The cliché of the depressed comedian — or is it? On being death positive

It’s a cliché, the depressed comedian. Isn’t it?

For four years now, I’ve been doing comedy, just whenever I can, on top of a career in anthropology and community service. But it’s become my one true love.

Partly because of it’s cathartic element: but that’s not the whole of it, far from it. I’m autistic and I manage a chronic auto-immune syndrome, a hypertensive disorder and legs full of metal from injuries which cause daily pain and probably an eating disorder…and then there are the mental health issues that accompany all of that cacophony.

I’m death positive. I’m determined that even if I drop dead after hitting publish on this story, some wild and funny stories will be my legacy, if nothing else.

Now, for the record, this is very different to wanting to die (and that’s definitely not it). It’s about being comfortable with the prospect of death, something that could come at any time (for all of us).

Many of these other conditions I experience as a disabled person — are what were once called “co-morbid” conditions. I’m glad that language expired (it’s called co-occurring now). Co-morbid sounds like a gang of diseases in a darkened room plotting your death. Co-occurring, sounds a little bit better, but they are still plotting, just while skipping hand in hand down the road, street lamps flicking disturbingly as they pass.

If I didn’t laugh at my situation I wouldn’t be here, I would have given into the regular dark ideation that swamps me late at night. The fact is, my dark and provocatively honest way at looking at the world made people laugh at work — in often very trying situations, so I just got up and put it on stage.

Throughout my nearly 50 years I have dodged an early death a few times (including in a hyperbaric chamber with decompression illness) and I’ve packed in as much life as possible.

My life is filled with adventures, from sacred sites protection in remote Australia to teaching English in China, to olive farms in Tunisia (and being in the middle of the second stage of the revolution), trekking the Himalayas, serving my country domestically as an avionics tech. Somewhere in there I finished a 90000 word historical fiction/thriller that won a publishing mentorship and toured a quirky Fringe comedy show about growing up autistic in the 1970’s, touring from Darwin to Sydney to Melbourne Fringe at the ripe old age of 48.

I’m soon to perform my first solo show at Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

All of my desire to keep on making unusual life choices and keep pushing my boundaries, is because my brain does both awful and fantastical things to me; like including being able to see sound (amongst other sensory experiences). Sounds cool and sometimes it is. Sometimes it is hell. I suppose I am always running from my own reality and I am okay with that.

The media seems swamped with “gold star humanity” stories, particularly when it comes to disability. It’s either inspiration porn, or inspirationally perfect bodies.

The human objects they describe are in perfect health or in perfect disrepair. The fact is, life is the one true binary (from birth to death), but also no experience along that binary is the same. It presents the ultimate contradiction.

Live a safe life and aspire to a perfect body or live a wild life and risk a broken one. The truth is we will all be broken in our lifetimes, it’s just a difference of degree not kind. I’ll take the wild route any day, although it tends to be not as physically wild anymore.

There is often no in between in these media stories of gold star humanity. So, I am happy to present the world with sometimes dark, provocative comedy work that is a true reflection of that in between. And interestingly, I know a lot of comedians who do the same, because let’s face it, our personal demons seem to be best exorcised with laughter.

But a bigger driving force other than catharsis is that I would rather control the narrative of my broken body and marginalised position through the medium of laughter. Coming out as gender queer just reinforced that desire. An even bigger driving force is to change the way the world sees our bodies and our brains through putting content to stage that is designed to make us laugh as well as think.

If you, as I have, have ever been given a life expectancy that you have exceeded…the following might resonate with you:

So many people seem so worried about dying they forget to live, but I don’t know if you’ve noticed this life thing — it tends to be fatal.

So, why not dispense with the gold star human expectations and go outside your comfort zone?

*note: I identify as autistic and disabled and that is entirely my right. Some people prefer person with autism and person with a disability. That’s fine too and entirely their right.