Chris Bliss coming out here this afternoon I'm actually doing a serious
talk about comedy those it'll be funny but it'll also be serious I was kind of
debating beforehand whether to open with comedy or not open with comedy some
people are scared of the whole idea of comedy and so I should reassure you that
even though I will be mentioning some point of view subjects that you may
disagree with politically I won't be using any language or subject matter
that isn't commonly heard on the playgrounds at the public schools so now
to the topic at hand some of you have seen this quote up here wondering why
it's here it's here because Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of my favorite
writers for his storytelling but also for the beauty and precision of his
language whether it's this opening line from One Hundred Years of Solitude or
the fantastical stream of consciousness of autumn of the patriarch where the
words rush by page after page after page of unpunctuality Majer ii just sweeping
the reader along like some wild river twisting through a primal South American
jungle reading Marquez is a visceral experience which struck me is
particularly remarkable during one session with the novel when I realized
that I was being swept along on this incredibly vivid journey in translation
now I was a comparative literature major back at college which is like an English
major only instead of being stuck with Chaucer for three months we got to read
great works of literature in translation from all over the planet and as great as
the books weren't as great as these writers were you could always tell that
you weren't getting anything close to the full effect but not so with Marquez
who once praised his translators versions as being better than his own
which is an astonishing compliment so when I found out that his translator
Gregory Rev ASSA had written his own book on that subject I couldn't wait to
get it it's called it this be treason it's a charming read I highly recommend
it for anyone out here who won't be interested in the translators art but
the reason I mentioned it this afternoon is that early on Rob ASSA offers this
elegantly simple in
now as often as every person in this room has run into that language barrier
somebody not hearing remotely what you think that you're saying I don't think
that I have ever seen the inherent challenge of communication in so
crystalline a light and that's my topic for today communication specifically
what 25 years of doing stand-up comedy has shown me about how people do and
don't communicate successfully in a world that with each passing day
challenges all of us to be more willing and able to accept and share changing
perspectives now it turns out that stand-up is uniquely suited to this
challenge to illuminate this challenge because for starters comedians
experience the transmission reception response loop with far more immediacy
than most people do I mean there you are alone on a stage in real time with no
filters in front of a roomful of strangers trying out your ideas that
look really funny on the page and there you are in that environment where
feedback is instant and intimate now in fairness the people who've come to watch
this presentation they want you to succeed after all they've all come out
that night they want to have a good time but both day and the comedian understand
the stakes and understand who's going to get the final say on how the evening
turns out in other words the audience at a comedy club brings both willingness
and judgment to the table which is really the same dynamic that's at work
in most of our important interpersonal communications the only real difference
for comedians is that there are a lot more witnesses when things start to go
sideways because there's really no graceful way for you to exit the stage
after you've taken an audience from this of course in California they told us the
lottery was gonna save our schools and it's done a great job Johnny still can't
read but he can pick six now
and then 15 minutes later you're at this
and then by the end of your set I have nothing else that kind of experience
focuses the mind and for the comedian that leads to the first important lesson
of comedy as communication which is that success and failure is not primarily
about the words the words matter of course but what matters most is what I
call conscious connectivity and by that I mean connectivity in both directions
outwardly and connecting and staying connected with your audience but also
inwardly in striving to achieve a conscious layer and effortless
connection to the full scope of whatever it is that you're presenting not just
how each piece fits into the overall narrative but also by making a
moment-by-moment commitment to infuse the material with every aspect of why
you thought it was funny to begin with everything from the cultural context to
your own personal emotional subtext now whenever I start mapping out a new piece
of material about some news story or some political or cultural issue it's
usually because my comedic spidey senses are telling me that something important
has been left out of this discussion so I start the process by trying to figure
out what are the questions that are being asked and what are the questions
that aren't being asked and actually came up with this approach after
watching an interview with dr. Jonas Salk the developer of the first polio
vaccine or he was asked if there would ever be a cure for AIDS and he answered
without hesitation oh yes there already is it pre exists within the virus we
just need to find the right questions now of course I realize comedy is not on
a par with something like curing aids but well-crafted thoughtful material
like any very committed communication can help us overcome our areas of our
ignorance as long as it helps us find those right questions and by right
questions I don't mean in the classic propagandist sense of setting frames for
the debate this is something I want to be really clear about because
to a whole lot of people the successful communication is one where they win the
argument and so they structure their premises accordingly and the result is a
highly self-limited mostly one-way conversation that even when it succeeds
it fails because it's designed to limit discovery that's not the kind of comedy
or communication that I'm interested