Let's End This

There is an area in Terry Pratchett's Ankh-Morpork called Cockbill Street. Its inhabitants are the kind of poor people who have Standards, the kind of people who would rather buy soap to scrub their dining tables spotless than buying food to put on it. Pratchett writes that they are "cursed with both poverty and pride".

I thought that line was phrased very nicely. It summed perfectly encapsulated the idea that you were stuck with certain value or world views that made it very difficult to exist in the world.

Fortunately, I am neither cursed with poverty nor pride. (Yet.) Nevertheless, someone picked a number of "Extra Challenge" options for me during character creation.

One of these, which I realized today, is that my world view is finely attuned to the conventional narrative structure. I see stories. I need to see stories. Where one thing leads to another with some kind of ulterior purpose. Cause and effect. Beginning and ending. Start to finish. Logic. Structure. Sense.

Meaning.

I am slowly becoming aware of how much I need my life and my experiences to fit a narrative. How my interactions with other people require a kind of causal logic. How I feel the urge to create memories around arbitrarily significant dates, instead of having the memories making that date significant.

I am squeezing my life into a narrative. Lying to myself to give my life meaning. Like that guy from Memento. Or as Terry Pratchett puts it in Hogfather:

“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.”

It's slightly unnerving, but as of now I don't know how, or if I even want to, rewrite my story.

Game Start,
The Edna Man

Cyclops

So I tried wearing my eyepatch today for the "wacky tacky" dress code event thing today. I am very surprised by the results.

After only one and a half hours of not using my left eye (which has historically been my better eye), I cannot see clearly with it,, even with my glasses. My right eye works fine. I think when I use both, my brain compensates with the view from my right eye to let me resolve words. With my left eye everything is a blur.

It's scary that it takes such little time for your brain to let go of something. I can't imagine what it would be like if I left the eye-patch on the whole day. Or if I blindfolded myself for a whole day. What would sight be like after I took off the blindfold,I wonder.

I am now going to take a short nap to see if that cures the problem. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. Let's see how it goes.

Can't tell if I'm winking or blinking,
The Edna Man

Welcome to our Show!

Reality is pretty awesome sometimes.

Earlier today, I was one of the MCs of a school talent showcase called Snapshots. Here I was, on stage in front of the whole school and their families, doing something so amazingly incredible, yet something I haven't done since I was twelve. Heck, I might have done it some time in secondary school, but I don't think I've ever had the liberty of coming up with my own script.

The best thing, the very best thing, was that I managed to do a big Opening Number, like Neil Patrick Harris does for the Tony Awards. I've always wanted to do that, even back in Yale for Shenanigans, but I was doing improv then, and with so much crazy stuff going on I didn't think I could do both. Well, this time I was going to DO IT: I took a whole day finding the right song, and another whole day to write in the words.

Everything was so totally worth it.

Volunteering for this was one of the best, most awesomest decisions I've ever made, I think. One thing though: it would have been great if I had had more time to prepare. Last minute work might be fine for assignments (here's looking at you, professors), but for a show like this, you want the time to do the absolute best that you can do. Never mind the rehearsals; just having more time to choose a song and write the lyrics would have been fine by me.

I had so much fun being MC. Michelle, my co-host, was great too; I'm just worried that she might not have had as many punchlines as I did. I think that's one of the reasons why I don't like writing MC scripts for a double-act: I believe you have to write your own jokes, jokes that you are comfortable with performing.

Knowing that you have the confidence to rip off that perfect one-liner is just the start, though. Nervousness was another crazy thing I had to deal with. I've always had pre-performance jitters before I do any show; I think it helps me focus and perform better (ironically). Hardly anything else matters - not the stage, not the audience, not the fear of failing - when you've got adrenaline pumping through your veins, fueling your comedy, pumping up your passion, telling you that the whole point is that they're SUPPOSED to be laughing at you!

Too bad it's over. I miss it already, but I really really hope there will be a next time.

Taking it from the top,
The Edna Man