The Art of Making a Career of "Unusual Strange Things"
Comedian Chris Duffy on noticing, practicing, persisting and showing up
“My whole career is, ‘That is weird. I will not forget that.’ ” —Chris Duffy, Comedian
Preview: Episode 76 with Chris Duffy
“The path to success is to not give up,” says this week’s guest Chris Duffy, a comedian, TV writer, and podcast host. In this episode of Emerging Form, we talk about Chris’s path into the world of comedy and what it’s taught him about how to find material (it’s around you everywhere, especially in urban areas), how to capture that material, how to learn from a joke that falls flat (“You’re not a real comedian if you don’t bomb all the time.”), how to structure a comedy set (very similar to how to structure a poetry reading!), and the importance of being vulnerable in your art.
Chris Duffy currently hosts TED’s hit podcast How to Be a Better Human. He has appeared on Good Morning America, ABC News, NPR, and National Geographic Explorer. Chris wrote for both seasons of Wyatt Cenac's Problem Areas on HBO, executive produced by John Oliver. He’s the creator/host of the streaming game show Wrong Answers Only, where three comedians try to guess what a leading scientist does all day, in partnership with LabX at the National Academy of Sciences. He has performed live in venues as big as a sold out Lincoln Center and as small as a walk-in closet (also sold out). Chris is both a former fifth grade teacher and a former fifth grade student.
What We’re Reading and Listening to:
Rosemerry:
Am I the last person to read The Song of Achilles? Oh, well, if you’re one of the two who hasn’t, let me recommend it for you. This familiar story is written in such a fresh way, the writing so compelling, and I just can’t believe it took me so long to read this novel by Madeline Miller. Love, destiny, war, fear, and heartbreak. Oh. My. Gosh.
Soooo … you may recall Aaron A. Abeyta from Episode 22—the man who is a poet, mayor, father, husband, founded a school, taught college, coached the football team … and that’s just the beginning. His new book is out this week, Ancestor of Fire, and it’s a triumph of poetry, of language, of love. It’s lush, beautiful, heart opening, heart breaking, heart opening again. It’s provocative, it’s tender, it’s some of the best poetry I’ve ever read.
I look forward to reading Debora Eden Tull’s newest book, Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown, after hearing her episode with Raghu Markus on his weekly podcast Mindrolling. They speak of the Western aversion to darkness and how the dark can be a teacher of receptivity and a deep source of restoration.
Christie:
I love this interview with Brian Eno, talking about his new album (among other things). He has this to say about uncertainty: “We don’t find uncertainty charismatic. Uncertainty doesn’t work for anybody very well, because in general the media don’t appreciate people like that. I would like to cultivate a charisma of uncertainty, a charisma of admitting that you’re making it up as you go along.”
The reasons I love Thanksgiving have nothing to do with its troubling colonial mythology and everything to do with the community and love my beloved friend Rhitu Chatterjee writes about at NPR. Also last week, some of us at Last Word On Nothing, shared reasons we’re grateful despite everything.
Veronique Greenwood just wrote a fascinating piece, “Life In a Blue Zone: Okinawa and the Wisdom of Community,” about what the long-lived people of Okinawa can teach us about how age, wisdom, and community are intertwined. Okinawans have a tradition of forming small groups, called “moai,” who meet regularly and offer support to one another. “As adults, they might meet weekly for drinks and a chat. If one member faces a disaster, financial, emotional, or otherwise, the others pitch in,” she writes. “The thought of a small group that holds us close and relies on us in turn has a warmth to it, a kind of strength to stand up to the shocks of the world.”
I cannot stop thinking about Clint Smith’s recent piece in The Atlantic about what the United States might learn from Germany about how to memorialize the sins of our history. Smith’s story is thought-provoking and haunting.
None of these projects, whether in the U.S. or Germany, can ever be commensurate with the history they are tasked with remembering. It is impossible for any memorial to slavery to capture its full horror, or for any memorial to the Holocaust to express the full humanity of the victims. No stone in the ground can make up for a life. No museum can bring back millions of people. It cannot be done, and yet we must try to honor those lives, and to account for this history, as best we can.
This Dance Never Fails
from the Bright Spots newsletter, by Chris Duffy
There is very little I fear more in the world than finding myself in the center of a dance circle at a wedding. Everyone staring at me and I’m in the middle somehow expected to not only dance… but dance well? I would rather be doused in gasoline and lit on fire.
But I try to not write things off without trying them, so in college I signed up for a dance class. It was a big class with a wide variety of skill levels. It was such a big class that no one was getting personal feedback from the teacher. That’s what I was counting on, at least. But midway through our first day, the professor called me over to talk to me one-on-one. She put her hand on my shoulder and said, “You have what I call the brain-foot problem. It’s where your brain and your feet are not connected.”
It was the dance equivalent of a doctor giving you a terminal diagnosis. “There’s nothing I can do for you, son. Enjoy whatever time you have left.”
So that’s where the bar is for my dance ability. PRETTY LOW!
And yet, I learned a fool-proof, never fails, system to successfully dance. It has worked for me for more than a decade at this point. And I’m going to teach it to you for free. I did NOT learn this from my dance professor. No, I was taught this method while studying abroad in Senegal in West Africa. I had gotten settled in with my home stay family and we’d eaten dinner together. After the meal, they turned on some mbalax music and all started to dance, everyone laughing and having a great time. “Get up! You need to dance too!” my homestay mom insisted.
“Oh no, I’m not really a dancer,” I tried to plead.
“You’re not our first homestay student. We have a trick that helps white boys to dance. Stand up. Now sign your name in cursive in the air with your butt.”
I wasn’t sure I had heard her correctly, so I asked her to repeat herself.
“Just sign your name in cursive in the air with your butt.”
I started to move my butt, skeptical but also curious. C-h-r-i (dot the i)-s D-u-f-f-y.
My imaginary butt sharpie autographed my name in smooth, sweeping motions through the air. And you know what? It was a beautiful dance. Memorable. Unique. Powerful. My homestay family clapped and cheered and my homestay mom nodded proudly.
To this day, that is my signature (and only) dance move. I’ve taught the trick to many others. I even instructed a full wedding reception in butt signatures at my friends Anna and Brian’s wedding. And now, I share the magic with you. Please stand up and try it now.
You’re welcome.
You, too, can subscribe to Chris Duffy’s funny, informative weekly newsletter, Bright Spots.
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This week, we converse with Chris Duffy about whether you can make comedy from a mushroom, when he knew he’d really made it as a comic, and why comedy is a group sport. If you are not yet a paid subscriber, you can go now to our website, EmergingForm.substack.com or by clicking the button below. Thank you!
Two Questions:
(share your answers with us here on Substack or in our FB group)
What’s a recent unusual strange thing you saw that made you think, Huh, that’s weird.
How is vulnerability important in your creative work?
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