The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

I didn’t know what was worse: that the owner of my label didn’t know who Radiohead was, or that he didn’t know that Radiohead had released a free record THREE WEEKS AGO in a move that had the ENTIRE MUSIC INDUSTRY talking.

There is something about silence.
One night in a candlelit restaurant in San Francisco, shortly after we got married, I asked Neil if we could just write each other notes during the whole meal. In real time, like texting, but with pens and paper.
The waiter thought we were slightly strange, but by the end of the meal we’d shared a degree of intimate information that we probably wouldn’t have if we’d just been sitting there chatting. And we could illustrate our points with pie charts and cartoons. And we really enjoyed our food, because we weren’t literally talking through it.
The couple next to us asked what we were doing, and when we told them, they ordered a pad of paper and two pens from the waiter.

From what I’ve seen, it isn’t so much the act of asking that paralyzes us—it’s what lies beneath: the fear of being vulnerable, the fear of rejection, the fear of looking needy or weak. The fear of being seen as a burdensome member of the community instead of a productive one.

It points, fundamentally, to our separation from one another.

Uncomfortably close. Dangerously close. Beautifully close. And uncomfortably close is exactly where we need to be if we want to transform this culture of scarcity and fundamental distrust.

Distance is a liar. It distorts the way we see ourselves and the way we understand each other.

You know what I always say, beauty. If you want to know what you believe, ask the people you taught.

when you’re afraid of someone’s judgment, you can’t connect with them. You’re too preoccupied with the task of impressing them.

Those who can ask without shame are viewing themselves in collaboration with—rather than in competition with—the world.
Asking for help with shame says:
You have the power over me.
Asking with condescension says:
I have the power over you.
But asking for help with gratitude says:
We have the power to help each other.

I did not learn how to be a rock star, or, for that matter, an employable, wage-earning bohemian

The entertainment industry, reflecting the world at large, has been obsessed with the wrong question: how do we MAKE people pay for content? What if we started thinking about it the other way around: how do we LET people pay for content?

The first question is about FORCE.

The second is about TRUST.

This isn’t just about music.

It’s about everything.

It’s hard enough to give fearlessly, and it’s even harder to receive fearlessly.

But within that exchange lies the hardest thing of all:

To ask. Without shame.

And to accept the help that people offer.

Not to force them.

Just to let them

How do we create a world in which people don’t think of art just as a product, but as a relationship?

As art returns to the commons and becomes more and more digital, uncaged, freely shareable, we need to figure out how people can sustain a new artistic ecosystem. The Internet is wonderful, and crowdfunding has opened up new worlds of possibility. There are terrific new tools, but they’re only tools. They’ll improve, they’ll go away, they’ll evolve, but even the perfect tools aren’t going to help us if we can’t face one another. If we can’t see one another.