Andrew J. Lederer

My week in Wales was spent largely among (read no condescension into this) "normal" people. Extraordinary normal people -- artists, dancers, amateur film historians, living in a "real" place with real relationships, doing real things.

But even though life there was nicer than a life spent as (at best) a marginal figure in comedy, I still can't seriously entertain the thought of living in a world which, to me, has always seemed sort of fake, there to flesh out the "authentic" world of places like New York and London in the same way extras and bit players flesh out the world of a film.

What would life be like, I wonder, if I were a humbler person; if I could somehow be happy with a relatively simple existence, which would, ironically enough, be less simple in terms of day-to-day options than the cash-constrained ambitiousness of the life I live today?