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October 18, 2006

Comedy does it better every time

Over the past few years yours truly has been ceding radio show time to 'other work' in the interest of the costs of living. This morning I woke up determined to make some changes - I lay in bed while a demolition team outside my window tore something big up. I tried to articulate why I need to focus more on making things up and the imagination.. and then I gave up and got out of bed, made some coffee and turned on the computer - and lo and behold - on the front page of the Guardian today - Armando Iannucci finishes my thoughts for me! (read)

It's what I suspect most of us who work in the creative arts occasionally feel: that what we're doing is interesting, it's fun, it's probably the only thing we can imagine ourselves doing. But is it a proper job? Is there a point to what anyone in the arts is doing? It's only recently that I've come to find out that it does - that spending one's life just imagining things, making things up, performs a crucial role today. It matters because it's an act of imagination, and imagination is one of the things that defines us as human beings rather than monkeys. It's an act of imagination that is just as valid, just as crucial, I think, as any serious competitor, like a drama or the novel. But I think we sometimes see comedy as an inferior art form.

Posted by bw at October 18, 2006 10:17 AM