Landedededed

Hallo Punks! I'm landed in London! It's surreal. I'm missing the love and comfort of home, but I have the love and comfort of home, in my twin, whose house I'm crashing in, and in all of the London-friends I have bower-birded into my life over years of throwing my head around the world (the picture above is of tea at Tiff Stevenson's house) And the scene, and the work, and my walkin' boots. I've been thinking about reputation (O Iago), and the ways that professional and personal reputation overlap or exist alongside one another. Since around the time of my podcast with Mitch Alexander (about three back, Teacast listeners), it's been rolling around my mind. As with when you learn a new word, a new idea rolling round can make you notice every time you see it in the world. So I've been listening to people talking about people, and the way they talk and what it means. Whenever people are talking about people (which, let's be honest, is most of what people talk about), I cringe at the idea that people will talk about me when I'm not there. Which is stupid. Of course I want people to talk about me when I'm not there - it's how I get new people to my shows, or new subscribers to the podcast. It's called Publicity. But it's the idea of speculation into the corners of my life that I choose to keep private that bothers me, maybe. Where you're open and explicit and articulating personal things (in comedy), there are two possibilities: 1) that you're an open buffet, casually accessible and everything's fair game. If there's an area you haven't discussed, it's because you haven't got round to it yet, and people are welcome to take their fill of you; or 2) that your openness is hard work and your casualness hard won. In that case articulate exposure is a neck extended - the lavish meal on the table is everything you can afford, and to demand more of the apparent abundance would be a really bad move. That's a dramatic set of overextended metaphor/analogies. But you get the polarity I'm trying to represent? Anyway, that's what I've been thinking about. I'm still a bit jet-lagged, and missing home, but it's good to be home. Chiz A