About Laughter...

I once looked to laughter to find my soul, but I found ridicule instead. I found people I did not know hating me for things I did not say, and people I did not know hating me for things I did not do, and angry college boys. How could I find that in something as warm and free and spirited as laughter, you ask? Well, try telling a joke that some of the prouder among us take personally. Now I'm afraid to tell a joke. I'm afraid of being called a liar because some guardian at the hypocritical gates of integrity can't tell the difference between a silly story designed to make another smile, and a bullshit story designed to make another look bad when they're not.

I never picked fights or made fun of anyone. But I made an ass of myself when I picked up for myself. I always tried to make people think, laugh, and smile. My sensitivity was always wound up, pissing people off for no reason instead. Having feelings pisses people off. I was always really hurt when I hurt others. I blamed myself by thinking I was terrible when my efforts to help others only hurt them, when my efforts to make others laugh only made them mad. They thought I was laughing at them. I was really sensitive to people's feelings. They weren't sensitive to mine and that's when and why I would lash out. I was sick of hiding how I truly felt, who I really was, to avoid offending people, to protect myself from ridicule. But I was always ridiculed regardless.

Sometimes people turned my efforts to make them smile and think into something malicious, as though my efforts to make them laugh was an effort to make others laugh at them. This was hardly the case. People who knew me could tell you I spent all of my time crying because I thought I hurt others instead of laughing because I made fun of others. There are much happier things to smile about: kittens in mittens, monkeys of India stealing booze as they ransack the bootlegger's cache, the snowed-in tractor as a play ground for golden-haired squirrels and red-tailed song birds.

The spirit of laughter, humility, love, self-exposure can take on the appearance of a person. The spirit of needing and wanting attention is sometimes a woman. She is a child. She feels shy. She feels alone. She needs to feel a part of something despite being a part of nothing. She wants to be loved and she's so ugly and stupid and uninteresting that the only way she could feel loved is to make others laugh, is to make others happy through their laughter, is to make others like her through the happiness she brings them. That's why she thought for hours about the shy innocence she could mask, the insecure humility she could blur, the farts she could philosophize and write silly stories about. And all so she could make others laugh. And they could love her and she could feel happy. I once heard it said that the desire to make others laugh is the desire to be loved. And I can't think of a truer truth.

Sadly, it often doesn't happen that way. For what is funny to one may not be funny to another. Things that make one person happy may make another sad or even pissed off. And she tested her new sense of humour on all of the wrong people: those with no sense of humour. Her new inexperienced desire to be loved and sense of nervous compulsion hurt this pride and that one even though she only wanted to make hearts smile. And though she never willingly ridiculed or told a joke intended to hurt another, she always did. Her sensitive joke made the sensitive laugh but offended the proud guy. Her bizarre joke made the bizarre laugh but weirded out the ordinary guy. Her childish joke made the child laugh but annoyed the impatient guy. The fat joke may seem funny to the skinny guy but not to the fat guy. Thankfully, she never ever told any fat jokes.

It's hard to know what to laugh at anymore. My shy college radio friend took a job chasing chickens on a chicken farm in Alberta. This made me laugh. The little pervert who lived next door to me as a kid stripped barbies naked so he could look at their boobs. What a weirdo! This made me laugh. My little brother lay on the floor and played his ass like a drum. This made me laugh. But I could hardly laugh at a pig hung by her hind legs with her throat slashed, or naked cowgirls printed on mud flaps. First cruelty to animals made me laugh, then it just disgusted me. I never saw the cruelty; I just saw the absurdity. Then the perverse objectification of women made me laugh but then it just … I don’t know, never made me laugh anymore. I never saw the inherently sexist spirit. But why should I? We were all just kids and Barbie was just a foolish toy. And when it comes to music, very little of it can even make me smile anymore. Similar scenarios put in gravely different contexts can leave people feeling starkly different emotions over very similar things.

Some stranger in Rabbittown calling a woman a butch because she has short hair - this doesn't make me laugh. Some straight guy calling another straight guy a queer because he has long hair - this doesn't make me laugh. Some straight guy calling a queer guy queer because he doesn't like him because he's queer - this doesn't make me laugh. Some crouching dragon fountain spitting at the stoutest garden gnome on the lawn because he's fat - this doesn't make me laugh. Those who see the worst in laughter feel making a thousand people laugh is not worth it if even to make one person cry. Those who see the best in laughter feel making a thousand people cry is worth it if even to make one person laugh. I can't really follow either. Laughter is a sensitive thing but tears are even more sensitive. And to laugh in the face of tears is to rid the world of true happiness. Such laughter is not even laughter because true laughter makes others happy not sad.

A joke: should I just sit and take it? Should I just sit and take ridicule? I take my desire to be laughed at, no matter how small; it is still bigger than my desire to laugh at others, which doesn't really exist. The three steps to finding true laughter: 1) Tell a joke. 2) Make sure it's not hurtful to another. 3) It must actually be funny.

I stopped trying to make people laugh and started writing poetry instead. Making people laugh seems to only make people mad, especially when you're a quiet kid who suddenly tells a joke and nobody gets it so everybody turns it inward. My feelings were my brothers, my sisters. My mind was my father; my soul, my mother. But after the death of music and laughter, I had no family.

If laughter was a music box then let orphan children wind it up. I'm laughter's psychological tragedy. Laughter has done more damage than religion and politics could ever do. Laughter is religion and politics.

But I must not let their religion and their politics destroy my love of music, my sense of humor, myself.

Elaine 06