The real world does not contain any coolness. There is nothing sexy about a day job. There is no way to paint heterosexual monogamy as fringe. An apartment, car, and the resulting bills don’t make it to pop music. But these are the things comedians talk about.
Stand-up comedy is art that is real at the expense of being cool.
I just watched Almost Famous, again. Well I started watching it before realizing I’d rather write this blog. I’m not even cool enough to watch a movie. Nothing is as uncool as a blog, except maybe a decidedly unfunny blog about stand-up comedy.
Every artist makes a choice: to be an artist. The rest is out of our control. What medium will we use? What will our subject be? Who is our audience? Those things matter. Yet, they find us: our fans, our inspirations, and our outlets. I chose to be an artist long before starting performing stand-up. I wrote. I drew. I went back to writing. And now I make people laugh. Some of my writing probably made people laugh but I was never there for it so I can’t be sure.
I lied. One time I gave my sister a short story I wrote about going to my grandpa’s last birthday party. It was about a fight I got in with my grandpa and the fact that I knew I would never see him again. I watched her read it and she laughed. At me.
In time, my medium chose me. Even if I prefer writing to performance (there’s less driving and pants as a writer), I’ve only had any success as a comedian. My problem with writing was that I need feedback and my friends and family can only humor me with notes about so many short stories before I exhaust their patience. With stand-up comedy, I get a new audience every night. Another chance to run an idea by them. I receive their instant feedback: laugh or no laugh.
Comedy as an art form has laughter as its feedback, but that is not the point of comedy. The point of comedy is to be real.
People laugh when they are surprised. But if I say something to be surprising, it won’t be funny. That is because the surprise is ruined by the act of saying something surprising. But if I say something real, that will always be surprising.
The truth is rare. Most sentences are not true. It’s not even close. There are an infinite number of statements that are not true for every true statement. Because truth is so rare, just saying it out loud creates the shock that generates laughter. Thus it is the job of the stand-up comedian to say true things.
One reason it is hard to speak the truth is that it is not cool. It’s insulting, it’s humiliating, it’s vulnerable, or it’s unpopular. Cool things are agreeable, honorable, and safe. Don’t believe me that cool things are safe? Somebody told me they like rock n’ roll. If they told me in the 50s, they’d be weird. If they told me in the 70s, they’d be cool. If they told me yesterday, they’d be weird again. Rock N’ Roll was only safe to enjoy in the 70s: when it was cool.
So Uncool, It’s Cool
Then something happens. Time loops back on itself and what is uncool becomes cool again or for the first time. Truth and reality win, but only in the long run. We may never come to see the day that our truth becomes cool. But the uncool artist is the only source of what will one day be cool. Cool people aren’t funny. They don’t have to be… they’re already cool.
Does anyone else immediately search the movie they just watched followed by “analysis” into YouTube? It may not be cool but movie analysis is my favorite part of watching a film. I filter the movie reviews and critics and try to find the rare gem like this one: Almost Famous - The Dichotomy of Real & Cool.