germ-phobic asshat

My life is a se­ries of awk­ward mo­ments. Where oth­ers, es­pe­cial­ly my younger coun­ter­parts, shy away from ten­sion and em­bar­rass­ment, I hang ten off waves of shame and po­ten­tial hu­mour. There is pow­er in this abil­i­ty. It’s some­what akin to liv­ing the­atri­cal­ly.

Dur­ing my time in com­mu­ni­ty the­ater I re­call that hu­mour was found in stretch­ing the scene. Does your char­ac­ter have a two minute mono­logue? Pre­tend you for­got your lines, stut­ter, bump into props (break them if you can) and watch the au­di­ence re­act. They will laugh every time.

Some­times your au­di­ence is your bet­ter. This is the time to dou­ble down. The fool is nev­er the boss. He may be a tramp, or a jan­i­tor, but he’s rarely in charge. Why? The fool re­flects the truth in all of us. None of us is tru­ly com­pe­tent. We’re all in­se­cure scaf­fold­ing up­held by our egos. The fool is all Id. It’s me as­pir­ing to know my­self.

So, I shout out wrong an­swers. I make es­o­teric ref­er­ences to forty year old Avant Garde cin­e­ma that I have to back­track and ex­plain to the less cul­tured. I or­der off menu. I nev­er sam­ple, dou­ble dip, or share from someone’s glass. Yes, there is hu­mour in be­ing an un­apolo­getic germ-pho­bic ass­hat.
 

The hu­mour in the fool is de­rived from his short-term un­pop­u­lar­i­ty. It’s only af­ter­wards upon the retelling of his awk­ward ad­ven­tures that we laugh. He is both wel­come and cel­e­brat­ed in the re­cess­es of our mem­o­ry be­cause he has of­fered us a glimpse of whim­sy. The fool isn’t a sin­gle per­son. He is mere­ly a role we all play at our most con­fused angst-ad­dled mo­ments.

But don’t wor­ry. That ring­ing in your ear at the cusp of an anx­i­ety at­tack is mere­ly laugh­ter ex­tend­ing from the ages. Re­mind­ing us that we all live in a se­ries of anec­dotes.
 
 

—louis her­nan­dez

Flom­mist Louis Her­dan­dez is ob­sessed with go­ing Bauhaus and be­com­ing The Ma­chine. Prefer­ably a drill press. Copy­right © 2016 Louis Her­nan­dez.

Poster and video from Chaplin’s Mod­ern Times (1936), still from City Lights (1931).

Louis will be part of KABARETT FLomm­stein, com­ing this fall … de­tails sooooon!

MOR D’ARTÍCULOS  MOR FLOMM !

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