Catapanic
Mon, Sep 28th 2009, 15:12
I came back from the TV Comedy Forum the other day. I’m not sure how I feel about conferences generally. On the one hand they can be an invaluable opportunity to meet new people, find new business and prevent insanity (from normal activities such as writing where you spend too much time alone). On the other, you can come away having picked up a kind of catatonic panic – “catapanic” if you will.
Catapanic can be constituted of several parts:
(1) first a kind of urgent and terrifying awareness of what the industry is (apparently) looking for
(2) secondly a frenetic urge to immediately supply something that fits the remit
(3) thirdly a conflicting instinct that you should just trust yourself and do what comes naturally to yourself even if that apparently conflicts with (2)
(4) a sense that you are irrelevant
(5) a sense that everyone is irrelevant
(6) a sense that everyone wants to be successful at the expense of everyone else
(7) a sense that the successful are worried they might not be for very long
(8) a sense that doing anything might be wrong, so you should just remain still and inactive as a way of not doing anything wrong, except that that might also be wrong
Oh yes. The joy of TV conferences... at least I got to hear Graham Linehan talk though (along with Harry Enfield, Armstrong and Miller and Jimmy Carr who was in for an ill Frankie Boyle). I'm a big fan of Mr Linehan's stuff and it was very interesting to hear him talk about how he constructs comedic narratives by finding three or so set pieces that really make him laugh, and then finds a way of binding them together in a story. Catapanic finally subsided about 36 hours after the event. Phew!
