Richard Eoin Nash

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Amanda Palmer wants human connection

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Typically I reserve this space for proper-ish essays. And my tumblr for quotes too long for Twitter. But I just have to quote this, an email from Amanda Palmer to Bob Lefsetz. Almost needless to say, what Amanda says for music, I believe to be true for writing also.

Amanda Palmer:

the new art of twitter and blogging and realtime connection with hundreds and thousands of people means that the very role and meaning of the rock star is changing.

watch it happen.

i started making the music in the first place not because i wanted music, but because i wanted human connection.
music was the bridge there.

(it took me a long time to admit this to myself, because i felt guilty and like a naughty/bad/inauthentic artist when i truly discovered this, in my mid-twenties, classic crisis time).

BUT this is, hands fucking down, also why people listen, why they search, why they want art.

connection = primary.
music/art = secondary.

yes, you need a filter (like you’re often saying) to FIND the music you love and connect to (and that filter has evolved and will continue to evolve….radio-vinyl-MTV-blogs and on and on)
BUT
the music ITSELF is a filter to connect to another human expressing mind/heart that blows your skirt up and makes you feel alive, not alone, etc etc what have you.

so in a weird way, music may take the backseat and act as a filter to those you follow on twitter….not the other way around.
fucked up, but maybe not.

it’s a symbiosis. one will need the other, but don’t discount the realtime human connection as only a tool.
it is and it’s not.
for many people, it’s the thing that they NEED and WANT, the holy grail of Not Feeling Alone in a world where that used to be JUST A FANTASY as you lay in bed with your headphones on, imagining a connection with the artist and the other people who might be out there in beds just like yours, imagining the same thing.

the music simply provides the necessary room in which the miraculous happens and all these bed-worlds collide in cyberspace.

there is a reason that i often find myself wanting to sit behind twitter and connect instead of sitting at the piano and writing.
there is a reason that the fans on there would often rather be connecting than lying in bed with their headphones on.

we do both. we need both.

twitter = realtime connection.
at the very end of the day, humans crave realtime connection.

that is Why It Works.

twitter.com/amandapalmer
amandapalmer.net

Richard Eoin Nash, Aug 18, 2009

• twitter
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• social media
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• bob lefsetz
| 
• amanda palmer

Comments

Discuss this article.

Why emphasize the media of letters or colors or music if all they do is connect people, which is what we do when we recommend something, is judge the thing on the basis of its properties/media, rather than the depth of the connection, which is impossible to accurately predict? Why emphasize the connection rather than the media/medium? Technology in my opinion is why. Current developments in technology, in my opinion, do nothing to change art or definitions we use to describe it, and rebutting technology, in my opinion, will work. Confusing methods though or properties of connection and dead trees are preventing the possible conviction of technology being improved to the point of destroying the economic (social) framework of creativity. Creativity itself is social, obviously. Economies, price meters social evaluations of cost and benefit, and technology dramatically razing costs impacts society which impacts creativity yet conflating the distinct ideas is inadvisable, to me, am I right?

    – Brian (08/18 01:12 PM)

In a small community the audience all know each other, so the fact that all are gathered for the event/ritual contains no significance for the identities and interests of the audience.

Cut to mega-sprawl and anomie: the audience is full of strangers, most of whom share your interest(s), some of whom you might want/be able to befriend, or more.

The ritual/event is balanced between content onstage (for lack of a better way of putting it), and the audience’s interest in itself.

Also see Crowds and Power, by Elias Canetti - the spectacle at the spectacle is the audience on display to itself.

Bear in mind when the book was written…

    – MF (08/19 01:46 PM)

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