Tales of an emotional chameleon
I Don’t Feel Very Funny Right Now
Some days you eat the bar, and some days the bar eats you
There was a stage in my life when I wanted to be a stand-up comedian
Do I regret not following up on that dream? Not one bit.
I see talented writers like Kristen Stark aka Lady Stark of Winterfell doing that. I read her story about jokes that bombed on stage — most of which were hilarious — and for a moment, I became inspired to fire up and give it another go.
But I know myself. I know that rather than stay on script, I would find myself going on a tangent and lecturing the audience about the benefits of urine therapy or the time I ate an entire forest of magic mushrooms and nearly died.
And that’s just not the reality of the job.
A stand-up comedian has to be funny even when they see nothing funny in the world.
They have to face the people even when they want to sit eating Cheetos in a cupboard. They have to bring life to others when there is no life left in them and damn, that's a tough gig.
Being a comedy writer is a little different I suppose.
As writers, we have the advantage of this Grand Canyon between ourselves and the reader where they can’t see the pain behind our words. It’s why motivational blogging, fitness blogging, or positive vibes blogging work well.
You can be a demotivated, heart attack prone, pessimistic bastard and still succeed in any of these niches.
It’s another reason I won’t dissolve into the tight anal passage of niche and become a comedy writer. Is my comedy stuff funny? Well, I think so, but I could also be a delusional bastard.
Do I want to wake up and have to write funny shit every day? Do I fuck.
Let’s take today, for example.
Three days ago, a friend came to visit, and we started the evening with a couple of light vodkas.
Next, we moved onto some innocent whiskey from a whiskey advent calendar that my Dad had failed to finish, then half regifted to me.
These whiskeys ranged between eight and twenty five years old, and the alcohol was between forty and sixty per cent. We drank about six each. Then we proceeded to drink a whole bottle of white wine and mix two rum and ginger beers each, and my piece de resistance was using pre-mixed Pimms cans (already 4.5% alcohol) as mixers for another two rum specials.
Anyway, the point is, I strained my chest by puking for two days and am currently on the fourth day of my older person hangover, which is like a box of fine chocolates made from the preserved excrement of various historical dictators.
This box of delights includes a wonderful collection of anxiety, guilt, depression and every other emotion we could put words on.
And, it’s not in the mind either. It’s all sitting in the body — in the liver and kidneys and chest as I refuse stubbornly to project it onto any life events.
It’s a job queue of negative emotions all waiting to be assigned a life event to identify with. I am grateful to know that negative emotions are physical and not mental, so I can leave them in this queue as long as I keep checking on them. It helps a little.
Anyway, the point of the point is that you can’t wear the same goddamn clothes every day when you live in a place like Melbourne cos you never know whether you will be burning yer face off or getting pissed on like an old woman with a urine fetish.
You gotta be prepared to move with the weather.
Same when yer internal weather is unpredictable. Ya can’t go pretending to be a funny bastard when you wanna kick a politicians head in or when it feels like the sky is falling down.
It’s a reason why I write whatever comes up.
The immortal talent and master highlighter David Perlmutter said to me the other day that this article on lucid dreaming was the first time he had read an article I had written without a single swear word.
At first, I was ashamed at resorting to respectful writing, but then I began to wonder if swearing was becoming a micro-niche for me. Did my readers expect me to swear all the time? Have I sworn yet in this article? No?
Oh well. Shit, bastard fuck. Dare I say it, cuntface.
That last one could definitely scare off a few stragglers.
Anyway, the point of the point of the point is this —
Our internal weather changes all the time, and trying to stand still in a hurricane is a mammoth task.
Suppose you don your crotchless squirrel suit instead.
In that case, you can float around on the hectic breeze and land wherever you want, whether that be self-deprecating erotica, profound spiritual analysis or angry rants at dickless white male politicians.
Niche works for some people, but for me, it's just too forced right now. Even if you are passionate about your niche, you still have to be able to write about it every day and that's a different thing altogether.
Do I write comedy? Sometimes. Am I a comedy writer? Sometimes. And, Im alright with that for now. Still, I do admire people that do it for a living.
Perhaps one of those writer’s rooms might help since other funny humans are yeast for one's own sense of humour. These times of isolation haven’t helped with that.
Anyway, what category does this article come under you ask?
I say again, shit bastard, fuck.
Cuntface.
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