Up close and naked Communion: Amanda Palmer smashes boundaries with her fans. Photo: Rahav Segev So there she was, post-gig, outside a Berlin nightclub, stark naked and covered in handwritten scrawls from adoring fans gleefully queuing for happy snaps. From a safe, cynical distance, an easy interpretation might be "cheap stunt from narcissistic show pony." Up close and personal, meanwhile, Amanda Palmer saw it as an act of communion with new friends. Only one young lady crossed the line, she reports. And compared with the hate and suspicion that routinely filters her way through mainstream media commentary, that was easy to deal with. "Please don't touch my vagina," she said. "I think this is an excellent metaphor for life in general," Palmer reflects. If you give yourself to people and make yourself vulnerable; if you bear your throat, it's very unlikely they're going to cut you. It's way more likely they're going to burst into tears and hug you. The very idea is bizarre in the world of popular entertainment as we know it, where physical and emotional distance have become essential to the rarefied state of "stardom" that, we're convinced, is every artist's goal. But Palmer never understood stardom as a pedestal. "To me, famous was code for 'you get to be close to everybody'," she says. I never wanted to be famous so that people would worship me from a distance. To me, emotionally, that sounded like a nightmare. Growing up in "an atmosphere with no metaphor" in Lexington, Massachusetts, the strange magic of artistic community became the essence of Palmer's ambition as a girl. She remembers casting neighbourhood kids in her first musical, a back porch Fiddler on the Roof, at the age of nine. Sure, she got to play Tevye, but the point was "getting everyone together into an artistic space." That was why I was so drawn to theatre, because it was the closest thing we had, in my high school, to everyone genuinely getting together, pretending to be authentic artists; the closest thing we had to a scene of getting real, exploring our psyches and taking risks. Theatre Is Dead is Palmer's latest rock album in a career defined by risks in a range of disciplines, from the dark cabaret of Dresden Dolls to ukulele Radiohead variations to raucous synth rock; from varied stage and video collaborations to copious blogging and publishing projects. "I've struggled for a long time with the dark, creeping feeling that I'm not dedicated enough as a musician," she confesses, "that I'm too many parts social networker and too many parts businessperson and anything else that draws me away from the piano and composing and rehearsing. "A really liberating thing about coming into my 30s, and also going solo, is I released myself of all the guilt I had been carrying around and just accepted myself ... If you spend all of your time and energy blogging, maybe that means you're a blogger!" she hoots. If you want to spend your day playing stupid ukulele songs and drinking wine with your friends, that's fine, too. You're allowed to just do what you want. I found that [realisation] so funny because it's what I preach to everyone else constantly. It's almost as if, in Palmer's world, artists should be free to express themselves however the fancy strikes them in any given moment, regardless of the outrage of those less naked. Speaking of whom, the rock establishment's apoplexy was reported thoroughly when Palmer raised $1.2 million via crowd-sourcing to make Theatre Is Evil last year, and then continued her longstanding arrangement of paying guest musicians with "hugs and beer." Industry can't help but understand artistic exchange as a cash-flow thing, of course. But as long as you don't touch her vagina, Amanda Palmer's value system does sound more nourishing. "I just did a house party in Virginia," she says. It was in this mansion with a giant walk-in closet that had a bunch of costumes and a futon in it. So after I played for an hour or so, I announced that all 50 people in the party were going to have two minutes in the closet with me because I was exhausted and wanted to lie down. Normally, for safety reasons, "I'm never alone with my fans," she says. Now here I am locking myself in the closet with them, one by one. There's a metaphor worth unpacking. Amanda Palmer & the Grand Theft Orchestra play the Forum, September 20.