I Really Enjoy The Social Aspects Of

Stand-up Life Is Really Hard. At One Point, I Got So Paralyzed I Could Write Five Screenplays Before I Could Write Three Jokes For Stand-up. Later, I've Finally Allowed Myself To Relax Quite A Bit, To Think I Can Do It Because I've Done It In The Past. The Pressure To Come Up With The Material Is The Same But The Anxiety About Whether I Can Do It Is Gone.

I Understood That As Much As I Had Resisted The Outside, As Much As I Had Constricted My Life, As Much As I Had Closed And Narrowed The Channels Into Me, There Were Still Many Takers For The Quiet Heart.

My Most Persistent Memory Of Stand - Up Is Of My Mouth Being In The Present And My Mind Being In The Future: The Mouth Speaking The Line, The Body Delivering The Gesture, While The Mind Looks Back, Observing, Analyzing, Judging, Worrying, And Then Deciding When And What To Say Next. Enjoyment While Performing Was Rare - Enjoyment Would Have Been An Indulgent Loss Of Focus That Comedy Cannot Afford.

No Matter How Many Times People Say It - 'oh, I'm Just Writing This For Myself' 'oh, I'm Just Doing This For Myself' - Nobody's Doing It For Themselves! You're Doing It For An Audience. So Whether I'm Performing Or Writing A Book Or Playing Music, It's Definitely To Be Put Out There And To Be Received In Some Way, Definitely.

I Knew I Wanted To Be In Comedy But The Path Of Least Resistance Was Doing Stand-up In Folk Music Clubs Where I Could Get On Stage. I Guess You Could Get Up No Matter How Bad You Were And You Didn't Have To Audition. You Just Got Up. Everything Else Required An Audition And If You Auditioned For A Tv Show, You Would Stand In Line With A Hundred Other People. But At The Clubs, It Was Okay Just To Get Up, So That's Why I Started In Stand-up.