"take the valuable important personal feelings or universal observations and Be Funny With Them."

a conversation i had with a comedian friend!

dear friends,

i’m grateful that you’re here.
thank you for being.
and now, this!

COMEDY LIFE CONVERSATION POST!

(i had a conversation over lunch with a comedian friend where some meaningful topics were raised, and the conversation continued in email and i got a good amount of value from it so i thought others might as well. so, HERE IS SOME OF THAT CONVERSATION! ps capitalization standards may vary!)

ME:

...on the subject of talking on stage about your thoughts and feelings regarding more personal topics: one thing that you said struck me. It was something like "I don't just want to talk about my fears, just tell the truth, without jokes." Something like that, I'm paraphrasing. And that's very reasonable. And I imagine you also don't want to *JUST* tell jokes that you don't care about, that aren't important or meaningful to you in some way. (Perhaps I'm projecting, as we all do. OR DO WE? JUST ME? But I think it's a reasonable projection based on the comedy of yours that I've seen, and knowing you.)

I will say this about my own comedic journey: in the beginning, I basically DID just tell whatever jokes I came up with. Regardless of what they were about. Does it get a laugh? It stays in the act. Even if it's "meaningless." Or "just a joke." Or doesn't exactly line up with my true thoughts or feelings on a subject. Then, after years of doing comedy, and getting better at it, and learning about myself more, I realized/learned/discovered that I CAN write jokes about whatever I want. Which means that I CAN focus on the things that are more important to me. Which is not to say that I will just say true thing after true thing with no punchlines. But where in the beginning, I would just say funny thing after funny thing (hopefully) with no specific point beyond that, I now know that it's possible to Make the true things funny, to Make the real things into comedy, to take the valuable important personal feelings or universal observations and Be Funny With Them.