The Empire Has Been on Ice for Seven Years
It's very late, but before I crawl into bed I wanted to say:
I've been rereading the Empire on Ice archive lately, and it's been kind of mind-blowing. I published one of those nearly every week, for almost a year-the Year of 32-and it's extraordinary how good some of it is, even seven years later. So funny. I mean, sure, it's got plenty of bad, plenty of meh. Sometimes, entire episodes are bad. But most of them have at least a couple laughs, and many are downright funny. A few are downright classic, better than much of what the "professionals" are doing. I'm not kidding when I say I've had many laugh-out-loud moments. And so much cleverness, not just jokes, but jokes that twist into even more intense jokes. A joke every few lines, minimum. I do understand, of course, that my sense of humor is likelier to ring true to me seven years later. But I really do think I tapped into something special with this.
And I was doing this every week.
Well do I remember many a constitutional on the Ring Road, confronting the daunting treat of deciding what the week's episode would be. What an absolutely enchanted time in my life. And mind you this was with considerable stress. I had a nervous breakdown seven years ago last month, while all this was happening. My first ever nervous breakdown. A harbinger of much worse to come. And yet...
And yet in those months I was truly alive. And I knew it. I knew it in my spark, and I think in my spark I also knew that death was coming for me, that my departure from the Mountain that autumn would be the end of me. As I had done at the beginning of my journey, in 1999 and 2000, so too did I sing my greatest songs at the end of it, in 2014 and 2015. And then that Josh departed the world forever.
If I am blunt about it...I am amazed I ever possessed such power, such depths of energy. Such brilliancy. I can't fathom rising to such a level today, in persistence or quality. I am a shadow of that mate. But there were moments, in the past few days, reading these old skits, when I could almost bring myself to wonder: "Maybe I could."
I've been rereading the Empire on Ice archive lately, and it's been kind of mind-blowing. I published one of those nearly every week, for almost a year-the Year of 32-and it's extraordinary how good some of it is, even seven years later. So funny. I mean, sure, it's got plenty of bad, plenty of meh. Sometimes, entire episodes are bad. But most of them have at least a couple laughs, and many are downright funny. A few are downright classic, better than much of what the "professionals" are doing. I'm not kidding when I say I've had many laugh-out-loud moments. And so much cleverness, not just jokes, but jokes that twist into even more intense jokes. A joke every few lines, minimum. I do understand, of course, that my sense of humor is likelier to ring true to me seven years later. But I really do think I tapped into something special with this.
And I was doing this every week.
Well do I remember many a constitutional on the Ring Road, confronting the daunting treat of deciding what the week's episode would be. What an absolutely enchanted time in my life. And mind you this was with considerable stress. I had a nervous breakdown seven years ago last month, while all this was happening. My first ever nervous breakdown. A harbinger of much worse to come. And yet...
And yet in those months I was truly alive. And I knew it. I knew it in my spark, and I think in my spark I also knew that death was coming for me, that my departure from the Mountain that autumn would be the end of me. As I had done at the beginning of my journey, in 1999 and 2000, so too did I sing my greatest songs at the end of it, in 2014 and 2015. And then that Josh departed the world forever.
If I am blunt about it...I am amazed I ever possessed such power, such depths of energy. Such brilliancy. I can't fathom rising to such a level today, in persistence or quality. I am a shadow of that mate. But there were moments, in the past few days, reading these old skits, when I could almost bring myself to wonder: "Maybe I could."