Jonah in the Belly of the Moshpit & indulging your voyeur nature

 Do you ever notice how you feel like you don't have something to write about? I experience that all the time.

Here's a quote from Buck Henry, an old-school comedy writer, that I got form Mike Sacks' book And Here's the Kicker,
"I think all writers should have a voyeur nature. You have to look and listen. That's why some writers might run out of material. They're not looking, they're not listening."
I think that's very true. It reminds me of a conversation with some good friends during the comedy studies program with Second City in Chicago. We concluded that the people who were all comedy all the time lacked a certain something when it came to their writing. All they knew was comedy, so all they could do or talk about was comedy. In the words of Anne Libera, it eventually devolves into "an endless series of Monty Python references."

So these are some thoughts I've made for myself: you have to have conversations, actually listen instead of wait for your chance to talk, and say the uncomfortable true thing instead of the polite thing when you're there.

You also have to put yourself in situations you might not normally be in. Break from routine. Which gets me to the Belly of the Mosh pit, and why I didn't make a blog post yesterday. Sorry to leave you all hanging, by the way.

Basically, yesterday morning I woke up at a friend's (Art-Kid Jordan Nevins) house, crashing there after going to a soiree the previous night. At this point, I thought "Oh, yes, I have really stepped outside my comfort zone now!" It's time to run back to my apartment, blog about it, and continue my monkish routine of writing, drinking coffee, and fulfilling my open mic one-drink-minimum by drinking the Lord's sacrament.

But Jevins and his scrappier friend Connor tell me that they're going to a punk concert. And I'm like, (imagine a 1920s voice here) "No, I couldn't! I don't even like punk music!"

Fast forward four hours, and I have been persuaded to enter my first mosh pit. Sweat. Sweat. Tank Tops. Punk music. My dancey muppet ass in the middle of the fray, working out a masculine aggression that seems A) a little frivolous and B) isn't Sunday the Lord's day to rest? Where's my open mic Malbec?!?

I emerge like a nerdy Leonidas several hours later, almost 100% sure I have acquired Mono via sweat transfer alone.

But, even if I never write a stand up "bit" about this experience, I'm glad I did it. At the end of the day, I felt like I had done something different, put myself out of my comfort zone (at least until it got fun), and set a precedent for myself: be a voyeur. Experience these other parts of life, and talk to the people there.

Thanks for reading this SUPER LONG EFFING POST.

 See you all tomorrow!

-Jon

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