Comedy, of any sort, is usually a byproduct of a tumor that grows on the human soul. If you know a really funny person who isnt tortured and broken inside, Id say A) theyve just successfully hidden it from you, B) their emotions are buried so deep down that even theyre in denial about it, or C) theyre just some kind of a mystical creature I cant begin to understand. Find a comedian, and youll usually find somebody who had a shitty childhood. Heres how it works for most of us 1. At an early age, you start hating yourself. Often its because you were abused, or just grew up in a broken home, or were rejected socially, or maybe you were just weird or fat or ... whatever. Youre not like the other kids, the other kids dont seem to like you, and you can usually detect that by age 5 or so. 2. At some point, usually at a very young age, you did something that got a laugh from the room. You made a joke or fell down or farted, and you realized for the first time that you could get a positive reaction that way. Not genuine love or affection, mind you, just a reaction -- one that is a step up from hatred and a thousand steps up from invisibility. One you could control. 3. You soon learned that being funny builds a perfect, impenetrable wall around you -- a buffer that keeps anyone from getting too close and realizing how much you suck. The more you hate yourself, the stronger you need to make the barrier and the further you have to push people away. In other words, the better you have to be at comedy. 4. In your formative years, you wind up creating a second, false you -- a clown that can go out and represent you, outside the barrier. The clown is always joking, always on, always drawing all of the attention in order to prevent anyone from poking away at the barrier and finding the real person behind it. The clown is the life of the party, the classroom joker, the guy up on stage -- as different from the real you as possible. Again, the goal is to create distance.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 09:42:47 +0000