The parts in italics represent me writing myself into a trap...I got lost. I became the joke.
Comedy walks in wearing a bright jacket
and everyone forgets to check its pockets.
A handkerchief.
A blade.
A map of exits.
A list of names you are not supposed to say out loud
unless you say them smiling.
It sells itself as mercy.
It says:
I will touch the bruise without making you flinch.
I will make the wound laugh at itself
until the wound forgets it was once a doorway
for harm to enter.
It says:
Look, the world is absurd,
and because it is absurd, it can be changed.
Because we can laugh at the machinery
we can loosen the bolts.
Because we can mock the throne
the throne can wobble.
And sometimes this is true.
A joke can be a small crowbar
slid into the seam of what is "normal."
A punchline can be a switchblade
opened inside a polite room
where nobody wants to admit they are afraid.
There have been nights where a comic stood on a stage
and smuggled a truth into the crowd
like bread hidden under a coat.
People went home fuller.
People went home braver.
People went home with a new question
buzzing like a lamp they could not turn off.
There is history in that.
There is safety in that.
There is a kind of freedom
that comes from naming the monster
without being punished for believing in monsters.
Comedy can be a double agent,
a traitor to the lie it must pretend to serve.
It can bow to the king
and still drag a pin across the crown.
It can throw its own body into the spotlight
so the audience watches the fall
and misses the theft of power happening
in the dark.
One must respect that craft.
One must respect that risk.
The comedian as pillar.
The comedian as ant
holding up mountains
while everyone else debates
whether the mountain is even real.
But an ant can also be trained.
An ant can be given sugar
in exchange for marching in circles.
Because comedy is not a saint.
It is a tool.
Tools do not choose what hands pick them up.
Tools can build.
Tools can bruise.
And laughter, too,
is not always liberation.
Sometimes laughter is a lock.
Sometimes laughter is the sound
of a room agreeing to stay asleep.
Sometimes laughter is a hand over the mouth
so the scream becomes a cute noise,
a cough,
a hiccup,
a "he is just joking."
Comedy loves to call itself progressive
because progress sounds like movement,
and movement sounds like life,
and life is easier to sell than guilt.
So comedy puts on the language of tomorrow
and walks it onto the stage like a pet.
Sit.
Stay.
Smile when you bite.
Now I must talk about what happens
when the one expected to be funny
is also expected to be careful.
There is a kind of consciousness
forced like a dress code.
You will know your angles.
You will know your tone.
You will know how the room reads you
before you open your mouth.
Because for some of us,
the joke is not simply a joke.
It is a test.
It is a trial.
It is a trap disguised as applause.
There is no such thing
as being disarmed
when the world refuses to put down its weapon.
There is no such thing
as an unguarded laugh
when your body has been cast
as comic relief
in somebody else's story.
They ask for your lightness
like it is a service.
They ask for your grin
like it is a receipt.
They ask you to turn your pain into a performance
and then call it healing
when it makes them feel clean.
