You're Not Special (Neither Am I)
Originality is, for the most part, nonexistent. Maybe that's for the best?
When I was in college, I had a recurring fantasy that, whenever I drove the enormous Dodge Durango I'd inherited from my father, I was dragging dead bodies behind my car. Okay, so, fantasy is probably the wrong word for it. It wasn’t whimsical or dreamy. It was bleak. Mostly it was fucking weird. I had a lot of fears about driving, and these thoughts would race in my head whenever I grabbed hold of a steering wheel. If someone pulled up next to me and looked at me even a little funny, my immediate thought was, “There’s a bloody dead body being dragged behind me, isn’t there?”
Why was that the first thought that came before anything else? Not, “Maybe I have a flat tire?” or, “Maybe they just want to say hi?” Instantly, my mind raced to: “You ran someone over without realizing it and now you’re driving to class, pulling a corpse…” Oh, and no one is calling the cops about it, they’re just looking at me disapprovingly.
I wasn’t even a bad driver. I always followed the rules of the road (and still do). But yet, there were many nights when I'd make a U-turn down a desolate road and get out of the car to make sure there was no lifeless body in tow. Once, on a late-night taquito run, I convinced myself I’d run someone over in the 7-Eleven parking lot. The pervasive thoughts of this happening so consumed my mind the next morning that I had to call that 7-Eleven and cryptically ask them if anything “happened” that night? They said no, but I still wasn’t entirely convinced and spent the whole day half-afraid the cops would kick down my door.
I’m telling you about all this because, years later, I decided to finally google what the fuck all that was about. It didn’t register until my mid-20s that these were what’s officially categorized as “catastrophic thoughts” and that this might be linked to, say it with me, anxiety. Instead, I suffered silently, quietly thinking I was going crazy and that I could never discuss these thoughts with anyone because they were simply too weird for civil society and would get me tossed into an insane asylum.
Lo and behold, these kinds of thoughts are extremely common for those of us lucky enough to have this kind of generalized anxiety. I voraciously read what other people had posted about their driving fears. Some of them much more fucked up than mine (impressive), and a lot of them, nearly identical. They too would make u-turns on the road, double-checking for dead bodies. They too convinced themselves they’d run someone over despite having no circumstantial evidence to prove it. I was not alone. And honestly, at first, that kinda pissed me off.
My mental OCD (often referred to as Pure Obsessional OCD), was something I thought was unique to me. There are many more examples of mental OCD spirals I’ve had over the years, but to to save myself from some of that embarrassment, I’ll just name a few, like buying syphilis tests at 4 AM, and convincing myself men I’d slept with led double lives and lied to me about their true identities, are some fun little stand-outs! The good news is, for the most part, a lot of these thought patterns have lessened and many are now non-existent. Mind you, even at the time, they were fleeting. They entered the mind in short bursts. When they dissipated, I fully absorbed the highly ludicrous nature of the thoughts. In the moment though, they consumed my entire mind and body. Even if they only lasted for 15 minutes, they induced a type of panic that felt world-shattering. I have a much better handle on how they affect me now, thanks to therapy, but I think simply getting older helped a lot too.
Okay but why would learning that my anxiety disorder was somewhat common be such an enraging revelation? Because here was my next thought on the matter: Is there no such thing as individuality? Are we, as people, all so alike that even our darkest, weirdest, most mentally ill thoughts are ultimately just memes? Can anyone be wholly original? As fucked up as my anxiety was, I also thought it made me special.
Being special – that’s seen as an important part of being an Artist, is it not? As an Artist, you want to believe you’re different. You want to think that your voice is going to rise above the rest and prove something that others can’t. You want to think that you’re doing something unprecedented. The last thing you want to hear as an Artist is that you're actually quite normal. Average. Just like the others. As an Artist, you can be a bit self-obsessed and inflate your importance. That’s not entirely your fault, though. You’re encouraged to be this way. The people who want to profit off of your creativity need to market you that way. Pursuing art as a career creates the kind of competition that fosters this ideology. You must have an idea that’s unique enough to garner attention.
In Los Angeles, we have “clowns” invading the alternative comedy community. Clowning is treated like high art, a “new” approach to comedy (that is hundreds of years old) but when you go to a clown show it usually just ends up being the same fart and sex jokes you see at any other comedy show. Maybe there is a bigger attempt at shock value where someone will whip their tit out or whatever, but at its core, the humor is essentially what you’ll see at any improv show. That doesn’t mean it’s bad. I laugh almost every time. However, it’s not really that different. Almost all comedy can be boiled down to the same five or six jokes. The job of a good comedian is to convince you that you’re not hearing the same joke you’ve already heard. So, I’ll give it to the clowns, they are doing just that.
Smoke and mirrors. That’s what it takes to be “original”.
None of this is to say that all creatives are equally as talented or untalented. There are very clearly some who are better than others. Go to one open mic and you can see that very plainly. Of course, some artists are life-changing and revolutionary. However, at the same time, I know now that even the artists I idolized growing up must have had their equals who I just don’t know about. The more time I devote myself to being an Artist, the more I learn the reality of how a lot of so-called icons become icons. Something about them stood out, sure, but they were never leading the path of change on their own. Changes in attitudes, new styles of thinking and performing -- they happen in groups and in communities. I might have thought to myself that there was only one John Waters in the mid-‘60s making filthy, transgressive low-budget movies in his backyard, but now I know that’s not true. For whatever reason, he prevailed in ways others didn’t. Could that be purely because his talent surpasses the others? Maybe. Probably (for him in particular), but other factors could have come into place as well. That’s something you learn the longer you’re in this world. The person cast on that TV show didn’t necessarily have the best audition.
Being unique was important to me in my twenties and I thought many of the things I was saying and creating were unlike anything done before. That’s a quintessential marker of youth, isn’t it? I used to think I was the first to create public discourse around men not eating pussy, with an article I published in Vice. Granted, at that time, it was the most popular article they had ever published, so I did something that stuck out. I may have even brought the issue into the limelight at a time when it wasn’t being discussed in the mainstream, but definitely not for the first time. My approach to talking about it, by denouncing blowjobs in protest, may have been unusual but again, there is no way I was the first.
What I know now is, I will never be the first at anything, and neither will you. In your twenties, you think you’re exceptional. In your thirties, you learn the truth.
Honestly, can we please stop being so fucking obsessed with youth? I know that’s a tall order, but what’s with all the pressure to be both young and prolific and brilliant? I honestly feel bad for anyone in their twenties feeling compelled to make it big before they hit their 30s or 40s. I know what it’s like. I was you. Now, truthfully, I am grateful that I’ve had more years to be under the radar. I feel my sensibilities and my comedy and my writing have grown to fit who I actually am. In my 30’s, I’ve been able to develop a stronger sense of myself and what I really want to say. There are many articles and stand-up bits I wish I could redo now with this deeper self-understanding and less pressure to do something “shocking” (for the wrong reasons). Perhaps I answered my question already. In your youth, you’re more impressionable. More controllable. More exploitable. It doesn’t really have as much to do with your “voice” (sowwy). Take my being paid $150 by a billion-dollar corporation (at the time) to write an article that brought me literal death threats…for example.
But yeah, societally, we need to chill the fuck out when it comes to pressuring young creatives to do something original. I say that knowing it won’t ever really happen. Of course, in a perfect world, we could do this easily. We could let people hone their craft for years without the pressure to monetize their art so quickly. If anything, the complete opposite is happening. There is a greater sense of urgency to creation. You have to post about it! POST, POST, POST! Why aren’t you posting? There is more direct competition and a pressing need to respond to anything and everything happening around you. I am not talking about this from a detached place of superiority, I too am part of the never-ending content machine. I post. You post. We all post. It’s how it has to be for most of us. Sitting with your thoughts is a privilege for those who can afford it.
Oddly, what I see a lot now is repetition. Social media has given us “templates” and “formats” to copy, redo with our take, and spit back out there until it is no longer trending (approx 72 hours). I feel conflicted about this because, on the one hand, it’s making clear exactly what I talked about earlier: no one is special. On the other hand, this cultural reproduction lays out plainly how lazy and tossed-off creativity can be in 2024. And again, I DO IT TOO, but admittedly, I do it fully aware I’m being lazy and trite. I let myself be lazy and trite, and that’s often because I feel a greater need to simply post something. Weirdly enough, I am often more rewarded by the algorithm Gods for such laziness. It’s fucked.
At least now I have an awareness of the punishing cycles inherent in the system we inhabit as Artists. Accordingly, I don’t feel so bad about my place in the system, and I no longer feel so special. Those words would enrage 25-year-old me. Now, however, it’s uplifting. I feel better knowing we are all more alike than I am different. None of us are a singular talent. The randomness of success within this mess is acknowledged and accepted. I used to think I was an originator of lots of things, and that my not being noticed for these feats is some great injustice. I know better now - the universe isn’t conspiring against me… even if my recent comedy special was criminally underseen (in my not-so-humble opinion). I just didn’t get lucky like some of my contemporaries did. I didn’t network as well as they did, or try to go viral enough, or get my pilot into the right hands, or whatever the fuck else might have happened for those who are now much higher cogs in the comedy capitalist machine than I am. For those of us who are pretty damn good at what we do, that’s something we have to accept. I know I’m just as talented as people more successful than me, if not moreso. I know talent is subjective, and maybe my perspective on my talent is biased… But, honestly, who fucking cares? Think you can do better? Go ahead and try. No, really. Why not? It’s never too late. The machine never sleeps. For better or worse.
Take comfort in being like other people. Embrace community and enjoy what you do for the sake of it. You don’t have to be different to be good. You just have to be good.
Great post. I totally relate to this journey.
I've come to find in my profound elderly wisdom as a 38 year-old that success has a lot more to do with drive and a willingness to fail than being a talented artist.
Unless you're rich or a nepo baby I guess.