One of my private beliefs that doesnāt translate very well is that true comedy is sacred. And not sacred as in solemn, but sacred as in profound. & even fart jokes can have a profundity to them if you get it right. But strangely few comedians seem to get it. Maybe Iām delusional?
I think it was Alan Watts who said that laughter and anxiety are both two sides of the same coin. The very serious job of the comedian, as I see it, is to transmute anxiety into laughter. Voltaire I think had a similar perspective.
(I visited my dad in hospital after he had a heart attack (heās fine now) & he told us he couldnāt sleep bc one of the other guys kept farting all night. To be close to death & then be bombarded with fartsā¦ we belly-laughed for 10m and itās probably my happiest memory of him)
I think for comedy to truly serve its exalted purpose, comedians have to, however briefly, put aside their ego, their neediness, their contempt and tap into a deep love for humanity, a deep joy, a deep sense of hilarity at the absurdity of all things. Easy for me to say, of course.
Thereās a lot to be angry about in the world. Thereās a lot of cruelty and injustice, &comedy can be a tool for addressing that. But I do privately believe that even there, there is a love in that pursuit. A desire for connection, shared understanding. Comedy is a way of grieving.
One must imagine Sisyphus LOL-ing.
You were born crying, you should die laughing.
A lot of the tedium of everyday life builds up anxiety & stress, from the burden of maintaining a costly illusion of sanity. The comedianās job is to remind us that itās all hilarious. And not in a contemptuous or cruel way – laughing at ourselves should be wholesome, nourishing.
So anyway, yāknow. I get pretty bummed out when I see comedians get all tangled up in stupid non-discussions about people being offended and whatnot. Itās like finding out that theyāre not really comedians, only pretending to be, only playing the part of it. I was rooting for you!
But I canāt be too mad about it because that would be me missing the plot too, you see what I mean?
Itās a little lonely inhabiting this space because very people really get it all the way through. But the joke there is, “Thatās my secret, Captain – Iām always lonely.” š
You canāt prescribe this as a method to anybody else, because it can be reductive and dismissive if itās done without love. But for me privately, āwhatās the joke hereā gets me through almost everything. Laughter is not just medicine, it is a radical act in an anxious universe.
Itās been a while since I read Taleb but one of my favourite bits from him is when he mentioned fantasizing about putting a mouse(?) down the shirts of stiff corporate suit types. In a way thatās a great way to describe all of this. Put the mouse of joy down your own suit.
I just remembered that one of my favourite comics of all time uses a rodent as a cheeky way of breaking through solemnity. There is something profound here. Lots of people imprison their rat and in so doing imprison themselves.