HeadSpill

Sometime last year I think I fell out of love with comedy. There were no signs, I didn’t see it coming. Everything in my personal life was great. better than great. Comedy was work, good work, but work all the same. I moved in with my girlfriend, and that was, and still is utterly splendid on many levels. In hindsight it’s a simple trap I suppose, sex vs the adrenaline rush of comedy. Why go to a gig for that fleeting but massive adulation of a job well done, or on occasion feint praise and a three hour drive, when there’s a steady flow of love at home, like having a lounge bar in the front room. I got sloppy, was making notes, but not really writing and over the relatively short space of 6 months my set became unpolished and flabby.

When I was single I was singularly motivated, I went to gigs and worked, and when I wasn’t gigging I went to gigs anyway as it was better than sitting at home.
Living with someone else changes that. It sounds obvious, but you don’t quite know how and what shape you’re life will take until you’re in that position yourself. You can’t just do stuff when you want like before, you just get in each others way, or don’t each other at all.

I read that back and it sound’s terrible, but it’s not. When you live with someone in ‘togetherness’ your stuff and her stuff start off sitting next to each other on bookcases, but eventually overlap, and when there’s no room left, you have to assert that that space on the shelf is for your Beat Takashi films, and not her Monkee’s DVD’s.

In the five months since moving in there’s a facet of me that wasn’t there before, well rounded isn’t the word, a difficult birth of compromise and assertion, tolerance and aggression.

There’s a difference between what you want and what you need.

When I was single I had a point to prove, a good point, but a point nontheless, comedy was my passion, and performing my outlet.

Finding your bestest partner, and someone who loves you regardless, I forgot the point I was trying to prove, and the dawning horror that I might not have actually had a point to prove at all, I just liked making the funny on stage.

I never planned to get hooked up and settled, it just kind of happened. I once said quite loftily ‘a successful relationship is by it’s nature compromise’ and still think that rings true. However a good relationship is also life experience and experience is good.

I’ve started writing loads again, I’ve started writing a about something very close to me, which might be quite painful in places, but it isn’t born out of proving a point, just wanting to live life better and more than I currently do. Not that anything was bad before, by my actions and experience I’m just a little more defined.

I’ve always wanted to go to Brighton, so it was a polite surprise when my highly organised and forward planning female partner informed me we were going there, in the car on the way to London mere hours beforehand.

Girls are great aren’t they? I have a tremendous affection for mine, however, as I’ve mentioned before, with my experience of ‘proper relationships’ only coming after the age of 30, my brain is full to bursting of habits, theories, cod philosophy and happy bobbins, that until now has remained far outside the direct burning gaze of female scrutiny. Under this new light of experience I have learned a lot of things quite quickly, like not to just say ‘yes’ if you haven’t fully heard the question asked.

I was expecting a foursome. As in my lass meets her mate, and I meet her bloke, they catch up and we find stuff in common to talk about, which would have been comparing the merits of Call of Cthulu and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons having found a large framed map of a fantasy kingdom in the lounge. Alas he wasn’t there, having devoted his whole weekend to said pastime (, and before condeming us both as geeks, you’ve got to respect a guy who’s negociated himself an entire weekend of pure escapism with his mates).

We also shot some footage of ‘Danny Pensive’ my character creaton/alter ego which Bron is working on. It’s one area of our relationship I can’t fault, she loves pointing cameras and recording everything the moves, and I’m an attention seeking egotist. It just works.

Brighton was in the middle of it’s Fringe festival, the venue where we saw two plays venue was a bit small, but the plays were good, Rachel (Bron’s mate we were visiting who wrote one of them) clearly has a good ear for dialogue, and giggles a lot.

Sunday consisted of wandering around London looking at landmarks and filming, then going to see the comedy store players. It’s the second time I’ve unintentionally seen Phil Jupitus, and despite not being a bad improviser he did suffer from some proper stagemongering, a trait which I myself suffer from.

K800, Aye.

I have a new phone. It’s terrible. I’ve only had my last one a year. Despite my loathing for disposable technology as fashion accessory, my last phone was a ‘motorola sliver’. To be honest I didn’t care what kind of phone I had, I just wanted one with a camera on it. And the camera on it was rubbish, My new phone is a sony ericcson with a proper 3mpx camera on it and loads of other gubbins that I’ll probably never use. The golf game is highly addictive though.

God I feel old, I can remember in my Student gaff at Uni having to go round the corner to the phone box in the rain with a stash of 20 pences to see who was doing what on friday night. We did have a land line, but between the four of us only two were paying for it, one was never there and the other guy whose name escapes me as he was such a recluse openly stated he didn’t like the idea of paying for anything he ‘couldn’t see’.

This led to a metaphysical discussion about how to quantify the electrical implulses that came down the phone line into the phone and I explained that yes, although the telephone handset itself was paid for, it was the conduit for the energy and was the nearest thing to a solid object there was. He tried it a couple of times, but it’s hard to justify phone use to a recluse with no friends.

Anyway it’s a nice phone, but I feel I’ve already damaged the enviroment beyond repair simply owning the thing. Still, if the radiation melts the ice caps tomorrow and we all drown, I’ll be able to compose some nice photographs of the world collapsing.

Danny Pensive visits Brighton