I am on a trip right now. I went to Georgia to watch my cousin get married and then to Austin, to scout it out two weeks before the big move south.
So everything I do seems primed with significance, symbolic in some way. I helped drive down to GA with my parents, but I didn't use cruise control because I don't like what it says about me metaphorically.
Saturday afternoon I sat out by the pool, my eyes readjusting to the light extremely slowly (due to the eighteen months, just ended, working third shift), and I was reminded of myself in the sunshine. I now have, thanks to a pale Irish complexion and a spotty job applying SPF 50, spots of severe sunburn that will soon start to peel, revealing the new me underneath.
I wore one shirt to the wedding itself saturday, changed into a different one for the reception, and finally a t-shirt for the casual, post-reception hour. The bride's side of the family, with only broad visual cues to go on, might've thought that I returned a different person each time.
That's the beauty of being conscious beings, I suppose: we can always reinvent ourselves (ants probably just have to keep being ants). In theory, I can get used to the dry heat (103 F right now) and the one way streets and everything, but I have to avoid old patterns and old cowardice. It's only day one, but I'm still raring to change my diet and cut my hair (soon, I can feel it) and pour myself into a different way of seeing things.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Thursday, June 9, 2011
on music
Music is as close to religion as I'll ever get. Those moments, seeing a live band, blasting the speakers in your car, your feet moving on their own, the world narrowing to a sunset or the hand you're holding or the memory that that song takes you back to, those are the best kinds of moments.
I sing constantly, and I hear melodies in my head, but I never had the patience or the self-motivation to learn an instrument. Words are the only thing I can manipulate with any aplomb (landing a line the right way on stage is rapidly nearing a religious experience as well), but it's harder to get that swelling of the score, that cinematic epic profundity that the best songs can instantly lend things.
In less than a month, I'm packing everything I have into my car and taking a two-day drive south, and I'm crossing my fingers that my cd player doesn't malfunction. I think I might waste a little money on CD-Rs and make 24-hours worth of mixes so I don't repeat, each song corresponding to a mile. I'm open to suggestions. Your favorite road trip music.
Because if you want to reach for those moments, you're going to need a soundtrack. I see the entire population of people with earbuds, presumably people who need music as much as I do, but it's only a small percentage that play air guitar and mouth the words and dance as they walk.
Maybe those people have actual religion.
I sing constantly, and I hear melodies in my head, but I never had the patience or the self-motivation to learn an instrument. Words are the only thing I can manipulate with any aplomb (landing a line the right way on stage is rapidly nearing a religious experience as well), but it's harder to get that swelling of the score, that cinematic epic profundity that the best songs can instantly lend things.
In less than a month, I'm packing everything I have into my car and taking a two-day drive south, and I'm crossing my fingers that my cd player doesn't malfunction. I think I might waste a little money on CD-Rs and make 24-hours worth of mixes so I don't repeat, each song corresponding to a mile. I'm open to suggestions. Your favorite road trip music.
Because if you want to reach for those moments, you're going to need a soundtrack. I see the entire population of people with earbuds, presumably people who need music as much as I do, but it's only a small percentage that play air guitar and mouth the words and dance as they walk.
Maybe those people have actual religion.
Friday, June 3, 2011
on enthusiasm
I've embraced having fun lately. There was a time that irony, cynicism had a romantic appeal.
But they weren't as much FUN, dammit. For some reason there's a prevalent sentiment in our culture, at least the sort of hipster pop culture to which I ascribe, that associates enjoying oneself with simple-mindedness. The implication is that critical thinking leads directly to disappointment, to the prominent noticing of flaws.
But that's just not true. I got wired back in march and wrote a long thing on facebook about how stand up comedy, for me, became so much more invigorating when I stopped approaching things by saying "you know what I hate?" and went with "you know what's absurd, and thus funny?"- the same is true for EVERYTHING.
I'm not perfect. Far from it. Admitting that makes it hard to hold it against the rest of the world. There are ironies, there's cruelty, there's bleakness and despair. And in a way, kneejerk snarkiness was a way of avoiding those depths for me for a long time.
But that's just treading water to avoid drowning. I'm going to laugh to myself loudly in restaurants, play the air guitar to my earphones in public places, say the first things that come to mind, drink some but not too much, be vulnerable, seek out the people and places that make me happy, make those people laugh and those places feel like home, and I'm only going to go diving to the murky depths of the middle of the loneliest nights when I have to, when it's healthy.
In the meantime, I hope to see you on the shore.
But they weren't as much FUN, dammit. For some reason there's a prevalent sentiment in our culture, at least the sort of hipster pop culture to which I ascribe, that associates enjoying oneself with simple-mindedness. The implication is that critical thinking leads directly to disappointment, to the prominent noticing of flaws.
But that's just not true. I got wired back in march and wrote a long thing on facebook about how stand up comedy, for me, became so much more invigorating when I stopped approaching things by saying "you know what I hate?" and went with "you know what's absurd, and thus funny?"- the same is true for EVERYTHING.
I'm not perfect. Far from it. Admitting that makes it hard to hold it against the rest of the world. There are ironies, there's cruelty, there's bleakness and despair. And in a way, kneejerk snarkiness was a way of avoiding those depths for me for a long time.
But that's just treading water to avoid drowning. I'm going to laugh to myself loudly in restaurants, play the air guitar to my earphones in public places, say the first things that come to mind, drink some but not too much, be vulnerable, seek out the people and places that make me happy, make those people laugh and those places feel like home, and I'm only going to go diving to the murky depths of the middle of the loneliest nights when I have to, when it's healthy.
In the meantime, I hope to see you on the shore.
Friday, May 27, 2011
on pop culture
Reference humor is very much like the weather in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It waltzes capriciously from one extreme to another, it knows no historical precedent. There's no formula to predict it.
I see movies constantly, watch my share of television. I keep abreast of things on the internet, which itself is a more insular place than it seems like from the inside. But there's no way of knowing, even given a crowd's median age, wardrobe, or the venue they inhabit, what avenues of mass media they'll follow you down on any given night.
Case in point- I have a joke, really the only survivor from my early days, which prominently involves Wham! that never seems to be too old for anyone- 80's references in general seem an easier bet than nearly any other decade, seemingly an entire ten years laced with a perfect mix of irony and nostalgia. I was born in 1984 myself, I remember absolutely none of it, pop-culture-wise.
I've worked in libraries and stayed tuned into to bestselling fiction for most of my adult life, thus I have a Nicholas Sparks joke that can be very hit or miss. Sometimes, in the right crowd, I replace it with a Twilight joke which is more universal (but the punchline itself is less biting. It needs work.).
Movies I reference constantly, but even there, even the hugest movies aren't always familiar ground. I had an Avatar joke that never really caught on for me- I think it might be because, despite the big numbers, the majority of people saw it once and moved on with our lives. I do a somewhat involved bit about The Matrix (it's about the déjà vu cat) that does pretty well- because even though it was an R-rated release over a decade ago, everyone's seen it more than twice by now.
It's a challenge that I relish- it makes consuming new art and media exciting. Even if I see a film and find it terrible, it still means I've punched a lottery ticket for my favorite drawing anywhere.
I see movies constantly, watch my share of television. I keep abreast of things on the internet, which itself is a more insular place than it seems like from the inside. But there's no way of knowing, even given a crowd's median age, wardrobe, or the venue they inhabit, what avenues of mass media they'll follow you down on any given night.
Case in point- I have a joke, really the only survivor from my early days, which prominently involves Wham! that never seems to be too old for anyone- 80's references in general seem an easier bet than nearly any other decade, seemingly an entire ten years laced with a perfect mix of irony and nostalgia. I was born in 1984 myself, I remember absolutely none of it, pop-culture-wise.
I've worked in libraries and stayed tuned into to bestselling fiction for most of my adult life, thus I have a Nicholas Sparks joke that can be very hit or miss. Sometimes, in the right crowd, I replace it with a Twilight joke which is more universal (but the punchline itself is less biting. It needs work.).
Movies I reference constantly, but even there, even the hugest movies aren't always familiar ground. I had an Avatar joke that never really caught on for me- I think it might be because, despite the big numbers, the majority of people saw it once and moved on with our lives. I do a somewhat involved bit about The Matrix (it's about the déjà vu cat) that does pretty well- because even though it was an R-rated release over a decade ago, everyone's seen it more than twice by now.
It's a challenge that I relish- it makes consuming new art and media exciting. Even if I see a film and find it terrible, it still means I've punched a lottery ticket for my favorite drawing anywhere.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
on blank pages and other people
What is it about creativity that makes time mutable? Bursts of productivity seem like they escape my hands as water, and I wake up to deserts of half-formed ideas, the minutes dragging by in chains of frustration.
Something about writing, about starting a sentence or a setup, makes clocks tick louder and the world focus in on your immobile fingers. The background fades away in slow motion and we sit there, alone and helpless.
The answer, for me, is to make the void smaller. I don't do improv, but I envy the group dynamic that it draws its basis of support from- look into the eyes of your partner, and you're never lost.
I've had a lucky three months, the best three months of my life in many ways, of meeting new people and being challenged. My world has gotten bigger as the void shrinks to nothing, and it's only made me hunger for more new things.
Comedy, especially for me, is just having one half of a conversation. Finding it and embracing it has made me regret the parts of my life I thought I could slide by hardly talking to anyone.
Something about writing, about starting a sentence or a setup, makes clocks tick louder and the world focus in on your immobile fingers. The background fades away in slow motion and we sit there, alone and helpless.
The answer, for me, is to make the void smaller. I don't do improv, but I envy the group dynamic that it draws its basis of support from- look into the eyes of your partner, and you're never lost.
I've had a lucky three months, the best three months of my life in many ways, of meeting new people and being challenged. My world has gotten bigger as the void shrinks to nothing, and it's only made me hunger for more new things.
Comedy, especially for me, is just having one half of a conversation. Finding it and embracing it has made me regret the parts of my life I thought I could slide by hardly talking to anyone.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
on conversation
You are all guinea pigs. I'm sorry, but this is true. Some of you mean a lot to me, I do my best to honestly engage with people, I do, but there is a part of my brain that I cannot stop. It is looking for ideas and phrases and the rhythms of speech that can be divorced from context and filtered through a microphone.
This might make me maddening to have a conversation with, I couldn't particularly say. In the Caste of Killers podcast last week, we touched on this briefly: how people might hear something that came up organically in your act later and feel used. But that's how it is, we don't try to pick the bones of social interaction like scavengers. We're just following instinct at a certain point.
If anything I think it's lead me to value open and honest conversation even more, to realize when I need to be serious, when someone isn't in the mood to be entertained. Now I'm at a point when I look for people to have meaningful debates with- I've even been antagonizing the high schoolers I supervise at my part time job with fundamental debates about the nature of religion and politics.
It's just that, with that part never shutting off, it's the simplest thing to switch from one mode to another, to widen or narrow the mind's lens and dance with my thoughts accordingly. It's the effort to resist being frivolous for the sake of laughter, to cheapen relationships by never really leaving the stage, that I'm hoping I avoid.
Because the meaningful things are often the funniest- it's just that we can't force ourselves to get there. Let's get a drink sometime and just talk instead.
This might make me maddening to have a conversation with, I couldn't particularly say. In the Caste of Killers podcast last week, we touched on this briefly: how people might hear something that came up organically in your act later and feel used. But that's how it is, we don't try to pick the bones of social interaction like scavengers. We're just following instinct at a certain point.
If anything I think it's lead me to value open and honest conversation even more, to realize when I need to be serious, when someone isn't in the mood to be entertained. Now I'm at a point when I look for people to have meaningful debates with- I've even been antagonizing the high schoolers I supervise at my part time job with fundamental debates about the nature of religion and politics.
It's just that, with that part never shutting off, it's the simplest thing to switch from one mode to another, to widen or narrow the mind's lens and dance with my thoughts accordingly. It's the effort to resist being frivolous for the sake of laughter, to cheapen relationships by never really leaving the stage, that I'm hoping I avoid.
Because the meaningful things are often the funniest- it's just that we can't force ourselves to get there. Let's get a drink sometime and just talk instead.
Monday, May 23, 2011
on exhaustion
In my head there are filters. I think about what I say before I say it, and only a fortunate confluence of predisposition and schooling have engendered enough quickness to make myself appear spontaneous.
I think too much about facebook comments, blog posts, greeting cards, phone conversations. I start every sentence several times before it gets enough momentum to reach a predicate. It lends itself well to the crafting, re-crafting, and over-analysis of jokes.
But it doesn't lend itself to telling them. It was beyond me, for a long time, to understand (even as I was compelled myself) how comedians can reconcile the agony of finding the right words with the inexplicable impulse to expose them to many people at once.
And the effort of trying to pit those instincts against one another, the need for expression versus the capacity to filter yourself into silence, ended up making me uneasy and terrified of what I was doing and relieved when it was over.
But then I got tired.
Tired of long days. Tired of worrying, tired of dodging the future. Tired of having potential, tired of marveling at the time going by. Somewhere I decided to talk as much as I can and filter it when it seems like it's becoming unwieldy, to sleep when my eyelids force me to and wake up as soon as I get another idea.
Comedy is about being fed up with absurdity in the world, on the face of it, but it's really about being fed up with a past version of ourselves. And the more exhausted I get it, the more nights I week I shake myself awake and find a stage somewhere, the less I pick and choose words out of fear- now I find new ones out of excitement and variety.
It took a year and a half of third shift to wear me down this much- if I ever spend any time on the road, I might even say things the very instant that I think of them. But as long as I'm weary and well-spoken, as long as I force sleep to catch me after a long footrace, I'll hit the pillow closer to myself than I've ever been.
I think too much about facebook comments, blog posts, greeting cards, phone conversations. I start every sentence several times before it gets enough momentum to reach a predicate. It lends itself well to the crafting, re-crafting, and over-analysis of jokes.
But it doesn't lend itself to telling them. It was beyond me, for a long time, to understand (even as I was compelled myself) how comedians can reconcile the agony of finding the right words with the inexplicable impulse to expose them to many people at once.
And the effort of trying to pit those instincts against one another, the need for expression versus the capacity to filter yourself into silence, ended up making me uneasy and terrified of what I was doing and relieved when it was over.
But then I got tired.
Tired of long days. Tired of worrying, tired of dodging the future. Tired of having potential, tired of marveling at the time going by. Somewhere I decided to talk as much as I can and filter it when it seems like it's becoming unwieldy, to sleep when my eyelids force me to and wake up as soon as I get another idea.
Comedy is about being fed up with absurdity in the world, on the face of it, but it's really about being fed up with a past version of ourselves. And the more exhausted I get it, the more nights I week I shake myself awake and find a stage somewhere, the less I pick and choose words out of fear- now I find new ones out of excitement and variety.
It took a year and a half of third shift to wear me down this much- if I ever spend any time on the road, I might even say things the very instant that I think of them. But as long as I'm weary and well-spoken, as long as I force sleep to catch me after a long footrace, I'll hit the pillow closer to myself than I've ever been.
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