Term Paper

RICHARD PRYOR AND SPEAKING THE TRUTH
On The Purpose and Voice of Personal Blogs
By Peter Laszlo


Who was Richard Pryor? I’m just wondering, because I have read he died of a heart attack at the age of 65 on Saturday in the early morning, that is how I learnt of the fact that he ever lived. It turns out I should have at least heard about him, since as the online paper writes, “he was one of the most influential American comedians of the seventies and eighties.” I read that he had a terrible childhood: he was born into miserable poverty, his mother was a prostitute in a brothel run by his grandmother, he was raped by a pedophile at the age of six, was dispelled from school at 14, and his first child was born when he was only 16. He led his life in a self-destructive manner. It seems he never got over the ordeals of his youth. His friend said, “Richard’s problems arose from his childhood. Inside him there was a terrible emptiness, which couldn’t be filled even by his fame and success.”

This quote is from him: “Lying is blasphemy. Lying is the most terrible thing in the world. Art is our capability to speak the truth, especially about ourselves.” He lived according to this principle all his life. He is described as a groundbreaking comedian whose profanely personal insights into race relations and modern life made him one of Hollywood's biggest black stars. He gained a wide following for his universal and frequently personal routines. After nearly losing his life in 1980 when he set himself on fire during a cocaine trip, he included the ordeal in his later routine. "By expressing his heart, anger and joy, Richard Pryor took comedy to its highest form," Steve Martin said.

I took a class this semester entitled Comedy and Clowns, and the one thing I learnt very well is that it is nearly impossible to be funny on stage without being honest and open about ourselves. The same principle, again. We were doing improv scenes each class and our most hilarious scenes were the ones where we did not struggle to be funny, but simply let ourselves “go with the flow” and be our own frail and fallible selves. I believe this principle must be true of writing blogs, as well.
I have just recently come to the conclusion that the best blogs I have seen were the ones that went the furthest in sincerity, the ones that dared to cast off any traces of pretentiousness. It is a puzzling phenomenon, though, since in blogging there is no easy way of hiding behind a persona, as opposed to stand-up comedy, poetry or an autobiographical novel. The blog’s authorial ‘I’ means the real person behind the blogger. No matter how much he chooses to reveal of him/herself, he identifies himself with his narrator. In addition, there are the other (also real life) ‘characters’ of the blog, speaking of whom the author has to restrain themselves, since not anything can be revealed of them, or at least not more than would be possible in real life. Of course, there are the autobiographies, sometimes painfully honest and hurtful with respect to the author or the audience, but blogging happens real-time, it embraces the self not in a retrospective way, but in an ongoing process, day by day, which is more difficult. Sincerity is a dangerous game; it can’t be played too high stakes.

My question is: if we accept that “Art is our capability to speak the truth, especially about ourselves”, is it then possible to do art through writing a blog, which in lack of a persona, unlike a stand-up comedy piece, a poem or a novel, will most likely never say everything or in the way it wants. Or am I wrong in assuming there is no total honesty in blogging? Maybe there is, only it takes a mature personality who is accepting themselves wholly. Or an anonymous one.
I, personally, have chosen to go for the non-anonymous type of blog when I set off this September. I posted photos of myself so anyone can figure out who I am. I have come across certain blogs that left me in awe and feeling a deep longing that one day I might be able to write something that powerful, funny or touching as those posts that I read. It is my conviction that these posts were instances of art.

Is the sincerity of expressing one’s unique personality in blogs really the same sort of exhibitionism as the one witnessed in reality TV shows? I have always been horrified to imagine myself in the place of these reality shooting stars. I would never throw myself at the hands of the lions, the viewers, without any armor, even if I was paid for it like a Hollywood movie star. How can someone let millions of voyeurs stick their noses into every aspect of their lives? Now, publicizing my life in a blog I feel like I have compromised my earlier disapproving feelings about publicity. I am letting my readers into my thoughts and feelings, not innermost, but still pretty private thoughts previously reserved for my friends. I am still trying to figure out what actually I am doing this for.

I have always found reality TV’s obscene, it is just not the right way to show up oneself. The same way, I have long had the feeling that one may feel powerful and beautiful emotions, but when it is put into writing it sometimes becomes ridiculous, obscene or vulgar. It takes art to translate those emotions into writing, and it is a talent that not everyone possesses. I knew that I did not want to make my stuff obscene.

Starting it off was a full-day struggle of me staring blankly at the screen for long hours, finally posting the first post, then deleting it immediately, since I realized I just continued my paper journal online, a very bad idea. I did not want to represent myself with all my darkest thoughts when writing to an audience. I decided I was going to write something that was worth reading by an audience, and my paper journal was just a big mess, meaningful only to me. I gave myself a break and started writing an email to a friend, with whom we share a dark sense of humor, often lamenting about being losers and the impending dropping of the A-bomb. It was then I figured out I could copypaste the whole email and make it my first post, since this was the style I wanted to use in writing my new blog. I did not so much wish to show up myself in all my complexity as I wanted to be funny, to entertain. However, as I suggested above, being funny assumes honesty, and slowly I started to drift toward being increasingly open about myself in the often cynical remarks I made about my first encounters with American college life and my stumbling through the first months of feeling an alien here. I am still in the process of discovering what blogging has to give me, trying out different modes and materials for writing, but it is starting to feel more and more fulfilling to be able to write honestly. I feel a freer man.

Blogging has a certain sense of intimacy to it. Although, I am more aware of my audience when I write, thanks to the services of Sitemeter.com, I can still surrender myself to the illusion that it is only a lone reader who reads me, so this one-on-one basis means it is only one person who reads me, and this allows for a more intimate relationship with him/her, I imagine, letting me speak more openly. As I am getting more and more comfortable with having a public self, I am more confident in assuming that my reader is benevolent and not hostile to my writing, and to myself.

I have said public self, yes, probably I have a blogger persona or self, not like I postulated in the beginning. In a sense we all wear a mask in public, why would blogging be different? I tried to establish a humorous persona in the beginning. However, I am moving away from my original persona/voice that I assumed at the start (and perhaps I am becoming more “myself”?). Keeping that pervasive humorous persona could have kept me from being vulnerable to any possible attacks. Referring to Richard Pryor again, “he was able to turn pain into comedy, he let the world see it, and that was his inspiration, too”, as his wife said. I believe I did something similar, but at one point I also started to write posts in which I could not laugh at myself, and I sounded miserable. I made myself vulnerable. I thought. But I am coming to see that such an openness, independent of the fact whether I have a comic take on it or not, also makes me less vulnerable. In putting these things out I am starting to learn to make friends with myself, to accept myself. Maybe it is also my readers who help me in this: a small readership, but they keep coming back, which bears the message to me: they accept me.

Writing for this audience makes a world of a difference. Let me quote Coffeerhetoric here, one of the online journalers we had the pleasure to meet in person in our class. Blog journaling is liberating to her, too, "like taking a massive shit. You feel a sense of relief,” she says. But can’t that all be gotten rid of in a private journal? I think no, because having an audience listen to what you have to say is different. Writing for an audience your prime purpose is to entertain, to give them something worthy of reading. After having established a stable circle of readers, she suggests that she wants to entertain herself and her readers, “Firstly, I must oblige by thanking the core group of people who read my blog semi-regularly. I started blogging not because I wanted 30 or more comments on my page, but because, it is a way for me to just write when I hit a creative writing snag. I was told by a writing professor that the best way to get through writer's block is to write. Initially, I would just write in your standard private journal, but in going back and reading some of the things I wrote, some of the people and sets of circumstances I encountered, I would snicker... actually wanting to share some of my dirty laundry.” She clearly takes her blog as a literary experiment: "This is one of the literary forms that I enjoy partaking in the most."

I believe one of the reasons blog journallers appreciate having an audience, is because an audience enables them to break out from isolation, feel accepted and perhaps feel that their lives are seen as interesting and worthwhile. Having no one ever read and comment on your blog, on your life, you are a failure as a blogger. You are writing for others to read it. Coffeerhetoric confides that "while my goal is not to be the most popular blogger- and I am thrilled that people have actually discovered it and have left their feedback- I have stumbled upon this great community of like-minds, and you all have been gracious enough to show interest in the trials, travails, and tribulations known as my life. Thanks. I love your blogs in return.”

I am excited the same way about the possibility of interesting new people stumbling upon my blog. I have already met someone who first read about me, and then I read about her in her blog, and then she made contact with me, and we sort of started our relationship in medias res, with a much more honest and open attitude to each other, since we felt we already knew each other. The kind of “blind-dating” that is after all, not all that blind. I’m pondering, may blogs be the 21th century tool of fighting alienation for some of us?

The audience of a blogger is no different from the audience of a comedian. As I mentioned above, a great rule I was taught is “Don’t try to be funny,” which I figure is a special application of a general principle in life: “Don’t try desperately to please people”. If you are not funny, then you are not. If your mind blocks, and stand silent on stage for minutes, then you stand silent for minutes. So what? Same thing goes for keeping my blog: I try to constantly remind myself not to write in a way that I believe would be appealing to my current readership. It would be impossible anyways, since it is such a diverse readership encompassing family, friends, friends of friends, and random visitors, I cannot possibly please all of them . I have to write the way I write, and not the way they expect me to. I must not want so badly to “please people.” This is a real life lesson that blogging teaches me.

Richard Pryor once said, "It's so much easier for me to talk about my life in front of two thousand people than it is one-to-one. I'm a real defensive person, because if you were sensitive in my neighborhood you were something to eat." I feel the same way now about writing for the public. It is easier to say something true about myself through this medium, than to do that through personal interactions. And I decided that when I open my mouth to speak I want to speak the truth about myself. It is not easy most of the time, faking is such an all-pervading human activity, but I am trying to live up to Pryor’s principle. And I am glad that I have blogging to start off with this somewhere.


Blogs cited:

http://coffeerhetoric.blogspot.com
http://a-kisdobos.blogspot.com (my blog)