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retrauxpunk · 3 years

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let me start off by saying that i am an artist, which is a fact i must accept because the facts leave room for no other interpretation, i.e. if it were someone else doing what i do (draw/write/etc in their spare time, with a lot of passion/enthusiasm) then i would fucking call them an artist. and it would be in the minority of times when i’d bother to specify amateur. because i don’t really care when it comes to deciding on this descripter ... except in the case of myself! hurrah impostor syndrome. internalised gatekeeping? i don’t feel as though i have much impostor syndrome really, but this is definitely an exception to that.

anyway let me start off by saying that i am an artist.

and artists are fucking stupid. why do artists romanticise dysfunction? this is a patently bad idea ... except that it produces (can produce) such a good aesthetic when explored artistically. (you know it’s true!!) like what other field goes, ‘oh this thing is performing sub-par. this is not functioning properly. this is broken. oh i know, look, isn’t it sexy??’

anyway this is a train wreck of a post. at least in terms of pacing. i think that above paragraph could be a stand-up bit. god remember when i did stand-up? hey, new followers, or -- wait did i even mention this? (wow i sound self-absorbed) in february 2020 i finished a six-week beginners’ stand-up comedy course which culminated in a showcase at angel comedy club where i did a three-minute set and at least ONE (1) PERSON in the audience came up to tell me they really liked my stuff! i say one person in capitals not because i’m offended, but because i am thrilled.

anyway we wrapped up that stand-up course with a great show and literally weeks later the pandemic hit and all public gatherings were shut down. i do really appreciate the irony.

(see? this is an accidentally-great example of what i was saying earlier, romanticising dysfunction!)

(this isn’t a callout btw this is a joke)

(an accurate-ish joke)

hey you know what guys? (i use guys as a gender neutral term ftr and i am averse to changing it because the way it entered my vocabulary was throuh my education at an all girls, extremely feminist (there’s literally a feminist liberation verse in our school song) high school. because any student doing a bit in the morning announcements would start with ‘hey guys’ to the point when it became a meme. so. i don’t consider guys to be exclusively masculine fuck that noise

(????)

hey you know what, comrades? my opening line was ‘hi, my name is sunny. i know what you’re thinking -- i look like the coronavirus fucked shoreditch.’

because the thing was Not Serious in most places in the world yet!! and so i referenced it with the blitheness of privilege (and the slight desperation of using anything to mine comedy becaues i was a goddamn novice) because what, what, is the point of belonging to a systemically disadvantaged demographic (in my case, my ethnicity), if i don’t use it to make the jokes that others can’t make because it’d sound too offensive coming from them?

so i came up with this line that referenced the fact that i’m a nauseatingly hipster-looking art fuck who is east asian. (don’t you love when jokes are explained to you?)

oh that was fun. i remember thinking of this and then posting a selfie on instagram asking ‘@ london peeps: do i look like a shoreditch person?’ to test whether my self-perception was aligned with that of the public, and i got a majority ‘yes’ vote (including from, bizarrely, one of my favourite comedians who followed me back and almost never interacts, which is -- i have to admit -- flattering; ugh) and then proceeded to pick out my hipsterest outfit. rolling up cardigan sleeves to show my most prominent tattoo (forearm; rabbit at a typewriter working on a novel). i remember walking up to the table at a pret where we were hanging out after our last pre-show rehearsal, seeing our teacher, and him glancing at my shoes (white doc marten boots with a big red heart on each toe) and just going, ‘cool. shoes.’ and it was the first time in a while that i’d gotten my shoes complimented (there was a dry spell of sorts, i suppose), and i was delighted. and also somewhat relieved/assuaged. (mollified? is that a word? ...mullify? ok i googled it. mollified.) because the thing is, i have not washed these bad boys in so fucking long they have become really beat-up. once fancy and delicate, now as if i wore them while riding through the countryside with my daredevil vampire biker girlfriend.

...i guess i could write that image into a story. that’d be fun. hey, did you know how fun it is to write fiction when you decide to be extremely self indulgent and make all your choices with ‘how much do i personally enjoy/like this thing’ as a top-level priority? it’s great fun.

okay man i’m getting tired of my own voice. goodnight. (it’s 11:45 gmt. ...are we gmt? i forget. anyway. 11:45 london time. whatever. ...yes i’m using 12 hour time. yes i decided to type this out to disambiguate that instead of simply the letters am.)

#lightning #precipitation #if you read all this #goddamn i respect the hell out of you

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