I did a show last night at a wonderful establishment. The booker is friendly and the crowds are stand up savvy and generous, however, I performed in its haunted room. The room is not haunted by ghosts who poke their heads out of closets or appear suddenly in a mirror, what haunts this room is much worse. I believe that years ago, in the far away land of 1998, a comedian had such a bad set in this room it ripped the space time continuum within it forever. Ever since that fateful day, the room has been a black hole of comedy, a vortex that sucks up laughter and leaves audiences, mostly composed of tourists, looking like rows of mannequins sporting the “just got in from Eastern Europe summer line”. Rows of flip flops and shirts that say “Armani” 1000 times. They stare at you, not only stone faced, but looking like they have never laughed before, like they’ve never heard a laugh, like someone came to their town with a rumor that someone had laughed 3 countries over and they beat him to death for his salacious lie.
There is nothing wrong with the room itself. You walk in, there is a stage and a bar and in front of the stage there are tables and chairs. In standard comedy club fashion the room itself is lacquered with a thick black paint and everything serves to focus attention to the comedian on stage, it seems normal, and that’s what tricks you. I imagine audience members settling down expecting a good show, but when the first comedian takes the stage, a dark energy envelops the entirety of the crowd. Their faces go blank, their ability to laugh is taken away from them, and as if bound to their tables by invisible tether, their hands cease to be able to clap.
This is where I performed last night, this is where I perform almost every week. I’m reading IT by Steven King at the moment, and there is a great plot device where the main characters leave their home town and their memories of the haunting they suffered there are instantly erased until they return years later to face down their monster once more. That’s exactly how I feel before I step back into this room. There is a nauseous sort of hope that sweeps over me before a show there. It’s not the hope of a traveler setting foot on new land, more like the hope a prospector feels panning the same river bed he’s panned thousands of times before, holding on to the false and insidious idea that maybe this time there will be gold at the end of his effort. Once I step into the room even that warped sense of optimism leaves me, and I settle into the darkness and silence.
Last night after my bomb, I got off stage and slunk back to the green room. The green room is nice and there is a TV where they have a live camera set up and you can watch other comedians bomb as bad as you do, but last night was different. I watched my friend, Kelly Ryan, crush. It was like watching the devil get beat in a fiddle contest, it was incredible. I couldn’t hear exactly what she was saying, there was no audio feed, but I could hear the laughter bang against the door like a horde of zombies hungry for my self esteem rather than my brain. I had associated that room with bombing for so long that I had built this comfortable space in my mind where I said ‘it’s impossible to make them laugh, so it’s ok’. You could tell Kelly was killing by looking at her performance without audio. She was relaxed, smiling, and generally having a good time. There is a saying in comedy that goes something like this: “If you’re having fun on stage, the audience will have fun with you.”
I think it’s a good little saying, but I prefer one of my own: “If you’re not having a good time on stage, the audience should have a good time anyway because you’re soooooo smart and special, and also someone in the audience should give you a TV show.”
Anyway, Kelly finished her set to a kind of raucous applause that I didn’t know was possible in that room, and when she came into the green room I told her “wow, that sounded great.” To which she replied “You know, they just wanted me to talk about what was going on in the world. They were all kind of sitting around waiting for it to be addressed.”
She said it so simply, so absolutely, like a plumber telling you “ya thats gotta be a blockage in the S-pipe, you’re gonna wanna put a spigot valve in the sprocket joint.”
I mulled over what she said for a while, and it struck a few nerves for me. First off, I was thinking about current events a lot that day, and I am now as well. Military action in the middle east, multiple deaths caused in the name of the country I poorly file my taxes to every year, and a creeping sense of inevitability. My parents were born less than ten years after the conclusion of world war two. Those must have been hopeful times, living in the country which was the flaming sword of justice that vanquished evil. They then stood up bravely to the war in Vietnam, because what was going on there was not what the United States military stands for.
I was born in a time where the marketing behind the United States military had been on auto pilot for a full generation before me. “Bringing democracy” and “securing freedom” were chanted like the drones of a bagpipe. They would spout talking points about imminent danger with no real conviction, using buzz words like they were entering the password to an ancient evil laptop. Now, we’re at a point where we don’t even really use those pretenses. Now we are at war because we are at war. We can come up with flimsy reasons afterwards, but those explanations are as varied and mystical as oracles looking into tea leaves. Going to war is an inevitability, because the country needs war almost as if we are offering it in homage. Our soldiers sign up to potentially be given as blood sacrifice in exchange for an article on Fox news with their face in front of a big American flag smiling brightly. The wanton disregard that this country seems to have for its soldiers does not hold a candle to the apathy it has for the lives of Iranians.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a way to turn all that into standup, but I think I should figure out a way to speak about things as they happen in real time. My issue is, I think slow, I write slow. My jokes are well thought out and pretty tight, but they take a long time to get that way. The thing that I am struggling with now is how to bridge the gap between what I am feeling and what I am doing on stage.
Recently I’ve been going to open mics and letting loose on stage a little bit more. I don’t know if anything will come of it, but it does feel good. I’m a firm believer that an entertainer’s job is to entertain, and a comedian’s job is to be funny. This video that I saw of Stephen Graham recently sums it up pretty well.
While I certainly believe this to be true, I also think a comedian has a better chance of being funny when they are talking about something they believe to be interesting.
I think my problem is. I put a lot of pressure on myself, and pressure is just that, a containing, restrictive force. Sometimes I resent certain audiences, I think they are scared or stupid or annoying, and I let that get to me. My preconceived notion of what they want clouds my judgement and makes me act inauthentically. I think I learned a lot that night from Kelly, even though she doesn’t know it. If you put distance between yourself and others, consider yourself to be different, better, more thoughtful, or worse, dumber, you offer yourself a cushion. I think what I learned is if you look down on people, you make it harder to connect, and connecting with people is probably the only thing that could make me feel better right now.
