The Tide is High

I have just finished booking all my travel and accommodation through until the end of Edinburgh. I’ve also kicked in a bit of cash to support Laura Davis in filming her award winning show, ‘If This Is It” to a decent quality, because it’s a slog being an independent artist in Australia and the world deserves to see this bloody show.

Now I’m writing my show, which launches in Adelaide next week, and it feels almost impossible. I haven’t been gigging: apart from a one off chronos in Brisbane, the Just For Laughs opera house gig, and one nightmare lineup gig on Valentine’s Day, I haven’t been trying new material. So it feels like writing in a void - trusting my muscle memory of how comedy ought to feel to guide me through. Like walking through your house in pitch black. You’re pretty sure you’re not going to charge into a wall, but you’re probably going to clip your hip on a table or your shoulder on a doorframe.

It’s such an interesting business, the business of having a baby. I was saying on Instagram (trying to get back into doing some video content to remind people I exist before the festivals) that because a babysitter costs $30 an hour, and Laser doesn’t go to daycare, I have to justify any work I do as being ‘worth’ at least that much money. Which, given I’m not paid by the hour, is a really weird calculus.

Each hour of work I do on the show - promotion, jokes, staring into the middle distance trying to figure out what I think, all has to be worth more than $30, and that’s just to break even. To then be an actual job and not just a weird hobby, it has to be worth what?

How many ticket sales do I need to hit or project to justify each hour of work I do? Depends on the venue deal, and how much that particular festival costs in accommodation flights, rego and venue hire. How many new Patreon subscribers? Depends on what level they’re subscribing at, how long they stick around. How many lineup shows or corporate gigs will come from this work? Should I write the jokes to show I’m accessible and mainstream and can MC your awards night in a nice dress and heels and not embarrass your CEO? Or should I write the other jokes? Do I even have time to figure out which jokes I want to write or do I just have to work with what my brain deals off the top of the deck.

So much of this industry relies on people effectively not having family or responsibilities or having the resources to act like they don’t have family or responsibilities. I’m recalling a lot of the conversations I had with dads in edinburgh, whose children were of similar ages to mine (then, about 10 months old), whose babies and wives were “maybe coming up for a week” of the festival. Or with older babies, whose partners couldn’t come up with the children, because she had to work(!)

Like, the fact that I have a Patreon means I get to keep doing standup. I don’t want this to sound (or feel) like a whinge. It’s more a sort of frustrated bemusement, and an impulse to lay this all out on the table to see if it looks as deranged when it’s put in proportion with itself. But without the Patreon, the standup doesn’t do much more than pay for itself. Which means the standup “needs to lead” to something. Or maybe it can just be itself, but then I probably need another job.

Salon Details

Salon this week is as follows. I’ll send the link across tomorrow - joinable by all levels of subscriber. Writers meeting will be Sunday Sydney time 9am. Workshop at 10am Conversions and link to be sent through later this week.