Funny is Hard

 I was a stand-up comedian once. I really was. I wasn't a particularly good one, but I knew it and stopped doing it. I say I gave it up for love, but I know I gave it up because it was unhealthy for me. Like the song says, looking for love in all the wrong places-- generally is.  Comedy is the art of making the darkness funny. The problem is that sometimes that the darkness outweighs the funny. Funny is hard. I muse about this because some comedians succumb to the darkness and don't know when they cease to be funny. This is harsh, but not everything is meant to be funny. 

Those elite older comedians, many of them, but not exclusively men do not seem to realize that time marches on without them and they come off to their youngers as out-of-touch scolds rather than truthtellers. Worse, they are not funny and they hurt people. Definitely not funny. It may be that I am being ageist or even anti-guy in saying this, but part of writing good comedy is to be in sync with your intended audience. 

On one of my other blogs, I keep my hand in writing jokes. Some are good, some okay, and some are likely deemed as awful--not by me, but by those who run across them. I'm okay with that. I have some rules in their invention. I lean to the silly over the cruel. I try not to be overtly sexist in writing them or racist or ageist, or anything else but my idea of what is funny. Again, I'm not the best judge of what others find funny, but at least I'm not going out of my way to alienate or harm. I just like to write jokes, not perform 'em. That is the lane I stay in and it is definitely not the fast lane (though at my age, it may be my last lane).

Comedy, like Liam Nesson's characters, has a very particular set of skills. To entertain does not always mean that laughter is what you are going for. Cinema and theater prove this quite often. But comedy is supposed to make you laugh--sometimes uncomfortably, but laugh nonetheless. Without laughter, there is just hopeless cynicism. Not funny.

In the darkest of times, we have relied on comedians and musicians to see us and perhaps even to guide us through. It is very serious work, to tell the truth in a way that tears and laughter are all we've got in our arsenal of emotions to react with. It is said that many comedians are broken people. I understand that. Many people who are not comedians are broken too. It is not excusable to use your pain to harm others and it certainly isn't funny. The comedian walks a very specific tightrope when they walk on a stage. Like the tightrope walker, the spotlight is very much on them, and, yes, there are people in the crowd wishing them ill. But, also like the tightrope walker, it is through their skill and guile, their ability to engross and captivate the audience in their craft that by the end of the show, the audience may be as relieved as the comic, even as they clamber to their feet to applaud the effort. The cathartic nature of comedy is that powerful. 

I equate comedy to a religious experience. The late Robin Williams likely channeled that sentiment better than anyone in his frenetic crowd-pleasing way of his. I miss Robin Williams. I thought of him when I wrote this joke: "What's the difference between a comedian and a fool? A comedian knows when to get off the stage."