I first saw Amanda Palmer in 2007 at a concert in Berkeley, playing a couple of songs with her band, the Dresden Dolls, at Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors Tour.

I was intrigued by this weird, punk-rock-meets-cabaret singer and her songs, and went right into Amoeba Records the next days to find their records.

I kept following her as she started to release solo records, was amazed, like everybody, that she managed to collect over 1 million Dollars via Kickstarter to finance the production of her next record…

She sold packages to her fans, and even some concerts that she would come and organize in a fan’s backyard, in return for his support for the future record.

I loved the result and went to Paris in 2012 to see her perform live on stage.

Now she just laid an even more impressive egg: her first book: The Art of Asking, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help.

I found it in Johannesburg Airport – and basically read it in one go at the beach in Cape Town.

In the book, she describes her life journey. She started out as one of these people who dress up as a statue in the streets and only do something once someone pops a note into their hat.

She was known for years in her home town, Boston as the Eight-foot-bride, wearing a bride’s dress, with a white face, and handed out a flowers to everyone who donated, and connected with them, for a brief moment.

Today she’s an independent musician who releases her albums without the help of a record company, who let’s her fans pay what they want, who organizes spontaneous free  concerts in cities with the help of people she doesn’t even know, by shouting out to her fan-base via twitter…

She couch-surfs with her whole band on some of these concerts, and rings the bell of strangers in the middle of the night when they offered her a couch, again via twitter.

All of that because she is not afraid to ask for help. A microphone, a place to sleep, a place to sing….

Basically, it comes down to trust: she let’s people write on her naked body, she visits strangers in search for a place to crash… and is basically overwhelmed by the positive response she has found in all these endeavors.

She’s no longer afraid to ask for help, and trusts that she will get it.

If you want to see herself talking about these ideas and how she got there, watch her now-famous TED talk. It is this talk at the TED conference that actually brought the book to life.

It is a lesson of trust, in the basic goodness of people, and humanity. Ask for help, accept the help, let yourself be helped.

But to me it is also a lesson in the reverse sense: asking for help – not demanding it.

Don’t expect something.

Don’t feel entitled to it.

Accept the possibility of a ‘no’.

Accept what is freely given to you.

This doesn’t mean you should expect everything for free. A big part of the book sees Amanda asking herself if it is fair to receive all these gifts.

It takes her some time to see that there is an exchange, that she does give back a lot. Her music, her art, the support she gives, in a different way, be it a flower to a lonely person, or a song that helps a depressed teenager.

The exchanges don’t have to be equal… it’s the overall balance that is reached, I guess.

In a sense, this is a variation of the Burning Man theme I experienced this summer in Black Rock City: ‘The playa will provide’.

Maybe it resonates so strongly with me because I have also experienced a lot of gifts this year, from strangers I did not know only days before, who opened their doors, took me on rides, offered their support and friendship.