This started out as a piece doomed for intensity, something with depth: a collection of ideas on how we systematically—and against our best judgment—remain ourselves. But it was going nowhere except around itself. There’s something uniquely cruel about writing from reading, you’ll be halfway through a sentence and realize it’s not yours. So instead, and luckily, I remembered that someone asked me in all good faith if I’d like to join their show as a comedy writer.
A comedy writer. Bless him, it’s not his fault. It’s entirely mine for presenting as someone who wanted to (or even could) write comedy when, truthfully, what I should have said is I enjoy the jilt and shiver that comes with the subversion of expectation. Because really and honestly, what do I know about making people laugh? I know about loss, and how loss breaks down the body so all that’s left in the silence following is a crackling that mimics laughter but isn’t.
He’s very talented, my friend. Knows how to love things in a way that swallows them while keeping them whole. To love something so much that it bends to meet you, love that makes a mockery of resistance. I only say this so you can understand why I even half-considered saying yes. Yes, I will write comedy for you. Yes, I will fix the character’s broken teeth and make her smile.
I can’t write comedy, I can write tragedy and it’s easy to mistake the two. They end the same way: with laughter. I am a collector of tragedies: the seriousness of believing, the break with belief, the astonishment which follows that cracks open as laughter. If he had asked: do you want to write sadness? That would have been easier, no, not easier, would have been possible.
That’s the only comedy I can write in any case: one that concedes a loss never imagined. That is incredulous. That goes beyond emotion and falls apart.
But, like I said, it’s my fault. We met when I imagined I was writing comedy. When I said, explicitly, that what I was writing was comedy, my character a joke of their own creation. My fault, wrong packaging. What did I think; when you claim to write comedy people expect you to make it funny.
I should have said: I am writing about heartbreak. The kind that comes slowly and horrifically as you realize you will be the cause of your greatest disappointments. A heartbreak without reprieve, without escape. A self-caused break. I should have said I’m writing a very sad story where the character laughs. Then it would be clear that it was not comedy.
That I, after all, could never write comedy.
maktabani 