Anger, comedy and cupcakes

…leaving when it doesn’t make sense anymore

The daily sorting like will be short today because I want to write on the prompt.

The prompt is after the 🎤🎤🎤 and the daily sorting is after the 💖💖💖

🎤🎤🎤

What is the coolest thing you’ve done because you were furious

In 2012 I moved to Seattle.

I had no idea that my life would change in such drastic ways.

(Disclaimer. This is a traumatic part of my history. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to make it funny…which is hilarious, because it part of my life was devoted to stand up comedy)

I started doing comedy in Seattle on September 29th, 2012 at a little room called PROK.

I know this because, surprise surprise, I wrote a blog about it. I called it zerotofunny.

My first set was not good. But. The producer of the show made it possible for me to get up, even though I lived in the suburbs the , had two children to get to sleep and then had to drive the 30 minutes, hopefully find parking and then go on stage.

The producer was so kind that he told me to let him know when I got there and he’d make sure I’d get up. He understood, somehow, the sacrifice I was making and the amount of planning I had to do just to get on stage for five minutes.

I wrote the shit out of that first set. I’d been doing performance poetry for years…and stand up…it couldn’t be that different right?

Ha

Ha

Ha

But I got on stage. Got a few laughs. Enough to excite me and get me to go home and wrote another set.

My second set I went back. Instead of writing a new set, I did a poem that used to make people laugh when I performed at slams.

I don’t often use the word cringe. But that night Hari Kondabalu got on stage after me and started his set with “There’s a fine line between poetry and comedy” and everyone laughed. It was a good line. And it was a genuine and thoughtful criticism of my set.

…and I burned the light. (That’s when you go over the time allotted and the producer is literally waving a light at you and your were supposed to already be off the stage)

It was a learning experience.

I wasn’t going to go back. I was so embarrassed.

Then my friend called me.

He’d been the one who told me about the open mic I’d gone to. He asked me if I knew the producer. I told him how kind and thoughtful and genuinely helpful he’d been helping me get on stage for the first time. How grateful I was. How I should go back and not give up.

“He’s dead.”

My friend had wanted to tell me himself. He didn’t want me to find out through the grapevine.

I had just started comedy and the one person who’d believed in me…was gone. I nearly quit. What kind of career kills people?

Comedy does.

When comedy is good…it’s very very good and when it is bad…it is the depths of hell.

I’m not sure, if knowing what I know now, in hindsight that I would have done what I did.

Comedy was part of ending my marriage.

It consumed me.

I didn’t quit. I had to find another open mic.

So I went to a comedy club. I don’t want to name names. I put my babies in bed. Drove all the way down. Stood in line. Signed up. I was one of two not-men there. I went with my new friends from PROK, three lovely guys who had also just started comedy. I was lucky to be there with them.

I watched man after man after man after man after man (36 in total) go up. Not one single not-man. I went into the bathroom and the lights were off in the women’s washroom.

I peed in the dark, and I was furious. I knew I’d put my name on the list.

But that is not how comedy works.

Not at the club.

You had to bring six friends to get on if you were knew.

I didn’t know that.

I looked in the mirror, barely able to see my own reflection and I said, “that’s it. I AM STARTING MY OWN FUCKING SHOW.”

…so much went into starting that show. Research. Meetings. Finding a venue. Choosing the perfect night. People thought I was out of mind.

And I was. With anger.

I wanted to see jokes by women, by people of colour, by disabled folks, queer folks, neurodivergent peoples.

So I started a show called the Comedy Womb.

It was the best and worst time of my life.

But it was pretty fucking cool.

Some of the folks who helped build that show are still some of my nearest and dearest friends. Others are absolutely not.

Doing that show nearly killed me. At one point a man brought cupcakes down to celebrate the show. I couldn’t eat them because I was afraid they might be poisoned.

I got out before it killed me. I handed it off to a group of phenomenal humans. They changed the name and continued to run it until this very year, when the venue was bought and all the shows that lived in it were shut down.

Anger still sometimes fuels what I do. But mostly now…I am energized by community, and have spent a lot of time working to set foundations for the kind of beautiful spaces I want to see in the world.

It feels weird to write about it, ten years post me leaving the show behind. I don’t think I regret it.

But I’m glad I made it out alive.

💖💖💖

Today at Curious & Kind the day was filled with gentle magic. Such gentle magic.

Heart,

Wake

Moments from today and yesterday

(My wondrous friend came to make art today and we accidentally wore matching colours and her presence at the space today made it extra sparkly. I’m so grateful I am where I am today.)