Everyone @ Chortle

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?

How's your 2007's been?

Mine had some ups and downs, my car got broken into 6 times, I had my childhood photos stolen, I went through emotional hell trying to keep an ex in my life as a friend because she was worth holding on to. I ran out of money, I got knocked out in the final of several competitions and didn't manage to get an agent. I had a TV executive have to be introduced to me 4 times at the same party a few hours after she'd seen me perform because as far as she was concerned I was totally unmemorable. I got led on by several people and gave up on looking for love. My parents moved out of the house that I was born in, and I finally had to grow up and fend for myself. I suffered permanent nerve damage and now have lost skin sensation on about 5% of my body. I had some friends and co-workers die and was there for friends who were going through some really horrible stuff. Two close friends were diagnosed with degenerative diseases, and one had a fairly serious AIDS scare.

But,

I started making a living doing the thing I love the most, I got good reviews and more interest than ever from the media, I grew as a person and finally became comfortable in my own skin. I returned to the Edinburgh festival and cemented my reputation as the festivals biggest blag-slag managing to achieve an incredible amount through networking and hard work. I wrote stuff for two of my heroes at opposite ends of art form, and got naked in front of 800 people. I ran my own successful gig and built a fan base gaining a number of superfans who travel to see me, and I wrote and performed my own one hour show to 60 people who'd all paid to see me, which was pick of the day in the metro and the journo from the Guardian wanted me to let him know when I'm in London so he can watch me and put me as his pick of the day too. I finished changing who I am to suit others and realised that I've changed me to make me happy and that means I can change the world. And then I found Rosanne, a woman who I love and who loves me and who I miss whenever I'm not around her.

So what does 2008 hold? More success, more of everything, more love more happiness and more weird and wonderful things happening to me. I don't know what 2008 Holds really, but I know one thing, this is where it starts to get really interesting!
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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 . . .