Louie — A tribute to the misery behind the delight of humor
Louie is a lonely man, sorrowful and shy. But he comes on stage and changes himself to someone completely different, and exists only to poke fun of his lonely self in front of the world and walks away. That’s what is intriguing about him; if one were to ask me what I thought of him, I wouldn’t be able to answer. Not because I wouldn’t know the answer, but because Louie leaves one with that feeling that a string of words put in a sentence that would last for a minute or two, would not do justice to it. Louie demands more than that. It is so heart wrenchingly real that it becomes impossible to detach oneself to give an opinion. Louie, is painfully sad.
The mellowed yellow lights on New York pavements, giving that sense of a time when people on the roads are either drunk or hurrying; those cafes in two minds about whether it’s time to close or wait for a couple of people more, those beggars and garbage bins and pastry shops and empty subways; they demand to put someone real there. Because it is tiring, tiring to see pretty couples holding hands and stealing away some time to share an ice cream flavor they never tried before, or a man playing a saxophone right at the corner of a crossing, or a cue of taxis awaiting drunk people out of night clubs.
Let the nondescript be the subject instead. All those pretty, ugly, deluded, dreamy, and hungry beings can be props that dress up New York nights, and let us, for a change, focus on the mundane. Because the mundane has a paunch, and a receding hairline, the mundane doesn’t want to get drunk alone and he is mostly alone, the mundane flirts with failure and success till he doesn’t understand whether to celebrate or mourn, but he still has hope. There has been no real tragedy in his life — a divorce may be, rejections and at most, an increasing cholesterol. No. His isn’t a story that’s worth printing. His isn’t a story that’s inspiring enough for a movie or disappointing enough for a play. What’s supposed to happen, happens, and what doesn’t, well, doesn’t. And that’s what’s so wonderful about Louie.
His humor comes from every day. His disappointments are what we laugh at. His imperfections are what we find hilarious, and he just gets out of the stage smiling and reluctantly waving and telling us how he figured us out. Humor is nothing but someone else’s disappointment. A story of someone’s embarrassment told to a bunch of people who would find it amusing. That is why humor is often offensive. That is why Louis CK is offensive. Because he is funnier than most. He doesn’t care about silly borders drawn in the minds of people that tell them what should be said and what shouldn’t because he puts himself out there. He opens up to the world about his failures and people laugh. He loves his daughters enough to be a father who tries his best, and he embraces his failures and wraps them up and throws them towards a bunch of people who pay him to get a laugh.
And sometimes he stops the laughter. Sometimes when he looks at a date who is disgusted with him and his body as he stares at her coyly with an obstinate hope, the laughter somehow stops. When he gets bullied by a bunch of boys and admits that he cannot fight and humiliates himself by being real on TV, he shows his humor comes from depths of sorrow. Because we are not a part of a movie where the idea of a hero is so skewed that we forget to celebrate bravery in any other form. Because bravery is not getting back with punches and alpha male aggression perhaps, bravery is following the bully to his house and trying to find out how he became a bully. Bravery is singing lullabies to his daughters in the middle of the night and not bring out the day’s humiliation about how he was told a coward by someone he hoped would like him. When he leaves his mike after his performance as the camera follows him back to his seat where he quietly eats his dinner alone, he stops the laughter.
When I watch Louie, am not hoping for a happy ending. I am instead, trying to experience his moments through his eyes and may be feel his heart beat with every mistake he makes, or every wall he walks into. Louie talks about sorrow to make you laugh. Everything that happens, every emotion, every insult, every cheer and every delight, spring from something so disturbingly real that it’s impossible to not relate to. When you see your own misery through the eyes of another, you realize that’s what humor is.
Louie tells me that life is mostly sad, but that doesn’t mean that we should be whiny about it. It’s fine really. Because whatever you are going through, tell that story in a microphone to a bunch of captive audience and they will laugh at you. So if you decide to do so, tell it well. After all, humor is a smiling tribute to sorrow.
