CosmiKnot

There used to be a running gag on tour with David Devant and his Spirit Wife. One of us would simply say the word “comedy” and it somehow summed up the bitter sweet struggle of being a member of our ensemble and yet at the same time somehow also said our pain is not so bad (this last part was probably implied mainly through the adoption of a W. C. Fields twang). I’ve just this moment started writing about comedy and the ring-fencing man in my head has just said you know very little about comedy you just turn up and do your big silly laugh you don’t even watch much comedy. Hold on I retort the whole TV schedule has become comedy. Comedy is the new rationalism. Comedians are the new Thomas Paine’s of this world very often pointing out our “idiosyncratic follies”. On the whole they are more Poussin than Fragonard (ask your granddad -he’s as likely to be as baffled as you by that comparison but ask him any way). Fragonnard was very much a product of the Fête Galante genre of painting...

In his Manual of the Warrior of Light Paolo Coelho sets down the teaching that a Warrior never backs out of something he has agreed to do. Otherwise he will spend his life making feeble more and more convoluted excuses. There is a very simple clear lesson here about learning to say no. I think as a middle aged man I   have learnt this but even so sometimes things all come together at the same time making me wish I had said no more often. This is by no means a slur on the activities I was involved in its just that I am a homebody who needs to get out more. In a week where I have to go out more than once I get nervous. So I get nervous quite a lot. I realise that fear is not conducive to a happy or fulfilling life so I try not to be nervous. It’s just that my head is happier floating up in the clouds and going out means connecting with other people. It’s a bit like taking the boys to the park – they always enjoy it when we get there. I really do enjoy conversation. No no really...

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