15/08/07
Loneliness© -
Categories: I’m increasingly uncomfortable with the fact that comedians, the one group of people who can make a living from telling tales of hardship and woe, are also the only group to never use an alarm clock. It’s hard to justify talking at great length about life’s troughs when you know full well that the following day you can get up after the majority of the population are coming off their lunch break.
But there is a counter argument. Away from Edinburgh I get up on average, at about midday. At this time every person I live with is at work. They get back at around 6-7, just as I am leaving for a gig. As they open their wine and cook their tuna steak I may well be covering 150 miles to make people who I don’t know laugh for a few hours. By the time I get home all the house is asleep, I may meet someone who has arisen for an early morning wee as I make my way to bed, carrying with me the bottles of pear cider I’ve bought from the 24 hour Tesco. More often than not a look of pity will be offered. You’d be justified in criticising a comedian for preaching about hardship, but we have copyright on loneliness.
I imagine that’s the upside of being a comedian in London. You’re all a tube-ride from each other for afternoon japes and adventures. Outside London it’s a more complex logistical affair. Fun has to be organised weeks in advance, and organised fun is never truly magical, any genuine monkey-shines become administrative continuity; we planned fun, it happened, no-one need loose their job. The more you become a comedian, the further you are inhibited from doing the things that provided you with the material to make people laugh in the first place. Take Edinburgh for example. If I become the comic I want to be, bringing a solo show up every year, that writes off August, the month I would be going to music festivals, swimming in rivers and climbing trees. Add to this that the more I gig the less nights out I can spend with my mates and I’m left with the uncomfortable choice between hoping something funny happens while I’m staring at my bedroom wall or forcing myself to do zany things on my own in the day. Then I’d have to lie a lot, pretending it all kicked-off at the SS Great Britain visitor centre, with a satisfying comedic arc and running callbacks. Despair.
Yesterday was my day off. I went for an all you can eat Chinese. I was with my friend Damion and there came the problem that the above relates to. I love Damion, and I love all-you-can-eat Chinese. It should have been total balls-to-the-wind fundom. But so used am I to my own company that sometimes I’m very quiet. Sat amongst the masses in Jimmy Chung’s my head starts to throb with the telephone exchange hubbub of other people’s conversations, all audible, none discernible. It’s like being caught in a mass internal monologue. I can just about deal with my own, but 100 others leaves me panicky. Understandably I seem aloof, withdrawn, moody. Damion tells me such and I’m reminded of my mother’s constant refrain whilst I was being a difficult teenager “what’s wrong? You seem so quiet” I AM ALLOWED TO BE QUIET. I am allowed to still be lonely in a crowded place.
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