The aloneness of the stage makes groups irrelevant. Few things dramatize the face-off between loner and group more starkly than the artist before the audience. And there’s an irony here. If this loner can’t get the audience to act as a group—laugh together—he’s fucked.
When things go well onstage I don’t just think: “They like me. They accept me. They think I’m clever.” All those things happen, but I’m also looking inside to see what else is going on. And when I do, there is a sense in those moments, I am more than alone—I am the only thing in the universe. I am the only thing that’s happening in it. No way to escape the progression of moments as they come up onstage—the next line and the next line, the next laugh and the next laugh. Which include my hands and the tilt of my jaw, how wide I open my eyes, whether I put more energy into it or slow it a little with my voice. There is nothing happening in the universe outside of that reality and that experience. When besides that I’m being rewarded with all this approval, attention, approbation, for something that is solely mine and only I can do … There can’t be anything better than that. To be intensely alone, intensely myself, in control of everything, the center of a self-created universe.
The creation of material is the ultimate freedom because that’s creating the world I want. I’m saying to people: the world you imagine isn’t really true: THIS is what’s happening: “Booogadee! Booogadee! Booogadee!” Even if I’m just babbling I’m saying: THAT is what’s true. What is. Here and now. Whatever you think to be true, you with the suit and the hat, on the subway or the freeway, is bullshit. THIS is true: “Booogadee! Booogadee! Booogadee!” I am momentarily changing the world to THIS. I am reinventing the world because I can. So long as you’re down there and I’m up here, freedom is: WHAT I SAY GOES!
That’s the freedom I always have. I’m alone, nobody wrote it but me, there are no amplifiers, no counting off, no staying in the same key. There are words I have to know but I made them all up. My job is making up things that AREN’T and telling people that they ARE. That’s what I do. What greater freedom can there be? To say, “The world is upside down. It’s not what you think at all. It’s my world! I invented it! FUCK YOU!”
I loved it when I was a kid and other kids would say, “Georgie, you’re fucking crazy.” “You ever see Carlin? He’s fucking crazy!” I still love it. When people say, “You’re weird, you’ve got a strange mind,” it means way more to me than if they say, “You’re a very funny man.” Of course, when they say, “You’re a very funny man and you have a strange way of looking at things,” I swell up: it’s just the greatest thing I can hear.
So part of me wants to let them see my weird side. And part of me wants them to see the serious craft it takes to dig this stuff out and turn it into art. And there’s some need for me to connect with them. This whole thing is probably about connecting. Standing up in front of people is saying: “Hey, folks, look at me, ain’t I great? Please induct me into your imaginary club of people you like. I want to be in that.” And there’s the need to find things out about them. To make kinships: “I feel this way about abortion, Volvos and farts.” “Yeah! Me too!” “You too? OKAY!”
Is there any connection between gradually leaving drugs behind and gradually discovering this process, devouring it, living for it? I would absolutely give that credence. During my drug period, the only thing that was important was getting high—and fulfilling dates when I could. I don’t recall these feelings of pursuing and appreciating artistry, the increasing ability to create. I’m sure the drugs blocked that sort of thing out, if it was there at all.
At the risk of sounding psychobabbly, maybe it’s that once the drugs are gone as artificial stimulation, thrill, high and escape, the real stimulation, thrill, high and escape can make themselves known. Whether or not such things are needed in the first place drives the whole prohibition versus nonprohibition debate. But for me it could be that stimulation, thrill, high and escape are legitimate human needs and have now shown up in a more benign suit of clothes.
Whether performance is or isn’t addictive, it’s certainly habituating. (Even though a lot of the show doesn’t change from night to night. But then, nor did the drugs.) I’ll find myself in the middle of something I’ve done five hundred times and it’s intoxicating, totally consuming. There are nuances, little ways to play with each word in a sentence. And simultaneously I’m thinking: boy, wait until they hear “House of Blues” or “Guys Named Todd” or whatever it is, at the same time as I punch home the lines I’m doing.
Sometimes I’ll be in the midst of a list—I love to rattle off twelve things in a row—and I’ll be around the third or fourth and one part of me will say to me: “You don’t know what the last one is.” And I’ll reply, “I know, but we’ll know it when we get there. And we’re getting to Number Twelve and I say the word before it with no clue what comes next. I couldn’t consciously tell you the next word is “Wilhelmina” but boom! there’s “Wilhelmina” right on cue. There’s an electric, magical, mysterious thing about that. Nothing to do with the audience, it’s not about performing. It’s watching one corner of your mind work from another corner of your mind. That happens a lot to me. And—I vaguely recall—happened a lot on drugs too.
Outside of these internal divisions of attention is a paradox. The reality is that the only thing that is happening for the audience also is that same line, that Wilhelmina moment. When they laugh, we’re acting as one. In that moment, they’re part of me, another aspect of me.
An audience is the only group I can tolerate, because the audience wouldn’t be a group if it wasn’t for me. Which extends to every other audience that has ever liked me. More and more as I get older, when people come up to me in public places to tell me how much they enjoyed some piece at a concert or club as long as forty years ago, I mentally see an audience of millions stretching away into the darkness. Individuals who in a sense I’ve met and some spark has passed between us, actual humans in whose presence I’ve been and who’ve been in mine, 1,500, 2,000, 3,000 at a time, but also one-on-one. Whenever they laughed, in that moment I was speaking to them directly. Faces with favorites; I overhear them in the lobby sometimes: “Wait till you hear ‘There Is No God.’” Or someone who loved A1 Sleet when she was little. They’re part of the family. We’re kindred. Live performance does that for you as nothing else can. And I think very few other comics in my lifetime can say that.
Outside of my audience, groups repel me, because for the sake of group thought, they kill individuality, that wonderful human oneness. I’m wide open to individuals. Fine with individuals. Individuals are just great. Even the most evil man on earth, who’s just eaten a whole dog, I find fascinating and interesting. I’d love to spend a minute or two with him. Discuss the preparation. “You put a little salt on that? Used a little cream?” I’d look in his eyes and his eyes would be from someplace God knows where in the universe and yet for that reason fascinating.
Every individual set of eyes you look into gives you something, whether it’s a blank wall or an infinite regress of barbershop mirrors. Just as fascinating. There’s something in all individuals. I make room for them psychically—even though I might want to get away after a minute and a half. People are wonderful one at a time. Each of them has an entire hologram of the universe somewhere within them.
But as soon as individuals begin to clump, as soon as they begin to clot, they change. Sometimes you have a friend and you say, “Gee, Joe is a great guy. But when he’s with Phil he’s a real jack-off.” Or, “Now that he’s with Linda, the fucking guy is different. He’s changed, he’s not the same old Joe.”
Groups of three, five, ten, fifteen—suddenly we have special little hats, we have arm bands, we have a marching song, a secret handshake and a list of people we don’t agree with. Next we have target practice and plan the things we have to take care of Friday night.
One of my lists once was: “People I Can Do Without.” Near the top: “People who say, ‘Long live Such-and-su
ch!’ and then kill someone to accomplish it.”
The ideal grouping for human beings is one. With the occasional sexual visit to the lady in the next group. Temporary twosomes are fine. Once upon a time people might have been good up to ten or twelve, or one hundred or so, whatever the ideal tribal unit was. When everybody took care of everybody else’s children, there were no last names, no patriarchy, no patrimony, when property was unheard of. You might have personal stuff: this is my favorite rock, I got an ax I made. But no one owns the tent, everybody belongs in that tent as long as we have our fire. What buffalo there are belong to everybody if we can kill one. Something about that is awfully compelling. But we lost it long ago.
The larger the group, the more toxic, the more of your beauty as an individual you have to surrender for the sake of group thought. And when you suspend your individual beauty you also give up a lot of your humanity. You will do things in the name of a group that you would never do on your own. Injuring, hurting, killing, drinking are all part of it, because you’ve lost your identity, because you now owe your allegiance to this thing that’s bigger than you are and that controls you.
It happens in police culture. You get talking with individual cops and they’re the greatest fucking guys in the world. But you know that when they’re making a domestic disturbance call in the black section of town, they’re going to hit first and ask questions later. And if you happened to be there and called them on it, you’d be the enemy, right or wrong. That great fucking guy would be gone. It’s the same with military men, with corporate assholes, the same anywhere on earth. And by the way, America’s groups are no better than anyone else’s.
The worst thing about groups are their values. Traditional values, American values, family values, shared values, OUR values. Just code for white, middle-class prejudices and discrimination, justification for greed and hatred.
Do I value a flag? No, of course not. Do I value words on a piece of paper? Depends whose words they are. Do I believe in family values? Depends on whose family—most are pretty toxic and that plural already has me suspicious. So I have a few holdings concerning potential behavior that an outsider could define as values. It’s received beliefs, received wisdom, received values I have trouble with.
My affection for people as individuals and the fact that I identify with them doesn’t extend to the structures they’ve built, the terrible job they’ve done of organizing themselves, the fake values that supposedly hold society together. Bullshit is the glue of our society.
I love anarchy. Anarchy and comedy are a team. But along with anarchy’s hostility toward authority, I have a deep suspicion man is not on the right path. Man went wrong a long, long time ago. The private property thing—“This is mine! You don’t own that!” Religion backing up property, religion backing up the state: “We say this king will be fine.” The king saying: “I am the king and the moon is my uncle and he tells me when to plant the crop.” All this mass hypnosis. Which is certainly akin to the hypnosis caused by Mass.
I no longer identify with my species. I haven’t for a long time. I identify more with carbon atoms. I don’t feel comfortable or safe on this planet. From the standpoint of my work and peace of mind, the safest thing, the thing that gives me most comfort, is to identify with the atoms and the stars and simply contemplate the folly of my fellow species members. I can divorce myself from the pain of it all. Once, if I identified with individuals I felt pain; if I identified with groups I saw people who repelled me. So now I identify with no one. I have no passion anymore for any of them, victims or perpetrators, Right or Left, women or men. I’m still human. I haven’t abandoned my humanity, but I have put it in a place that allows my art to function free of entanglements.
My job is to watch the ludicrous dance down here for the humor and entertainment it provides and drop in every now and then to show my former species how fucked up they are.
Years ago I began to recede past Jupiter and its moons, out to the Oort cloud of trillions of comets, beyond the planet formerly known as Pluto, back home with my fellow atoms. All of which originally came from some star or other, and not necessarily the one we’re circling.
I believe I am bigger than the universe, smaller than the universe and equal to it. I’m bigger than the universe because I can picture it, define it in my mind and everything that’s in it and contain all that in my mind in a single thought. A thought that’s not even the only one in there: it’s right between “Shit, my ass itches!” and “Why don’t we fuck the waitress?”
That thought, with all the others, is inside the twenty-three-inch circumference of my cranium. So I’m bigger than the universe. I’m smaller than it because that’s obvious: I’m five foot nine and 150 pounds and the universe is somewhat taller and heavier. I’m equal to it because every atom in me is the same as every atom the universe is made of. I’m part of that protogalaxy five billion light years away and of that cigarette butt in Cleveland. There are no differences, we’re equal. Unlike our fake democracy, the democracy of atoms is real.
Depending on my given mood on a given day, I can reflect on one of these three relationships for a moment or two and find comfort in it. And know that I’m really at one with the universe and will return to it on a more fundamental level someday—my reunion with it—and all the rest is a journey, a game, a comedy, a parade …
After I die I’d love to be fired into space. That’s probably not practical given the crowded nature of the upper atmosphere. So one of the codicils of my will is: “I, George Carlin, being of sound mind, do not wish, upon my demise, to be buried or cremated. I wish to be BLOWN UP.”
I’m sure there are people who see these attitudes as a form of escapism. My response has always been: “I don’t care. Leave me alone. I’m not going to give you any threads to pick up here, folks. This is all temporal bullshit.” Of course, once you tell someone, “This is all temporal bullshit,” you’ve retreated to the realm of the angels. (I realize “temporal” and “angels” are Catholic terms, but as I’ve always said, I did use to be a Catholic. Until I reached the age of reason.)
Kelly has taken exception to some of them. She feels that if you don’t vote you shouldn’t have a say when it comes to complaining. Then there’s golf. Her husband is from a golf family—his dad managed country clubs—and she plays golf. Sometimes on public courses, so a whole different experience than the corporate one I attack. It uses up a lot of land, but there’s trees in the middle of the city and it’s a nice way to spend the afternoon. Does that make her a golf asshole? Of course not. On occasion she’s also questioned that I’m antiauthority and anarchist, with no belief in any system or political wing. That I often showed myself to be a very traditional—even conservative—father. Like when I took a baseball bat to her abusive boyfriend.
I don’t think the world is that neat; none of us is that neat; none of us falls into categories. There are differing aspects of ourselves, not all of which point in the same direction. I’m a collection of liberal, conservative and anarchist. Different parts of me emerge when I’m outside my common mode, permissive left-liberal. I guess menacing some punk with a baseball bat for messing with your daughter is what you’d call traditional conservative behavior. So fine, part of me is conservative.
I do hide stuff from myself. I deny a lot, in current terminology. If someone isn’t on fire, actually standing in front of me in flames, I’ll say, “Everything’s fine.” I don’t want to know stuff that isn’t real apparent, right out in the front parlor. Leave it alone unless it explodes. When it’s not exploding, it doesn’t attract my attention. I don’t take a few random clues and construct a complex problem out of them to obsess about.
I am very single-minded and preoccupied about my career, my art, my craft, my writing, my entertainment, whatever this package is. I’m accustomed to going out into the world and talking to thousands of people and being applauded for it, then coming home and debarking emotionally.
Doing that night after night
, for decade after decade, may have made those other personal connections unnecessary as psychic food. I get so much satisfaction out of my work, I pour so much of myself into it and get so much approval back, it’s a circular process that’s going on, a closed system; and maybe some percentage of the normal need to connect with people, even those I’m closest to, has always has been satisfied.
But boy, nature is exacting! It has a balance sheet that just won’t quit, and if someone leaves before the end of their balance sheet … it may never be balanced up. The longer time goes by, the closer to even numbers it’s going to come out in the end. And someone has to pay. There is no way that the stand I took long ago—I will exist alone and write my own things and steer my own ship and tell everybody what I think with just a microphone, no instruments, no band, no director, no writer, no producer, just me—isn’t singularly selfish.
No way that the other side of the ledger doesn’t fill up with all sorts of debits. I’ve never had to look at that. I’ve thought about it intellectually, but I’ve never really looked at it in human, emotional terms.
When Brenda was alive I used to have a fantasy of Ireland, the southeastern parts so that it would be a little warmer, and the two of us there, close enough to Dublin that you could go buy things you needed and not have to clean yourself with … wire or whatever—I don’t know much about the countryside, I guess I know they’re not poor—and just e-mail my shit to the publisher and go sit in the garden.
I often wonder if things had turned out differently whether I would have acted on that fantasy. I think I might. Give up performance. Make that sacrifice.
The most important lesson I’ve learned from nature, and I don’t necessarily apply it well, is balance. There’s a part of me that’s unfed and unnourished. It needs the light of day, it needs some encouragement. And that is, not doing what I do now. I’m not even going to call it by its name. The opposite of what I do now.
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