I Volunteer To Move Your Soul And This How I Feel?

So the way my life rolls now I only have to eat my own shit, which is a position of great privilege, but last night I ate so much crap I almost choked on stage. About halfway through a storytelling spot I wanted to apologize to the audience and walk out the door and walk home and stop eating my own shit. But that's never an option so I simply ate faster.

The theme of the night was Life and Death and I planned to talk about my time with Occupy and my support of Wikileaks and the price I pay for being involved and the rewards for taking risks, what with being arrested multiple times and my new scary relationship with the authorities. So far so good, I know what I do and why and I have plenty of stories. But let's eat shit.

Doing stand up this year I've worked out my routine: talk to a voice recorder during the day and work in a notebook when I get to the comedy room. If the notes I make just before I get up don't relate to what I worked on during the day that's no problem, they're more immediate and therefore more relevant to what's happening in the room. And I may not even use the notes and just rely on my experience to guide me, which seems to work alright. And there are always dick jokes, the open micer's parachute. Oh, I almost forgot: and I'm a genius.

The main thing is stay busy and keep it simple. But! I asked a mate to come along and video my Occupy story. Big fucking mistake, because now I'm boxed in and when I'm at the gig and my notes are all about horrible childhood shit I start freaking out because I feel like I've committed to getting the Occupy gear on video. I take that freakout to the mic and as I try to shoehorn Occupy stuff into far more immediate Childhood shit I can feel it not making sense as I speak. At no point does it occur to me I'm not getting paid so none of this matters in the real world.

I opened with something like, "When I was two my grandpa killed himself, ending what I would call the golden years of my childhood." I enjoy saying it, the audience enjoys hearing it, and I could have kept going with Horrible Childhood Shit very easily as the Drugs rampage into my system, but no, I had a job to do, which was ruining my flow completely by awkwardly shoehorning Occupy into the mix. I felt like such a cunt. "But Sean, cunts are beautiful." I will push your wheelchair down a cliff-face if you don't back off. I will set fire to it first.

While I was trying to make the story work, I felt like I was revealing way too much of myself to strangers like some sort of American. Eeeeuuwww.

You know those singers who open their souls to the audience? They're all full of shit, which is why they do an album then disappear for a few years to be hermits drawing pictures of their cats. Last night I felt like I stumbled into that territory. I hate that Oprah shit, it's masturbation masquerading as honesty. I felt like I was doing the most middle class thing in the world, 'sharing my feelings'.

And it was all by accident. I love saying horrible shit, but not being in control was brutal, so afterwards I had to be ashamed for hours and today I have to blog about it.

But hey, I got into stand up because I wanted to master a difficult craft and smack people in the face with my achievement dick.

Sincerely,
Sean's Penis.