There’s something that comes between me and others that means they don’t really get me and I end up feeling alien and rejected.

Today we did my skit it Sketch class.

This one here : (Skit) One Day At The Steak and Shake. And technically it went over well. Everyone said it was very clever and compared it to Monty Python, which sounds lovely, but…

They didn’t laugh. And if they don’t laugh, what’s the point? I want to make people laugh, not just get them to recognize, in the abstract, that my work is made with skill.

Part of the problem is, I think, that it’s just too fast for people. It’s banter, and banter is risky. If you can pull it off, like in those old Bogey and Bacall movies, it’s delightful. But if you get it wrong, it’s confusing and people can’t keep up and it’s like trying to juggle a dozen balls and not only dropping them all but having them bounce off the audience’s foreheads one by one.

A bigger problem emerged in class : lack of context. I realized that, in my mind, these are two people who have known each other for a long time, and this is just their badinage.

But in writing, what’s in your mind doesn’t count for shit. It’s what’s on the page the matters, and I have nothing in the skit to indicate that. So my fellow writers and the prof read it as some surreal world where ordering the tears of your enemies in a restaurant and getting them is a thing that could actually happen.

Totally did not see that coming, and so clearly I needed this vital lesson in writer’s theory of mind.

It’s an easy fix, I think. All I need to do is add a few lines at the beginning that establish that these two people know each other very well. Something like :

Server : Good morning, Bill.
Customer : Hey there Linda!
Server : How’s your wife doing?
Customer : Oh, she’s fine, turned out to just be the flu.

Or something along those lines. And something similar at the end.

Serve : See you again tomorrow!
Customer : You bet!

That way the audience knows that none of this is serious and it’s just two people playing with words to amuse themselves.

But the whole “not laughing” thing got me thinking about a particular sore tooth of the mind that has been growing and throbbing for attention lately, and that’s the difference between what I think will work and what actually work. I clearly do not get the intended effect from my actions, and when that happens, you have to take a good hard look at both your methods and the mind implementing them.

When theory does not match results, it is theory which must bend.

The things I say are always funny in my head. But often they fall flat in practice when I am not with my little group of friends. I look back and the joke still seems clever and funny to me. So it must be something about my delivery…. or possibly my knowledge of my audience.

There’s that theory of mind issue again.

It would pain me to have to admit to myself that I have poor theory of mind. I pride myself in my ability to understand people and how they tick. But there’s a huge gap between analysis and action, and my ability to comprehend people’s motives and desires in the abstract doesn’t mean I know them in the field.

At the end of the day, all us poor artists can do is make art which pleases us. Then hope to find an audience.

it could be argued that I try too hard, too. It’s so hard for me to relax and be natural. The neurosis is always there, trying to solve all problems via a ferocious application of intellect when, like a Chinese finger trap, the only way out is to just relax.

Like the cliche goes, I need to just relax and be myself. Act without thought sometimes. Be natural. Stop trying to control outcomes by sheer force of mentation and take that leap of faith into concentrating instead on expressing my true self. Be the best me I can be, and hold tight to the idea that everything will work out if I do.

That’s… not going to be easy. I don’t really do faith. I do not say that to brag about how intellectually pure I am. I think my lack of capacity for faith cripples me. There are things you need to believe in order to be psychologically healthy, and some of those things you must believe without evidence. They are too important to leave to the vagaries of reason.

But reason is all I have, so to speak. At least when it comes to trying to make sense of the world and find my place in it. Everything has to be approved by ten different departments of my mind before it is accepted as true, and while there’s a lot of power in the strictly defined open-mindedness of the true skeptic, it is a very cold power and doesn’t do a damned thing to actually make you happy.

In fact, it might be blocking the very happiness you seek.

I wonder if a change in meds would make it easier for me to truly connect with others, and pierce this shell of mine. Paxil keeps me sane, but it does that by applying a kind of chilling effect to my emotions, turning down the volume on the chaos in my mind and giving me vital breathing room so I can heal.

But I worry sometimes that its chill is exactly what keeps me locked in my lonely cage of ice. As if, like coffee in a thermos, there is a layer of hard vacuum between me in the world that no warmth or light can penetrate…. or escape.

And yet, I am in the middle of a rather intense education and therefore it is not a good time to reduce a medication.

Guess I will just stay lonely then.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.