I'm on the train back from a gig where I died on my arse.
I need to put tonight's show in perspective. We all have bad gigs. I just don't like being the elephant in the room. My closing line got a good laugh, if nothing else. Bloody comedy...why do I put myself through it?
It shouldn't have gone that way. The crowd were lovely, and had been warmed up well by the MC. Then I went on and killed it stone dead. I got a smattering of laughs, but mostly when I signposted when it wasn't going my way, which is a dangerous move; do to much of it, and you end up voicing your audience's concern in the first place. The worst moment was when I caught the eye of a woman in the crowd who was completely perplexed by what I was saying, and clearly embarrassed by the silence. That wasn't good for the ego.
To be fair, I was first on, which is never an easy spot. I also didn't have much time to turn things around. It still felt like a disappointment, particularly on the back of a brief gig hiatus. For a fleeting moment I felt I'd become the embodiment of my recent bad review.
You shouldn't entertain those thoughts for too long. In reality, my recent gigs have mostly gone well until tonight. There were a couple of instances playing mixed bills in Brighton where I brought the room back round. My recent So You Think Your Funny heat also got good laughs. But my sweeping, all-encompassingly bad write-up from Chortle is still wedged in my head, tempering my awareness of how things are going, and making me think it's all been bad.