#c chase

I'm sweating. It's appropriate. It's nothing new. Everyone reaches a certain pitch, you know? We're all tuned differently, but we can all get there.

I can't stop driving in circles on Martha's Vineyard, thinking about Farley.

Really, could it have gone worse? Not so much having been cut down in his prime as having bowled through every conceivable barrier life presented and then looked for more, and found nothing. Wall, doorway, ceiling--both real and metaphorical--were smashed. There wasn't anything left for him to knock down. In the face of his energy, life had finally retreated at his feet, bowed its head, and sat there, obedient. Once that happens, who to talk to?

There are times when you can actually observe yourself. They're rare, but they happen. I'm not sure if the frequency of these times is inversely proportional to your level of notoriety, if the fame impinges on your ability to contextualize your own life, or if everyone has the same problem and fame is simply an excuse. Whatever the case, I can see myself now. I can see my tiny car zooming along, chasing its own headlights, thinking about Chris Farley, and it all seems so much smaller than it actually is. Chris Farley! An American folk hero, and he came to me for spinal advice. Spinal advice.

"Christ, Chris! When you throw yourself around, how are you staying safe? What kind of precautions are you taking when you rip through a Styrofoam wall onto backstage concrete?"

"Precautions, Chevy?"

Sure, I partied with him. We all did. Once, he carried me up a set of stairs, plopped me at the top, and fell back down, like a Sequoia, completely blind to what might be in his way. You can't imagine the sound. And the laughs.

Picture yourself flying through the air. You're cutting through it like a scythe, slicing through the fabric of the universe. Anything--and I mean anything--that comes in your way is vanquished, no match for whatever the supernatural force is that's fueling you. Even your past, all the things you'd ever want to forget or defeat, cowers.

This isn't happening at a great height; you're actually only a few feet above the earth. Which makes it all the more enjoyable, because you can actually relate your greatness to other people. They do not melt into abstraction. They stay present. They are participating in your triumph.

You're up there, and there's not even the hint of any downward curve, not even the mention of a parabola anywhere near your person. In fact, if you stop thinking and hold your breath, and pay very close attention, you may still be moving up. The only readily available equivalent image I can conjure up to assist you here is Michael Jordan, splayed out across time, which he's made take the form of air; his endeavor has moved beyond being a battle with gravity, it's become a battle with history. And you're him. And you're winning. In fact, you've won. (If the image feels slightly used, it's only because it's so powerful.)

That's the best and only way I can describe myself in 1976. I had won.

The God's honest truth, though, is that that feeling never leaves. Once you've had it, it's in you. People talk about the problem of getting there, that it leaves you searching for that high again, but it's not about the high--it's about self-confidence. Drugs, sex, etc. aren't a search, but a dulling, whether conscious or subconscious, of the knowledge that the universe can be controlled.

For the most part, I've learned to let the stories people tell about my life, both the real and the imagined, wash over me. It's like standing with your ankles in the surf; the first waves scar the sand with the imprints of your feet, but each subsequent swell is doomed to do less damage. Those first few grooves drop you down a bit, and never completely go away, but they end up helping you--no one can ever hurt you that way again.

Except for the stories about John.

Whose greatest rival isn't his greatest ally? His greatest asset? It might strike as armchair psychology, but the truth is that I never would have pushed myself the way I did if I hadn't had a threat as strong as John, as...medieval as John. He was the only one who ever scared me--later, maybe Billy gave me doubts--but when it was all first happening, it was John who gripped me. Everyone else was stars. He and I were constellations. His eyes would go so wild.

I'll admit it: he's the only one I ever wanted to make laugh. Because when I did, it meant I'd won. It's the same reason I stopped laughing when he performed: I knew if I gave him the slightest bit of notice I thought he was funny, was doing good work, it would not only pump him up, but also bring me down.

But not because he simply would have been funnier than me; actually, I knew if he knew I thought he was funny, he would stop trying so hard. And then I, in turn, would stop giving it my all. In a way, I was punishing myself into greatness by punishing him. I was withholding, from both of us. It was a brutal dance.

I didn't attend John's funeral, so this is the first time I'll have visited his grave. At the time, I was in the middle of shooting Modern Problems and said I couldn't make it. The excuse was convenient because I didn't want to be there. It would have confused things. For everyone.

Now that I'm finally here on Martha's Vineyard, for the first time, I suppose I'm less confused about a few things. But I'm somehow even more confused by the fact that what we were fighting over was a couple of jokes: pratfalls, one-liners, accents, etc.

Maybe, though, it's actually people we were fighting over.

I'm sticking to a plastic chair in a motel in Olympia, inhaling bites of terrible, bland Thai food in the midst of a frustration that's prompted not as much by the lack of taste or the overabundance of general heat and humidity, as by the terrible television I'm cycling through. I'll watch for thirty seconds, tentatively settle in to whatever's being presented, and then something will set me off--the pitch of the laugh track, an awkward-looking physical joke--into a fitful bout of remote mashing until I find something that's not a commercial. Rinse and repeat.

But then? But then Letterman comes on. What a fucking nut. What a ballsy toothpick of a man. The smartest guy on the desert island.

Is that even a metaphor? It's one I'm using, anyway. Chalk it up to the humidity.

When they put a briefcase full of money in front of you, you have to listen. And you have to understand that on top of the money, the early 90s were not the kindest of years to me. I wasn't yet an elder statesman, like I am now, and the sense that I could resurrect whatever it was that I had once had was all but gone. I was nationless.

But I wasn't dead. We don't die, we just feel dead. I truly thought I had something left to give. There's this sense that I'm an absolute robot, but it's not true--I have empathy.

At the same time, goodness knows why they did what they did. Thought of me, I mean. I never rehearsed. Or anything.

Time moves much slower on television than you would ever imagine. Minutes smear long, gaps in entertainment don't feel like momentary pinches, but rather like brandings--the audience holds the burning iron to your flesh. And then they hold it there some more. You sweat as you smile.

I was in so over my head.

i am not simply a gag.