Stand-Up Tragedy
Comedy is exhausting. Comedy is like a genius manic: you have to keep the ball in the air all the time, you have to keep it light and bouncy, you can’t get dragged down by undercurrents. Tragedy is restful. Tragedy is freeing. At the end of a tragedy you can breathe, if you’re still alive. When tragedy occurs we are quietly triumphant because we were right; and death is the most restful place of all, if you believe that.
The polar opposites are security and tragedy: the certitude that only an act of God could deprive you of your security on one side and on the other the certitude that you have no one’s grace, not even God’s, left to fall from.
Human beings are capable of nearing the latter state of perfection, not as capable of approaching the former: our comfort is imperfect, but our contempt is flawless.