Well… not class, really. More like a support group married to a workshop. But whatever.

Had my first official… whatever of Stand Up For Mental Health today. Session? Let’s go with session.

And it was fun. I was both right and wrong about there being homework. There was none assigned, but I would have been a lot better off if I had done what Felicity did and written a bunch of jokes beforehand.

I ended up going last, which is a constant theme of my life, and if I had brought more material, I have a bad feeling we would not have gotten to it. By the time it was my turn, people were tired, and we ended early because I did not have stuff.

Won’t make that mistake again. I hope.

I brought only one joke : “I think the only way SUVs could get any bigger is if they add a second floor. ”

To me, that’s pretty funny. It’s tightly phrased with a good punch word at the end. The meme of bigger and bigger SUVs has been around for many years now. I didn’t think I needed to explain it.

But the joke was met with deafening silence. Felicity made an acknowledging noise (to be fair, she had heard it before) but otherwise, dead fucking silence. Most people weren’t even paying attention.

This activated approximately all of my issues.

Now, it might have been that it was getting hot, people were getting tired, it was the very end of the session, and hence it could have been the funniest joke ever and people still would have made absolutely no noise.

Honestly, criticism would have been less painful. Sometimes it is better to be abused that ignored. At least if they abuse you, they acknowledge you exist.

Some of us need a lot of validation.

And it could have been that it was just too fast a joke for tired people to get. It happens. It’s possible to make a joke too compact and muscular, and not by leaving words or concepts out so that it makes no sense.

It’s just too fast and too dense for most people to pick up. Even smart, funny people. People didn’t even have time to turn on their brains before it was over!

And I know I am funny. Really, I do. I have had people tell me I am the funniest person they have ever met. And only one of those people had just gotten out of jail!

Ba dum bump.

So while I know I am funny, I learned today that I still have a lot to learn. Which is good, because otherwise going to the rest
of the classes would be kind of stupid, at least from an educational point of view.

Still, next time, I am going first.

My fellow… um…. session-mates seem like cool people. There was one chick I particularly liked. She was funny and had attitude. Seemed to have a real spark to her.

And there’s another guy who has made it all the way to getting minor gigs, and he did his set for us, and it was hilarious. I am quite encouraged by seeing how excellent his material is.

Now I just need to get my ass in gear and bear down to attack this comedy business in a formal, school work manner. I really, really, really don’t want to do it. When it comes to comedy, I thrive on spontaneity. Putting it all down in text and then monkeying with it feels like I am killing and stuffing it and sticking it under glass to me.

But I have to assume that I am wrong about that. There must be a way for me to make my creativity more open-ended. Right now, stuff comes in and out, but it’s a very personal and intuitive experience. Not the sort of thing that involves the rational mind except as the final step.

A lot of comedy has gone in to me. I have done a lot of thinking about what makes things funny. I have felt compelled to try to be funny in my life since way, way before I was any good at it.

But my creativity comes from all the stuff that I have experienced which has dissolved into the (water imagery) cauldron of my creative mind. Things crystallize out of this potent brew on their own. Sometimes the real world provides the beginning of the crystallization, but it’s still a non-conscious process.

I guess, deep down, I am worried that if I open the hood and poke around in there, I will break it and it will never work again. That isn’t rational or probable, but it is still how I feel. I don’t want to lose the goose by trying to make better eggs.

Nut that’s a silly way of looking at it. I do all kinds of things rationally and that doesn’t make me any less creative. In fact, truly powerful creativity involves the left and right brain working together so smoothly that something greater than the sum of the two emerges.

I have felt that happen, It’s freaking amazing. A total high.

For me, being an intuitive intellectual type, it’s like the two sides (on a good day) work together like the hands of a concert pianist. I couldn’t really tell you where one ends and the other begins with me. It’s like asking which hand you are using to climb a ladder.

Well, both, obviously.

So what am I afraid of? That if I open up my process, the magic will get out?

Not likely. And the truth is, if my eggs aren’t good enough to sell yet, then what am I really risking? The only way to get good enough to make money at things like comedy and writing is to stop fucking around and introduce some structure and focus to the process. Otherwise, it will continue to just be stuff in my head.

And I am almost completely sure that I want to escape my mental prison and live in the real world.

Emphasis on almost.

I will tall to you nice people again tomorrow.