Taking a break from Silence Speaks today. The next bit is going to be tricky. Plus, it’s Sunday and I feel lazy. And I haven’t done the bloggity blog thing since Wednesday, so I am due.

Writing Silence (working title, will def be changed) has been awesome. I guess I kind of stumbled into doing my own NaNoWriMo. I am already brainstorming for what I will write next. Writing fiction is a trip.

Such a trip that sometimes, I get a little depressed when I stop. For a while, I was fully engaged, which is exceedingly rare for me. When I stop it’s like the world suddenly goes back to black and white from being full HD Technicolor. Coming down from that writing high can be hard.

I have seen rock stars say that the drugs and alcohol weren’t to help them with the pressures of fame or any of that bullshit. They were to help them come done from the high of making music. Performing.

There must be nothing like it. To be up there in front of scores of fans, making sweet sweet music as they adore you, being connected to the audience and the band and the music and everything. I can’t think of any other form of performance that would give you that kind of high.

Not even stand up comedy.

That’s the real reason these people can’t stop performing. They are addicted to that high. Us casual observers might wonder why Mick Jagger and the rest of the Stones keep going on tour. We might even cynically assume that they only do it for the money.

But these guys are already rich. The money wouldn’t be enough to get them to do it any more.

No, they do it because performance is a drug and you can only get a dose by performing.

I obviously have never been in a band, but I have been in the cast (and then some) of plays, and so I know what it is like to be in front of an audience. It feels amazingly good. Scary, but in the excited way, not the terrified way. It is like riding shotgun on a speeding train. Exciting, but also kind of scary.

And when they laugh…. that’s truly when the sky opens up and love comes pouring down.

Being a rock star must raise that to the power of music. Making music can be a real high even if nobody else is around. Doing it in a band must be amazing in and of itself.

Put the audience into the equation and…. wow.

So who knows. I might not be interested in working in theatre, but I have the performing bug. Maybe this stand up comedy thing will work for me.

Lord knows, I would love a job where all I have to do is talk to people. For me, that seems like being paid to do what I love to do anyhow. Even factoring in have to write jokes and sweat over them and perfect them and all that doesn’t make it seem that much harder. None of that is something I feel is outside my wheelhouse.

I keep Hot Wheels in my wheelhouse. It’s a Hot Wheelhouse.

See? There’s a joke. A terrible one, and I would never use it in a standup set. But that came to me with virtually no effort at all. My mind produces jokes like plants produce oxygen. It’s just a natural byproduct of me being alive.

Being a stand up comedian would add pressure to the equation, and I certainly would have to keep the “accessible jokes” separate from the “too weird for the general public) jokes. But I don’t mind a certain degree of populist intent in my crafting of jokes. I will never do material I think sucks and isn’t funny, but that doesn’t mean I am some uncompromising purist.

I’m not any kind of purist, really. I don’t trust it. Purity ethics always turn evil.

So I would be quite content writing jokes to make Joe Average laugh. In fact, such is my ego and my pride that I would be determined to make my accessible jokes better than everyone else’s.

Being accessible doesn’t mean being terrible. Thinking anything that isn’t high art must suck is a narrow minded and elitist view. Sure, there will always be things which are awful and yet popular, but that does not mean all popular thing must be awful.

Logic doesn’t work that way. The fact that A includes some B does not imply that A = B, and thinking that it does is just a lazy shortcut through the evidence to a prejudice.

And odds are, whoever you think of is a good comedian is also very popular, or you never would have heard of them.

One thing I have always pondered about being a stand up comedian is all the travel. I don’t drive, so I guess I would have to get really, really comfortable with Greyhound. Probably get one of those unlimited pass things to save money.

Plus I just love the idea of being able to get on any Greyhound whenever I like. I have always wanted that Golden Ticket. The magical ticket that means I can get on any plane, bus, cruise, train, whatever. A Greyhound pass would be a little like that.

Now I am picturing myself writing jokes on a Greyhound, then recording me performing them onto my tablet so I could figure out how to make them funnier.

There are worse ways to live, I suppose.

And hey, being a standup comedian is just a stepping stone to having a sitcom these days anyhow, and if my the grace of Whatever someone handed me a sitcom, I would make the best fucking sitcom ever.

It’s the job I have been training for my entire life. If I could star in and write my own sitcom, that would be a lot like dying and going to Comedy Writer Heaven to me.

Heck, I’d be happy just writing it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.