tuckova

ha ha very funny

The increasingly atrocious facebook still has the "memories" feature, which I enjoy. I treat it kind of like a horoscope: a few years ago on this day I was thinking about this or that, so maybe today will also be a this or that day. Sometimes it is. 

Four years ago I went to Vienna to do standup, my first time out of town. I was very excited, 7 whole minutes! I invited some of my friends to come -- I was doing this relatively new (to me) thing and I wanted very much to have the support of people who already liked me there, one friend from Brno and a few locals as well. Despite not being from Vienna I was a "bringer" and a good one at that, and still am I guess. I think there were six other performers, five men and one woman. They talked about dating, girlfriends, living in their parents' basements, masturbating, fast food, shit. It was... not different from most of the folks doing the central Europe comedy loop. They passed a hat and my friends put in money like the supportive pals they are. At the end of the show the other performers (just the men, if I remember correctly) divided up the money in the hat, and I watched them split it. I stood there awkwardly for a bit, and then left, because I had a bus to catch. My Brno friend told me, as we ran for the bus: Never let that happen again, that they don't pay you.

At the time I tried to justify it to myself: I was new, maybe they thought I wasn't that good. Thinking back on that night, a lot is unclear to me because I've come really quite far since then but what I do hasn't changed much. I was trying, and I am still trying, to do the kind of comedy I think is funny, which is the kind that makes me think. I don't think jokes are bad; I just don't generally like them as much as stories. I'm pretty simple: I like comedy that doesn't make me feel bad (unless I should), that connects ideas in ways that surprise me, and that makes me laugh. I am better at articulating what I want to do and I hope I am better at doing it. But in retrospect, I don't think I was bad back then, not so bad that I shouldn't be paid when people are paid. I was, though, and still am (though in waves, rather than consistently) really uncertain of how others see me and sometimes I'm not sure when it's a situation where I'm supposed to walk away or speak up. 

I am sometimes so angry about how unfair things are in performance and specifically in comedy, but also in life, and that's not new. Sometimes I think about how hard it is for me to ask for what I want, and sometimes I ask and I still don't get it, and I watch the same hands drop what I asked for in the lap of someone else and I have to bite entire holes in my tongue. Sometimes I think that's how the world works and I just want to stay home and never go out again. Sometimes I think that if that's how it is then I have to work harder, so that whoever comes after me will get to keep their tongues intact and be stronger, funnier, happier. 

It was nice, though, to have that memory pop up and think: I get paid pretty well in Vienna now. And I will bet that even if I haven't changed what I'm doing much, I have improved considerably more over the last four years than the rest of the people who performed that night. I think I'm funnier. I might even be having more fun. 

save some room for later

For the last few days I've been feeling something I'd best classify as "low-grade rage" that starts shortly after I wake up and continues through the day. I've been meditating again, thank goodness, and so part of me sits next to this rage and watches it like a dark cloud passing across the sky or more realistically like someone else's toddler, which is to say: I'm disrupted by it, but I'm also disconnected in what I think is a healthy way. "Oh, look, it's rage. Try not to hurt yourself?"

I'm angry at things that are not as good as I think they could or should be. Comedy nights where the hosts are not in control of the atmosphere and it's therefore unpleasant for performers and audiences. Just makes me mad. Yesterday I was extra annoyed Adam Gopnik for writing a crappy article about Joni Mitchell that ran in the New Yorker, a magazine that set my early standards for editing. This morning I was stomping around because there are "holistic" dentists in Brno who offer tooth bleaching and mercury filling removal and they're getting advertised by people who should know better. 

And there's a part of my annoyance that is about why people attend these comedy nights, permit these articles, visit these dentists. I think I'm used to this feeling as one of jealousy: Why are you paying attention to THAT when you could be paying attention to ME? 

Every time I've asked WHY I get told that I don't need the attention and I'm gradually accepting that people perceive that need differently than I do but in any case it's not personal. Some years ago a promoter who I consider a friend came to an event of mine, woke up the next morning and published an article about a competitor. This felt like a punch. And it's happened so many times since, in large and small ways, that I honestly can't count. It stops hurting as much because I can't honestly register that many blows. Sometimes I ask "why" or try to point it out and sometimes even that doesn't seem worth it. 

So that jealousy is a recurring theme for me; I'm acknowledging that. And this may still be part of that, although it's quieter. It's more on the lines of "Why are you, a person/organization I respect, supporting a thing I dislike?" To be clear, it's usually fine with me that people like things I don't like; not liking is different from disliking. As long as things don't actively cause harm I rarely bother to dislike them. I guess you could argue that Gopnik isn't causing harm by being a douchey writer but he gets a platform that other delightful and talented writers then don't get, which is a kind of harm, and I'm mad at the New Yorker for failing to rein him in and thus not living up to my perceived standards of them. 

This dovetails with another thing I've been working on. I tend to think that when my friends (or actually anyone) with whom I generally align disagree with me, they've been influenced by someone else and I direct my unhappiness with this disagreement at that someone else. Like: Let's say a friend and I both like the colors yellow and purple. But my friend also likes the color brown, which I don't because it reminds me of poo. If my friend has another friend who likes brown, I am angry at my friend's friend for influencing them to like the poo color; I imagine that absent that nefarious influence they would know what an ugly poo color brown is. What I'm working on is realizing that actually some of my friends like things that I don't like just because they like them; that they do things I wouldn't do just because they do; that the "culprit" is themselves -- not that they've been misled from their normal "correct" (aligned with me) path but that they're on a completely different path that only overlaps with mine sometimes. A poo-colored path.

Acknowledging this feels lonely and then of course the other part of my brain chimes in that one was always lonely and that knowing it doesn't make it more or less so. But that may be the source of my anger, actually.

Anyway, something I've been thinking about.