When Comedy Goes for Help

Make them laugh, make them laugh..

 

Today I’ll harvest sage wisdom from two comic minds. One is a silent clown, the second a gypsy magician.

The silent act has spent much of the past few decades doing cabaret inEuropewhen he wasn’t doing odd arena style opening work for major musical acts. The magician by contrast has played everything from children’s cartoon show feature, to authoring of the Klutz Book of Magic, from large venue stage shows to very intimate venues where he roves the crowd performing close up.

Having blended my life from all show business, on stage, full time, 300-500 shows per year, into part show business full time novelist, completing a novel about every 21 months, and presenting some 100-150 shows per year, my comic muscle remains in shape while the minds and imaginations of my two associates remain honed and their instinct for what is funny sharp.

Literary fiction is a realm with a different set of rules than the set that comes with a variety show stage act. There is an intersection, a place where they overlap, and one can inform the other. The secret is to know not just what to do (entertainer) but knowing something about how to do it (author.)

Still, in developing the outline to Hot Spring Honeymoon what I have is now a set of potentials. My friends are relentless imaginations. The silent clown is ever obsessed with any slight, least, moment he can exploit for his own mirth making purposes. He is granular, sees the world through a lens that is of its own kind.

The magician is different still. He is concerned with illusion, trickery, surprise and revelation. It isn’t what the performer sees from stage, but what his audience sees, and as an illusionist first and funny guy second, he understands the intermediation that good narrative demands.

Both know situations that are inherently funny offer a power that a singular funny line does not. They have a nose for circumstance, have strengthened their instincts to respond to opportunities.

I will go with a hundred ideas and return with a thousand. A few of these ideas will be worth their weight in fools gold. We write alone at a desk. We write what we know. Pieces of what we come to know have been generously donated to us. Sometimes it comes as a gift from the well seasoned comic minds of veteran showmen.

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Resisting Change

Chattering Change

 

Things change whether we want them to or not. I recall that turning twenty-one could not come fast enough and that sixty is coming up too quick. What’s that about? Winter is too long, the weekend too short. Curiosities perhaps or a clue to something else going on. Giving our attention to change around us is different than wanting things to change. Placement of our desires in the path of change can put us right into the path of an oncoming change we might not be an advocate for. On the other hand we can make it even worse by reacting as things swing back and forth. The basic idea of the thing is to watch as the world does what it does and try not to get in the worlds way. We can go in the direction we feel best while appreciating that even that isn’t good enough sometimes. Creating a fictional character asks of an author to figure out how a character reacts to change. Our best choices are not necessarily our first choice. Sometimes it is choiceless. What is extra is our reacting to change. Here is the high art of change. You train yourself not to get too excited about things going your way and not too bummed out when they don’t. Sometimes we exaggerate our influence upon change. Often we have not influenced the changes at all. A seasoned loser is in some ways entered the fray with an advantage over a consistent winner. If on the other hand you see yourself as being just along for the ride, in the audience, going with things as they are instead of how you wish they would be… well, I am wondering out loud. I don’t know I’m convinced of the thing. What say we do our best, hope it works out, but learn to accept the fact that things can’t possibly always go our way…

Monumental Change

The Monumental Mojave

Among the greatest achievements of my generation is how little we have done. In California where I live we are in the midst of building a new bridge that will link the Oakland, California side of the San Fransico Bay with San Franicsco, California. In the middle of this sits Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island. The bridge we are replacing is a cantilever affair that is insufficient when put up against an earthquake. On the other half is a suspension bridge that is more likely to withstand an earthquake. My generation seems to be a bunch of moochers, we literally are living off the past and not all that interested in creating a robust infrastructure for the future. Instead we are tied in knots about all manner of things doing with doing things and thus we resist contributing to the future because right now is so dang vital to our present moment. It is the most profound form of insanity…because soon an earthquake will hit here and we will have to fix the damage and we will have to reckon with the fact we did not set aside sufficent funding for this predictable event. Instead we ate our seed corn in this present moment fixation with what? This blog is not just a report on change it is about reporting on the insanity of not embracing change…sometimes we must wake up to the reality that nothing we were born into is about what we are living in and what we will leave to our children. High speed rail, big collosal bridges, super highways, new more advanced electrical grids………….maybe this is what we are supposed to be leaving in our journey of being here….otherwise why go visit the pyramids?

Weather to Change Course

 

Late Summer San Francisco Bay

Noel spoke to June, soft enough so she could make out what he was saying,  “Been a best day for me too.”

June smiled tenderly, and glanced up into Noel’s eyes for a brief moment. She patted him on his leg.

“Never know what a day will bring.”

Highway Home

As they say a collision at sea can ruin your day. In all things human we seem
wired up to an either or proposition, on the one hand or the other, some see it
this way and some that, I’ll give you half and I take the other. We advance
technologically and seem to be in full retreat when measured by the unintended
consequences of hubris. We know that deep water oil wells are dangerous, that
coal mines can explode, and that nuclear power can be harnessed but not
perfected to operate at a level safe enough to merit their being sited just
upwind of a place such as New York City. (Who thought that one up?) The last
week has exhausted tear ducts. There must be something awful hidden in wind
powered electricity generating turbines, photovoltaic solar panels must have
embedded within their core some unintended consequence, fuel cells must spew something
other than water, natural gas cannot be so wonderful, and the advances in shale
oil developments across the frozen tundra of the north must have disturbing consequences
far beyond anything yet contemplated. I used to ride motorcycles. If you were
going to be in accident it was said you hoped not to be blindsided. Your
survival depended in part on being able to see the accident and to react to the
situation and with luck you might save your own life. We need a good old
fashioned visit down to the river of new thinking…We need to be honest with
ourselves. This is the way we are going and we need to figure out what to do
and whether to change course….

Step Ball Change

The Dance of Love

“Right now, but one day, when the dust settles, and you get your head screwed back on, and your feet are touching the ground, you’ll wake up and maybe I’ll just be a woman, not amazing, not beautiful, not anything special, just a woman.”

Highway Home

You don’t want to get caught on the wrong foot. Trying to change your footing after you’ve gone all in is most often impossible. Might be that the action you’ve taken is irreversible and you will suffer the consequences for the rest of your life. Going head over heels for a new love interest can be an exhilarating ride. It is fun to watch a friend’s dashboard light up and watch the launch. The risks of going all in with your heart is not a bad call, but sometimes these things don’t turn out, endings can be messy, feelings hurt worse in the end than the exhilarating feelings you had on the ride up into the wild blue yonder of romance. It is the ultimate damned if you do, damned if you don’t fact of a high risk love life. Too many people place too much caution into their romance and not enough chance. So, learning to keep your feet on the ground can turn into a lonely stance, losing your footing can be risky, then again being agile, staying on your toes, ready for whatever is next, open mind and open heart, when the moment arrives, and you find yourself right there at the beginning of something new, something you want to take a chance on…I wouldn’t recommend keeping your feet on the ground. I recommend being ready to change the foot your standing on. That’s dancing from the heart…

 

 

The Heart of the Change Cycles

Fog incoming over Alcatraz

With each new day the world turns, and all things move, all things change and keep changing, and so time is marked by the hands on a clock and thoughts run through our minds and change comes and things go like tides in the oceans and clouds passing through the sky….always though, is this turning of the wheel, the whirling of the stars and shining of the sun, always infinite circles, symbolized by rings, unbroken and endless and timeless and infinite beyond words….a mystery….and in this infinite mystery, this life here and now, people the world over reach into their hearts and join their lives together, forged by vows and with each day they commit their efforts to love and compassion, living out our days on this earth mated, married, happily in the trust of each others care….

Small Change Got Rained On By His Own 38

Dawn Sky

    

Resistance seems natural. Our survival techniques encourage us to reduce the number of variables so that we might reduce the number of threats in the jungle we hunt in. In this modern jungle we find ourselves interconnected to complexity is both ally and enemy. We cheer change we like and resist change we fear. There is no end to the paradox. As they say we are entitled to our own opinion, but we are not entitled to our own set of facts. Change happens! It is a fact. We are sure to be pushed by change, sometimes that push supports our opinion and sometimes that push is supported by fact. Climate change is one such fact. Getting a facelift after consulting our changing looks in the mirror another… Small Change got rained on by his own 38……resisting change in this jungle of life is self inflicted… If you listen you will hear facts speaking. An open mind is a ready mind…what are you open to? What do you resist?