Selfish

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Transcript:

I’ve devoted a MASSIVE portion of my life to comedy.  Watching it.  Reading it.  Watching documentaries about it.  Reading books about it.  Listening to podcasts about it.  Writing it.  Performing it.  Rewriting it.  Watching other people do it live.  Taking photos of people doing it.  Helping other people write it during joke workshops.  Daydreaming about it.  Thinking about it in the shower, out on walks.

Should I have done something else with my life?  Should I be doing something else with my life?  Aren’t there larger problems to be solved?

The trouble is, you don’t really get to pick what you’re drawn to, or what you’re good at.  I’ve tried.  I’ve tried to be different.  It’s very painful.  It’s very painful to try to be someone you aren’t.  You don’t get to pick who you are.  You have a nature to you.  You can make adjustments, but there are certain fundamentals that can only bend so far.

In a way, it does seem terribly selfish, narcissistic.  The idea of forcing people to listen to you with a microphone.  What a strange torture to inflict.

Look at me.  Listen to me.  I’m important.  Sit down, shut up.  Ok, you can laugh.  That’s the one sound you can make - the sound that means you like me the most amount possible.  Spontaneous laughter and praise of my artistic genius.  I will permit you to do that.  Clap if you would like.  That would also be acceptable here in my realm.

Why do I enjoy comedy so much?  I’m much more comfortable with shame than other people seem to be.  I don’t get embarrassed easily.  Apparently, that’s also a characteristic of psychopathy, but it does help if you wanna do stand up.  You’re gonna do lots of embarrassing things - or things that other people would consider embarrassing.

I think a comic has to embrace embarrassment - which can be selfish if done poorly.  Just getting on stage and behaving in an embarrassing way - in a shameless way - if there’s nothing redeeming in it - if there’s no deeper comic insight for the audience to appreciate, then, yea, you can kinda come across as a big a-hole who’s wasting everybody’s time.

But embracing embarrassment as a comic is critical because that means embracing your imperfections.  That’s the project.  You’re trying to be ok with all of your terrible shortcomings, and that gives other people permission to be ok with themselves as well.  It’s a commentary on the human condition - trying to maintain optimism despite our limited, fragile existence.  Just laugh it off and keep dancing; who cares if you only have one leg and a missing eye.

I do stand up because it helps me come to terms with who I am.  Is it a good idea to use comedy as a sort of therapy.  Maybe, maybe not.  Regardless, stand up has forced me to dive into my own psychology in ways nothing else has.  I’m always picking through my brain.  I was a philosophy major in college, and I was always reading these complicated books - in conversation with these really smart dudes from hundreds of years ago.  That made me think a lot.  But stand up is more potent in some ways.  You put something out there that you think, and then you get slapped in the face with a reaction one way or the other.  It’s very different from reading books by unresponsive, dead people.

It’s amazing how much can be disorganized underneath the surface of your mind once you start looking.  And there’s a massive incentive to figure out what’s really going on in here *pointing at head*, what’s true and what’s not.  Because if you don’t figure it out, the audience is gonna look at you like you’re a crazy person.  They’re not gonna laugh if they don’t understand you.

A lotta times you hear comics after a joke bombs, they’ll say, “That one was just for me.”  “It’s a good joke, you dim wits just don’t get it.”  And maybe you’re sort of right.  Maybe it is a well-structured joke, and maybe with the right people who understood you more, it would kill.  But that doesn’t really matter right here, right now.  It’s sort of irrelevant.  And maybe it is more than a bit selfish not to recognize that.  Are you a comic or are you a person who gets up on stage and gloats at people about how great you are?

Comedy is a dialogue.  It’s not a monologue.  There are strict limits on the two-way communication - the form it takes, but it is two-way communication.  Comedians need the audience for feedback.  It’s critical for us to understand our own material on a deeper level.  You can never really master what you’re trying to get at without that connection to other people.

I definitely used to get on stage like I was trying to prove something to people - like I was trying to win the prize of laughter.  That’s a terrible way to do comedy.  I think I did that initially because I came from this academic, philosophical background where you wrote essays to try to win an argument.  I’ve since learned that’s actually a terrible way to debate.  The goal shouldn’t be to win.  That’s one of the things that’s gone terribly wrong in our political culture.  The goal should be increased understanding and competence in dealing with difficult issues.  Who cares who wins?  That’s all ego.  What works.  That’s what matters.  What works.

There’s this idea of “killing” on stage.  “Killing” in comedy, it implies taking from the audience - “I killed you.  I got your laughs.  You couldn’t help it.  You tried to cover your mouth, but your laughs came out anyway.  And now they’re mine!  All mine!” - that’s not the best way to do it.  That’s not the best way to do anything.  That’s your ego getting in the way of a much more beautiful experience.

You might get huge laughs, but at what expense?  When you’re trying to prove a point up on stage, you’re trying to elevate yourself about others.  You’re trying to win.  Prove how clever and witty you are.  That’s fine, whatever, but it is ultimately selfish.  What are you leaving the audience with?  What are they sitting with when you’re done running your little skits up there?

The more impressive thing to do is to flatten your own ego.  The best comics are ultimately humble fools.  They’re self-aware.  They don’t use a microphone and a stage to tower above everyone.  They get up there and say, “Isn’t it crazy how thoroughly inadequate I am?  And, by extension, all of us are?  And yet, somehow, that seems to be ok?  Huh, that’s kinda funny.”

I’m not saying jokes say this directly, but it’s the general subtext.  Most of the very best jokes I’ve encountered are subtly implying something along those lines.

There’s a professor on YouTube, John Vervaeke; I’ll link his lecture series in the video description. I heard him talking on a podcast about the difference in Greek philosophy between the ideas of philia nikia, which is the love of victory, and philia sophia, which is the love of wisdom.

Those are two very different ways to live your life.  He talked about watching two fighters in combat.  Now, there’s the philia nikia aspect of the fight - who’s going to win?  Who will the victor be?  But there’s also something else going on in the fight.  There’s the process of the fight itself.  There’s the dance the fighters are in with each other.  That’s a different kind of excellence and beauty that can be appreciated.

No one wants to see a fight in which one fighter immediately defeats the other.  You want to see each participant push the other to their limits.  You want to see them compete at the highest level.  You want a close match.  And the fighters want that too.  They both want to win, but they also want an optimal challenge.  That’s what we all live for - to perform at the peak of our capacities.  Everyone finds that thrilling - doing something we’re very good at - we love that.  But we can only reach peak performance if someone else is pushing us.  The goal should be that peak performance more so than winning.  I’d rather run a faster time neck and neck with someone else and get 2nd place than win a race because the other guy tripped and fell.  It’s a hollow victory.

It is weird the current relationship between comedians and audiences.  It’s so strange how much political and cultural unrest has bled over into comedy.  It’s very, very interesting.  Genres of drama, tragedy, comedy are getting melded together both in stand-up and in television and film.  It’s interesting.

But I think it’s good.  Because it’s a challenge, you can’t just go up on stage and mouth off your selfish little thoughts in some hacky stock form and expect to be showered in laughs.  That’s this ego-driven, philia nikia approach.

You have to respond to the challenge from audiences.  They’re harder to make laugh.  Everyone’s walking on eggshells.  Everyone’s mad - we’re all angry and upset about 10 million things.  Plenty of those things are legitimate things to be upset about.  But I don’t think the solution is to stop laughing.  That’s a really bad idea.

Genuine laughter is wonderful.  People need it.  Physiologically, we need it.  But comedians have to find the genuine laughs in a shifting culture.  That’s always the challenge.  How do I dance right along with the audience, move as they move, still do something that is authentically me within this art form without it being all about me?  Philia sophia - where is the wisdom here?

So yea, there’s always the temptation to be selfish in comedy.  To use it as an ego boost.  To elevate yourself and make yourself feel more important than you are.  But it doesn’t have to be that.  It can push you to be a better version of yourself.

Also, I should say I’ve spent much more of my time as an audience member at comedy shows and open mics than I have on stage performing.  I’ve listened to far more albums and specials and podcasts than I’ve ever produced myself.  So, taking my turn up there with a microphone doesn’t seem terribly selfish to me considering all the buffoonery from others I’ve subjected myself to.  If you listen to others in the same way, patiently waiting for your opportunity, it would seem to me stand up is just another way to communicate.  It’s a weird form of communication, but it’s not inherently selfish.

Of course, this could all just be very elaborate self-delusion.