November 1, 2023
I make a point of never talking about depressing stuff in "the world" because it's simply overwhelming to cope with the reality of it, having so little control over things that are so threatening and beyond anyone's influence, let alone control.
But it seems to be happening at the very same time, that I'm starting to get intimations of my own ineveiable and standard age-related mortality. There are actuarial charts for this. I am starting to see people of my age dying and no one laments how someone so young could die, they say, well, that's what happens, a little early, maybe, but nothing outrageous. A person can possibly hold it off with good habits, and I hate to be a downer, but everyone I know who reaches a certain age starts to wind down, loses physical capability, and spirals towards a death--which, if lucky, is gentle and painless and not too much of a burden on loved ones--but not in any way ultimately preventable.
My comedy hero (the recently died-Norm MacDonald a guy who modeled the lost art of telling the truth wherever he was) was doing a monologue that started with his reaction to a comment that often people don't understand how a suffering person could take their own life.
"I say. You don't?
(audience laughs as he mischeviously relieves them of the obligation to keep a thought suppressed that they actually have)
"Well do you live in a cotton candy house or something? What the f-@$#@? . . .You don't know about life?. . .How it only disappoints and gets worse and worse until it ends in a catastrophe. "
(Even bigger laugh--as he reveals reality suddenly standing out there in its birthday suit)
Not everyone in my life shares my enthusiasm for Norm MacDonald. I guess not everyone is relieved by the plainspoken acknowledgement of otherwise repressed thoughts--mainly because not everyone is in as much as me need of having my particular profile of self-repressed thoughts acknowledged. Mysteriously, I often rely on the voice of Norm MacDonald to cope with my life. More often than I read library books, (I did read a library book he wrote which I obtained by getting on its waiting list, and during the request and the librarian and I commiserated about being in the secret underground society of people who considered him almost a family member) I look up his interviews on the radio to promote comedy tours, and his appearances on talk shows. I never get sick of them and sometimes go back to the same ones.
My favorites, are when he just says something that would be only rude if it were not completely accurate and delivered with boyish delight, and in later years sometimes tossed off, like a remark from someone who had been drinking, like the one above--(he did not drink I understand) or formally with the diction of a writer who had composed a remark with well chosen words, like a 20th Century Canadian Mark Twain.
I wish I could do either of those things, but I can only sort of, sometimes. He learned to do it by working the North American comedy trail of hotels and night clubs and local morning radio shows for decades, being, or appearing to be, indifferent to acceptance. He was an anti-panderer. He appeared to want stick to truth as a form of humor, more than he wanted to be popular or accepted. In this he had a moral and aestetic value system that made him an artist, while being both an entertainer and anti-entertainer. He had a unique reward system for himself. He was working towards a sense of what was funny that did not depend on the audience liking it, or being made comfortable--but he was very true to it and was willing to suffer the failure of silence, or getting fired from a (the) flagship National Comedy Gig television show, or people getting confused, or thinking he was stupid. He was probably a very difficult person to be. He had a gambling problem and lost two or three fortunes during his lifetime. He once threw a suitcase full of all the money he had at the time, into the ocean at Atlantic City because he refused to lose it all over again (again) in the casino. He had Cancer for 9 years and when he died only a few people knew this, not even some of his closest friends, as he didn't want to be seen as going for sympathy.
On any list of heroes I make, he's right at the top. I wish there were more on this list out of all the current and past heroes I might choose from everyone who has ever lived. I know how stupid this sounds, but in the spirit of Norm MacDonald, I am not interested in feeling bad about this. Maybe if I knew Tolstoy better, I'd look for his sensibility when I overhear the news, but I don't. Even the trustworthiness of Dalai Lama has to come into question because of my suspicions that his honesty probably is often compromised by his need to be thought well of. I know mine is. In this beautiful, mean old world, there has to be a handful of voices you can trust as not being controlled by pressure. You need it so you can face pressure yourself and know what it is like to not mindlessly knuckle under to it.
I thought I gave up writing songs during this school year because of the pressure I felt of trying to not neglect other things. This kind of maturity threatens to be permanent. But you can't keep songs down. I bet this is better (in its raw state) than one I would make out of habit. I had to reinvent my way back to the impulse. It's not a song, but I think its very high grade ore for a song. . .
Supplementary Post:
Texts I sent myself and closest test-confidants.
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