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?

After deciding to spend an extra day in Wales, where things have been so damn nice (emotionally, I mean; the weather has sucked), I began to enter too much territory -- too much me for the people I'm staying with, too much talking during movies for me. (I tried to join in as a coping mechanism and got chastised for my talking.)


Uh-oh. I was just given coffee and affection, necessitating a change in the tone of this post and bringing into sharp relief the subjective nature of these things.


Everything is beautiful. We're going to a bizarrely-spelled Welsh place on the bus. Last night's dream, in which my happy dancing was followed by my mother telling me that I was embarrassing her by smelling bad (I think it was due to unwashed clothes and simply rolling out of bed and into the dance party), has been nearly forgotten.

I have been craving normalcy.

Am I getting it? Do I want it? Can I take it?

For a variety of reasons, not all of them narcissistic, I decided to make last year's primary Edinburgh show a chronicle of the previous year in my oh-so-fascinating existence. I didn't know how the year would turn out, only that I was increasingly fucked; in a drugless, alcohol-less, nevertheless downward spiral.

As the months passed, I monitored my days, getting excited if something else seemed poised to go wrong. (Better for the show, I thought.) I assumed that, to benefit my story arc, I'd be forced live life in ways I'd previously avoided, taking emotional risks for the good of the show I'd have been unlikely to take without it.

Of course, this meant that, before August, I would have to fall in love. Imagine my frustration as May became June which gave birth to July with no love interest in sight.


Because no one would love me, I had an inferior show.


Now, damn the luck, there are events transpiring that, while more than pleasant, would have better served my comedy if they'd happened earlier in the year.

And for Christmas-related reasons, I'm not doing the Anthology show tomorrow, which means I don't have anywhere to talk to strangers about it.

I’m looking out the window at a Welsh valley.

I don’t feel beaten as one typically does when ogling a valley. (Winner – Non-Sequitur of the Year, 2007) But I do feel outside time as it relates to ambition.

I want to be in love. I want money. I want a career.

In reality, I have nothing.

Sleeping in borrowed spaces on two continents, warmly advising others with more capably-navigated lives than mine; conjuring spectacular notions and ripping songs from solvent friends’ CD collections.

This is not a life..

But . . .

I feel great. Everything seems possible.

Maybe it’s because the world is closed for the holiday and when it starts up again, I’ll feel out-of-step once more.

Maybe there’s someone who’s made my life better and I’m not as out-of-step as I like to think I am.

Maybe . . .