My apartment is disappointing. I know this, because everyone who has ever been inside has remarked on one of its less savory elements, like the fact that I don't own any tables. Or curtains. Or the fact that the windows don't open. Or the leak in the ceiling.
This was all news to me - I have remarkably little awareness of the parts of the world around me unrelated to the task at hand, which is why my shoes are always untied and I have to rely on external feedback about my breath. But now others have pointed out that my home is unlikely to attract someone to spend their life with its tenant, I have been moved from disinterest to incessant complaining. How lucky for my friends.
Whenever I start ranting about this, someone will inevitably say "why don't you just move, then?" This is a completely reasonable question, and I don't have a good answer. Similarly, if you've been around me for any length of time, you've either witnessed me drink too much and talk/text unending nonsense, or you've heard me be frustrated by my tendency to do so, and an inevitable question of the same kind arises - "why don't you just stop, then?"
Regardless of the inventiveness of my response, the truth is that if I'm not willing to take any of the more direct steps to fix those problems, then there are some things I consider worth more than their resolution. This isn't wrong in itself - very few things are ultimate. I consider the lack of men's 29" length jeans available for sale FREAKING ANYWHERE to be a significant problem, for example, but I wouldn't want to pass a law requiring stores to stock them. In so doing, it becomes clear that for all my whining, I value certain things about a free market more than I value the convenience of being able to purchase clothes that fit.
This self-awareness of the way we communicate our values is missed from the public sphere sometimes, I think. One common economic conversation goes like this:
Person A: "Corporations are amoral, so we need to obligate them to contribute to the country and pay workers fairly through taxes and wage requirements."
Person B: "But we can't do very much of that, because they'll just go to another state/country, and then what would we do?"
Person B would likely not say they think corporations rather than governments are the final authority in the world, anymore than I would suggest I enjoy beer more than I hate the consequences of drinking too much of it, but the options we consider "off the table" communicate more about what's really going on in our heads and hearts than the words we say.
When nine people were shot in Charleston ten days ago, the first reaction of several was to say "we must not use this moment to talk about gun control." Franklin Graham said the problem was not guns, but Hollywood's corrupting influence. Rick Perry said the problem was not guns, but drugs. Facebook was full of well thought out political discourse, such as memes which said "no one blames the car in a car crash" and "Cain killed Abel with a rock." Would changes in gun laws have made a difference in this instance? I don't know the facts or the potential solutions well enough. But when a person's first/loudest response to a shooting is to protect their right to keep and arm bears, it communicates more than just opposition to gun control. It shows the things they consider less important than maintaining the current levels of access to guns.
No hidden fees! No contract! No one forcing you to eat lawn clippings!
Are you interested yet? Does it matter what I'm selling, when the terms are this good? Does it even matter if I know what I'm selling? Do you want to be forced to eat lawn clippings? Those are the choices - my nebulous shadow of an idea, or everyone being forced to eat lawn clippings.
I knew you'd come around.
This is roughly the proposition Ted Cruz offered students of Liberty University last week. Cruz' speech announcing his candidacy was the first major announcement of the 2016 campaign, and hundreds in the Liberty audience applauded his every word. Almost 40% of Republicans polled this week said they would consider voting for him, twice as many as prior to the speech. I have three questions for them/you/pronouns:
Why are the accomplishments of a leader's family important?
Cruz' first 10 minutes were spent describing how his mother and father rose from poverty, prison, and vice into education, entrepreneurship and Christianity. I'm sincerely pleased for them, but I'm pleased in the way I am when people talk about their March madness bracket. I'm glad you're excited. The difference is that (with a few exceptions) people aren't trying to get me to change my worldview based on their ability to predict basketball results.
Cruz, however, wants us to believe that his presidency will allow Americans to pull themselves up by the laces of their Converse because his parents did the same. Unfortunately, you cannot simultaneously ask people to like you because your parents were good, hardworking Christians and ask people to like your vision of America where all you need is a work ethic to succeed. I'm not discounting the contributions parents make in instilling the kinds of values needed to contribute usefully to the country, but many of us have had great parents and become total train wrecks, and vice versa. It isn't relevant to the discussion.
Why are platitudes to which we all can agree important?
"Imagine, instead of economic stagnation, booming economic growth."
"Imagine young people coming out of school with four, five, six, job offers."
"Imagine that every single child, regardless of race, ethnicity, wealth, or zip code has a right to a quality education."
I'm on board with the above quotes. Everyone who runs for office in every country in the West is on board with the above quotes. Perhaps a good rule would be that if every single candidate in a given race could make a particular statement, we shouldn't applaud it from any candidate. If it's something that Megan Fox could say if she ran for office, it shouldn't be enough for a prospective president to gain approval.
Why do you trust someone before they have presented any realistic plans?
Toward the end of the speech, Cruz got slightly more specific about things he would do differently than the current administration:
Repeal the Affordable Care Act
Abolish the IRS
Repeal Net Neutrality
Repeal Common Core
You might agree with Cruz' assessment that the current administration has failed in these areas - but he didn't provide any alternatives, and these aren't binary issues. "No regulation of healthcare, tax, communication, or education" does not solve the problems created by those issues any more than closing Facebook would have solved the problem that people believed they could "do their part" for American Sign Language by dumping ice water on their heads.
Politicians are often cornered into saying things like "I'd rather people voted for the opposition than didn't vote at all," and we seem to associate some virtue with lining up for the ballot booth. I think we can raise the bar a little bit this time. As we gear up for another 18 months of mudslinging, complaining about mudslinging, and some pesky voting at the end of it, let's make our reactions to this campaign season about specific, positive policies, not personality, platitudes, or unfocused anger with the current regime. Let's aim to see everyone proud not just to get something that says "I Voted", but that they cast a vote informed by the specific policies they believe will make our country a better place.
Longer pieces never really go well for me on stage (the below is actually long for me...), so I've only attempted this once, but as the relevant news story has reared it's head again, I thought I'd post my notes in written form.
The following is a dramatic reenactment of a recent news story.
Hey Bill, isn't it great being up here on the 493rd floor of this building?
I don't know Johnny, I'm getting kind of worried.
Why's that Bill? Is it because he gave us both the same voices?
No - something even worse. I've heard they're going to implode the building.
Oh no! What should we do, Bill? Or am I Bill?
I don't know, I've forgotten. I think we need to get out of here... But I've been here on the 493rd floor all my life, since my mother gave birth to me.
Did she had the same voice as us?
Probably. But the point is, we need to get out of here, leave the 493rd floor before they blow up the building. Let's go as far away as I can think of, somewhere we will be safe during the implosion... Floor 490.
Are you sure we can get there in time?
Oh yeah, we'll be fine. Plus, when we get there, there's a vending machine!
Perfect! Yes! If we run away as far away as we can think of to floor 490 and eat all the food in the vending machine, we'll definitely be safe when they implode this 10,000 story building.
-That was two bison, running away from the Yellowstone volcano.
I'm not sure if Netflix has a "shuffle" button. They didn't the last time I used the service, but that was about a year ago, and paying for a month just for the purpose of the blog seemed like an extravagance. But imagine with me for a moment that you can, with one click, serve up a randomly selected movie from Netflix' vast catalog. Then imagine that you watch one third of it before turning it off and writing a review of the entire Netflix service based on this abbreviated, random experience. The results would not likely be worthy of a Peabody (or even a #ghostpee-body), but this was the strategy employed by Collegian staff reporter Haleigh McGill to review the Monday night Open-Mic Comedy at Hodi's Half Note.
Fortunately for all of us, the 45 minutes that McGill endured included the excellent Richard Kennedy, who was rightly featured in the article. The character Richard slips into on stage is not only the perfect vehicle for his great lines but also some great crowd work, and he regularly accomplishes the difficult task of making an audience laugh at something against their will. I'm glad the writer liked Richard, and he was certainly the highlight of the show up to the point McGill and her collection of friends (whom I suspect included disappointed "interviewee" Brittany Carpenter) made their exit, but I'd like to suggest for a moment that maybe Haleigh missed the point.
Erik Lindstrom said to me once that "music feels authentic, and standup actually is." I think he's right. The immediacy of one man and a microphone, or one woman and a womicrophone, and an audience that aren't expecting anything specific, creates the possibility for literally anything to happen. You might hear Dan Jones recounting a drunken exploit with such confidence that he seemed determined not to learn anything from the encounter, and succeeded. You might hear French Accent mixing every type of joke imaginable together over the same two chords at such a speed that you don't have time to decide whether or not you like them. You might hear Ryan Nowell dropping one perfect adjective after another, making you wish he'd follow you around and narrate your day, except that you wouldn't get anything done as you'd be laughing too hard. Miles Harmony might say 25 monotone words over five minutes and leave the audience sure it was funny but unsure exactly why. And Bob Gaudet might hold the whole night together with well crafted, perfectly timed stories and an uneasy undercurrent that is difficult to define as more homicidal or suicidal.
Space and laziness prohibit me from mentioning the many other excellent comics who may or may not drop in, and may or may not be brilliant. Certainly some nights are slow to get started, and certainly some venues provide less than ideal circumstances - how Hodi's manages to be hotter than the outside in the summer and colder than the outside in the winter, I'll never understand. But the joy of standup - especially open mic standup - is that at any moment one comic could grab the whole room by the attention span and transform the evening. At Hodi's for almost four years, and at several other venues across Fort Collins, this very nearly always happens, and it definitely happened in the later part of the evening that the Collegian reporter missed. Live standup is real, raw, and unpredictable, and the knife edge separates it from watching specials on Netflix. In open mic comedy... I was going to say "the view is worth the climb," but that sounds too fortune-cookie. Maybe to contextualize for the Collegian I could say "the finished building is worth the construction," but that's far less likely to be true than my actual point. The laugh is worth the uncomfortable silence. And you will laugh.
I don't write about faith much - this is the first time on this blog. Because it doesn't permeate my speech as much as it should, and because I know a lot of you in a context that doesn't naturally bring those conversations about, I worry that reading this will feel like a bit of a bait-and-switch. I don't have anything to offer to correct that, but I feel it important to acknowledge. I hope I'm always honest when the subject comes up, but there are situations where it doesn't, and that's ok. It would be ridiculous to say "here's how I think Jesus would have designed this piece of software", just as it would be to reference to God in my standup just to assuage my conscience.
Social media is filled today with thoughts about the triumphs of 2013 and the possibilities of 2014. No doubt all of us had a year of highs and lows - but I find it difficult to write about the year because, sitting here tonight, the lows are louder. It's not that there weren't great moments - there were - but I can't think of those without also musing on the things that didn't go as well, and so the whole thing ends up pretty downcast. No one wants to read a comfortable middle class 25 year old feeling down about the things that annoy him (and for what it's worth, I'm not talking about anything in my life approaching a real problem, rather things that feel overwhelming regardless of how serious - though I believe this argument also stands for huge things like long term unemployment or the breakdown of a significant relationship).
I think I'm pretty chipper (or at least neutral) in person, which probably makes it a little weird that I can't think of anything nice to say about 2013 without negativity crowding in. I don't think I'm pretending in person, the voices of doom that descend when I'm on my own don't tell the whole story anymore than occasional attempts at wit during meetings do, but it's difficult to hold the two things in balance. The world offers several responses to my melancholy, and they are unhelpful:
"Be grateful." It's easy to assume someone feeling weighed down by things in life is taking too much for granted. This suggests that humans are incapable of feeling more than one thing at a time - but anyone who has made a difficult decision in anticipation of something better knows that this isn't true. It's totally possible to feel deep gratitude welling up about good moments while still hearing the constant voice of those things you wish were different.
"Stop being a victim." I'm treading carefully here because I risk saying something I don't mean. But for those who look at every unhappy person as a victim - look me in the eye and tell me that 100% of your successes were the result of effort, and 0% was happenstance. I promise, you cannot. Yes - fight for change with all of your might, all of your days - more on that in a minute - but there has to be a way to handle the possibility that we could fight our weaknesses our whole lives and lose.
"Hope in next year." In this category, I'd argue that the pessimists have the intellectual high ground. Nothing magic happened between 11:59 and 12:00 last night. All the things you hate today are there tomorrow, and will be the day afterward. In this same category is "it can only get better from here,"which isn't even appropriate if read from a fortune cookie after eating bad Chinese food - you might still throw up.
So what do we do about this? There are lots of ways that "hope in Jesus" could answer this, but before you dismiss me as trite, let me offer one specific answer:
Hope in the future. Not next year - unimaginable millions of years into the future. Hope in the fact that this future has been secured by someone who is not you. The perfect life and death of Jesus is the grounds by which God accepts you into a future which has not been ruined by our rebellion. Then use that reality (that the only future that counts is not based on you, and therefore you can't ruin it) to fight to do the right thing in this life. The assumption that we have to have our most comfortable life now is ruining everything - and you know that, because it's lack of comfort that is ultimately causing the melancholy. Things will still go wrong, and a lot of them will be your fault. But if you, like me, find yourself a bit confused about how to feel at the end of the year, set your hope in 2014 on Jesus, who secured a future reality not based on your performance.
The following is a conversation I had with myself, standing outside a friend's house this weekend.
"I'm half an hour late. That's ok, isn't it? People aren't on time to things. At least, I'm not on time to things. Am I always the last person to arrive at everything? That can't be, because I distinctly remember forming the opinion that it's basically fine to arrive after things start because someone else did that and it wasn't a problem. What if that was the only time they'd ever been late to anything? And I chose that moment to form a habit of being late to social events? Nothing happens in the first half hour of a social gathering anyway, perhaps some people will have taken their shoes off already. I reckon I'm pretty quick at that, so I'll be fine.
I should double check the invite to make sure it's not tomorrow or yesterday or at someone else's house or involves dancing.
Oh no.
The invite lists the time in Central time, but the app has helpfully converted it to Mountain.
Do they know that? Was that on purpose? Or did they mean Mountain time? Am I now half an hour early as well as half an hour late?
Should I just go in? If I do, should I acknowledge that I don't know when it starts? Do I explain why I'm confused? No, that won't work, they'll suggest I stay, and I'll either be awkwardly sitting on a couch or feebly trying to help and making a mess of something, like trying to get a glass of water and accidentally starting the house on fire. I suppose I could say "I'll come back," but then it's just a more understated kind of weird. What if , on the way back down, I pass someone else who is genuinely coming early? Do I explain to them that I'm just leaving for a bit because I'm incompetent? Or if I don't explain, what if they ask where I was going when they get inside, and the others have to explain?
Maybe I should go in now, and if I am early rather than late, I'll just not say anything. Act completely normal. Will that work? Is half an hour too early not to explain? What would I do if someone came to my house half an hour early? Actually, I'd be quite annoyed as I thought I still had that time to myself, but that's not something you can tell the person who arrived, so I'd overcompensate by being extremely nice so they didn't notice. I don't think I can handle wondering if that's going on in someone else's head as well. No. If I go in now and I'm early, I'll have to explain and either be awkwardly there or awkwardly not there.
What if I leave it a few more minutes? What's the maximum time I could be potentially late to something and not have it be weird, while also being ok if I'm early instead? If I'm 40 minutes late or 20 minutes early is that better? 45 minutes late or 15 minutes early? Fifteen minutes still seems long enough to have to explain if it turns out I'm early, but now the explanation is worse, because in addition to having got the time wrong, I'm also admitting that I would have been 45 minutes late, which doesn't sound good. Could I risk being either an hour late or on time? If I am an hour late, I can explain the time difference thing, and if I'm on time, everything will be fine. Yes, that's a reasonable plan. I'll risk being 60 minutes late to seeing some friends I genuinely want to see, to avoid any of the awkward worst case scenarios I've developed for being 30 minutes early. Perfect."
I wandered around the street for 30 minutes, and then went in. On time. I can't help feel this isn't the way normal people solve problems.
It's time I lay my red cards on the table. I'm not retiring from the world of professional soccer refereeing, rather, I'd like to make an entirely unoriginal point about the free market. The notion that people will "vote with their dollars" as a way of regulating commerce assumes that:
We always make good overall decisions with our money
The sum of everyone's individual decisions equals the best decision for the group.
This is probably true in the world of smartphones. Samsung and Apple's users vote for whichever phone's features they like better by buying that particular phone, and because Samsung and Apple both want to stay in business, they keep improving their phones to poach customers from each other. This results in both sides producing better phones - a win for everyone. But it only works because what happens to smartphones doesn't matter. I enjoy the incredible devices that are available- but if the tide turned and everyone started buying cheap phones and drove Apple and Samsung out of the phone business, it would be difficult to mount a case that this was morally wrong.
But what of important things? A little while ago, the FDA began to require the full calorie count to be displayed on certain products (so that soda companies can't suggest that their 12 fl oz can contains 3 servings of 100 calories each). This came up in conversation and I remarked that it was a great example of a government agency doing something useful. A friend suggested "I think it's sad that the market couldn't have produced the same result." (As a side note - this was a flippant comment made in passing, and I'm not suggesting it represents all of his considered views on the subject.) But I found it interesting, because it's a problem the market will never solve. If a company prominently displays the true calorie count on its products, fewer people will buy those products, and a company isn't going to make a poor economic choice for the public good. Additionally, if one company starts doing this and others do not, the public isn't going to buy the more accurately labeled product merely out of principle. When we move beyond the realm of preference into the public good, the market cannot effect change.
Another example - in the industry where I work, the last five years or so have seen considerable government action to enforce the notion that certain products are unacceptable to sell. While some of that regulation has been unnecessarily heavy-handed, the overall impact has been positive, as customers have been weened off of low cost, low quality products. However, market forces were incapable of producing this change. I am sure our industry would love to sell only high end solutions, but as long as there were companies selling low end solutions, everyone had to sell them to stay in business. Equally, customers would have loved a better solution, but couldn't justify the cost as long as a low end one was available. When we move beyond the realm of preference into the public good, the market cannot effect change.
I say all of this to make a point about the smoking ban. Fort Collins is extending theirs next year, and I was amused to discover this weekend that Ault disregards the one which has been in effect for the last 7 years. The argument usually made when people dislike these regulations is "each business should be able to decide for themselves if they should allow smoking." This presents the same problems as in the examples above - no business is going to make a decision which reduces the number of customers. Therefore, the question is not "is it the government's decision or an individual business' decision to allow smoking?" The question is "is the decision to allow smoking a matter of preference, or the public good?" And to answer it, we don't need politicians or economists - we need scientists. Let's stop making arguments about rights and freedom, and take a hard look again at whether it's demonstrably bad to be around smoke. It could be that the impact of second hand smoke is negligible enough that the government doesn't need to impose any rules - if that's the case, it's a matter of preference and the market will sort it out. And if not, then the government should restrict it in the way they are planning. When we move beyond the realm of preference into the public good, the market cannot effect change.
A small postscript before the whole internet piles on top of me: this is not a post in favor of, or against, the expanded restrictions Fort Collins is proposing. I'm just suggesting a better place to put the goal posts. The interesting question is "has it been shown that the impact of second hand smoke in a patio environment causes sufficient public health risks to warrant government regulation?" I have no idea what the answer to that is, but that's a much more useful argument to have, I think.
I sometimes ask comedy audiences "Who thinks life would be better if we could all do whatever we wanted, without anyone interfering?" There's usually a bit of applause, and then I'll explain I disagree completely, and spend a few minutes exploring the ways in which we're all broken, evil, and can't be trusted. Here's a few words along that same theme.
"Remember when you were little, and..."
Most of the potential endings to that sentence are pretty harmless:
"...your sister knocked over all your legos?"
"...you got your face painted like a carwash?"
"...your uncle sat down in a lawn chair and it broke underneath him, and he was stuck there for a while?"
Etc., etc. But I can't handle it. Stories about my past come out, and I immediately want to leave the room. This isn't because I did anything particularly unthinkable as a child. I'm not afraid someone will launch into a story which begins "remember when you were little, and we left the house for five minutes and came home to find you halfway through killing and eating the dog?" They know better than to tell anyone that story.
I don't think this is normal. We all did silly things when we were younger, it shouldn't cause embarrassment or shame because when I was five I did something perfectly normal for five year olds. No one really expects their adult life to be judged by their childhood (Macauley Culkin, perhaps). So where does the fear come from?
I have a similar problem with song lyrics. My old band has been playing again, and a few good songs have been consigned to the Great Box Set in the Sky, because I don't like the words. Given that most songs are about nothing (especially songs which sound like they might be about something), and in general people don't care what the lyrics are, this seems like a waste of decent chords and melodies.
It constrains the covers we play, too - good ideas are never tried, because the prima donna singer wonders how the words will reflect on him (he says, irritatingly, in the third person (he explained)). This makes the least sense - the audience knows we didn't write it, they don't imagine that deep down, I really really really wanna zig a zig ahh (to take a purely hypothetical example). So why can't I get over it?
One last example. If anyone has ever asked "do you enjoy working as part of a team?" in a job interview, I am confident in 2 things: the interviewee responded yes, and it was a lie. Steve Jobs apparently made a comment once that "A players only work well with other A players," the implication being that in order to have a successful team, you must fire all the B and C players. I don't agree with this - large organizations depend on people of varying abilities working well together. It might be nice in a manager's mind to say "we only have A players here," but it's never going to be the reality.
But I find myself sabotaging this "everyone work together" attitude sometimes. (For example's sake, and because I haven't eaten yet, let's imagine a line of people making a burrito). In general, I contribute to a team's success only until it begins to look like an idea I disagree with (for example, eating cilantro) will be part of our final product (perhaps I'm making a burrito with someone who feels rice and salsa taste too nice, and must be ruined by adding horrible green leafy things). Once that becomes clear, apathy takes over and I find it hard to be invested in the success of whatever we're doing (oh, many people probably like cilantro. They think it's fine, and who am I to judge?). If I don't think I can win, I won't even bother putting my case forward, I'll just meander along with everyone until the end (choking down a burrito like a 6 year old forced to eat peas). As I just explained, I know intellectually that this is no way to behave, but it seems to be my default setting.
Is there a common thread here? More than failure, shame, or embarrassment, I think it's control of my reputation. Family members telling stories, band members suggesting songs, or coworkers putting a project together, all cause opinions to be formed which I'm not in control of, and sometimes that's impossible to handle. I'm not suggesting this is a good thing - I've just spent 700 words explaining why it's ridiculous - but destructive as it is, it's definitely real. We often labor under the illusion that if we could control every aspect of our lives, our lives would be perfect...but if even the desire for control can make a wreck of everything, I suggest we're not the best people to be in charge.
I say that not to gloat about my fast paced party lifestyle (I don't have one), nor to make you worried about a potentially life threatening addiction (I don't have one) - I'm just making an observation. The "why" question is complicated. I'm not really a "drowning my sorrows" type, alcohol doesn't make me forget my troubles, it just increases the time between saying something and feeling guilty about it, which massively increases my troubles. It's also not because I particularly enjoy the sensation. The moment of realization when things have gone too far is not a good feeling. It's like... well, it's like an awkward innuendo that I'm not really comfortable typing. I realize nothing which happens repeatedly can be an accident (a comfort to people with 4 or 5 older siblings), so there must be some reason for it.
Beer makes us all the same.
My friend Kim said that. I'm not sure if she was quoting someone (the internet suggests she is not), or trying to be profound (the internet also suggests she is not, but the internet has a spotty record on Kim's intentions), but that thought has stuck with me. Beer has a strange power to break down social barriers. I am not a sociable person at all, it sounds less scary trying to staple my tongue to the side of an angry horse than trying to make conversation with someone I don't know extremely well, but for some reason beer changes all of that. Not the alcohol, by the way - the whole scenario stops being intimidating from the first sip.
So what is it? Why does this one thing suddenly stop me caring about being incapable with people? There are probably a couple of reasons. In Fort Collins, we're blessed with a bonus reason, as well, which is that it's an acceptable topic of conversation. In most places I imagine "what are you drinking?" doesn't generate fifteen minutes of genuinely interesting banter, and I'm grateful that it does here. But there are slightly more mainstream reasons I think beer makes social functioning possible. In the first place, for whatever reason, it actually counts as something to do. It's an activity.
"What are you doing tonight?" "Drinking a beer."
"What should we do tonight?" "Go drink a beer?"
Those exchanges seem perfectly normal, but if you replace "beer" with "Pepsi", or "glass of water," it sounds ludicrous. You might be thinking you can get away with "coffee" in the same way, but with coffee, you only ever want one, so it's not nearly as helpful. Beer (and other alcohol too I imagine) counts as a way to spend time - lots of time. It even counts as something to do between sentences - if the conversation is flagging while you're out, sipping a beer and staring into the distance is completely acceptable. There's no pressure.
In the second place, it's impossible to be bad at. I'm bad at just about anything normal to do with a group of people (playing sports, watching sports, watching movies, playing video games, watching movies about people who play sporting video games), but the feeling of "I will just be in the way" isn't there at all if the plan is to go and do some drinking. I'm completely capable of that, and so is almost everyone I've ever met. Kim is right, beer makes us all the same.
Over against the social advantages, there's a lot to hate about drinking. I hate that I usually have to spend the next day alone in a dark room, and I hate the fact that I say things I know I should be ashamed of thinking, let alone acting upon. I'm under no illusion that it's good to lose my inhibitions and let everything out sometimes - people need to be inhibited, myself very much included. If I were presented with a list of the pros and cons, and asked to make a rational choice, the cons outnumber the pros significantly, but "being able to be with other people like a normal person" is a massive pro. Beer makes us all the same. And I want to be the same sometimes.
About a week. Or until a bad gig. Or the next time you try to write and end up with a paper with a dozen black dots from setting the pen down.
That's how long the elation from success will last.
The first couple of times are incredible, like you've discovered a brilliant new drug. Being on stage when things are going well is like having your hand on a lever that can make the whole world feel good. It's great to be in the audience on a good night, but nothing can compare to the feeling of controlling the on/off switch to people's joy for a few minutes.
Even better, you didn't really discover this moment, you made it. All the fun of being the captain of the big happy ship is turned up x100 if you designed and built the ship. It's part of you, it can't finally be separated from who you are. You've presented something to an audience, they've loved it, and because they loved a thing that you made, you feel like they might love you, too. Any performer who says they don't care what the audience thinks has just changed the definition of "audience" - someone's acceptance is always the prize, even if not always the people sitting in front of the stage. And so when things go well, you walk off the stage feeling 5'7" - not only full of glee, but having been validated as a person, too. Taller people may need to adjust the height of the previous sentence for the metaphor to work.
At some point this feeling wears off, and like all addicts, the hunt begins for more. This drug is particularly evil, because it can't be purchased or found, it has to be made. By you. And you have no recipe, ingredients, or internet. Hearing someone talk about writing is a fascinating thing, because when things are working it sounds as though it's very easy, with a simple process to create something brilliant. People have all sorts of sophisticated ways of saying "I work hard and am good at things." In a dry patch, however, things take on a mystical tone - the process that was so clearly defined the week before has now been rewritten to include a lot more "sitting and waiting for things to come to me." The reality is somewhere between those two things - if you're not working hard, you won't know what to do with a brilliant idea when it does arrive, but however hard you work, you can't control the arrival.
The cycle continues in such a way that every moment of triumph is followed immediately by the fear of that being your last moment. The frustrating combination of labor and luck leads eventually, possibly, to another great idea, but the pit in your stomach from the whole process never really goes away, and that is almost at the heart (almost, because we're still in your stomach) of creating anything:
After the success of the first idea has faded, you live with the fear of never having another idea, until the second idea arrives, but the arrival of the second idea does not bring with it any promise of a third idea. There's success, then work, struggle, and fear, then success... At some point, it occurs to you that you can cheat the system, by finding out how to extend the success of the first idea forever. This isn't all that hard, there are new audiences everywhere, and by the time you come back to the first audience, they've forgotten you anyway.
This should lose it's thrill - there should be some natural dissatisfaction that drags you back onto the "creating" trail of fear and success... but sometimes there isn't. Sometimes you can trade for ages on past glories, slowly forgetting what you're missing because subconsciously you only remember the struggle. Like a guy living on fast food because he remembers that cooking real food takes effort but has lost sight of the fact that it's also a million times better. And that is something to be afraid of. The fear of never having another good idea doesn't help anyone do anything, but not losing sight of the joy of creating something new - that is at the heart of creating something great. You have to keep the fear of becoming the Rolling Stones.
