I\nenjoy the way in which Hannah Gatsby, the stand-up comedian from Australia subverts\ncomedy as a genre to create her own truth. She then moves away from silly\nvulgarity and cheap tricks, and makes herself completely vulnerable \u2013 and then in\nbetween she still makes people laugh. She was very close to her grandmother and\nrelates how \u201cGrandma always used to say, “Ah, well, it’s all part of the\nsoup. Too late to take the onions out now” when making mistakes. \u201cI had to\ndeal with too many onions as a kid, growing up gay in a state where\nhomosexuality was illegal. And with that thought, I could see how tightly\nwrapped in the tendrils of my own internalized shame I was. And with that, I\nthought about all my traumas: the violence, the abuse, my rape. And with all\nthat cluster of thinking, a thought, a question, kept popping into my mind to\nwhich I had no answer: What is the purpose of my human?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0I first took note of Hannah in her Netflix show, Nanette<\/em> (which made her so famous that she couldn\u2019t follow through on her plan to quit stand-up comedy). \u201cNow, many have argued that “Nanette” is not a comedy show. And while I can agree “Nanette” is definitely not a comedy show, those people are still wrong — because they have framed their argument as a way of saying I failed to do comedy. I did not fail to do comedy. I took everything I knew about comedy — all the tricks, the tools, the know-how — I took all that, and with it, I broke comedy. You cannot break comedy with comedy if you fail at comedy. Flaccid be thy hammer.\u201d That was not my point. The point was not simply to break comedy. The point was to break comedy so I could rebuild it and reshape it, reform it into something that could better hold everything I needed to share, and that is what I meant when I said I quit comedy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is how she subverted comedy. This is how we can break the dominant, disempowering narratives in our lives. As I watched her TED talk, I was astonished how much of what she said, echoed the dynamics of narrative therapy \u2013 and once again underlined the power of storytelling. Just listen to some snippets of her story and her struggle to find a way out of her trauma through a cohesive narrative and through comedy:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\nfirst tried my hand at stand-up comedy in my late 20s, and despite being a\npathologically shy virtual mute with low self-esteem who’d never held a\nmicrophone before, I knew as soon as I walked and stood in front of the\naudience, I knew, before I’d even landed my first joke, I knew that I really\nliked stand-up, and stand-up really liked me. But for the life of me, I\ncouldn’t work out why. Why is it I could be so good at doing something I was so\nbad at?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut\nyou need more than just jokes to be able to cut it as a professional comedian.\nYou need to be able to walk that fine line between being charming and\ndisarming. And I discovered the most effective way to generate the amount of\ncharm I needed to offset my disarming personality was through not jokes but\nstories. So my stand-up routines are filled with stories: stories about growing\nup, my coming out story, stories about the abuse I’ve copped for being not only\na woman but a big woman and a masculine-of-center woman. If you watch my work\nonline, check the comments out below for examples of abuse (Laughter).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNow,\nabout a year before Grandma died, I was formally diagnosed with autism. Now for\nme, that was mostly good news. I always thought that I couldn’t sort my life\nout like a normal person because I was depressed and anxious. But it turns out\nI was depressed and anxious because I couldn’t sort my life out like a normal\nperson, because I was not a normal person, and I didn’t know it. Now, this is\nnot to say I still don’t struggle. Every day is a bit of a struggle, to be\nhonest. But at least now I know what my struggle is, and getting to the\nstarting line of normal is not it. My struggle is not to escape the storm. My\nstruggle is to find the eye of the storm as best I can. \u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDiagnosis\ngave me a framework on which to hang bits of me I could never understand. My\nmisfit suddenly had a fit, and for a while, I got giddy with a newfound\nconfidence I had in my thinking. But after Grandma died, that confidence took a\ndive, because thinking is how I grieve. And in that grief of thought, I could\nsuddenly see with so much clarity just how profoundly isolated I was and always\nhad been. What was the purpose of my human?<\/p>\n\n\n\n This\nis such an awkward and at the same time such a brilliant question- what is the\npurpose of my human? No matter all the onions in our soup, we have to make\nmeaning of our lives \u2013 of our being here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\nbegan to think a lot about how autism and PTSD have so much in common. And I\nstarted to worry, because I had both. Could I ever untangle them? I’d always\nbeen told that the way out of trauma was through a cohesive narrative. I had a\ncohesive narrative, but I was still at the mercy of my traumas. They’re all\npart of my soup, but the onions still stung. And at that point, I realized that\nI’d been telling my stories for laughs. I’d been trimming away the darkness,\ncutting away the pain and holding on to my trauma for the comfort of my audience.\nI was connecting other people through laughs, yet I remained profoundly\ndisconnected. What was the purpose of my human? I did not have an answer, but I\nhad an idea. I had an idea to tell my truth, all of it, not to share laughs but\nto share the literal, visceral pain of my trauma. And I thought the best way to\ndo that would be through a comedy show.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n