Connect
“You need to have a community. You need to have meaningful values, not the junk values you’ve been pumped full of all your life, telling you happiness comes through money and buying objects. You need to have meaningful work. You need the natural world. You need to feel you are respected. You need a secure future. You need connections to all these things.”
- Johann Hari
I’m in a meeting where the speaker, whose share I have not been relating to much, says they never knew how to make small talk. Now, I feel like we’re kindred spirits. This is why old-timers always say listen for the similarities. That eerie sense of well-timed coincidence, that God-feeling, stays with me for the rest of the night.
I’d probably been in LA for about a year when I literally Googled "how to have conversations with people." I was in a new city, in a new comedy scene, navigating the sudden burnout of my best friend/comedy sherpa. He was always the one who small talk came easy to, and I was lucky enough to ride his conversational coattails. I felt like I didn't know where to start, but I needed to find out soon. The "where are you from?/How long have you been doing comedy?/How long have you been in LA?" well had run dry.
When I first started doing comedy, back in North Carolina, I would go to open mics and sit alone, head buried in my notebook, trying to look cool and tough. I had yet to realize I was neither of those things. More importantly, I didn’t think of stand-up comedy as being a social enterprise in addition to an artistic one. So when other comics would come up and try to talk to me, the conversation would usually last only a few sentences before I shut down and they wandered off.
A few months in, thanks to the efforts of a persistent and chatty ex-New Englander, I found myself connecting with the other comics at mics and shows. It wasn’t much – shop talk, a little riffing, innocuous banter – but it was enough for me to see that isolating was going to get me nowhere. For comics, the hang can be just as meaningful as the act.
My background in speech and debate made it easy for me to connect with the audience whenever I started doing stand-up. Public speaking? Count me in. Eye contact? No problem. But that off-stage connection was trickier. Fear crept in. “What if these people don’t like me? What if they don’t respect me?” Once I realized that I was putting way too much weight on small talk, it was way easier to set it down. No need to carry that extra burden.
The thing I have come to love most about a life in comedy – aside from the comedy itself – is the community. A hard truth I had to realize was that this is not a competition. We’re in this life together, just a bunch of rascals and weirdos trying to entertain the masses. Comedy can definitely feel like high school, with its myriad cliques and scenes, but these tables are big. There’s usually more room than you’d think. When I stopped trying to compete and started trying to connect, it became easier to stop trying to be whoever I thought people wanted me to be, and just be myself.
I get this book for Christmas one year called "Say What You Mean." The cover says that it's a guide to non-violent communication.
It suggests that I come to the world with an open mind and come from a place of curiosity and care.
Small talk isn't that hard – it's just about being curious and caring. It's about knowing what you care about and finding ways to chime in. It's about having an opinion.
These are the moments I really love – the ones where we are talking about anything but comedy.
I'm in Florence, in the basement of a hostel, talking to one of the local comics on the lineup about translating his jokes from Italian into English. He says that English is the best language for stand-up comedy. "Italian is great for poetry, or song – maybe not for stand-up." Then he tells me about a "butcher poet" who lives in the town Daisygreen and I are visiting for the wedding. Steak and poetry? Sign me up!
The next day, I learn I can't get reservations at any of his restaurants – turns out he's become something of a hot commodity since having an episode of Chef's Table dedicated to him. But I'm in luck: he's catering the wedding reception.
At the reception, while we sit in black-tie attire, marveling at the hailstorm crashing over us, the butcher poet blows through what has to be an old police siren, announcing his arrival. He doesn't say any verses, but he does send a quartet of guys in white aprons and red shirts that read "Carne Diem" on a makeshift parade around the party. They show off the steaks we're about to enjoy. Raw, marbled, huge. Poetry in motion.
I'm at Sacred Ground at the Comedy Store, where a comic is asking me why I got sober. I tell him the speedy version of my stock AA lead, but he seems like he's looking for something a little more heady than me explaining why I felt like I'd broken through the right amount of rock bottoms.
"I'm someone who loves novelty and chaos. When I drank, it was easy to find myself in situations that were new and chaotic. But I've been sober long enough to learn that life has enough of those situations without me trying to find another way there."
He nods. We sit in recognition for a moment, silent, contemplating. Then I get up to go watch Hormoz showcase. “Nice talking to you.”
I'm outside the strip mall comedy theater I frequent in Orange County. We are talking about wedding planning. "You might get married in a library? That's badass," Atif says. It is the first time anyone has said this about getting married at a library and I think maybe he's not wrong. But we'll see. We have so many venues to check out and I have so many more married people to ask for advice.
I'm in the green room at the Comedy Store. I'm in the Belly Room's green room, listening as three guys talk about The Grateful Dead. I am not a deadhead so I'm mostly nodding along and occasionally going, "ah!"
It's after the improv show and we are talking about brisket and dogs and cats. And there is a moment where I remember that this is the thing I love, this thing I used to retreat from. I don't know why I ever thought retreating from it made any kind of sense.
I think that the thing I always forget about are the beauty of these moments, these times where we're not actually trying to out-game each other and try to "talk shop" but when we're just having these tiny, beautiful conversations about all these things that don't matter.
But it is nice to talk about brisket. It's nice to talk about bands versus DJs at wedding receptions. It's nice to talk about the different kinds of AA meetings and whether or not that Grateful Dead docu-series is worth your time even though jam bands aren’t your cup of tea.
These little moments don’t seem like much as they unfold. But when I am gone, on a job, or away from home, these are the moments I come back to. Because when it comes right down to it, these are the little moments of connection that matter more than anything on the fucking planet.