#269 - On Humor

Musings on why humor is important to me

All of you may not know this, but I’m absolutely hilarious. Most of the comedians in Hollywood should count their blessings that I never decided to try that route. Out of a pure love for jokes, I’ve worked on my craft for years, bringing chuckles, chortles and guffaws to the lands that I’ve inhabited. I offer a wide range of quips and jests, gags and wisecracks. In many cases, the one laughing the most at any of these jokes is me, but sometimes that’s enough to make another person laugh. I love to laugh, I love to try to make other people laugh. But, humor doesn’t feel like just something I enjoy, but rather a personal value for how I live my life.

Whenever I think about my interactions with new people, I often evaluate whether they engaged with my jokes or if I felt out of place with them. It’s an imperfect way to gauge people, but one that’s important. If someone doesn’t have a similar sense of humor to me, I’ll always find it difficult to connect with them (because they don’t understand true comedy, of course).

This goes back pretty far. As an overwhelmingly shy kid, humor was a way for me to get people to like me. In school, I was academically successful, but it was obvious to me that didn’t necessarily make me interesting to my classmates. It was only through developing a sense of humor and making people laugh that it felt possible to make friends. 

Thankfully, I was blessed with a sense of humor that I inherited from my family. I grew up knowing dozens of bits of Seinfeld through my parents before I ever watched the show, and we were always trying to make each other laugh when we were together. Healthy diets of Spongebob Squarepants and other cartoons fueled me in a household where everyone felt free to make the dumbest jokes imaginable and getting a groan of disgust was as good as getting an actual laugh. This dynamic started before I could read and continues to this day. It won’t ever go away; we always will laugh with each other.

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I think that being funny indicates something about one’s worldview. It’s not only an ability to see the comic nature of the world or find lightness in the absurdity of life, but it’s also a commitment to that ability, continuously choosing this perspective as a way of interpreting how things work. Not everyone has to be funny, nor should everyone try to be funny but I find myself admiring those who are, even if that’s not their main focus.

My favorite artists tend to have a sense of humor: Tyler, the Creator has had multiple hysterical sketch comedy shows and Ezra Koenig from Vampire Weekend is well-known for his humorous writing and his own comedic animated series as well. I connected with these artists initially through their music, but they became much larger inspirations to me once I grew familiar with the fact that they were funny as well. These artists both push the limits of their music, constantly iterating and innovating on their unique sounds.

Maybe their humor helps to propel their creative process, like what Austin Kleon said:

Jokes, pranks, irreverence — if we start poking fun at the world, at a certain point we wonder if maybe we can change it…

The creative process is frustrating and painful, but it’s easier when one can laugh at your own failings or find ways to not take the ups and downs so hard. When it’s more of a joke, it doesn’t have to feel so rigid, and you can choose to do things that you might not normally do.

One of the reasons I love poetry is that it has pretty loose rules (especially when it comes to contemporary poetry), leading to hilarious poems that I find just as inspirational as the most beautiful work of Ocean Vuong. Jon Sands wrote a poem about meeting Andre 3000 at a Trader Joe’s that barely makes sense to me, but it makes me laugh and reminds me that even something as “literary” as poetry can be light and fun.

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I watched an interview between a psychiatrist and a Twitch streamer, in which they talked through some of the sadder parts of the streamer’s past. During the interview, the streamer would often joke in the middle of talking about extremely serious topics, which the psychiatrist referred to as “coming up for air.” I like this comparison a lot — getting into the more serious aspects of life is venturing into an ocean of seriousness. It’s dangerous territory, one that pushes our bodies to the limit. It’s only natural for us to regularly come up for air. 

Some people are better at existing in depths of the seriousness ocean, some may be scuba divers with oxygen tanks to keep them going. Meanwhile, I’m simpler, diving now and then while mainly staying on the surface and filling my lungs deeply with the lightness of jokes and humor. I understand that there’s great beauty and value at the depths of human experience, that finding beauty and understanding of the intellectual and emotional bottom of this hypothetical ocean is meaningful. But I don’t believe I can live at those depths alone. Instead, I look deeply when I dive, and wonder what I can bring up with me to the top. I try to mix what I find with the lightness in the ocean breeze, because why wouldn’t I want to enjoy the air?

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💧 Drops of the Week 💧

It’s not lost on me that the letter about humor isn’t very humorous, but I tried to pick a couple of funny drops to compensate

• ALBUM - hypochondriac by brakence - I just can’t stop listening to this album

• TIKTOK - How to look cool showing up at a party alone - now this is comedy.

• POEM - “Poems from an Email Exchange” by Hanif Abdurraqib" - is there a more poetic line than “My dude, / Truly, this is not going to work”