Today I try something again that I haven't done in many years. I go back on stage and try to make a room full of people I don't know laugh. At jokes. That I write. And somehow get on stage to perform them.
Now this might not feel like a big deal to others, especially to my stand up friends with balls of steel. But that clearly is not me, as the last time I did this scared me so bad I ran and didn't look back for thirteen years.
Ok. That's a slight exaggeration. I have thought about it may times. Many many times. Stand up is an amazing thing, it's like a single person sport, up there with the greats like boxing, chess, or karate. I would say wrestling but the idea of my head between a sweaty guys legs is not really a good look. You get the gist though. It's this solo thing- just you and that other person, persons in this case. And that's it. On stage. Alone. Pretty scary.
It's like triggering an existential dilemma for no damn good reason.
They say stand up comedians are all crazy. Not sure about that, but not I'm not a stand up comic yet, so maybe I'll let you know once I actually become one. Or maybe I won't. Crazy people don't know they're crazy.
That being said, the stage is a great place to work out many things. Fears about talking in public being one of them. I mean if public speaking is hard to do imagine bombing a whole set. Now imagine doing that more than once. Yeah. Intense. Even more so you get to work through "issues." Love that word. So loaded. We all have them and what better place to work them out then in a public forum, in front of a group of people you don't know, trying to make them laugh. So yeah. Maybe I am a little crazy. Or at least neurotic.
Bear with me.
In a previous post I mentioned resolutions. Hence me even writing this. One of them was to write more, especially this blog. Free flowing, stream of consciousness, not looking back, except of course to edit, but even then not too much. (I'm still really bad at spelling. I still think it's a gene. Science will prove it one day.)
I started blogging to move past the fear of writing. Fears are best faced head on like any other bully or villain. "Will it be good? Will it be bad? What will people think?"
That's my internal editor. He's like a mix of the Riddler and the Joker. A combination of a cackling mad man with the ruthless calculations of a genius master mind; with all questions leading back to a hog tied, paranoid Chris chained to a chair in an abandoned bank vault with dynamite underneath. Yeah, my self editor is old school like that.
So I got tired of dealing with them, him, it, whatever. I decided I won't be intimidated by my fears anymore. I shot back at my internal editor with Batman eyes. You know the ones from cartoons where he looks at the screen and squints really really hard.
Yeah. Those.
You get to a certain age and you just say ok, enough. Whether it's school, bis, or other things in your life there, comes a moment when you have gone around the same loop enough to know that if you don't get off the ride nothing will ever change.
So I decided to squint back. Actually I said "Dude, fuck you! Get some balls and let's go do some shit. Time to live. Life is short."
Yes. By going on stage and embarrassing myself. Ha. Not really. By doing things that I have always wanted to do. But let little fears creep in and stop me from doing. So the blog, doing stand up, all these forms of public self expression are great tools for dealing with my "stuff". The little insecurities that plague us all, left over from flight or fight responses that aren't even real or at least not as big as we create them in our heads.
And I'm enjoying blogging, and while it's great for getting ideas i.e."the stuff" out, the stage allows you to really "move" through them. I mean literally. You actually move through them. It's the physicality of the performance that actually moves the stuff out of you. After all, most "stuff" is just fear or an issue you didn't talk about. So again, what better way get it out than to shine a gigantic light on it. In this case a spot light.
I'm looking forward to climbing back on stage and tackling the boogie man that ran me out of town thirteen years ago like Simba in the Lion King. And like Simba I have reluctantly returned to my birthright to stare my old enemy, Scar, in the face.
Yes a little heady, but it's true. I like comedy, not so sure about performing, but I love to make people laugh. I've been that way all my life. Maybe I'll like performing too. The goal is not to put a value around it, good or bad. Just do it. See how it goes.
Part of the process of growing is to just do it. As Maslow said, "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be."
I'm learning it's not so much about being the next Eddie Murphy or whomever, it's about becoming whatever it is you are meant to be and making peace with that. Not letting fears and insecurities stop you from becoming that beautiful transcendent thing.
Most of all I am enjoying tackling the fears of my youth and probably gaining some new phobias along the path to becoming the man I truly want to be. So it's ok, I plan to work those out in my 50's when I give all this up and pursue that Jazz career that I left behind as a middle school trumpet player.
Hopefully I'll see you at an open mic as I'm work shopping a comedy set or a few years down the road at a small jazz club while I'm playing the piano. We'll see about the latter.
- Til Then
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