‘Lo friends!
Apologies that it’s been so long since we last yeeted a fresh pile of email at you through the ethersphere. Time has once again catfished us pretty cruelly and I am behind on everything. April was hollowed out like a coconut and July has crept up on us from behind, wearing it like a mask. I don’t know about you, but at the moment, I constantly feel like weeks are being pulled out from underneath my feet. My diary is a rushing velvet tablecloth being whipped off a restaurant table heaving with glistening silverware, but the magician is inept and all the crockery is bunted to a shattering death by linoleum. Imagine that Jamiroquai music video where he stylishly navigates a moving conveyor belt floor. Now imagine I am Jamiroquai, pole-axed with motion sickness, tumbling about in my hat, daring only to get to my knees to belt out his heinously funky 2000s lyrics without gagging. C’est moi!
Anyway, enjoy these verbal fireworks!
It’s social time again! Time to be social, lads! We’ve been very unsocial this whole year, now it’s time to unleash the old socialising! Crack out the ol’ craic! Release the chat!
I have absolutely no idea what to talk about with the people I know and love. What do you say? How do you do a conversation again? What’s it made of? Are words even meant to be volleyed back and forth, out in the sunshine, out in public, getting dirty, being borrowed and misused and mispronounced and having their meanings repointed by strangers? Excessive solitude followed by excessive socialising has rendered my brain a sac of pork-pie jelly that only occasionally glows in tune with the English language. I work in a bookshop at the moment, and the other day after a successful transaction a customer said ‘Thank you’ and I replied ‘Hahaha! No choice!’ What does that even mean? I’m serving up slices of the dictionary willy-nilly with the accuracy of a leafblower. My conversational tennis is wholly subpar. ‘Hello!’ people say. ‘Exactly!’ I reply.
Even with people who I know better than anything, conversation can be like climbing an invisible clifface, trying to get purchase on a moment of time, playing pingpong in the street, during a storm. Sometimes, half way through a lovely and totally up-until-that-moment enjoyable hang with a friend, I will remember that we have essentially just met up to try and get friction on the wind. We’ve turned up at the same place at the same time to throw ourselves at a moment. Let’s meet at 4pm to see if we can, without plan or supervision, make 4pm a good hour. Let’s MacGyver a feeling out of thin air, using just ourselves. Suddenly you realise that relationships and fun are green energy, harnessing the power of our internal weather to turn on a light bulb. You’re both pedaling along on an unseen tandem, knowing if one of you gives up, the whole thing could stop. Hoping desperately that someone will invent the perpetual motion relationship.
Sometimes even the words themselves start to implode under the pressure of being spoken. You know when you use a word too many times and it suddenly loses all meaning? Comfortable. Comfortable? Com-fort-able. Comfort. Able. Comfortable is not a word. Say it with me. Comfortable. Speak it out of meaning. Say it again and its scaffolding completely collapses. Scaffolding is another one. Scaf-fol-ding.
This is where my brain is at with conversation now. Hello, people say. Hello! Hello means nothing. He-llo! These are just noises! You might as well just quack like a duck, or scream like a chicken. Bing bong! He-llo! And where do you go from ‘hello!’? Bonjour? That feels like a lateral move. But, to be fair to the French, at least ‘bonjour’ means something. Good day, they say, lying. How are you? How am I? How do I be? How is life? Life is literally everything! Could you narrow it down a bit? Maybe compliment my shoes and we can go from there. As an opening salvo, ‘How are you?’ is a Tolstoy novel. Two seconds ago you were honking like a duck - ‘how are you?’ feels like a jump.
And on it goes, like this, ad infinitum, until they put us inside again and I can just pay attention to the voices coming out of the television. And relax.
Wanna see more of Will’s cartoons?
Look yonder at Will’s website here!
Wanna peruse more of Jack’s work?
Behold thither at Jack’s website here!
Wanna tolerate more of Ben’s nonsense?
Weep copiously at Ben’s website here!
Ben’s Gigs
Ben is back on the road (train-track) doing standup! Here are his dates for the coming month:
9th July - Gaghouse Comedy, Walton-on-Thames
14th July - Smoke & Mirrors, Bristol (WIP w/Helen Bauer)
15th July - Knock2Bag, Moth Club Hackney
19th July - Monday Club, Museum of Comedy
21st July - Star of Kings, Kings X (WIP w/Ken Cheng)
22nd July - Striplight Comedy, Camden Head
29th July - Fresh Chestnuts, Betsey Trotwood pub, Farringdon
Feeling generous?
If you’ve got spare honk, why not consider giving to one of these amazing charities?
Centrepoint - these guys are fab! They work to get young homeless people off the streets permanently by providing them with accommodation, health checkups, educational services, fitness and sports programs and employment help. They also campaign to make changes at a governmental, legal level. You can sponsor a room with them for £12 which is peanuts. I’m doing it! You should too!
Parkinson’s UK - Parkies provides care and support across the UK for people with Parkinson’s, and fund research into a cure. They do incredible work! People with Parkinson’s tend to be 50+ and depend on regular contact with others, so have been hit really hard this year. Please consider donating!
If you have a charity close to your heart, however big or small, and want to include it here {or you wanna get in touch for whatever reason!} - just send us an email benpope86@gmail.com or Tweet at us @LoAnEmail