Sorry about taking so long since my last blog, I've been busy. My life has been substantially occupied by drinking and constructing Ikea furniture. Those aren't related events although, in my experience, constructing Ikea furniture often leads to a desire to drink. But that's not the point of this blog, normal blogging services shall begin now:
I think that being a comedian is much like any other job. Obviously the hours are different, there's a lot more traveling involved and most jobs don't have free booze but apart from that it's much the same. There is gossip, office politics and everyone thinks they should be paid more for what they do.
You also make friends at work. As a comedian you don't see the same people every day when you go to work but you do seem to have runs of gigging with many of the same people and that can be lovely. Some of the other comedians you gig with become your friends, some become very good friends, and some you don't like but have to work with anyway. That's the same with any job.
However I have noticed that a lot of the really really successful superstar comedians that I know seem to be really good friends with other really really successful superstar comedians. Even though I know and get on quite well with a lot of these people I wouldn't say that we're bestest friends. We're friends and colleagues but we're not close enough to share each others deepest darkest secrets and to be god-parent to their first born kind of friends.
That's not to say that I don't have some fantastic friends in the comedy world, I do. But, while my close comedian friends are very good comedians (some of them are blow-your-mind amazing comedians), none of them are releasing best selling DVD's or have their own TV show.
The other thing that I noticed this week, as I was assembling cheap Ikea furniture and drinking 2 for the price of 1 bottles of wine, was that I'm not a mainstream superstar comedian either. And it got me thinking, are we really good friends because we're not famous or are we all not famous because we're really good friends? It's a real chicken or egg situation.
They say you can choose your friends but you can't choose your family. While it's true you can't choose your family you can choose to ignore them. But equally you don't get a real choice as to who your friends are. Your friends find you, they are like minded people who put up with you. And if you have as abrasive a personality as I do you should be thankful for everyone person willing to deal with you and be your friend. I know I am.
Your friends like you for your personality and to say that you can choose your friends implies that you made a choice as to your personality. You don't choose your personality. You are who you are, and you should embrace all who want to be around you. I certainly do. My friends are fantastic people but they're not for everyone and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Similarly, in the comedy world, I don't think you choose what type of comedy you do. Sure you can choose to tone it down occasionally or choose how you're going to deliver it but you have to tell what you think is funny and that's engrained in your personality. My close comedian friends laugh at the same things I do, we seem to feel the same way about a lot of things and we like to hate the same things with competing passion. We are often very different comedians but we make great friends.
What I'm really wondering though is, are we holding each other back? I haven't made friends with them based on their comedy nor on what they could do for my career. If you need proof of that you only have to look at the superstar fame that I have attained in my career. But if my theory is correct, if one of them breaks into the big time them surely that will mean a DVD deal is just around the corner for me.
This is a call to my friends in the comedy world - hurry up and get famous!! My career needs a serious leg up. I didn't start doing comedy to get famous, I do comedy because I love doing stand up. There isn't a better feeling in this world than being on stage making a crowd laugh, but a little fame leads to more money and I'm sick of having to assemble my own flat-pack furniture.
To me success is being wealthy enough to purchase already-assembled-furniture. So my conclusion is that if my friends aren't going to be considerate enough to get famous and drag me up the comedy ladder with them, then the least they could do is to come over and help me assemble this fucking desk because I can't figure it out.
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