on narcissism

Stand up comedy is inherently contradictory. It's based on the assumption, or the mutual delusion, that an audience on some level needs to hear what a given comedian has to impart. But so often that message is couched in self-deprecation and irony that it passes a point of over-saturated falsity- some crystallized point between Rodney Dangerfield's lack of respect (even as he got rich) and Anthony Dice Clay's manufactured bravado (even as his career cooled considerably).

So where's the line, and how does it end up defining us when the microphone is off?

On Monday I told another comic that I've always been relatively humble (which is a paradoxical thing to claim) and I was met with laughter. I realized that in this context, going out five or six nights of the week and assuming my voice needs to be amplified, assuming my visage needs to be spotlighted, I was letting the specific narcissism of performance inform my personality in a deeper way than I thought.

And honestly? That might be fine. In my experience, unearned cock-sureness might seem just as bad as an aggressive lack of self-esteem, but it gets a hell of a lot more done.

A dash of confidence can work wonders: suddenly the risk of failure is invigorating instead of paralyzing, compliments are rewarding instead of somehow ungainly and inappropriate (is there anything worse than a steadfast refusal to take a compliment? It's a sort of arrogance that takes much more effort to maintain, in its way).

All we can do, I think, is try and keep on the near side of the unknowable line between vanity and determination, and remember the kind words or the laughter or the therapeutic compulsion that put us up there in front of a crowd in the first place.