My most persistent memory of stand - up is of my mouth being in the present and my mind being in the future: the mouth speaking the line, the body delivering the gesture, while the mind looks back, observing, analyzing, judging, worrying, and then deciding when and what to say next. Enjoyment while performing was rare - enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the struggle of a performer to stay present while juggling thoughts about the past and future during a performance.
In this quote, Steve Martin conveys the challenging experience of stand-up comedy, where a performer must deliver their lines and gestures while simultaneously grappling with a barrage of thoughts and anxieties about what has happened and what is to come. This mental juggling often impedes the ability to enjoy the moment of performing, as the focus required for comedy leaves little room for indulgence in pleasure or relaxation.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a workshop for aspiring comedians to highlight the mental challenges of performing.
When I first started doing my comedy act, I just desperately needed material. So I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little comedy routines. I always felt the audience sorta tolerated the serious musical parts while I was doing my comedy.
You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do.
I have heard it said that a complicated childhood can lead to a life in the arts. I tell you this story of my father and me to let you know I am qualified to be a comedian.
...it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.
Reviews for someone like me come in three packages. One is justifiable praise, the second is justifiable criticism, and the third is, "This is only published because he's a celebrity."
If he thinks he would harm Mirabelle, he would back away. But he does not yet understand when and how people are hurt. He doesn't understand the subtleties of slights and pains, that it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.
I spent a whole summer working on what proved to be 'A Game of Thrones'.
A good film demands its own score, and if you are a musician, your conscience will never allow you to do something mediocre for a good film.
Science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle.
The artist produces for the liberation of his soul.
If a given combination of trees, mountains, water, and houses, say a landscape, is beautiful, it is not so by itself, but because of me, of my favor, of the idea or feeling I attach to it.
I consider writing practice a true Zen practice because it all comes back at you. You can't fool anyone because it's on the page.
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