Comedy, Money, Politics, and Everyone's Worst Critic
Ba dum dah.
That is from 2006 when I was an aspiring comedian. I'm digging through my old notes trying to come up with new stuff as my partner is pushing me to have more laughter in my life and wants me to try and pursue comedy again.
The windows joke got laughs because it speaks to the weird way that money is dealt with in society. We spend in public and save in private. Except, their is no privacy anymore. Essentially, we all can figure out roughly how much people make and look at what they have and how many vacations they take, and do the math in our heads and figure out when the numbers don't add up. Well, actually, I can do the math. I have always been good at math and took inspiration from my Ukrainian grandfather. He came over from the old country and didn't have any opportunity to attend any schooling. He was a very smart man but always felt insecure about never going to school. Yet, he taught himself to read and also do complicated math in his head. He could do three digit multiplication in his head. It was amazing. Math is not much of a valued skill anymore since everyone has a calculator on our phone. I am amazed at how many of my friends can not calculate a tip without an app. Regardless, money management is not very funny. I know a friend who loves a bargain. She will buy a new purse at 20% off and put it on her credit card which charges 19.99% interest. She makes the minimum payment so by the time the purse has been paid for it costs her roughly 300% of the retail price. Not much of a bargain.
People would manage their money so much better if they focused on abundance rather than what is missing.
The federal Conservatives have an election ad out featuring Andrew Scheer telling us that he has a plan to reduce our cost of living. He doesn't say what that plan is and I haven't seen it to be able to adequately understand it. It is not his fault that he is putting out a sound bite without much information. It is the reality of our instant gratification society. When the President of the United States primarily uses twitter as a way of communicating, this is what we get. Twitter only allows so many characters so he is role-modeling insignificant communication.
It is easy to go on tangents, like I just did, when thinking of what is funny in this world. There is a lot of absurd but not much funny.
But, I am coming up with a few jokes and giggling to myself. Life is good. I hope to participate in another open microphone event soon. Nothing may come of it, but I am scattering seeds, my theme for this year. Can't wait to see what grows.
It also reminds me of something that occurs when you do comedy. It doesn't seem to matter if you are playing to an audience of 5 or several hundred. It is just one of those things that happen. There is always one woman off to the side. You can't see her because of the lights in your eyes, but you hear her. Whenever you make a joke, she will laugh and then explain why the joke was funny. It throws you off your timing a little and in comedy, timing means a lot. You always want to stop and say, you don't need to explain the joke to me, I wrote it !!
And, with the lights shining in your eyes, you can only see one person and it is always the person sitting right in front of you. It is always a man and he never laughs and he never cracks a smile. You can hear laughter in the audience but the one you can see never laughs. You want to stop and get the woman who is explaining the jokes to sit next to him. You want to do everything to make this guy laugh. You start focusing on this guy, trying to get him to laugh. You start explaining the jokes to him. Now, you are throwing off your own timing. All to get this guy to laugh. It is too late by the time you realize that everyone else has stopped laughing. By focusing on the one guy not laughing, you lose the many people who are laughing. Deep sigh.
The worst thing is that one time the guy came up to me after my set and told me that I was really funny. I felt like asking why he didn't tell that to his face. Then, you realize that not everybody laughs out loud. Not everyone dances when no one is watching. Not everyone has a sense of whimsy. They doesn't mean that they don't find humour in life.
Once you realize that, you realize something else. That guy is not real and it is actually your inner critic. All of your insecurities and self-doubts are the one thing you hear the loudest. By paying too much attention to this inner critic, you sabotage yourself and your inner critics words become your reality.
It is not just in comedy where you inner critic is all that you can hear. Part of learning to tame that inner critic is to make friends with him. You have to acknowledge that your inner critic really is coming from a place of compassionate kindness. Your critic does want you to succeed but also wants you to be aware of the risks and dangers. Once you understand that, you can tell your critic that you got this and you appreciate the analysis but you want to take that risk anyway.
It is hard to know whether this is a case of life imitating art or art imitating life.
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