Blog

Life is a performance. It's all funny. Everything about life, from our senses, to our entire being, exists in a void of ambiguity. To avoid floating endlessly we grab onto something solid. Since we exist in the void, the only thing to grab onto is what we create. We create through performing.

Individuality
Individual from Latin indivisible, in meaning 'not', and divisible meaning 'capable of being separated'. Therefore, indivisible meaning not capable of being separated, and individual is a whole that cannot be divided. Your individuality is that whole expressing in some way.

As an individual you are performing your life. I was recently in my apartment, feeling bad. I was having a hard time of describing why of was feeling bad because all my theories were meh, and everything was meh. I came to the conclusion that my soul was lacking. I was angry, and sad, frustrated, and overstimulated. Every little thing just added on top of the pile that was leading to me feeling overall, bad. In this moment I decided that there wasn't much I could do so I tried to meditate. I'm not normally very good at meditating, but I surprisingly found that I was able to acknowledge what was happening, and feel all the things that were just a second ago driving me crazy, but they were distant, like looking through a window in my mind into the world that all this was happening in. I found myself picturing a mini me, looking out this window in my forehead, picking up a rug and waving it in the air, as if to get rid of dust. I thought huh, 'what do I do now'. Then I thought wouldn't it be funny if I sat down on a couch in this world just as I am in the real world, and felt just as angry. Then I saw the mini me doing just that. I couldn't help but see the meta nature of the situation as extremely funny. Then it hit me, this is reality.

If you've been around me for any amount of time over the last year, you've probably heard me going on about a philosophical theory that describes that world as built atop ambiguity, as a means of being able to do things. Looking to heavens of a metaphysical realm for guidance. I stand by this theory, and by no means does it entirely describe anything, but anything I throw at it, seems to make sense within it.

So what does this have to do with comedy. Well what is comedy? comedy is a performance. As stated above, life is a performance, so comedy is taking place in that performance. This makes comedy a meta-commentary on the performance of life. If you've ever really engaged in comedy, you might feel like comedy is real and serious, and then meta-comedy comes along and makes fun of all this stuff that became real and serious. Meta-comedy is a meta-commentary on comedy. A lot of people find meta-comedy to not be funny, but this is because they are not treating comedy as life. Someone who has been involved in studying comedy and performing comedy, is in the in-group, it's like an inside joke. Comedy in general is meta-commentary on life, perhaps it's about some niche part of life or observational about life that most of us live in general, making the intended audience the in-group creating the inside joke.

Coming back to my meditation and my outbreak into laughter, I saw what I was doing, I was performing life. I realized how much feeling I was doing. I was committed to the role, and I couldn't see outside of it. I was Peter MacAulay, I was all those feelings I described above, and I became him. So, when I saw the mini me in my head do this imitation of the role I was playing, the role of Peter, this meta-commentary made everything funny.

The abstraction of my life, and realizing how committed I was to performing my life, was hilarious, I am the ultimate in-group because I am me. Have you ever thought, "Only if they could know everything that I've been through, everything I've thought, and only then will they understand me"? No, well I have and often do, as I yearn to be understood, I think that's one of my main goals I've been trying to achieve in life; working on communication to be understood. Finally I have the audience that will totally, and I mean totally understand me, because it's me, and maybe I even learn and communicated with myself, bringing further understanding of myself.

• Tragedy is when you are trapped inside the role.
• Comedy is when you suddenly see the role from outside