The crying-on-the-inside kind
Gadino with Lauren Ashley Bishop
When I paint, as I’ve pointed out before, I listen to music or podcasts, often about comedy but also about history, music, and there’s always Radiolab. I should get Audible.com but my attention to what I’m hearing contends with what I’m painting, so there would be way too much re-listening. Besides, for several years now, while listening to comedians talk casually about how they get by and do what they do, I’m constantly seeing parallels with a painter’s life, at least in the range I’m doing it—getting some recognition and awards and some sales, now and then—but otherwise laboring away obscurely in Rochester, NY. At their best, comedians speak truths that make you uncomfortable, but in a way that lets you enjoy the discomfort—because you’re laughing. It reminds me of Dave Hickey’s dictum that art can depict something very uncomfortable as long as it does it beautifully—beguiling you into looking at what you don’t particularly want to see. Jim Norton’s recent address to Just for Laughs, a big comedy festival in Canada, was profoundly truthful about the enforced politesse of our PC culture. He talked about how comedians need to keep violating norms and conventions and rules for what can and can’t be said in public, all in the pursuit of laughter. As he put it, murder isn’t funny, but jokes about murder can be funny, and the laughter takes precedence over any responsibility for those who don’t get the humor. Cruel laughter isn’t the goal, but rather the laughter that’s also a confession of recognition of truths in what might otherwise be censored in this culture of complaint about hurt feelings. Hurt feelings are a part of moving around in the vicinity of other people. Just walk down a sidewalk in New York City and five or six things or people will somehow affront your sense of self-importance or propriety or good taste. That walk will also make you feel utterly alive. Conversely, way too much art attempts to do what comedy legitimately does: shock people in a way you discover isn’t so bad, once you realize the context, that it’s art. (Or comedy.) I prefer art that seduces in such a way that you hardly realize you’ve been charmed. It requires you to pay attention, but doesn’t fulfill your expectations that art needs to be radically unlike other art or just ordinary life. Shock value isn’t high on my list of priorities. I can handle it with comedy and actually like it, if the shock is subtle and clever.