Starting Standup in Maine with David Walton

Ep 2-Discover the Real Voice in Your Head

• David Walton • Season 1 • Episode 3

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David begins preparation for his first terrible open mic. 

David shares the first piece of wisdom from the book, "Comic Insights" by Franklin Ajaye, that the key to comedy is identifying your true thoughts and feelings. 

He then does a strange exercise tapping into the Voice in His Head and discovers that he's a simple minded idiot. 

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Speaker 1:

Hey, welcome to episode two of Starting Stand-Up. I am David Walton. If you've skipped around or this is your first time, let me just give you a quick little recap of what the hell's going on here. You have stumbled on a real indie podcast. We're building this plane. As we fly it, we're gonna follow my quest to go from beginner stand-up comedian to master. How long will that take? Well, they say it takes about seven to ten years to get decent at stand-up. I'm going to try to get decent in one nice 20-minute set, maybe live, maybe with you there, who knows. But we're just going to put our head down, trust the process.

Speaker 1:

I am reading a ton, I'm beginning to do open mics and this second episode is pre the first open mic I ever did. I didn't have a lot of guidance and you're going to see a lot of the mistakes I made. This is the build up, truly, uh, one of the most humiliating experiences of my life, which was, which was my first stand-up set. And now, looking back on it, listening to it, not only do I feel a tremendous sense of shame, and the physiological reaction to listening to my first open mic is so intense I almost lose control of bodily functions. It's truly unlike anything. I've ever felt a level of humiliation, but anyway, this is where you begin to see the journey towards that humiliation, as I misstep and do all sorts of things that are not what you're supposed to do before going up on stage. Now, I'm not going to blame anybody. I mean I will blame Al Madrigal, who I did About a Boy with who's a very talented stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and all he said was dude, you just got to read Comic Insights, this book by Franklin Ayahe, and then you're good to go. And I was like, oh cool, let me just read this book and then I'll be good to go. So I did, and in this episode you'll see the first lesson of that book, which is wonderful, by the way. But now that I'm recording much later and introing this sort of time machine back to the beginning stages of this journey, there was so much more I needed to learn before I did this, before I did this open mic.

Speaker 1:

I think it's going to be really pleasurable if you enjoy fail videos, if you enjoy just people landing on their coccyx and breaking it, trying to do something dumb in their house. That's sort of the physical manifestation of what this podcast really is. It's just a long, drawn-out fail video at the moment, but who knows, maybe it won't be, maybe with your help. Speaking of if you could email me, I'm reading all these things, I'm creating a list, I have trouble with social media, and so I love newsletters, though, and I've been emailing a group of people who are into this, so please email startingstanduppod at gmailcom. Startingstanduppod as in podcast at gmailcom. Please email me there. I'll add you to the list and I promise I'm going to send a bunch of fun, awesome stuff. We are beginning now Begin the journey towards failure. Here we go, please enjoy.

Speaker 2:

Oh man, that's rubbish, that's rubbish.

Speaker 1:

All right, this is a segment called Lessons Now. Lesson one first lesson comes from the book Comic Insights by Franklin Ayahe. So the first lesson, this is the first thing I highlighted in this book as I launched my stand-up journey fuck, stand-up quest. This was the first thing I highlighted. Okay, here it is.

Speaker 1:

You gotta discover your point of view, your true thoughts and feelings. Your point of view is the voice you hear when you talk to yourself. Tapping into how you really feel or think about the madness of life is the key to tapping into your true sense of humor. An aspiring comedian must be determined to get to his or her true feelings and convey that to the audience. Side note, that seems easy. Everyone's like I know who I am. Oh, I'm just going to be me, I'm going to say what I think. It's like you actually don't know what you really think because you're trying to first of all not offend. So your true thoughts and feelings are, I had noticed in all of life, out of people's head, are very rare to come out and usually, if they do, and they're not super offensive because they're harmful or being mean or shitty, because so many people's voice in their head is judgy and shitty. But if you're really truthful, usually people laugh because you're doing something that no one's comfortable doing, which is just being really honest and not caring and, I think, fundamentally surprise originality. All that stuff comes out of this real mining for truth of yourself, and to me that is fascinating.

Speaker 1:

Now I did a little experiment and, as I was in the months leading up to this podcast, I've been doing a lot of recording and trying to figure out what I think and feel for real, and I started to get so terrified that if I ever shared what I really think and feel, you know, I would be arrested, and so I started masking my voice. I reached out to a podcast producer actually Wobby Wob from Dak Shepard's podcast and I was like dude, how do I mask my voice? I'm going to launch a podcast, but I can't. I don't want anyone to know it's me, otherwise I won't be able to freely speak my mind. And he didn't. He was immediately making jokes and making fun of me, but he gave me some technology, some whatever. It sounded like this it was incredibly freeing.

Speaker 2:

I mean, the shit that was coming out of my mouth was really wild and extremely energizing. It was almost like it was almost like I had jumped into a new body and everything was just flowing and I was all jacked up and getting like aroused and it was really weird, really kind of a strange experiment. But then I realized, as I listened back to this ridiculous voice, first of all that people could just reverse engineer it, and they would. They could if they wanted to find out whose voice it was and who was saying these cockamamie things. And then, second, it's just wildly annoying for like 20 minutes to listen to a robot voice. What an idiot I am. You idiot, dave. What a dumb idea.

Speaker 1:

So, anyway, there's been a lot of idiot ideas I've had, but they're all moving me forward and this is a digression, of course, a lot of digressions here, and I thank you for staying with me, I thank you for being here. So this is all. To say that this first episode is I'm going to share rant. That is me trying to tap into the voice in my head per that advice of really understanding how your inner monologue goes. And you know there's a concept called the tight five in stand-up. For those that don't know it, that's five minute of a very tight set where there's not a word out of place, everything, tons of laughs. You know it's the kind of set that you'd see on Letterman or Leno. And I listened to this back, this rant, and it was very loose, but I'm mining for material, so I'm going to call this segment for now the Loose Ten. Please enjoy, and then we'll come back and we'll analyze if there's anything in there that will be usable on stage. See you soon.

Speaker 1:

When I was in acting school, we had a clown class and you can't fake your clown. It's like a deep part of your nature and my clown was a fucking maniac, just not like super high speed. No, no, governor, governor, just trying to get people to laugh and just devastated if people didn't think it was funny and that's. It's like I just he's so eager to please and I really do want to please you. That's a little bit. The people pleasing. People pleasing that's a good premise. People pleasing are you okay? Is everybody okay? Do you like me? Do you like me so pathetic?

Speaker 1:

you pathetic fuck um, also, just like people that trust their mind, you idiots, you're like ripping cigs. You know your, your mind is here. Here's what's, here's what. If right now there's a bullhorn on your inner dialogue, you would never. You'd probably go to jail, right? You're a fucking terrorist in your head. Here's like just an example of what my mind would do, and I'm relatively. You know, I'm a. I'm a. I've never been in trouble.

Speaker 1:

I want to fuck this is. I just recorded something that, um, it was just like I really tracked my thoughts. Oh, I want to fuck my wife. God, my kids are cute. They are so fucking annoying. How do I remove them from the house? How do I get them to shut the fuck up for the next seven hours? God, I'm hungry. I want Skittles.

Speaker 1:

Don't be a weak, fuck you weak-willed pussy. Don't talk like that. Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa. Don't talk like that to yourself. You're a beautiful, godlike creature.

Speaker 1:

God, my wife's tits are great. I wish I could slap them around right now. I wonder if she'd let me spit on them. Honey, hi, you look great. Oh, I feel gross. That was out loud. No, no, no, you look great. Ah, fuck that.

Speaker 1:

I'm going back to doing the dishes. There's no chance of speed bagging my wife's tits. Maybe I should go beat off now. It's gross. The kids are awake. I guess I should wash the dishes, be helpful? Nope, I'm going to go take a shit and spend 10 extra minutes on the shitter looking at Twitter. You know, that's just. You know, just a two-minuter. It's a two-minuter More to come but it's like how do people fake things? What are the ways people judge without being aware. Yeah, that's my little, my ranty ragoo, ranty ragoo. Um yeah, as we develop this thing, I'm I'm psyched to, to, to develop it. I've got my wind in my sails again and it's just a small work, it's just a work in progress. Everybody, this is just a work in progress. I'm not nervous at all. I'm not nervous at all about sharing this kind of shit. I'm not nervous at all. I'm not nervous at all about sharing this kind of shit, I'm not nervous at all.

Speaker 1:

What are you talking about? I'm not nervous. No, I'm not nervous. What are you talking about? I'm not nervous. Fuck you, fuck you, man. I'm not fucking nervous. Why do you look at?

Speaker 2:

me like that. Stop looking at me like that.

Speaker 1:

Fuck you, man, fuck you, oh my God, I just killed somebody, oh my. God, I killed somebody.

Speaker 2:

Help me bury the body.

Speaker 1:

Help me bury the body. Where are the shovels? Ah, ah, okay, okay, it's down. What do I got to do? Oh, check for blood, check for blood. Oh, I cleaned up the blood. Okay, okay, now just sit in the couch, be normal. Be normal. No one knows. No one knows what about his oh show. Okay, hey, honey, can I suck your tits? I mean, honestly, that's the life, that's what we're talking about here. That's what's going down, that's what's happening. Yeah, yeah, we don't want it. We're gonna talk. Oh, my god, I'm fucking. I'm fucking a tree. I'm a chipmunk fucking a tree there. This shit makes me mad, fuck you Kick a little oak.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, all right, playing around and we're out. Well, that's it for our first full episode. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I hated editing it. What a pain in the ass. I don't know if I can keep doing this. I may have to outsource. I don't know if I can keep doing this, may have to outsource, but that was like the most painful edit of my life. Ugh, somebody reach out, email me, tell me how to do this better. Holy shit, anyway, guys, alright, um, really fun, really fun to be with you. Really the first episode. We have an FAQ you can check out If you're confused.

Speaker 1:

a little more technical, a little more just a little more buttoned up, but I promise you that that buttoned up feeling is not going to stick around much longer. I'm really enjoying Speaking to. I have a secret person I'm doing this whole podcast for and I don't think they know who they are. But you know, you go onto YouTube and they're like Just talk to one person. So I picked a person and this is for you. Thanks for listening. Next episode I share my first open mic and the humiliation begins. Take care, thank you.