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Showing posts from March, 2018

"Here we are again" - tricking yourself into being good at Art

Here we are again. That's an old clowning phrase. Back in the OG days of European clowning, the French government briefly outlawed popular performance mediums. Professional, stuffy shit only for the French People. Rebellious clowns would announce their presence as they walked onto the street-stage by saying, "here we are again." To me, it's a lot like Waiting for Godot . It speaks to the eternal return of the idiotic. And that's how I feel a lot of the time when I'm writing. Today, I am tapping into the eternal return of the idiotic . Often times, you can trick yourself into writing something good by first writing something bad. Trick yourself into writing something creative by first writing something prescriptive. Trick yourself into competence by starting with idiocy. It applies to writing, but also to rehearsing. Also for any kind of improvising. Start with idiocy, advance to competence. Rinse and repeat for 10 years to get to mastery. I hope you li

Free-Writing, Louis CK, and the First Principles of Standup

Just put some words on the page. You have an open mic coming up tonight, and you damn well better have done at least some freewriting before you stand up there and deign to disperse the unstructured shenanigans of your thoughts upon the unwilling crowd of bitter comedians below. Two thoughts then: Louis CK doing hell rooms/bitter comedians, and the freewriting. Freewriting is a little motor that powers me toward the direction of writing in my own voice. Or at least that’s what I would like it to be. And we have determined to do things more simply, with more writing than performing, and with more consideration than determination (it’s not enough to be a disciplined workhorse pushing your way through the human gruel of stand-up comedy - you have to know which direction you’re moving, otherwise you’re just wiggling in the trenchmud). Thinking about Ray Dalio/Tim Ferriss and the concept of deconstructing a craft so that you can discover First Principles - the core concepts of a thing