Tag Archives: comedy

Presenting . . .

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My life sometimes seems like a synopsis. Or maybe it’s one of those TV shows shot with a rapidly moving handheld camera, interrupted at frequent intervals by commercials so snipped into quick-cut bits as to become nearly stop-motion animation. Just when I think I know what’s happening, the scenery shifts and the action swerves in an entirely new and different direction. I can seldom sense what’s ten minutes ahead, let alone ten weeks or ten years.

This is no complaint, mind. I realize that such unpredictable chaos is likely closer to the norm than otherwise in this weird and wonderful world. And no one can have great adventures, joyful or otherwise, without a touch of that good old element of surprise–maybe even the slightest frisson of danger. The degree of risk often determines the possible breadth and depth of reward. Still, there are moments when I hunger for a sense of safety and stability, if not quite stasis. We all long for the familiar and comfortable from time to time.

But this is the tragicomedy we live, loaded with unnamed characters making entrances and exits that were never foreshadowed, doing unscripted deeds and introducing plot twists never imagined on this our stage. All we can do, each of us, is to find our own character, commit to it, and keep working on its subtleties and vagaries no matter what scene changes get sprung on us. I, for one, will always wonder what new or mysterious acts remain ahead for me, and hope I can make the required costume changes and keep up with the action as long as the story unfolds toward the final curtain.digital artwork

Bottom the Weaver!–After the Fact–

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graphite drawingAh, Shakespeare me boy, do tell me. I’m just curious: did Bottom have any sort of Fairy Fella epiphany after his little ass-hat adventure? Me, I am fairly certain that had it been me I would have felt smugly brilliant in my newly dawned state of knowledge the moment I was un-donkey-fied again, but I’m even more certain that I would have slipped right on back into my unwise natural state just about as quickly as twitches a donkey’s tail. Because I am so very much a silly, stubborn creature of habit.

Mr. Shakespeare, whatever his level of formal education or high culture or (if you’re of that particular school of thought) of being multiple persons, had a decidedly perceptive eye for ordinary human nature. The bard’s keen observation and sharp understanding are the fundamental reasons his plays and poems have so long endured–he had us figured out, my friends. I may sometimes wish that the characters in Shakespeare whom I resembled most were the heroic and compassionate ones, the witty, the powerful and the sage. But alas, it’s in Bottom that I recognize myself, in Shakespeare’s dolts and fools and in the obstinately self-centered and weak and wooly-minded characters.

I guess I should just thank Mr. S. for having raised my humbly mortal state to high art and sashay back over to perch in my little flower bower. I rather hope that one day these moments of revelation won’t need to be as frequent or as rudely transformative as getting me visibly turned back into the braying boob that represents my true inner being.

Lowbrow Criminal Activity for Fun and Profit

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I confess, I would make a terrible criminal. See that? I already confessed, and I hadn’t even done anything underhanded yet. My mother is the one we kids always said would be the ideal wicked-mastermind, because she’s so incredibly good and kind and nice, nobody would ever suspect her. Of course, there’s the problem of getting anyone so genuinely nice and kind and good to actually Do Bad Deeds, so you can see that in practical terms our family is just not cut out for skillful bad-deed-doing.

So it’s conceivably a somewhat sympathetic chord being struck that makes me kind of like tales of really inept criminality. Yes, it’s also that the stories all end with comeuppance for miscreants, because if you’re really a clod among crooks, you will get caught, and I am after all a great goody two-shoes at heart. But maybe one with a hint of a mean streak, because it’s probably pure Schadenfreude that makes me truly enjoy tales of ineptitude among the nefarious.

photos + textHey, Who’s the Real Bad Guy Here?

One day I was evading the police pursuing me,

And by a mere coincidence, I bumped into a tree

That happened, oddly, by surprise, to tip onto a house

And through its roof, which crumpled down, startling a rabid mouse

That shot across the neighbors’ lawn and bit their Shih Tzu dog,

Upon which, he upended, deathlike, in aphasic fog;

The neighbor lady found him lying stiff-legged on the lawn

And started in with CPR* to save him, thereupon

Shocking the Shih Tzu back to action, sending him a-pounce,

As though he squirted from her arms, to give the mouse a trounce

That sent the rodent racing back to its familiar haunts,

And by the tree, it spotted me, quite startled for the nonce—

The both of us, indeed, taken aback for just that blink,

Until a second later it occurred to me to think

There were some coppers on my tail, and if I didn’t scram

They’d find me gaping at a mouse, and clever as I am,

I reached instead and grabbed the little critter by the tail

And strapped him in my seatbelt, so if any went to jail

It would be one that, anyhow, had terrorized a pet,

Whereas I’m just a burglar, and I ain’t bit no one yet.

[Note for my Canadian friends: not referencing the Canadian Pacific Railway here, although I suppose one could make the argument that running a train over an unconscious being might forcibly restart his heart with a powerful squashing, if it didn’t kill him outright]

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Rumors

Mellie’s tidy garden

Upon the gatehouse roof

Is rumored to conceal some things

Of which we have no proof.

It’s pretty for its own sake, yes,

With dainty flowering plants

But the idea it’s secretive

Is really what enchants

Roof gardens are quite magical

All of their own accord,

But we like thinking Mellie’s

Best, for hiding untoward,

Suspicious things not seen at first,

Perceived among the flowers,

But only yet imagine

In our impish idle hours.photo

Let’s Just Start with the MacGuffin:

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Surprising as it sounds and contrary to all expectations, it turns out she was the heroine in her own story.

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Sometimes the pivotal, crucial piece of information on which the plot hinges--the fantastical and showy part--doesn't wait for the denouement . . .

Whatever the exotic and thrilling final chapter of my life is going to be, nothing could fully prepare me, let alone anybody else, for it; I think, however, that I may have tromped through the facts of the event many times already without even recognizing where I was. Heck, I may exist in a universe parallel to the one I think I’m in as it is. It’s as though I’d backed through a door into my life and discovered I was somewhere well into the whole chain of events, been mystified by them (though everyone else is in on the joke, having started someplace more logical), and dashed back down the hall in hopes of a do-over. Pretty sure I showed up in my underwear onstage, come to think of it–everybody else seems to at some point.

Here I am, then, living a serio-comic mystery story, ending utterly unknown, and apparently it was written by a bunch of clowns more interested in spectacular pratfalls and occasional bouts of farcical action with absurd and incongruous outcomes than in logic or meaningful purpose. This is not, mind you, a complaint. Once it occurred to me that my calling in the grand scheme of existence was as comic relief, things got a lot simpler and less intimidating. There’s no grail for me to hunt, no world-saving invention for me to create, and certainly no audience expecting anything beyond my appearance in the olio portions of the program, say just after intermission and before the serious third act commences. Even in my own life I might end up playing a bit part, and that’s kind of comforting to me, as opposed to having some dreadfully high purpose to accomplish before curtain call even though nobody’s bothered to spell it out for me.

I make art that way most of the time.

Some drawings and stories start with a title that has no inherent plot or direction implied in its wording but is hoped to goose my brain in a fortuitous direction. I told you before about my [nonexistent] spy-mystery tale used (along with a few nonexistent chapters’ headings) as a springboard for illustrations. My sister donated another title for me that led to a couple of drawings that turned out to have no detectable connection with the title, “Penguins in Peril.” Much of the time, my mind takes such convoluted routes from Point A to Point B that I’ve exhausted the entire alphabet and gone into numbers before looping back to B, where I thought I was headed. If I ever really go there at all. “Penguins in Peril” is such a great title that I’ve tried, really tried, a couple of times to get it right but it just hasn’t happened yet. Ah, well, I like the drawings I got out of the attempts and I still have this fantastic title for future reference. A bonus!

There are other tales and pictorial ramblings that spring from the convoluted mental meandering itself, and these too can take their own tangents and drag me right along with them. If, as I’ve posited before, everything is research, then whatever I discard, carom off of, or don’t include in the current project is fair game for the next.

I figure that ought to apply in life as well as in art. What I didn’t succeed in becoming or discovering or doing this time around, maybe I am just saving up to do when I’m older and more, erm, mature (okay, that’s just not gonna happen). Maybe I’ll get lucky and either someone else will get it done, or karma will plunk me into a future person-place-or-thing better equipped and more highly motivated to get the job done.

And that’s what this is all really about, isn’t it. Motivation. I’m just hiding behind the actor’s persona and pestering the director to tell me “what’s my motivation?” when I know perfectly well that it’s I who am supposed to weasel that information out myself. Sigh. That’s why I prefer to keep goofing around on the edges of sanity purposefulness when making my various stabs at art, and just see where the jollity of the moment takes me. So much more fun, so much less, you know, <makes a face like a baby that just tasted a spoonful of pureed broccoli instead of the expected bananas> responsible. This way I’m also able to be just as surprised by the thrilling finish of the story as all of the innocent bystanders. Whatever it is, guys, I’ll see you there. Wear a Kevlar® jumpsuit, and perhaps also a water-squirting boutonnière, just in case.

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Writing good mystery stories is tough enough--solving the mysteries of one's own life, toughest of all . . .