The story of the girl who used Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer as a dating service

I had a little bit of an adventure Wednesday night. In order to to explain it to people, I guess I'll start this story a few months ago...

Earlier this year I read about Amanda and Neil were having lots of fun using a website, turntable.fm , which allows you to be DJ choosing music (or spoken-word recordings) to play to a room of whomever wishes to join. You can be as active as you want, from being a DJ, participating in the chat-room, or just having the DJ's music in the background while you're on your computer.

So I started to participate in rooms hosted by Neil. It was a lot of fun and very detrimental to my nighttime productivity. As fun as being exposed to great music and poetry was, the best part for me was chatting with the other people in the room.

I soon realized that Neil and Amanda's fans are probably the nicest people you'll ever meet. In theneilhimself turntable rooms, everyone was kind and polite, following the guidelines of what type of music to choose, and making sure that everyone who was interested had a turn as DJ. As much as people were interested in asking questions and participating with Neil, they also refrained from the frenzied-fan state, instead comparing poetry interests, tv shows, obscure music, student/workload horror stories, and whatever else the intelligent conversation had to offer. Although some of the other themed music rooms on turntable were enjoyable, most of them never reached the level of ease, interest, and fun of Neil's rooms.

Cut to me, Liana, and where I find myself now.

I have no problem saying that I have never been good at dating. The Why is not important (who really would want to read a self psychological analysis?) The facts are that I haven't seriously dated anyone in years. Some of these years I'm not sorry for being single; people should experience who they are when not affected by anyone else, and explore the difference between neediness and the vulnerability of choosing to have a connection.

But one thing I do know is that my loneliness is making me really unhappy. I still fight subconscious uncontrollable nerves when dealing with attention from people, and the logical part of my brain says that I'd like to get my life a little more together before starting a relationship. The hard truth is that this is a part of my life that I've been neglecting and avoiding, and there is no good excuse for not trying to be more pro-active about it.

When I started to think about what I would want if I could ask for anything or anyone, I realized that my ideal would be to have my dating pool be the Neil Gaiman/Amanda Palmer fanbase. These people and I already share similar taste, interests, and personality traits, and the majority of them came off to me as people I would want to know, be friends with, spend time with.

Then I scored a ticket to a Neil and Amanda concert. It made a nice opportunity that I couldn't reason my way out of (with an excuse like "maybe I'll feel more ready in a month or two")

There is an "ask Neil and Amanda" where you can write any questions you have for them on an index card. I wrote something like this:

Neil and Amanda if you could help me out with this that would be great.

Your fans are the coolest and nicest ever. I've decided to stop being single.

If there are any men or women in there 20's who would be willing to at least start

a dialogue with me it would make this amazing evening stupenderiffic.

I then proceeded to enjoy the wonderful concert.

I loved the venue. It had character and was small and intimate. It made the whole concert experience feel very at ease and personal.

I fell in love with The Jane Austen Argument (and happened to be the person to buy the very first copy of the Holes CD!) Both their playing and their singing had a high level of skill/control and emotion. Lyrics were gorgeous. I just wish Maintaining the Madness was on one of the

CD's for purchase.

Half of the song's Amanda played I had never heard before, so it made the listening experience all the much more interesting and special. I'm in love with how she plays the with her whole spastic and expressive body (if anyone gets the chance to see a performer named ELEW play live, it's very similar in terms of the power and expression through his whole body. I saw him when he opened for Josh Groban and he played the piano with his legs in a sort of power side-split.)

Neil's conversational manner makes an immediate connection with the audience. All of the pieces he read were excellent, but the best one hands down was the piece he wrote for Amanda and read to her in Sydney. Stories are fun, imaginative, and intriguing, but there is something about his perfect personal words about what he loves about her makes the stuff you find in romance novels trite and just plain trying too hard.

Oh and yes... Neil picked my card to read to the audience.

For those of you that were not there, this prompted Amanda to pick up her Ukulele and sing about Neil and Amanda's dating service.

They asked me to come up on stage, and try to say a little about what I was looking for that evening. (until you play back the recording of it for me, there is no way i could tell you what exactly i said on that stage. It's a blur. I know I said something about not being so interested in being taken home for one night. The audience was a invisible presence in the darkness behind the bright stage lights; I couldn't even see the front row, so this meant just focusing on Neil and Amanda and just trying to stay as natural as I could onstage.) Since they were going to be signing merchandise after the concert, Amanda proclaimed that if anyone ended up taking me home that night, they would autograph me for the lucky person.

When I got off the stage it took me a while to calm my adrenaline and nerves down, which were saying something along the lines of "what the HELL did you just do???"

As I've already summarized, the experience of the concert itself was wonderful. When the concert finished, there was an unexpected side effect that truly made the night stupenderiffic.

As we all filed out of the audience people shouted their well wishes and their encouragement as I passed by. I got hugs and conversations with people telling me how they thought it was such a brave thing to do to put myself out there like that. One girl said she wanted to run up on stage, give me a hug, and say "I'll be your friend!".

What is it in our culture that makes relationships, our love lives, our desire to find companionship something that we keep close to our chests? Why is something that we value so highly such a sensitive subject, one that makes us feel naked and vulnerable if we're ever honest about what our current state of the journey is? The message I got from most people was how brave and ballsy my action was. A relationship is something we all want; it just takes someone to say what they want in their life for everyone to come up and express this unspoken common desire and the importance we each personally give it.

And, yes, I was also approached by five people interested in... starting a dialogue. One wrote their email on the inside of my arm, another sweetly brought up a hand written note expressing a desire to maybe get some pizza and talk about pocket watches.

It's exciting. I had a high all day today, where you think about it and you can't help smiling inanely. I confess I'm also nervous. I can't stop the subconscious anxiety about taking the leap of dating and all the uncertainties that it tends to bring.

Even if nothing comes out of this relationship wise, whether I just make some new friends or have opened myself to some crazy person (NONE of the people I met fall into this category. But should something arise from this public forum, be forewarned that I'm a strong person who is not going to get tangled into your issues. I have the support of lots of friends, many who you don't want to mess with (i believe i can say that Amanda and Neil would back me up on this.) oh, and one of those friends is a professional knife thrower. Don't make me call on these people.

where was I...

Even if nothing comes out of this... I think that the experience of doing this as been quite an adventure in itself. And, the concert was recorded: i'm going to be getting a audio copy of it. At the very least I'm going to be able to look back on this and have a great story, about the time I tried something pro-active with what I wanted from my relationship quest.

I'll do my best to post an update on what happens in this little story. But even if i never talk to these five people again, I would like Neil to know that I HAVE made a friend from this whole experience. There was so much friendship and support from the audience members that night.

It proves what I said

Neil and Amanda fans and the coolest and nicest people ever