Laughter? Good Grief!
During the past year, I’ve had lots of time to look at the substance and structure of my life without the incessant, nagging distraction of a job. I recommend it strongly if you feel your future fortunes slipping from IRA to the IRS. You’ll be time rich – a half million minutes to spend as you wish.
I spent hundreds of thousands with my wife and daughters, tens of thousands re-writing my film project, practicing guitar, reading, and singing the Blues: Chicago, Delta, and 9/11. Month by month, I felt America’s collective sense of grief and innocence lost lift slowly, until the anniversary of the massacre arrived with a weary thud. We were ready move on. Heart-heavy, but attentive to our responsibilities, America returned to the distractions and reactions that hold our interest.
But I didn’t. I lingered in that grief, refreshing the fading memories of loss, pain, and death with similar events from my life. The result was powerful and pervasive: fewer invites to social gatherings, fewer check-in phone calls from distant friends, better renditions of Blues songs.
The friends who decided to “ride out the storm” with me fell into two categories, those who saw it as an inspirational trough in my roiling sea of genius, and those viewed it a pissing away a load of time. It was this latter group that recommended help – not sit and talk, take a walk, share our thoughts help. They gave me books.
I read books on grief, depression, spirituality, poetry, investment advice, window-box gardening, Pilates, kayaking, Mensa, the evolution of consciousness and inducing creativity. But mainly I got a lot of books about dealing with grief.
To me, reading a book to lessen grief is like reading a book to lose weight. Nothing happens until you set the book aside and apply its ideas to your life.
It’s easy to see that overwhelming grief is an imbalance, when someone else is feeling the grief. Catastrophic loss overshadows life and, for a while, we observe rather than participate, but are immobilized by our observations.
In the short term, it was not surprising I focused on staving off my re-adjustment until I had fully immersed myself in loss. I wanted a healing, a transformation that offset my impaired emotional range and expression. When mourning a family member, friend, love, job, home, pet, or status takes precedence in day-to-day living, I am inclined to deny myself the natural outlet for stress and exhaustion – laughter.
And I should know better.
Years ago, I performed stand-up comedy in San Francisco. Robin Williams and Steve Martin had revolutionized stand-up by adding their outlandish talents to traditional joke and routine comedy. America has always been deeply in love with its comedians.
At first, I was determined to make people laugh and build a career in television and movies like other comics had done. This was actually easier than it sounded because most competing comedians lost their way with alcohol or drugs or developed a noxious off-stage personality. So I worked my way up through the ranks quickly, mastering the craft and savoring my growing popularity.
One Sunday night, after a particularly good show at a Bay Area Comedy Club, a couple of women from the audience stopped by the adjoining restaurant Green Room to thank me. I made a loony excuse about not having enough time to seduce both of them and they laughed heartily. “You’ll have to draw straws to decide who’ll be the lucky one.” I said, “to leave alone.”
We joked a few more moments and one of the women said: “I haven’t laughed like this in months.” I asked, “Just get out of re-hab?” and she laughed again briefly, but her face settled into a grim smile as she shook her head. Her friend said, “She lost her husband and this is the first time she’s been out since he died.”
I was unable to respond – a frustrating situation for a guy who makes his money by being quick to answer. When I looked at them both, I saw their need to laugh. My mind raced though every possible joke, wisecrack, and gag I knew, but I was stumped. In desperation I said, “You want have the best Irish coffee in San Francisco?” They nodded happily and we walked up the street to the Buena Vista Bar where the drink was invented.
Drying a widow's tears is one of the most dangerous occupations known to man. - Dorothy Dix
Although it was nearly midnight, the place was packed. We took a table near the window so we could see the Bay and the lights of the Golden Gate Bridge. I ordered four Irish coffees. When they arrived I set three of them in front of us and held up the fourth.
“And who’s the fellow who will be joining us in spirit?”
I was gambling with a long-shot set up here, but I wanted them to know that I was not on the make and mindful that we were dealing with some pain. The friend said the husband’s name, I repeated it with an added greeting, and set the drink on the table in front an empty chair. I lifted my cup in a toast, “Here’s to laughter – and the morning after!”
We talked for an hour or so. I listened as they alternately laughed and cried while re-telling stories about the husband and his fatal accident. I tried at first to add a restrained comic twist here and there, but the women were far funnier and insightful than most comedians I knew, so I held back and paid attention. Besides, it was their performance, not mine, that mattered here.
They displayed the most amazingly contradictory emotions as they recounted the sadness, pain, and absurdity of the months following the accident: laughter at adversity, tears over happiness, strength over adversity, helplessness in the face of opportunity. And their responses shifted so rapidly that I was sure that something far more important than table talk was going on. They were moving through the memories so quickly that the emotional boundaries connected to each recollection were getting blurred.
Laughter, tears, surprise, pain, hope, love, hope, laughter, hope.
They seemed to be unconsciously processing their emotions in the safety of their deep friendship and I was honestly spellbound by the interaction. No one else in the bar paid any attention to them. They were in a safe place, a ritual space, where emotions and drinks and laughter and tears were the currency. And such transactions trade loneliness for acceptance, sadness for honesty, pain for peace.
Just before they left, I asked what prompted them to come to the comedy show. They looked at it other, smiled, and the widow said, “It felt like the time was right.”
I watched them leave, thinking about my place as a comedian in the grand scheme of things. But rather than re-examining what I was doing on stage (the main pre-occupation of most comedians), I wondered what was going on in the audience when I performed. Not the laughter, so much as the interaction. This relationship became my main interest and, as I learned more about it, I decided to create television and film projects rather than becoming a comedian or actor.
Shortly after my change of plans, I attended An Evening with Jonathan Miller, a physician and cast member (along with Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, and Alan Bennett) of the sharply satirical British comedy, Beyond the Fringe. Miller mentioned his keen interest clinical psychology and interaction ritual as a basis for understanding and creating comedy. He referred to sociologist and ethnographer Erving Goffman’s studies of routine social interactions[1] and Elias Canetti’s Nobel Prize-winning Crowds and Power.[2]
Goffman, then president of the American Sociological Association, was best known for his analyses of human interaction and relied mainly on observation to explain our rituals and behaviors. As a comedian I read his books voraciously and was inspired by his application of “mordant irony to the pretensions and theatricality of everyday interaction"[3] and his examination of the "horror and anguish – as well as some of the absurd comedy – of everyday life.”[4]
Canetti defined a crowd as small groups of people (e.g. couples, friends, acquaintances) combined to form a larger group (e.g. a comedy club audience) that acts and reacts radically different than its original components.
Canetti’s viewpoint helped me understand the enormous power that was generated by crowds of people. This power could, in the case of a mob, destroy everything in its frenzied path, or, during a religious ritual, transport the participants to a compelling emotional unity. In either extreme, these people yielded their individuality to the crowd, exchanging their separateness for the power of many. The audiences I played to were crowds who had ritually agreed to listen to the show (audi – ence, literally: listeners) and not interrupt the comedian.
The proof of this is the audience’s reaction when someone in their midst heckles a comedian who is doing well on stage. At the first outburst, the audience usually reacts to the heckler with surprise and looks to the comedian to see how he or she will handle the interruption. If the comedian ignores the heckler, the show resumes with little or no interruption. If the heckler persists with no response from the comedian, the audience takes it upon themselves to shout the offender down, often with more vehemence than the comedian would have used.
On the other hand, if the comedian verbally whips the heckler at the outset, the audience reacts with satisfaction and righteousness that the outsider has been punished. Obviously there is something very special about a group of strangers who sit in a dimly lit comedy club, in front of a person on a stage with a microphone and are thirsty for the blood of a heckler or comedian.
Luckily, I didn’t usually “die” onstage. I usually “killed.”
He who is obsessed by death is made guilty by it. - Elias Canetti
It was here I found the first clues of how laughter – especially when shared with others – could affect change. I had often heard that “laughter is the best medicine,” but it seemed that laughter was less like a medicine and more like oxygen. My best advice to an inexperienced comedian preparing to go onstage had always been “remember to breathe,” so perhaps there was a connection between ritual, community, and aerobic laughter.
As a brilliant friend used to quip, “Breathe in tension – blow out relaxation.”
Laughter lowers blood pressure, reduces stress, increases oxygen intake and stimulates the body’s production of endorphins - a natural pain reliever that makes us feel good) in amounts comparable to vigorous physical exercise.
On the purely emotional side, laughter helps us keep a positive point of view and eases social interaction when “it feels like the time is right” to move on from pain and loss.
- end –
copyright © 2010
Martin Higgins
All rights reserved
[1] Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior, Doubleday, 1967. ISBN: 0394706315
[2] Crowds and Power, Noonday Press; 1981, ISBN: 0374518203
[3] Forms of Talk, Erving Goffman, (University of Pennsylvania Press, l98l) The New York Times Book Review, May 10, 1981, Geoffrey Nunberg, p.11
[4] Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order, Erving Goffman (Basic Books, l97l) The New York Times Book Review, February 27, l972, Marshall Berman, Section 7, ps. l, 2, l0, l2, l4, l6 and l8
I spent hundreds of thousands with my wife and daughters, tens of thousands re-writing my film project, practicing guitar, reading, and singing the Blues: Chicago, Delta, and 9/11. Month by month, I felt America’s collective sense of grief and innocence lost lift slowly, until the anniversary of the massacre arrived with a weary thud. We were ready move on. Heart-heavy, but attentive to our responsibilities, America returned to the distractions and reactions that hold our interest.
But I didn’t. I lingered in that grief, refreshing the fading memories of loss, pain, and death with similar events from my life. The result was powerful and pervasive: fewer invites to social gatherings, fewer check-in phone calls from distant friends, better renditions of Blues songs.
The friends who decided to “ride out the storm” with me fell into two categories, those who saw it as an inspirational trough in my roiling sea of genius, and those viewed it a pissing away a load of time. It was this latter group that recommended help – not sit and talk, take a walk, share our thoughts help. They gave me books.
I read books on grief, depression, spirituality, poetry, investment advice, window-box gardening, Pilates, kayaking, Mensa, the evolution of consciousness and inducing creativity. But mainly I got a lot of books about dealing with grief.
To me, reading a book to lessen grief is like reading a book to lose weight. Nothing happens until you set the book aside and apply its ideas to your life.
It’s easy to see that overwhelming grief is an imbalance, when someone else is feeling the grief. Catastrophic loss overshadows life and, for a while, we observe rather than participate, but are immobilized by our observations.
In the short term, it was not surprising I focused on staving off my re-adjustment until I had fully immersed myself in loss. I wanted a healing, a transformation that offset my impaired emotional range and expression. When mourning a family member, friend, love, job, home, pet, or status takes precedence in day-to-day living, I am inclined to deny myself the natural outlet for stress and exhaustion – laughter.
And I should know better.
Years ago, I performed stand-up comedy in San Francisco. Robin Williams and Steve Martin had revolutionized stand-up by adding their outlandish talents to traditional joke and routine comedy. America has always been deeply in love with its comedians.
At first, I was determined to make people laugh and build a career in television and movies like other comics had done. This was actually easier than it sounded because most competing comedians lost their way with alcohol or drugs or developed a noxious off-stage personality. So I worked my way up through the ranks quickly, mastering the craft and savoring my growing popularity.
One Sunday night, after a particularly good show at a Bay Area Comedy Club, a couple of women from the audience stopped by the adjoining restaurant Green Room to thank me. I made a loony excuse about not having enough time to seduce both of them and they laughed heartily. “You’ll have to draw straws to decide who’ll be the lucky one.” I said, “to leave alone.”
We joked a few more moments and one of the women said: “I haven’t laughed like this in months.” I asked, “Just get out of re-hab?” and she laughed again briefly, but her face settled into a grim smile as she shook her head. Her friend said, “She lost her husband and this is the first time she’s been out since he died.”
I was unable to respond – a frustrating situation for a guy who makes his money by being quick to answer. When I looked at them both, I saw their need to laugh. My mind raced though every possible joke, wisecrack, and gag I knew, but I was stumped. In desperation I said, “You want have the best Irish coffee in San Francisco?” They nodded happily and we walked up the street to the Buena Vista Bar where the drink was invented.
Drying a widow's tears is one of the most dangerous occupations known to man. - Dorothy Dix
Although it was nearly midnight, the place was packed. We took a table near the window so we could see the Bay and the lights of the Golden Gate Bridge. I ordered four Irish coffees. When they arrived I set three of them in front of us and held up the fourth.
“And who’s the fellow who will be joining us in spirit?”
I was gambling with a long-shot set up here, but I wanted them to know that I was not on the make and mindful that we were dealing with some pain. The friend said the husband’s name, I repeated it with an added greeting, and set the drink on the table in front an empty chair. I lifted my cup in a toast, “Here’s to laughter – and the morning after!”
We talked for an hour or so. I listened as they alternately laughed and cried while re-telling stories about the husband and his fatal accident. I tried at first to add a restrained comic twist here and there, but the women were far funnier and insightful than most comedians I knew, so I held back and paid attention. Besides, it was their performance, not mine, that mattered here.
They displayed the most amazingly contradictory emotions as they recounted the sadness, pain, and absurdity of the months following the accident: laughter at adversity, tears over happiness, strength over adversity, helplessness in the face of opportunity. And their responses shifted so rapidly that I was sure that something far more important than table talk was going on. They were moving through the memories so quickly that the emotional boundaries connected to each recollection were getting blurred.
Laughter, tears, surprise, pain, hope, love, hope, laughter, hope.
They seemed to be unconsciously processing their emotions in the safety of their deep friendship and I was honestly spellbound by the interaction. No one else in the bar paid any attention to them. They were in a safe place, a ritual space, where emotions and drinks and laughter and tears were the currency. And such transactions trade loneliness for acceptance, sadness for honesty, pain for peace.
Just before they left, I asked what prompted them to come to the comedy show. They looked at it other, smiled, and the widow said, “It felt like the time was right.”
I watched them leave, thinking about my place as a comedian in the grand scheme of things. But rather than re-examining what I was doing on stage (the main pre-occupation of most comedians), I wondered what was going on in the audience when I performed. Not the laughter, so much as the interaction. This relationship became my main interest and, as I learned more about it, I decided to create television and film projects rather than becoming a comedian or actor.
Shortly after my change of plans, I attended An Evening with Jonathan Miller, a physician and cast member (along with Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, and Alan Bennett) of the sharply satirical British comedy, Beyond the Fringe. Miller mentioned his keen interest clinical psychology and interaction ritual as a basis for understanding and creating comedy. He referred to sociologist and ethnographer Erving Goffman’s studies of routine social interactions[1] and Elias Canetti’s Nobel Prize-winning Crowds and Power.[2]
Goffman, then president of the American Sociological Association, was best known for his analyses of human interaction and relied mainly on observation to explain our rituals and behaviors. As a comedian I read his books voraciously and was inspired by his application of “mordant irony to the pretensions and theatricality of everyday interaction"[3] and his examination of the "horror and anguish – as well as some of the absurd comedy – of everyday life.”[4]
Canetti defined a crowd as small groups of people (e.g. couples, friends, acquaintances) combined to form a larger group (e.g. a comedy club audience) that acts and reacts radically different than its original components.
Canetti’s viewpoint helped me understand the enormous power that was generated by crowds of people. This power could, in the case of a mob, destroy everything in its frenzied path, or, during a religious ritual, transport the participants to a compelling emotional unity. In either extreme, these people yielded their individuality to the crowd, exchanging their separateness for the power of many. The audiences I played to were crowds who had ritually agreed to listen to the show (audi – ence, literally: listeners) and not interrupt the comedian.
The proof of this is the audience’s reaction when someone in their midst heckles a comedian who is doing well on stage. At the first outburst, the audience usually reacts to the heckler with surprise and looks to the comedian to see how he or she will handle the interruption. If the comedian ignores the heckler, the show resumes with little or no interruption. If the heckler persists with no response from the comedian, the audience takes it upon themselves to shout the offender down, often with more vehemence than the comedian would have used.
On the other hand, if the comedian verbally whips the heckler at the outset, the audience reacts with satisfaction and righteousness that the outsider has been punished. Obviously there is something very special about a group of strangers who sit in a dimly lit comedy club, in front of a person on a stage with a microphone and are thirsty for the blood of a heckler or comedian.
Luckily, I didn’t usually “die” onstage. I usually “killed.”
He who is obsessed by death is made guilty by it. - Elias Canetti
It was here I found the first clues of how laughter – especially when shared with others – could affect change. I had often heard that “laughter is the best medicine,” but it seemed that laughter was less like a medicine and more like oxygen. My best advice to an inexperienced comedian preparing to go onstage had always been “remember to breathe,” so perhaps there was a connection between ritual, community, and aerobic laughter.
As a brilliant friend used to quip, “Breathe in tension – blow out relaxation.”
Laughter lowers blood pressure, reduces stress, increases oxygen intake and stimulates the body’s production of endorphins - a natural pain reliever that makes us feel good) in amounts comparable to vigorous physical exercise.
On the purely emotional side, laughter helps us keep a positive point of view and eases social interaction when “it feels like the time is right” to move on from pain and loss.
- end –
copyright © 2010
Martin Higgins
All rights reserved
[1] Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior, Doubleday, 1967. ISBN: 0394706315
[2] Crowds and Power, Noonday Press; 1981, ISBN: 0374518203
[3] Forms of Talk, Erving Goffman, (University of Pennsylvania Press, l98l) The New York Times Book Review, May 10, 1981, Geoffrey Nunberg, p.11
[4] Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order, Erving Goffman (Basic Books, l97l) The New York Times Book Review, February 27, l972, Marshall Berman, Section 7, ps. l, 2, l0, l2, l4, l6 and l8