Ted talk- Christine LaBarbera

I was really intrigued by this Ted talk. I think what Amanda Palmer is doing is such a cool and insightful thing. At the beginning I was confused as to how she was going to connect her job as a statue to the “art of asking” but the talk as a whole was neat how she ended up connecting all the parts of her life with music and with people. She used terms to describe her life that just made me want to be her. My favorite concepts that she described were “couch surfing” and “random closeness”. Its like I have always felt the things she was talking about but never really put them in words. I have had many experiences of random closeness and the fact that she is making a career out of hers makes me really happy. She whole heartedly trusts the world enough to openly put herself out there. She relates her life to crowed surfing in a really powerful metaphor. She is connecting with complete strangers in a way resulting in being able to ask for anything without a fear or shame. What she is doing is giving her music to the public in exchange for trust. I completely respect what she is doing and I wish there were more people like her in our world because if so everyone would be trusted and be trusting and the world would be a better place. She is conveying that if we LET the people do what they want in exchange for what they see fitting more people are apt to be happy with the music they want. I envy her life and feel like she is an open book, she knows who she is and isn’t afraid to trust her fans without risk. It’s cool to see how her past “job” has made her this way. The asking hat reminded me of a few months ago on the streets of New Orleans there was a band and a singer performing and my boyfriend asked me if I wanted to dance. Right there on the street we danced along to the music for like 20 minutes and it was so much fun and so public but we didn’t care because we knew the band appreciated it. I will never forget that moment and when we walked on our way we dropped twenty dollars in their hat and thanked them much like Amanda Palmer did with the flower and the eye contact. We gave the money because we were happy that they were out there inspiring us to dance and connect with them. This is one of the random closeness experiences I have had and I couldn’t agree more with what Amanda is doing with her life.