Crazy Comedians
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Transcript:
Do you have to be crazy to make art?
Yes.
I think so. I think you have to be a little crazy.
By definition.
Because, by definition, art is created outside of existing culture.
Art is not tracing an existing work of art. You’re not coloring within the lines.
You’re taking what exists in your current culture, and you’re running it through you and then expressing something new and different.
That’s what differentiates art from mainstream entertainment. Stuff that is showing up on primetime television isn’t likely to break new artistic ground. It’s going to be more formulaic and already have relatively widespread cultural approval and sanction. Also, I’m not knocking primetime TV - there’s plenty of great mainstream storytelling going on in popular television and film.
But, if it’s new and it’s different - in ways that people have never seen or are not used to seeing - that’s a bigger risk. If people have their current cultural glasses on - through that lens of what is acceptable in current culture, any truly new and innovative art is going to look a little crazy to the average person.
They’re gonna stare at it and think, “WTF?” This isn’t what I’m used to. How am I supposed to process this? It’s strange to me.
That’s why making art isn’t safe. You’re potentially challenging aspects of the current culture. People who are stable and happy within the current culture may not like that. They may find your art upsetting.
The goal is to make art that is so good that even when it upsets people, they still like it.
But it’s hard to make good art. It’s very hard.
To make high-quality art, first, you have to adapt to and participate in the existing culture. You have to be of the culture you are creating art for. You have to understand the culture intimately and be a well-integrated member of that culture. You can’t create art for a culture if you’re a total outsider to that culture. They won’t understand you. You won’t be able to relate to them.
But you can’t just be an average participant in the culture either. If you want to be an artist, you have to go outside the current culture and encounter new ideas and new ways of being. You have to struggle with aspects of life that are not fully accounted for by the current culture. You have to experience things that the current culture is not well-adapted to handle.
Then you have to start dreaming up creative ideas related to those new experiences that are not codified by cultural norms. If the culture doesn’t know how to categorize what you just experienced…then you as an artist have free reign to try to explain it for the culture through your art.
That’s where things turn risky. The culture may not accept your explanation for whatever phenomenon you experienced outside the culture. They may consider what you’re expressing to be taboo in some way. They might see you as a threat to the current way of life.
And maybe you are a threat. Maybe your art sucks. But also, maybe it’s brilliant, and people just can’t see that yet. Maybe your art is threatening because it’s brilliant. Or maybe it sucks. I don’ know. It’s hard to tell.
They might tell you to shut up. They might get violent toward you. They might lock you up or kill you.
Probably not the case in most modern western democratic countries with cultural norms that involve civil rights protections like freedom of speech, but historically it has not always been safe to be an artist. And depending where you live on planet Earth, it still isn’t.
And you can still garner plenty of online vitriol from the current culture if they think your art is running afoul of accepted cultural norms. Making art can be isolating. You’re playing around with weird ideas by yourself up in your head.
How do you connect with others around those ideas? Artists still ultimately are seeking connection. You go outside the culture on this voyage of discovery, but then the goal is always to bring that new creative learning and experience back to the culture.
The art form I play in is stand-up comedy. I love all sorts of stand-up; traditional stand-up, alternative stand-up.
I’m not certain there is actually a clear line that separates traditional comedy from alternative comedy. The difference to me seems more one of degree.
Traditional comedy doesn’t reach as far outside of the culture as alternative comedy. Alternative comedy is more ambitious. Alternative comedy doesn’t try to speak the current cultural language as much as traditional comedy does.
With traditional stand-up, you make more of an effort to meet the audience where they are in the current culture. You bring your art to them. The setting for the new ideas you are expressing is the current culture. You give them relatable cultural touch points, and then you sprinkle in a little bit of chaos that they aren’t adapted to.
Alternative comedy is more of an invitation to go exploring outside the culture together. As a group. It’s not clear what the point of the exploration is - the punchline can be a muddle of ill-defined absurdity. Everything isn’t resolved and tied up with a neat little bow for ready consumption.
Alternative comedy feels like a way to wake up artistic curiosity in the audience. It’s as if the comic acts as a guide to show people - “See, you too can go explore these strange ideas. I don’t have the answers. Our culture doesn’t have the answers. But look, isn’t this weird what we’re seeing over here? Don’t you want to poke this idea and see what happens?”
Traditional comedy, traditional stand-up - it operates by breaking down the current culture and reshuffling perspective to make fun of the culture from mostly within the bounds of the culture.
Alternative comedy is a group field trip to uncertain ground. It’s a vacation from the normal.
Jokes always have a comic subject. The question is whether the comic subject lies within the current culture or outside of it. If you’re making jokes about something already accounted for by the current culture, then you’re likely in the realm of traditional stand-up comedy. People will readily understand you.
If you’re making jokes about something that isn’t well-understood within the current culture, you’re going to be inching toward alternative comedy. It’s going to be harder for the audience to relate - they aren’t going to have as many cultural touch points.
I think both of these things - traditional and alternative comedy - are very fun to do if you have the skill to pull them off. I think they’re both useful and beneficial to helping a culture evolve in healthy ways.
Like I said, alternative comedy tends to be more ambitious. It’s more difficult. To be able to pull off alternative comedy, I think you need to train yourself by getting good at more traditional stand-up first.
That’s how you get the mechanics of stand-up down. Lots of comics, myself included, we start off trying to tackle really grand ideas and difficult subjects.
That’s exciting to us, because as creative people we want to wrestle with challenging ideas that are not well-integrated within the culture. That’s mysterious and thrilling - creatives love encountering novelty and then trying to make sense of it - novelty is inspiration. You go out and experience weird new things, and then you write or paint or sing about it - whatever your creative medium happens to be.
But if you don’t have the solid mechanics within your medium down - things like joke structure, timing, stage presence, the ability to read a room - stay emotionally in touch with the audience - if you don’t understand that stuff, you aren’t going to be able to properly express your brilliant artistic ideas in a way that people can understand.
They’re either going to stare blankly, boo you, or give you suggestions about how you could improve your jokes after the show…which is the worst one. I’d rather you boo me.
So, if you want to make great new and innovative art, you have to make basic, less challenging, less groundbreaking, more relatable, more mainstream stuff first.
As an artist, you have to be normal before you can be crazy.
You still have to be crazy, but you can’t be completely nuts all the time.
That’s too isolating.
Sure, you may be able to entertain the crap out of yourself up in your own mind, but then you’re just a dude laughing to himself in public for reasons no one understands. That’s too far gone.
You don’t wanna go full crazy. Just 50, 75% crazy at most when you’re up on stage, but you always need to be able to pull it back and reenter the culture.
And hopefully, you didn’t say anything too nutty while you were up on stage and the audience appreciates your fresh perspective on some stuff they didn’t understand as well before they encountered your art. And you’ve helped move the culture forward a little bit in an important way.
Or, maybe they’ll take you out front and tar and feather you for hearsay and blasphemy.
That’s the risk ya take you crazy SOB. Now go paint something with your paintbrush.