jennings rampage

This is the April Fool’s entry.

The stretch of US 58 between South Hill and Emporia in Virginia is very conducive to introspective analysis. The speed limit is 55 mph, like every other highway in the state, but the terrain is a bit on the rolling and twisting side, which requires sharp reflexes to navigate at 80 mph in the dark. (But always slow down before you hit Emporia, that city exists only subsidize the Virginia Highway Patrol.)

I do my best thinking under pressure—it’s the only time I truly have clarity and focus. It was after midnight by the time I hit Virginia early Monday morning, I was completely alone on the road, and I was heading home from a very good weekend of longform improvisation in central North Carolina. The show on Friday was very good and very well-received, and the rehearsal I led on Sunday left the team physically exhausted, mentally tapped, and far more unified as a team than they were three hours before. It felt fantastic. Being away from my art, from the thing that brought me so much satisfaction and so much contentment, wasn’t much fun. I’ve been far happier since I’ve been doing some sleeping on Ross White’s fold-out sofa.

It’s amazing how fleeting that feeling is. One moment you’re up, the next you’re back down, looking for any way you can to get back up. Like smoking crack on a rollercoaster, or some other horrible mixed metaphor. Just when I had managed to get it completely out of my system, I took a trip to New York, and I was shooting up while bungeeing off a bridge. Enough metaphors. And now I’m driving seven hours, 450 miles, whenever I can, just for my fix. I play longform with a small group of people with whom I don’t get to rehearse in a shortform theater in a city I just don’t care about. I coach longform to a group of college kids and other people I don’t know. If they ever have a show, I probably won’t see it. I swoop in, I play, I coach, I hang out with Ross, I get on his girlfriend’s nerves, bless her soul for putting up with me, and then I swoop out. I’m putting far more miles on my dear brother’s car than he would ever consent to, and it’s only a matter of time before I break down somewhere outside of Franklin with no cell phone and no money.

I asked myself why I was doing this, and I came up empty. It doesn’t fit in with a plan, it’s not helping me achieve my goals. I have high expectations for myself. I have all the tools necessary to be extremely successful at whatever I decide to put my mind to— it’s just a matter of putting my mind to something.

The kind of focus and clarity I was feeling doesn’t happen very often, so I decided to take full advantage of it. First, I needed to define what constitutes success. I want a family, I want a home, and I want to provide for them both. I want to be well-known in my field, I want respect, I want to be sought out for my opinion. I want to live my life in peace. I want stability.

Spending a week learning all about tax-qualified defined benefit retirement plans makes it hard not to think about your own retirement. I think I’m an early retirement kind of guy, early 50s, really get a chance to enjoy it. My mom was miserable in her retirement – she was disabled suddenly and hadn’t planned ahead, and was left with nothing but Social Security to get her by. She and I are both simple people with simple needs, so I know I’m not talking about huge trips around the world, but I want my retirement to be a comfortable time where I finally get to enjoy all that results from a lifetime of hard work.

I‘m a very creative person in the literal sense: I need to create things. Part of my problem with improvisation is that it comes and goes, leaving no evidence. Even after the most brilliant improv show imaginable, there’s no proof that it ever happened. It can’t be consumed on demand, you can’t buy it in a bookstore, and if you could, you’d expect that the artist would improve upon the improvisation to make a stronger piece. Things that are improvised are merely novelties, a handicap that an artist gave himself to overcome, a chance for you to say, “oh wow, that artist sure is clever if he was able to create that from nothing. It’s not as good as the stuff that he revised and perfected, but it’s still pretty impressive.” When archeologists and anthropologists are poking at this time and this culture, will improvisation even be a footnote?

Longform improvisation will never become the art form we’re all working to make it. There are too many obstacles to overcome: an audience’s impatience and expectations for perfection, problems with bringing live improvisation to a wide audience and delivering taped improvisation that carries the same impact, and finding a medium that’s willing to take the risk on unscripted work that isn’t hindered by ridiculous frameworks and gimmicks.

The study of longform clearly has value, though. It serves to sharpen the wits and focus the mind and create a brain capable of producing well-paced and well-structured comedy on short notice. It’s a fantastic tool. We all know it’s not coincidental that so many of our heroes of longform have gone on to make it big on a bigger stage in the world of scripted comedy. We rightfully celebrate that, but it should be a pretty clear indication that the pursuit of improvisation as an art form is a dead end. If the very best improvisers place their focus elsewhere and only play on odd weekends in tiny theaters, what hope do the rest of us have?

I’m twenty-three years old and fast approaching my first mid-life crisis. Everywhere I go, whenever I mention improvisation as an interest of mine, it’s confused either for standup in the worst case or shortform in the other worst case. No one outside the incestuous improv communities in the big cities could tell you a Harold from a deconstruction from a game of da-doo-run-run. This feels like a waste of time, a waste of gas, a waste of my own talent. I feel like I could continue chasing this elephant for a very long time and continue to have fun and be content, or I can throw it aside and challenge myself to accomplish more with my life.

Everything happens for a reason, and for some reason, I’m starting off as an analyst for a very respected firm where I could thrive and build a career and a comfortable life and a family. I’m creating complex computer systems that manage massive pension plans, which is a remarkable intellectual challenge and something that improves people’s lives. It’s a good use of the skills I’ve been blessed with. I’m adding value to society in a real way that can be measured and will be recognized and appreciated. It’s a great feeling.

Everything else is a distraction. I don’t want this to read like my retirement from longform improvisation – how is it possible to retire from something that doesn’t really exist in the first place? Improvisation has been a wonderful hobby and a great experience. I’ll always value the things I’ve learned and the friends I’ve made, but right here and right now, it’s distracting me from the goals I have in my life. I can’t make the same mistakes my parents made and find themselves with no savings and no retirement and nothing to show for their lives. I need to focus.

I will never again perform improvisation. I will never again teach improvisation. As art, it will go the way of dada, and as a tool, it won’t stand by itself on a stage. I’m getting out now before the leaks start springing and I find myself having to start all over with nothing when doing that is more difficult. This is the time to take advantage of my youth and intelligence and advantage in the marketplace. Maybe when I retire I’ll have more time for such a consuming hobby, assuming of course that anyone is improvising in thirty years.