Jokes

I want to tell you a joke. But I lack all comic timing. So I'll have to set it up really well or simply never tell it.

I want to tell you a joke. Not that I have a particular joke in mind, I just want to tell one well. I just don't want to be seen as overbearing and aloof which is what happens whenever I try. I have a sense of humor, and it isn't all rueful and dark and mean-spirited and overly ironic, I promise. I love to tell jokes, and yes, they all roll off pathetically, misunderstood or misinterpreted through no fault of the listener. I love to tell jokes, but sometimes I'm just not feeling it, which is of course exactly when I want to talk about it, like now.

I like "The Simpsons". Jam-packed with jokes. I like what I've seen of "M*A*S*H". I went back and watched the Wayne Brady sketch of "Chappelle's Show" about a hundred times. To me, it's about as good as comedy gets. It moves you in directions you might not want to go, and yet, at the end of the day, you are sent in those directions, laughing all the way. Again and again. That's what humor is supposed to be, in my view.

Humor's a syringe full of truth serum and a mask full of laughing gas but you have to get the timing and coordination right between the two and so few are capable doctors. All I can tell you is that there's a veil of absurdity around the straightforward and a logic to all absurdities that bear upon the real, and any comic worth his/her salt can tap that. What I'm saying is that there's a lot of comedic mileage basically in being alive. And yet to take the stick-shift and actually get in gear with the comedy is the most difficult thing in the world. The art, the science, the... the craftsmanship. I can't get enough of the craftsmanship.


I guess my interest in comedy partly comes about from the observation that in a way the problem of comedy is the basic problem of writing, but even more distilled than the finest flash fiction - be realistic in what you convey, but not too detailed that you ruin the joke. You find that angle, or that curvy probe (whatever instrument is the best for like impaling someone, but in a funny way), and you prod through whatever is in your way, possessed of truth and the confidence that is supposed to result from that. Every detail has to be perfect, and the angle has to be unimpeachable and new and thoughtful. Beginning, middle, and end, not a step or beat misplaced. And you're essentially on a metronome through all of this. It's no coincidence that all the improv troupes tend to congregate and feed from the top universities. You have to be smart as a whip, and apply it effortlessly and unteachably.

On the other hand, instead of a syringe of truth serum and a mask of laughing gas, I just have anxiety. It doesn't work as well for doing surgery. A biopsy with anxiety is generally pretty diagnostically useless. But you know, you fight through the anxiety, even though it sort of eats away at the foundation. Anyway, my point is, you make prods, like, through the skin and your syringe full of truth sinks in. Also laughing gas. It's tricky.

That's why I never try too hard to be funny. Because I'm so clumsy. And letting my guard down like that? Telling you what I think is funny? That hurts me because I can't control you. Funny is funny and if you don't laugh it means I'm a failure at comedy. The things that I find funny are so very different from the things you find funny, and if I screw up it means I've missed the basic essence of the space between us and I have to re-evaluate, perhaps in an interminable and painful process lasting decades, filled with anxiety or useless sessions of introspective guilt. Why can't I connect to you? Is the you reading the same as the me writing? Is there any way to know? Other people are so good at social signalling and I've never had much in the tank, but I try to be honest and yet what our mind and perspective admits us to say honestly and truly... it's limited. I have a filter on everything I say that I can't ever get rid of. That's why I admire comedians. They seem to have no such filter. They're like exhibitionists. Naked and proud; prized for their candor and spiritual genitalia even when they die. I don't want to die fully clothed, in a straitjacket of my own unescaped (and inescapable?) perspective.

Anyway, I want to tell you a joke. I can't but I want to. I want to prove that I'm funny and brilliant; that's the only reason. I want to connect with you. I guess that's another reason. Two reasons. 1. Prove that I'm funny and brilliant and 2. Connect with you. Actually, because I'm just that narcissistic, there is actually only one reason; the two are one in the same. I don't want to connect with you unless I'm also conveying that I'm brilliant and funny. And I don't want to convey that I'm brilliant and funny to you without also reaching you and forcing you to admit it to me.

But knock one motivation off there, because I can't prove that I'm funny. All I can do is prove that I'm brilliant and connect with you. I can do this by being really confident and using big words and alluding to the sophisticated music that I'm listening to right now while you while away the days on some inferior pursuit. I mean, yes, in the back of my mind there's the "But what if you're not actually brilliant, Alex? What if you're just clutching at straws, you idiot?" line of questions but come on, I don't have anxiety or anything about that. I'm a writer and I'm very confident about everything I say. I want you to be intimidated by me. After all, that's what I just said. I want you to be intimidated by my prodigious intelligence. That's why I speak like I came right out of a book from the turn of the 20th century, because I'm trying to convey a sense of timelessness while you - foolishly - trawl the ephemeral wasteland of the Internet. You have to worry about DNS failures and Wi-Fi signals. I meditate in the lotus position and then do tai-chi, under a beautiful peach tree, reading Arthur Conan Doyle, wearing my trusty Deerstalker, taking breaks to eat giant chunks of laudanum and hallucinate Lovecraftian entities and think about human nature. It's always summer where I live, did I mention that? I never have to worry about money.

And I'm gonna live forever.

And I can always go deeper, they tell me. I can always find another angle when I've exhausted what others have laid out for me. But if I can't make people laugh, well, what am I doing out here?

I mean: I have to write in character because I can't write as myself. If I write as myself, there's no filter and all my anxieties come tumbling out and then I'm just a guy writing about his feelings on his blog. And suddenly it's all "I feel I'm in sort of a transitional period in my life right now with the loss of my most recent job right before a vacation and I don't know how to handle it." This is unacceptable. I have to take an angle and strike forth with all the confidence in the world. I can't even look at the monitor right now. My head is bowed, and the various ornaments and tools that surround me take a backseat to the manic experience that I'm dealing with right now. I'm not just opening a wound for the world to look at. I'm creating characters and stories for others to identify with, for they are in the domain of a plausible thing that I could have created. Right?

I have to write in character because I have to take some kind of angle that validates my powers of creation. I have to be able to invent a person from scratch and declare that that person is a person, that I have created something realistic enough to pass muster for a story or a reflection. Sometimes I'll reflect in character and decide that the reflections are accurate enough to be my own point of view and I remove the quotes and simply speak as myself, which... but is that myself? Or is that just another character, the quote-removal man that I've decided has a more unfiltered view but still has his perspective and filters.

Can I have characters express things that are beyond my ability to express? Is that possible, or is that incoherent? I can't tell jokes, but can I create a character that can? And then write as that guy (or girl)? I don't know. And if I can't make a humorist, what right do I have to create a doctor, or a basketball player? Or, and this is the kicker, what right do I have to create anyone? "Why can't I live unfiltered?" yes, but, the natural follow-up, too: "If I have a filter, how can I dare to write as if I had such crucial integrity and openness?" And yet, that filter is so central to how my brain works, how it processes and juggles information in itself, that I wonder if it's too central for me to ever be a great writer. Or comedian. Or lover. Or a true friend. Or a fastidious citizen, for how can I be alert to, say, the plight of the poor I can never comprehend. How can I ever be a vocal advocate of my experience when to me my experience of the world is ineffable?

Writing is hard. Can I just come right out and say that? Some of us have an overdeveloped memory for linguistic things, scoring high on all our IQ tests and our dutiful mothers did read to us and we had that miraculous pre-24-mos. experience of being able to order from the menu, after which afterwards we no doubt turn our heads to the server two hundred and seventy degrees like "The Exorcist" and say "I will have the chicken wings, Mother." in a voice six octaves too deep. Yes, some of us are freaks. But it doesn't mean we'll be good writers. And it doesn't make actually writing good stuff easy. I don't remember who said it but there's a kind of thermodynamics acting upon creative work bringing us always towards the mediocre. And for me, my goal is to feed this creative work with enough energy to stem the tide of mediocrity if only until we are living in paradise and eternal life or I'm dead and can no longer tend my garden sufficiently. Writing is hard, and no matter how hard you try, in the back of your mind, there's all sorts of perfectionism and anxiety and coming in and out of attention (Feed this with coffee.). And you laugh at yourself, but no one else finds it funny.

My father died when I was 12 and I dealt with it. I'm about twice that old, actually, in a month is the exact centerpiece-date for me. More time alive with him dead than him alive, after that. So I can't use that as an excuse. I had a troubled upbringing, but in America, who doesn't? It's not like everyone was out there winning Father-of-the-year awards in an amber glow of Family while I struggled without support. It's not like everyone else was born with perfect conditions to grow and thrive. There aren't any excuses left, and I'm not a failure. So I can't make excuses, and I can't make laments. I just am, and in a sense, I'm free to pursue my own happiness. But also, there aren't any narratives left, and I feel like a man without a central purpose or essence. All I can do is make others happy and make myself happy. And I'm a pretty happy person.

I'm starting to realize that while I want to tell you a joke, and maybe, at the end of the day, I can tell a joke or two? While I can perhaps tell a joke, I'm subject and punchline for everyone of my well-timed jokes. And it puts people in a bad place to laugh at me, both with social signalling and their own self-image, and honestly, a joke's supposed to be more than just apt and cutting. I mean, it's supposed to be uplifting. It's supposed to be real. It's supposed to be happy. It's supposed to make others happy, and bring them together, even if it's about how much our lives all suck. And laughing at myself doesn't accomplish that - while it works well for me, it just brings other people to empathize with my strange sense of upbeat and well-intentioned (almost competitive) sense of self-loathing and expectations.

I'm a riot, is what I'm saying. But it's a little overwhelming to deal with in casual conversation. I'm very funny, but that's going to have to be our little secret, just you and me, and you're just going to have to accept it completely without evidence, and I'm not even sure of it, myself. But it's our little secret, and no one else will know. How can they? After all, I've got the comic timing of a broken clock.