[1203] Same Page

It’s 3 AM and I’m home from day 2 of the Limestone Comedy Festival in Bloomington, Indiana. Earlier today, I was at St. George Serbian Orthodox Church in Schererville where I was a pallbearer for my 45 year old cousin’s funeral. It was close to 3 AM that I arrived to the area driving up the night before, and after a viewing, church service, burial, and lunch, I made the drive back, finding myself exhausted and briefly/uncontrollably drifting lanes just before the Lafayette exit I was looking to pull over on to take a nap.

 

For what my decision to buy a VVIIPP badge for the 3-day event might’ve suggested would be a flatly “fun” weekend packed with “comedy,” my cousin’s death being the most obvious wrench in my expectations is not even what’s mostly on my mind. I learned more about him from his obituary and eulogy than I had ever heard/remembered family talking about. As a basic human, it’s sad when people die and I’m not coldly dismissive of what my aunt is going through or anyone else in my family. Especially because I’ve gotten older, I just don’t play along anymore than I have to.

 

I suppose, again, we arrive at the notion of “playing along.” To be sure, I will never “forgive” nor “forget” the horrible things my family have done to both my dad and step-mom, grandmother, or myself. These are thieves. These are liars. These are greedy, insecure, and angry children who, as recently testified to in my cousin’s death, are willing to let those in their orbit suffer for their lack of accountability. My dad is 1 of 4. They all got the same parents, and he managed to be the only one who didn’t find a way to mock the examples my grandparents were trying to set.

 

At the same time, as I can already sense this is sounding incredibly judgmental or callous, I don’t pretend that anyone is anything less than an animal first. I had this moment as they were lowering the lid to my cousin’s coffin where I just looked around the room and felt this lightness about the terrible and inhumane or exploitative shit the people in my family have done. There was a useful narrowing of focus and forced perspective as the sickly mouse-like face of my cousin descended into his coffin and I looked at the congregates hold back tears or stare just past where he laid.

 

There’s a certain poetry to the idea that I go straight from comedy festival to burial and then right back to festival. There’s a certain highlight that I, in spite of my best effort, would find myself flirting with death on the highway. You really do want to believe something about the bigger picture. I couldn’t escape the thought that the reason we have this whole lengthy procession is to distract us from the responsibility that is begged in thinking death is the end. What if my aunt simply failed her son? What if she’s continuing to fail her remaining one who is struggling deeply with alcoholism? Now now, fuck all that noise, we’re gonna hang out soon in heaven!

 

The comedy festival is feeling feeble. There’s plenty of funny people, but I’ve never felt more like an afterthought in buying the highest-tier badge for something. Maybe the System of a Down “VIP” tickets once, but this is right there for considerably less money. You don’t feel the energy. You don’t get the sense the ones who have been doing it for…12 years…have figured out the rhythm. Did you know I get reserved seats right up front for shows that haven’t sold 1/5th of the room? If 30 or 40 people got invited to it, why am I seeing the same hosts and features multiple times? It’s very first or second year energy. They told me my badge would look the "coolest." It’s the exact same badge as the VIP.

 

I’m exhausted by what feels like perpetual unreality. My family isn’t real. The competence and “love” of comedy by whomever organized Limestone isn’t either. It’s so many people playing along with some idea of what they think the thing “should” be. At lunch, my surviving alcoholic cousin and I get along in a weird way. His energy and my fluid acceptance of it did not match the pleasantries vibe at the table. He shakes. You thought he was going to drop each bowl of food as it was passed around. I recognized how important it was to him that he wasn’t babied as he still managed to serve himself without spilling or breaking anything. He’s dealing with real shit, including recently diagnosed cirrhosis of the liver. I gather he clocks me as someone willing to meet him where he’s at.

 

The comedy festival is interesting if only because it’s a majority female comics, and younger people than me. It’s like this weird little microchasm into the broader fucked up world of lonely fascist men steering us to Handmaid’s Tale-opia. Tonight was karaoke, and by 1:30AM, when the songs were done, it was 30 girls in mom jeans and 90s dad sneakers talking too-enthusiastically to each other as people like me I assume felt reasonable in not even thinking about hitting on any of them. Tomorrow, we can get brunch with the comics. From what I’ve gathered, they’re mostly comfortable talking/working within their fellow comic cohort and marketing themselves or playing friendly with the locals wasn’t quite explicated in their contracts. I don’t blame them.

 

When I first started writing this I felt this desire to get on the same page. I was going to just list the things I “individually” felt and thought “everyone” could kind of support or understand. Instead, I’ll take one thing, like sneezing and saying bless you, to illustrate my frustration. I think we need to be saying “bless you.” I don’t think it has anything to do with religion. I don’t think you’re remotely sane if you find it offensive. At least half the times I sneeze, I don’t get a bless you. Every time I hear a sneeze, I say bless you. We need things like that to save us from the individualized algorithms. We need social norms back. 30 funny creative women should not be meandering about a bar in a college town during a festival because they can’t trust any man because “toxic” is all they’ve known and men are no longer being properly socialized.

 

The ideals live and die with each of us. My grandparents set examples. They died with 3 out of 4 of their children. To me, that says you need to work 4 times as hard as you might assume initially to maintain whatever it is someone was showing you is worth maintaining. You think you worship Carlin, Pryor, Williams, and Chappelle? Create something, in 12 fucking years, someone like them would want to play at. Stop “doing comedy business” and seek and celebrate those with the message. If you want family, don’t perform and pretend like mine, hold the line of standards and respect for yourself and what you contribute to the pot of wellbeing.

 

I think there’s like 5 separate blogs in here, but I had to say something. I have to say something because, whether it’s 40 comedians or 3 days or acquaintances who only see each other at deaths, no one else is saying what needs to be said or what I need to hear to suggest we’ll ever find each other again.

[883] Bubbling

I have had about a dozen titles for this float by over the last few days. I do not believe it would be overstating that I am coming from a place of calm, deliberateness, but still acutely aware “something” need be said. I'm “procrastinating,” which might be understood as me prioritizing writing this first. I'm actively mitigating my cold house, the heater out of commission, with a plug-in blanket. My coffee is delicious. A movie I've tried to watch 3 times is paused with pre-famous Bobby Cannavale explaining to Robin Williams why he needed a break from their relationship.

Again, I feel on the cusp of greatness. The last few days I've felt my initial enthusiasm for the Sirius XM Radio stations in my loaner car wane. At the same time, I got a loaner car when my truck shit the bed. I got it from someone I actively told was not my friend after we became desk mates at my last job. This friend is also repairing my truck while navigating too many clients and attempting to get through a doctoral program. He references his culture as the source of his impulse to help. My sense of greatness is bolstered by a relationship both shaped and unshaped.

I try to set conditions. The creation of my home is arguably the largest expression of that. Whatever winds may blow, they blow against my house, not my apartment complex. Whatever broad “business” idea I want to pursue, I won't pursue it with anyone less than an Allie or Hatsam.

I think you set up the conditions in your mind and behavior, and they manifest in incalculable ways. With my friend fixing the truck, I told him we wouldn't be friends unless he affected my bank account after he, incorrectly, thought he could get me a side job with the university. It was something of a running not-actually joke for a year and half until I called him about getting hired on where I work now. They paid me, so we're friends now, and then he went and did some shit like fix my truck, and I feel the kind of enthusiastic reciprocity burden to help him insulate and pour cement in his garage.

It has been my suspicion for quite some time that “sharing” or “reciprocity” have been beaten to death culturally. Things have reduced to “me and mine” at all times. Independent of that I can think of my best friend who, over the 20+ years we've known each other were anchored by exacting dollar amounts in where we sat with each other. It's very recent memories where the impulse to reference that $3 spent at McDonald's has come due isn't the first one. I don't know what else you might expect from a couple of psychopaths, but it was a system that worked.

The concepts of what bring us together don't become so opaque without the active assault and assertion for the current cultural narratives. You're not sharing with someone you need to “capitalize” on. You're not sharing your happy moments and achievements as much as marketing your brand or providing data points to get you photographing algorithm-predicted brands next time. Our “culture” is to reflexively submit to the mercy of the various powers that be. The impulse to criticize or push for another standard or definition is punished, or you're just too tired.

For me, I can feel lighter about my impulse to better define and call-out. Did you write a polite, but direct, letter to your upper management the other day telling them to pay everyone considerably more? Do you need to? Yes. Can you afford to? Probably not. I don't like my job, but I'm not clawing my eyes out like I normally would. I can deliberately and meticulously parse out what I like, what I don't, and where it sits with me in the many contexts I exist in at once. That's psychologically regal. That I got to sleep in to 9, get up and write this, look at my bank account and see about a month's worth of similar “effort” between me and getting “even” is physically regal. The things I need are no more or less than we all need, like health insurance, so I don't take it personally like some deficit in my decision making or “simple choice” to spend obscenely for not enough.

I'm full. I'll need to eat again, and I know shit is coming, but I'm full. I get offered more food while I'm full. Whether I'm full of ideas I think more people need to share, or physically stuffed with Thanksgiving leftovers, the implication is to really or genuinely share. We all are packed with as many or more ideas about our lives, the directions we'd like to go, the things we deserve, or the ways we can help. There is no road map. You have to figure out what you're full of, and decide how it needs to be shared. You need to reverse narratives about what you are constrained by and discover what enables you to create. I create blogs. I create “pay us more” emails. I create the half of a friendship or relationship that says, “you must be this good to illicit this much in return.”

It's cold. Most people don't have the priming to hear you. Most people don't have the time. Most people don't have the disposition or the definitions to even understand, nor parrot back, what you've said or what you're doing. That doesn't erase your obligation to try. That doesn't let you off the hook for recognizing things you can be more responsible for. That doesn't unburden you from sorting out your reasons to exist each day. You can choose to respond to how you feel with another brick in your wall or with a brick thrown at your head. You can appreciate the space-heaters and warm blankets, or tell everyone what a piece of junk your air conditioner is. You can always do both, but can you feel which one your behavior is dictated by?

You don't know which part of the water is going to send up a bubble first. You can be sure it's not going to boil if the heat isn't on.

[746] Hit By Pitch

I hope I can make this quick.

 

Suicide is in the news again. Chester, Robin Williams documentary, and not-quite-the-same I just sat through a presentation talking about LGBTQ youth and their rates of suicide and particular problems related to inclusion. In the set of presentations they also included a story of a baby born with cancer who died a little over the age of 2, and a sentiment that “God puts people in our lives for a reason.” Also, wholly unrelated but for it happened to me in close proximity, I went out to see someone away, and they were less than excited at my presence.

 

How do we unpack this and mash it all up? Let's start with the idea that people are in your life for a reason, or you in theirs. The second half I can at least speculate some divine role I was “supposed” to play. I've talked about it before. Being something of a “destroyer” or “anti-particle.” Things collide with me and never seem to come out like they imagined on the other side. In a world of tight-lipped and tight-assed people, I would serve a palpable function. If you're squeezing on to your conception for dear life, I'm the devil. Isn’t it properly avoidant and convenient of God though? Without him, how could you humble yourself in the presence of your dead child? Good thing you’re so important for him to focus on you so specifically; just what you needed. 

 

In talking about the dead gay kids, the point was stressed that the difference between life and death can be a feeling of inclusion and support. It can be having just one person who accepts them for who they are. It can be opening their eyes to a timeline for if and whether they want to come out so that they're safe and supported. We're in southern Indiana after all, that point needed stressed. Included. Part of the greater pack in which you depend on for survival. No finer point could be put on it than a suicidal child whose identity is being denied.

 

To make that “unfair” and “terrible” and “what the fuck man?” analogy, every time you strip someone of their identity, you're playing the suicide game. I consider myself lucky to no longer be a child. I like that I don't lay my well-being on the hinges of how people decide to think of me or whether or not that want to engage or talk. One must wonder how many people are truly teetering on that ledge though when you consider the music of Linkin Park. “Somewhere I Belong” has been on repeat in my head for a few hours. I'm not the only big fan. I've never connected so strongly with millions and millions of people to still fall under the weight of my demons.

 

Is that a choice of mine? Am I just better at constructing a story that externalizes? I was thinking about my proposition to try and stay “generally happy” for a week. I mean, I'm pretending like me shitting on things doesn't make me happy. I don't hate my jokes. I don't pretend I'm at the mercy of my mistakes. I don't glom on to people but for the remnants of neural connections I can't untangle. Why is the darkness my playground when it's just the damning destroyer of worlds for everyone else?

 

I suppose I feel I'm ramping up a bit. I've beaten my head into submission, and now our awkward hug or song and dance about friendship leaves me as empty as I always wished as an anxious child. A memory hit me early of a time when my mom took us to The Taste of Chicago, I had no desire to go, she had complained of having little money earlier, and in my angry pouting she said, “Crucify me!” and I replied, “Gladly.” The look on her face left me as dead inside as I've ever felt. Not dead embarrassed or filled with regret. But in that moment, it clicked how useless and nothing you were going to mean to me as a person if my words were going to get you so crazily worked up or break your face to look like an African war mask. Bitch, you threw the pitch and are shocked by the home-run? You're playing my game.

 

I don't seek redemption or forgiveness. I'm proud that I've the constitution or manner that keeps focus. I drive all over this godforsaken state and see thousands of people just living their lives, voting for Trump, spending money they don't have, coming up with excuse after excuse for why their lives do or don't look the way they do. All of it boiling down to modes of being that have nothing to do with me. The only people who are my people do the shit I do. They risk. They're screaming the truth. They take the beatings for their behavior. And they know they are nothing without the ongoing conversation. Maybe if someone got to the work of telling these gay kids they will always and forever be the exception they'll swallow their fate and stop hurting themselves in service to shitty rules. Maybe if we stopped romanticizing and perpetrating depressing environments we'd get to listen to the ongoing creations from our artist heroes. Maybe it's my embrace of the darkness that makes me feel entitled to the world and my conception of myself well in spite of you.

 

Try not to die, I guess.

[390] Inspired By Robin Williams

The fire is still hot on Robin William's death. This is something that seems to encompass so much of what I think needs to be talked about, I'm going to risk adding to the fanfare and out pour as if to capitalize on the moment.

If you haven't seen it David Wong tries to explain why funny people kill themselves. I don't disagree with the article, but I think the habit of classifying people as “funny” or “depressed,” in general, steers us in a very specific, and I would argue unhelpful, direction as far as the conversation goes.

Take a look at the comments section if you're subscribed to Cracked on facebook. Immediately there's the person who proclaims “Not every comedian is depressed!” as if that's what Wong was saying. Of course the defenders of “The Point” come in and let her know how badly she's missed it. Then there's the people who need to list off all the names of dead comedians who've suffered depression and anxiety. Like it's now a pissing match between who can come up with the most “healthy” and “troubled” comedians and settle the debate once and for all. There's the people who will tell you how amazing and caring and all around wonderful Robin Williams was. Every phone number to every help line in the world is listed somewhere so we can reach out if we're close to the edge.

I should add a disclaimer, I've handled discussions of depression poorly in the past, and if my phrasing or perspective sounds so “YOU STUPID FUCK YOU DON'T KNOW, YOU HAVEN'T HAD IT, YOU DON'T GET IT!” Let me just say it's bound to happen and I'm not really trying to discuss depression or what it's like to have depression or my story as it relates to depression. Depression is a factor in the digression because it's big and everywhere and related to comedy in a particular kind of fashion.

I think the conversation should be centered around the difference between “distraction” and “appreciation.”

I think a lot of funny people remain secretly sad because a lot of people use them as a distraction verses appreciating where they are coming from. The comedian can also be said to be using the audience as a distraction as well.

I think nice people have it rough. I think they are almost destined to be a martyr for what perfection is supposed to look like. The immensity of the drive to push you to be a little nicer, understanding, or lend a helping hand seems to frequently come from having to battle, if ever to overcome, a lot of bullshit first. I think there's much to be said about how your perception molds that bullshit or why you would go out of your way to be nice or learn how to be funny.

What's the cliché? Assholes live forever. Assholes seem to know something in their bones that never let's them get “too sad” because the world “out there” is hardly the nicest thing they could imagine, but you can scrape the bottom and still find a reason to live. And then perhaps that's all they believe in. That's how I work at least. I'm not “shocked” this “funny, amazing, good spirited, beautiful soul” killed himself. I'm certainly not happy about it. He easily was top 3 funniest people on the planet to me.

But he was plagued in a way I am not. I don't have an “addictive personality,” which I think is often a bad way to label getting into a habit of avoidance. I don't have “depression” which I think is flavored not only by culture, but goes into overload when you incorporate substances or something as vapid as the entertainment industry. I think nice people like Robin Williams, as kind of horrible as it sounds, need to become bigger dicks.

You're lucky if your sweet nature gets you the kind of authenticity reciprocated. I don't do well with nice people. I need to see edge and anger. I need to see that you're not impressively sad about his loss, but maybe infuriated that someone can go 63 years of having the same thing and getting the same comments and “help” and it wasn't enough. I wonder if depressed people were just hoping you'd share the suicide hotline one more time. I wonder if Robin Williams didn't just set a benchmark.

And none of us knew the man. But we know ourselves. We know friends who suffer like he did. We know a lot of the problems they face are the ones we face, but for our worse memories or dickish natures we carry on a little lighter. Focusing on rehashing the buzzwords related to depression misses the point. Focusing on the hidden tragedy of comedians loses it again. Passing the suicide hotline around like a hot potato isn't the kind of lasting staving off or fixing of the problem.

Certainly no one wants to say “some people can't make it.” You'll never be in their head. You'll never figure out the right combination of words to convince them that what you feel and think about them matters more, and it's selfish and horrifying and the worst thing they could ever do to you. But I would think, if it were me, I wasn't able to feel it. My pain outweighed yours, or what I imagine yours will be. I can prove it. Wong points out that you can learn control when you take the funny reigns. Maybe you don't even have to turn dickish, you just have to finally prove you have control of anything, even if it's just a moment of losing the ability to ever do so again.

I want people to see him as a man first. His historical contribution to comedy and culture are as far-reaching and influential as anyone has achieved. But it wasn't enough for him. Do you think we'll figure out why? Do you think we'll be able to save the next one? Are we aware that we only ever get to hear the survivor's tale? If we're going to tackle depression, if we're going to appreciate our capacity for humor, and if we're going to give people reasons to live, I think we need to treat the conversation better. I think it needs a kind of authenticity Robin Williams wasn't finding no matter how often he offered.

Bobcat Goldthwait tells Joe Rogan Robin Williams real cause of death - Lewy Body Dementia