A Stand-up Guy

This past week, I was watching Jon Stewart accepting his 2022 Mark Twain Prize. He was discussing how he got his start in comedy at the Comedy Cellar, and I couldn't help but compare the platform that comedy club provided and the platform (and opportunity) that the Internet provides:

I walked into a basement in Greenwich Village called the Comedy Cellar.

And when you're a comic, you look in a room, and 200 seats are facing one way.

And there's one stool, and it has a light shining on it.

And you walk into that room, and go, "That's gonna be my chair. I'm gonna sit in that one."

And you spend the rest of your career trying to earn that stool.

And some nights, man, you don't even belong in the club, you don't even belong on the street.

But you get back at it, because there isn't any fixed point in comedy where you make it or you don't make it.

It's the journey, with the greatest friends I could ever possibly have made.

In the realm of creative expression, there is no fixed point when you've "made it", you have to just keep at it.

It's about the journey, showing up, and the incredible friends you make along the way.

How "The Writing Studio" parallels the Comedy Cellar

This month I'm kicking off a series of 1:1 sessions with Michael Dean for a writing accelerator that Write of Passage is running called "The Writing Studio". We are (aptly) going to be refining my recent essay about finding friends and communities on the internet.

I believe they ultimately want to curate and promote the writing that comes out of this new initiative. Could The Writing Studio become a springboard like the Comedy Cellar that gives writers a platform and a way to share and practice their material? I sure hope so.