I'm tired. I always tired. It's my default state. But, now, I'm more tired. Tired plus. Now with 10% extra tired.I've been working hard on this project, fighting mismanagement more than anything else. And I'm left wondering - why? Why am I doing it? It's not something I love. It's not something important to me. It's not even something that's going to lead to something I love or something important. So why am I doing it? To pay the bills? I don't know.
Maybe I'm afraid to do anything else.
I'm tortured by my own conflict - I have to achieve or I feel worthless, yet I need a simple, easy life. Those needs are mutually exclusive. There will always be something missing, something I don't have. And I've lived with that conflict my whole life.
You know what's worse? Me moaning about it. Oh, and a laptop that moves the cursor into the middle of a sentence as I type making it much harder than it has to be to type this. Oh, but none of that is what I meant. What's worse is that when I see someone around me doing well, I don't feel proud of them or happy for them - I feel jealous and disappointed in myself. Man, that's petty. Anyway, it's just one of those evenings. Enough of that.
Something big happened yesterday. Big for me. See, if I was ever going to buy into a church, it would be the Church of Bill Hicks. I don't know if there is one but, if there isn't, there should be. Bill Hicks' last performance on Letterman was never aired. Letterman pulled it. And it was very clear from Hicks' reaction afterwards that he was pissed off, and quite hurt by the experience. Bill Hicks tried to get the footage so at least he could show his parents. CBS never delivered. At one point I'm pretty sure they said it no longer existed.
And then he died.
Well, fourteen years later, last night, Letterman aired the footage. More than that, he brought on Bill Hicks' mother and apologised. Now I think she really should have stuck it to him but it's clear from this Letterman segment that they had given her the footage some time ago and the air was probably cleared at that point.
I knew what was in the footage, as Bill Hicks did the set on another performance after to show that there was no reason not to air the footage. And I've seen Letterman apologise about the whole thing in interviews before. So there were no surprises here. And, yet... something about it really moved me when I watched it. Like, I just had something in my eye - I was still all manly, like. There is something just terribly sad about his short life and a performance that seemed to mean a lot to him that he never saw, and the respect he lost for David Letterman. And now finally seeing it after all these years.
It meant a lot to me. I'm not even really sure why. I don't normally like cluttering up my blog with YouTube videos but, for this, I'll make an exception. In three parts, here's the segment -
Part 1:
Part2:
Part 3:
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5 comments:
You know what? That's the first clip of Bill Hicks I have ever seen. I have heard people talk about him for years, but have just never got round to looking at some of his work. It's quite fascinating to watch actually because I can see how he's influenced a lot of current comedians.
Thanks for sharing this :)
Dear Mr.Animator,
I understand the feelings of being so tired it goes into your soul and viscera.
I understand the tortured conflict as well also. I wish neither of us did
For what it is worth, I read a over 100 blogs a day for my research in my writing. yours is one of my favorites, I smile from ear to ear when you show up in Safari's RSS feed. Your blog matters to me. I know in the scheme of things that hardly matters. But it does matter to me. please take care .
That actually does mean a lot to me, Susan. Thanks a lot.
Andy, you should check out more Hicks! This clip doesn't scratch the surface as he was holding back to avoid exactly what happened.
"What's worse is that when I see someone around me doing well, I don't feel proud of them or happy for them - I feel jealous and disappointed in myself. Man, that's petty. Anyway, it's just one of those evenings. Enough of that."
I feel kinda good that I'm not the only one thinking like that... but now I feel even worse that I comfort myself on shared pettyness :-(
I had never seen Hicks before either, and I'm definitely going to look for clips of him Youtube.
I suppose I understand why you were so moved by this particular event. Somehow Letterman tried to correct this mistake he made as a mean to attain closure. Sure, it was not a perfect correction, since the apology wasn't received by Bill himself; but then again, this is not a perfect life either, is it?
How many times have we wished there was a way to turn back time and correct the mistakes that haunt our minds?
Thanks for posting this; and I don' know why but I had one of my recurrent deja-vu moments when I saw Hick's mom talk. What a sweet old lady; and funny too! You can see where Hick got his talent from :-)
Your post on the David Letterman show airing of the Bill Hicks clip has been mentioned in the UK Mental Health Network Synopsis Post #-1. Keep up the good work.
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