
“They weren’t with us on the sidewalk, and they couldn’t see the exchange that was happening between me and my crowd, an exchange that was very fair to us but alien to them.”
Besides the art of asking and her music career I think one of my key take aways is also how much we learn also during the side jobs. For me, I still have very vivid memories of what I learned about work, leadership and life when I was working in restaurant at young age, first polishing cutlery and then managing the bar.
This talk was a nice remember that if we are mindful about what we learn and the individual exchange, than then maybe we can enjoy even those mundane jobs a little bit more.
This is part of a series on “speeches that changed my thinking”.
