https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=pSS_EYrK4rQ
The comedians that I’ve always looked up to, and weirdly enough, someone who I think has a lot of a lot in common with you, there’s a my favorite ever is Patrice O’Neill, right? And the thing about Patrice is like almost to a fault, he lived his truth. So when I’m reading your stuff about like telling the truth, and like the most adventurous thing you can do is is tell the truth, right? What do you think about that? It’s fucking great. I love it. Why? Because I’ve been really thinking about that again, lately, I put a little Instagram clip out from from a podcast with Chris Williamson. Yeah. And I said, you know, if because I’ve been thinking, all these political movements, you know, Black Lives Matter, Nantifa, and the right wing identity politics, white, white supremacist types, they’re all offering this kind of romantic adventure, right? You can you can join this revolutionary group and take yourself out of your mundane day to day existence. And there’s a real attraction in that. And it’s very difficult for mainstream political ideas to compete with that. Because people need an adventure, especially young people, you need an adventure, man, that’s your life. But I do believe that there isn’t any more intense adventure than saying what you believe to be true. Because you do us don’t know because you have to let go of what’s going to happen. And you don’t know what’s going to happen. And what you say that’s true, I don’t know if I would recommend it, but it’s certainly not dull. It’s not dull. And it’s not realistic. I think in a lot of ways, like Patrice sabotage himself, there’s a comic named Jim Norton that said it brilliantly, like he lived his life, as if he was gonna have to watch a movie of it with his three best friends afterwards. Like they were going to be there and call him out on every fraudulent thing that he did. Right. So instead, he told the truth. So when he watched the movie with all them, he could be like, not that was me. I really felt that way about that person in that time, right. And, but the problem with obviously, there are certain problems with telling the truth all the time. Like sometimes the things that we feel are not acceptable, right? We might feel something that’s not publicly acceptable. And I think that your work around for that was, well, you don’t have to say it out loud. You have to say it out loud everything you feel. But if somebody’s asking you something, like what if my friend is like, Hey, how was my set? This is a person I love a person I want to do better at comedy. Do I tell them that it sucked? That will be the best thing for them. Maybe maybe they’ll work harder than jokes. Maybe they’ll get better. You know, like, do I have to have a sit down with my mom? And do I tell her that she’s annoying me when she’s calling and asking for help? I feel guilty that it’s annoying. That’s on me. So it’s like, well, you can have that conversation too, right? You can say, this is a good way of having a conversation with someone you love. It’s like, it turns out that there’s something you’re doing that’s bothering me. But that might be because I’m stupid. Yeah. So you’re either annoying, or I’m stupid. Let’s figure it out. Because if you’re annoying, I want you to stop because I don’t want to be annoyed with you. But if I’m stupid, then you should tell me because I don’t want to be stupid. And that’s like, you can you can tell the truth without claiming omnipotence. You know, it’s not that you’re right. It’s just that that’s what you think. And but you do want to be corrected if you have any sense, because why would you want to lug your stupidity forward? Yes, apart from the fact that it’s painful to confront. I mean, and it is. Yeah, but it’s not as painful as lugging it forward. So then you’re stupid forever. That’s not that’s not advisable. You know, unless you think that’s an advantage. But you know, stupid is disadvantageous, is disadvantageous by definition. Yeah, right. So we call stupid, persisting at something that’s disadvantageous without learning, right? So with your friend, you know, if you have a friend, and he’s attempting to be a comic, and, you know, you have to assess why he’s asking you. Yeah. Now, if he’s asking you for a pat on the back, then maybe, you know, you’re sensitive enough so that you realize that he needs a pat on the back. And then you think about some thing that you could do that would offer him a pat on the back. But if he really wants your opinion about because, you know, conversation is ambiguous, and it isn’t always clear what people are asking. Yes, yes. You know, because maybe your your your girlfriend says, Do you like this dress? And she really means Do you love me? When you say, well, it makes you look fat, then she thinks that means you hate her. That’s not really sophisticated truth. Now, is it, you know, it right because of the ambiguity. But if your wife if you go shopping with your wife, and she’s trying on three dresses, and she asks you which one you like, well, maybe you could tell her because you’re gonna have to look at it. Maybe you’re gonna have to be happy taking her out and, and maybe she needs your opinion. And like, it’s tricky, but that that is true. It’s like being able to decipher what that person is truly asking. Right? That is so true. If the person just wants a compliment, then the truth of that moment would be either satisfying that compliment or not. Right? This is often true, obviously, like with a spouse girlfriend, but that is that is so true. Yeah, you can still live in your truth almost within a lie. It would be a surface level lie, but an under the surface truth because that happens a lot. You know, people call those white lies. And I would say, like a white lie is better than a black lie, but it’s not as good as the truth. Right. So and I would say even in situations where you’re called on to, to manifest a white lie, it’s still better if you can come up with something that isn’t true at one level and false at another, you know, to keep it true all the way down. Right. Sometimes you’re just not smart enough to whip up an answer like that on the fly, though. Yeah. So yeah, and that is, you know, that is a situation where you’re being asked to conflicting things at the same time. Yes. Not necessarily easy to do that correctly. But, but I well, but I still hold to our previous discussion that it’s an adventure to tell the truth. Now you agreed with that very rapidly. It made me laugh too. Like, why? Why did that strike you? Because I think and maybe this is a comedic thing for me. I people oftentimes go like jokes are jokes are wrong or jokes are right or the blah blah blah or jokes or speak about the truth. Jokes aren’t truthful, right? We lie all the time. Like how often is the misdirect something that completely didn’t happen, right? Like, the whole point of the joke is the lie. I think Seinfeld actually said that really well. But the feeling within the joke is true. And the problem is a lot of us don’t want to acknowledge the feelings that we have. And I think one of the reasons why you’ve had well, that’s what chapter three and Beyond Order is about, right? Don’t hide things in the fog. And it’s definitely the case that what comedians do often is point to something and say, Look, we have that hidden in the fog. And here’s what it is. And everyone laughs. It’s like, yeah, that’s really what it is. Yeah. So yeah, that happens a lot. So so and you use fiction. It’s not so much lie. It’s fiction. And fiction is fiction is more than true in some sense. Because it’s like the it’s like the average of truth. Look, a great novel is more realistic than life itself. And because who the hell wants to read a novel about how many times you blinked after you woke up this morning, right? If you wrote down every detail, it’s just not relevant or interesting. You want to sift through your life and pull out what’s what’s importantly true. Yeah. And and fiction pulls out what’s importantly true about lots of people’s lives and amalgamates it together into one story. Yes. So it’s hyper true. It’s what’s more than true. And that’s why it’s so useful. And when you use fiction on stage, when you use fiction in the performance, you’re doing the same thing you’re you’re drawing on this ability. So for example, when a little kid plays dad when he’s playing house, you say, well, he’s imitating his father, but that’s not right. Because if you watch the child, he doesn’t do exactly what he saw his father do that day. What he doesn’t said is he watches his father in many, many situations, and he gets the gist. And then he acts out the gist just like someone who doesn’t imitation. He’s doing this all the time. They do imitations. Yeah, yeah. And it’s not like they do exactly what they saw the person doing. They watch them across lots of situations and they act or speak like they would in that situation. And so it’s true, but it isn’t an accurate representation of something that actually happened. Yeah, so it’s a very funny form of truth. That doesn’t make it trivial. It’s a more true.