Today
was interesting. You ever have one of
those days?
I
was coming back from Boston – something us comics have to do. Travel.
It’s cool because you make money but it gets rough. For example, today I ate a hard boiled egg, chex mix and a
donut. I was coming back to New York to do a show with
the same format as the Dating Game.
I was late so I’m booking it through the Bronx. I get to the club and it’s just a regular
show. Shit. I went to the wrong location. Since I won’t make it to the Dating Game, I
figured I’d hang. I ended up chatting
with a comic I knew and fairly quick into the conversation he was saying he’d
reached a point where he figured out that you have to own what we do. You have to let go of stress, in particular
from a day job. Most humans have to deal
with some sort of similar job-type thing, but for us creators it is so useless and soul
sucking. It doesn’t serve us. It was funny because we got right to it. He said that weeks after leaving his job, he
was still stressed out and holding on to the anxiety that this job produced
within him.
If
you’re an artist you have to just make art.
If you’re a writer you have to just write. May seem simple, but our brains do this thing
where we second guess it all. That was
another part of the conversation too. We
can’t do our thing when we’re all frazzled.
He continued, “New York wants to kill you.” The city will definitely take it outta
ya. It is not pleasant. It’s noisy, you’ll be tortured by awful
roommates, you’ll definitely be broke and you will experience a lot of
rudeness. All of that, along with your
own self-doubt, will unite as a giant force trying to get you to question the
whole thing. This blog has been a place
where I sort out all of the nonsense. It
needs to be done because these forces build momentum. You have to talk to other artists and be like
“dude, WTF.” It helps. It’s like being in the trenches
together. That’s how your crew is
formed. You kavetch, have coffee, hang
out, drink wine. It validates why you’re doing this. Every time I get on stage I remember, but I
find myself still needing to be reminded.
That’s because everything off stage unites to offensively throw you off
your game to the point where you have
to have to talk to another comic, and when you do, it becomes this incredibly enlightening thing. On the other hand, you can easily
complain, but that doesn’t usually get you anywhere and becomes like all of the
other forces that bring you down.
We
talked about trusting the universe that the money will come and that we are
taken care of. Deep stuff. Lately I have had a lot of money and I can’t
explain it because I don’t have two jobs any more. Just stand-up. I walked into the club that night, and we had that very
specific conversation. The universe
cares about you. It will provide for you
but you have to believe it.
