Back at it, People!
I did a spot at The Comedy Store every night last week. As you remember, I was playing with the idea of never doing stand up again. I still don’t ultimately know what will unfold, if anything, but it is what I do. So, we’ll see. It’s not like there are no problems in the world or with me personally to fuel me. I just don’t know if I’m tired of it all or not. Actually, I am, but that has never mattered.
I will say that the strange intensity of being out in the world among people is weird and tangible. I find I may be talking louder and with a bit more excitement without knowing it just because it’s been so long since we've all stood in that back hallway of the Comedy Store just talking. It was great to see Jeselnik, Segura, Lederman, Povitsky, Ingraham, Maz, Burr, etc. It was like nothing happened, except it did, a year’s worth, and now the strange vibration of collective trauma permeates.
It’s odd, but the natural adaptive urge is to get back ‘normal.’ I can’t, really. I won’t. I have to address what we’ve been through. Thoroughly. A year of terror, panic, isolation and near madness. The plague, death, the assault by a leader that wouldn’t honor our system, environmental horror, unbreathable air. The last year was emotionally and physically and psychological devastating for most of us. So, what is this normal we’re just supposed to get back to? Tired patterns of another time. We must process the multi-level traumas we experienced as individuals, as a species. I believe we are all in profound PTSD and if we don’t release and actively sit with it a bit we risk damaging our collective memory and disabling our ability to process what is happening now.
This is a respite. We must gather ourselves and regroup and reground and re-engage.
That said, the comedy has been tenuous in nature, but good. I’m getting my legs back for what may be the big work to come. Hitting the bag, jabbing, staying up. I can’t really spread out at the Comedy Store but I can work out. Hopefully when July is here and I’m doing the residency at Dynasty Typewriter my vessel will be ready to do the deeper explorations.
Today I talk to Gabe Kaplan. It was a real honor. He’s the real deal. Thursday I talk to Andrew Santino. We didn’t really know each other, now we kind of do. Comic talks. Good times.
Enjoy!
Lynn Shelton lives!
Love,
Maron
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