How to laugh at yourself (w/ Nuar Alsadir) (Transcript)

[00:00:00] Chris Duffy:
You are listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. I tend to approach the world through a framework of humor and laughter. That may not be surprising considering I am a comedian by trade, but I really do believe in the power of laughter and of being willing to see the absurd and hilarious, even when things feel tragic or intense.

Today's guest, Nuar Alsadir, wrote a book that I have been thinking about so much since I finished reading it. It's called Animal Joy: A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation, and this book, Animal Joy, it put into words so many ideas that I really believe in but hadn't ever been able to articulate in words before.

Nuar herself is fascinating. Her work connects some worlds that I think many people would be surprised to find sitting together: poetry, psychoanalysis, and clowning. So here is a clip where Nuar explains how she sees the interconnections between all three of those worlds.

[00:00:56] Nuar Alsadir:
When I was in clown school, the instructor kept referring to moments when the audience laughed as poetic. And what was interesting to me about laughter in the context of clowning is that people didn't laugh because something was humorous. They laughed because it was true, it was human. It resonated with their own humanity, and that movement inside of the audience members was inside of their bodies is similar to what I value most in poetry, which is when you feel moved.

In fact, I would say, I would define what is poetry by what makes you feel moved. It doesn't have to be on paper. It doesn't have to look like a poem. It doesn't have to sound like poetry or be called poetry in the formal generic sense of what poetry is. I think it's defined by its effect. And what happens when someone feels moved is what happens when someone laughs when they watch someone on stage, which is that what they see happening to the person on stage or what they imagine the writer is experiencing when they read is something that they can associate to their own experience.

[00:02:24] Chris Duffy:
We are gonna talk a lot more about that experience and many more in this episode. But first, here's an experience of listening to some podcast ads. We'll be right back.

[BREAK][00:02:42] Chris Duffy:
Today we're talking about the transformative power of laughter and humor with Nuar Alsadir.

[00:02:46] Nuar Alsadir:
Hi, I am Nuar Alsadir. I am a writer. I'm a psychoanalyst. My most recent book is Animal Joy: A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation. It's a nonfiction book, and I've also published two books of poetry.

[00:03:01] Chris Duffy:
So in, in addition to this podcast, I spent the last year, and I'm still in the middle of this, of, of writing my first nonfiction book as well, and, and it's all about humor and kind of redefining what it means to have a sense of humor because I think people often think it's about, like, getting attention and being in front of the crowd and instead, to me it's a much more generous internal act of noticing the absurd things in the world and in yourself.

I was trying to find some sorts of frameworks for thinking about laughter and humor and comedy, and I read your book and was like, this is, uh, this is it. You said this thing that I've, I've been thinking about a lot, which is that often what people laugh at on stage when a comedian is performing, said in a different context, but exactly the same words, would count as a breakthrough in therapy.

It would be, what, the moment that you would look for as a practitioner to get to with your patient. So, I'm curious to just hear more about that selfishly, because that's an idea that I've been thinking about nonstop since I read your book.

[00:03:58] Nuar Alsadir:
It was actually something I discovered because I went out into the world to do research on laughter. I wanted to see when people laugh, and I thought, well, “What better way to experience other people's laughter than to go to standup or storytelling or improv shows?” I started with standup and then I just followed the path of what actors were doing at that moment in time. And what I found was that when someone was on stage and the audience laughed, it was usually because they were saying something that was really honest, and the laughter had very little to do with humor, and in fact, it could have been the text of a therapy session, if it had been framed differently.

In fact, in a psychoanalytic session or a therapy session, the equivalent to laughter would be a moment of insight because you feel it in your body. When someone has an insight, something opens up inside of them, and it, it isn't marked by laughter, but it has a bodily component. And I think that is what these different forms, whether we're talking about standup or poetry or psychoanalysis share, is this sense of being moved.

[00:05:29] Chris Duffy:
Hm. You know, I imagine that most people listening to this have very little practical interest in becoming a performer of comedy themselves, right? Whether that's a clown or a comedian, or a standup or a writer of any kind. But where I think your work really transcends that narrow niche is that you are talking about the, the big lessons about what it means to be a person through this experience. I mean, that's why the book is called Animal Joy of, of laughter, and this release and healing that comes from that. And there's this idea that I had never heard of before about the true self versus the false self. Can you walk us through what those are?

[00:06:07] Nuar Alsadir:
Yeah. I really love this idea. It's from the psychoanalyst Winnicott. He essentially says that we all have inside of ourselves this core energy; it's creative, alive, spontaneous energy that when we're infants, we express freely. And if the mother, he says mother, but of course it's any caregiver, responds to spontaneous gestures from an infant with affirmation, then it signals to the infant that it's okay to express yourself.

But if the mother corrects the gesture and tries to align it with something socially recognizable, for example, if the infant says, “Mwah,” and the mother says, “No, mama, mama.” And then the infant says, “Mama,” and the mother is happy and claps or smiles. Then the infant learns to give the mother what she wants from it in order to get love, and that's the birth of the false self.

The false self is what Winnicott calls this, it’s basically the social self. We all need some kind of armor to go out into the world. We can’t wear our hearts on our sleeve and just expose our innards to everyone we encounter. But sometimes we can get so good at developing false self reactions that we lose contact with the true self.

And when we have contact with the true self, we feel alive or moved. It's when you suddenly tear up, and you don't know why there are tears in your eyes, or you, you feel a profound sense of opening up inside of your chest, or someone says something, and it hits home, as we say. Maybe that home is the true self.

And the complicated thing that he presents is this idea that we get social tokens or affirmation for false self achievements. So we learn to chase false self accomplishments as opposed to expressions from the true self. But it's really when we have contact with our true self that we feel alive and what he calls real.

And when we regain contact, it's like a kind of resuscitation. What I was really exploring in the book, I realized, of course, after finishing it only, is what it takes to feel alive inside your life. Not just to live it, but to actually feel alive while you're living it.

[00:09:03] Chris Duffy:
What does it take to feel alive while you're living your life for you?

[00:09:07] Nuar Alsadir:
Poetry is such a huge part of my existence. I have two children who run naked through the book, essentially, and they help me remember what it takes to feel alive. If I present a false self in front of them, they always call it out, for example. When I look in the mirror, when I'm getting ready in the morning, they accuse me of having my mirror face, and we all have this mirror face that we put on when we look at ourselves in the mirror.

What is that about? Is that our contact with our false self? Is it we're making sure that our facade is there before we go out into the world. To them, it’s so embarrassing, my mirror face, but of course, it's what's covering up my real face.

[00:10:01] Chris Duffy:
Many of the like, laugh out loud, hilarious moments of this book are, are from your daughters. And there's one here that, that just makes me laugh even just thinking about it again afterwards. It's on, um, page 78, your daughter says, “ ‘Do you consider yourself an adult?’ My daughter asked one night during dinner. ‘Yes, of course.’ I said. She burst out laughing, couldn't stop. Had trouble remaining seated on her chair despite being in, half tucked under the table. ‘What's so funny?' I asked suddenly, unsure of my answer. I just think she struggled to get the words out. ‘It's funny that anyone would consider themselves an adult.’” That, I love that so much, and the idea that she's like, “I can't believe you admitted it. You admitted it.”

[00:10:39] Nuar Alsadir:
What’s your relationship to thinking of yourself as an adult?

[00:10:43] Chris Duffy:
The true answer is that I honestly wake up every morning kind of amazed that I'm not a 10-year-old. Like I think of myself as like, well, surely I'm 10. It's incredible that I have a house and have to, like, take care of bills and things like that doesn't seem right. I'm just a kid.

[00:10:57] Nuar Alsadir:
It's remarkable that anyone would think of themselves an, as an adult, like how did we come to that aspiration? And what does it mean? It's like you turn all your knobs on standby. It, it somehow being an adult is a kind of, uh, toning down or deadness of all the things that most people value. Feeling alive, feeling present, authentic, true, honest.

[00:11:29] Chris Duffy:
Often the explicit and implicit message that you get from society is to become less who you are, be less you. Fit in. Don't make noise. That the work of both performance of comedy, but also the work of psychoanalysis, the work of self-discovery is to reject that and to be more yourself, to find who you are.

[00:11:49] Nuar Alsadir:
And the tricky part is that if you are really gonna try to figure out who you are and what's inside of you, it also means letting go of the story you have of who you are, because of course, we're not one thing that remains fixed throughout our lives. We evolve and change. And, it, even if you think about it in terms of psychoanalysis, one of the things one wants to do in analysis is know your desire, but if you try to really figure out what your desire is, it may not be what you want to want because we're taught what we should want. And there's value in wanting what you're supposed to want.

But what if what you really want doesn't align with what is socially desirable? Do you go after it? Do you wanna know or do you wanna just go after what you're supposed to have and then achieve a perfect life from the outside, even if it doesn't feel right on the inside?

[00:13:06] Chris Duffy:
We are gonna take a quick break right now for some ads, but when we come back, Nuar is gonna tell us all about how clown school helped her as an analyst, as a poet, and as a writer. You do not wanna miss that. The clown secrets are coming.

[BREAK] [00:13:28] Chris Duffy:
And we are back. Can you just walk us through your experience of going to clown school and what that means? Because I think a lot of people also don't have the image of clown school that is the clown school that you went to.

[00:13:39] Nuar Alsadir:
Uh, the kind of clown school I went to is the French form of clown that Jacques Lecoq was, I think the father of, and Philippe Gaulier is, is still alive and teaches in Paris, and he has, he's famous for his clown school.
And it's a, it's a form of theatrical training that many actors undergo, even if they're not working in comedy or they don't intend to be a clown. What you get in touch with is your inner clown, which is very similar to what Winnicott calls the true self.

So you're trying to strip the layers of socialization and get to that child life force inside of you. Whether it's an art form or some other creative endeavor. Essentially, if you can tap into that wellspring of energy and creative forces, it's like a furnace. It's a natural energy source that we all have inside of us that can help power our aspirations.

[00:14:53] Chris Duffy:
Where was the school that you went to? How long was it?

[00:14:56] Nuar Alsadir:
It was in Brooklyn. And I did an intensive program. It was two weeks for six hours a day, and I actually went for two summers in a row. I, I went twice because the first time I went, my mind was blown. And something opened up inside of me, but I really wasn't able to take notes in the way I would want to, to write about it.

So I went back after having already been cracked open, and then I gathered more of the material that I used in the book. Although it does bridge the two summers, and it was basically, the way it was structured is we were given these tasks. It would be to make up a song where you would basically riff off of a theme.

It would try to get you to just tap into your strong feelings about whatever the theme was, and then you would just riff about things you feel, things you love, things you did, so it would expose you in front of everyone. You would be loved the more able you were to be honest. And then when you would try to cover yourself up or be cool or give the audience something that you thought they would like, the audience would feel your falseness. Then they would hate you a little bit.

[00:16:38] Chris Duffy:
You talk about this happening for you personally, that you, you got up there and you were delivering what you thought you were supposed to deliver and it, it bombed horribly.

[00:16:45] Nuar Alsadir:
Yeah. That was one of the really valuable things I learned was how you handle the flop if you're flopping, and my flop was when I would try to be guarded or intellectual. If I leaned on my intellect or intelligence or my persona in any way, they would feel it, and they would feel my falseness. And the only way to get away from being hated by the audience, for being fake is to become real and to just break through the facade with an authentic feeling.

[00:17:27] Chris Duffy:
Can you give us an example?

[00:17:30] Nuar Alsadir:
Someone was trying to be cool and say something funny that they'd already in the world used and was funny, and you can feel when something is being recycled. and we were not pleased. It, it… You feel the falseness, and you kind of look at the person, like, don't try to pull that with me.

[00:17:55] Chris Duffy:
Yeah.

[00:17:55] Nuar Alsadir:
And then she started to sob because she felt how much everybody hated her. And then she just started talking about what a failure she was and how she could never get anything right. And then we were laughing so hard. It was like suddenly she was real. And then that real emotion, even though there was nothing humorous about it, made us love her. And our laughter was actually a sign of our appreciation.

[00:18:23] Chris Duffy:
That's a great situation that eliminates how the exact same reaction in different contexts could have been really cruel, right? If that's a, if that's an audience of people who are not peers, who aren't also gonna have to do this same experience, laughing at someone's crying could be really mean. The thing that is making everyone laugh is we have to do this too, and we recognize how impossibly difficult this is, and how we want to do exactly what you've just done that all of a sudden makes her feel, like it makes you all laugh 'cause you relate, but then it makes her feel like, “Oh, I am seen. I'm not the only one who feels like this.”

[00:18:55] Nuar Alsadir:
Exactly.

[00:18:55] Chris Duffy:
Um, one of the, the things that it seems like was really transformative about learning to clown and to be a clown in this way was that they pinpointed the, the sort of mask, the, the exact version of the false self that you would put up. And I think they even had some sort of nickname for you, right? Like they called you Doctor, The Professor or something like that?

[00:19:15] Nuar Alsadir:
Smartypants.

[00:19:16] Chris Duffy:
Smartypants, yes.

[00:19:18] Nuar Alsadir:
It, that was on the first day. The real naming of your clown happens at the end of the program where you, you get up on stage, and you're basically interviewed. You’re responding not only to what's happening in the moment, but it's a culmination of the character you've been revealing over the course of the program, and your clown gets named, and that is a really horrific experience. I was called Smartypants on the first day because when we were in going around the circle introducing ourselves, I said I was a psychoanalyst, and I was writing a book about laughter, and I was doing research and I was there to do my research.

[00:20:06] Chris Duffy:
Mm-Hmm.

[00:20:07] Nuar Alsadir:
And then the instructor called me Smartypants and I was really trying to hide behind my intellect, and I felt belittled, and I wanted to drop out, but if I dropped out, I would've lost my money. And so I decided to stay and they wouldn't let me stay and observe. Uh, I had to participate, and I'm so grateful for that because none of this would've happened to me. I, I really was transformed by it.

Even the clown name was fascinating, so my clown name was Blah, like when you're at an audition and you get cut and you get bumped off the stage, and basically I was bumped off because I wasn't giving it my all. And if you're not gonna really give it your full effort, then don't take up the stage. Get off the stage. And that was a great lesson for me because I carried it over into life. And it's true. If you're not gonna really bring it, don't waste everyone's time.

[00:21:13] Chris Duffy:
Something that I, I just find so, uh, delightful about talking to you and about your book and, and about these ideas are even the fact that, like, you went to clown school and had this really profound experience that aligned with the work that you were doing as a poet and as a psychoanalyst, and yet, it wasn't like you were in clown school for five years that required you to move to Paris.

I, I think that's actually to me, significantly better because at least in the, the kind of media that I consume in the world that I live in, I, I hear a lot of people talk about going on like a meditation retreat or something like that. I haven't personally done it, but that's something that kind of feels like, oh, oh yeah, people talk about that.

And this is kind of similar time, similar cost, similar world. It's a whole new way to achieve some of the same things that I think people are looking for from those places.

[00:22:04] Nuar Alsadir:
Yeah, and I think to do something that you're not an expert in, I think this is one of the other myths of growing up, is that once you grow up, you do the thing that you do and you're supposed to be an expert, and you just get better and better and better at it, and you don't learn anything else.

That's your definition. But when you're a kid, you try this, you try that. You go to to theater camp, you try riding horses, maybe you try skateboarding, and the world is open to you. And I think that's one of the really sad things about this myth of growing up, that suddenly everything shuts down. And you're supposed to take your position and perfect it and repeat it and behave and then it's all over.

[00:23:00] Chris Duffy:
Yeah.

[00:23:01] Nuar Alsadir:
Where’s the joy?

[00:23:02] Chris Duffy:
Exactly. And um, so we've talked about Donald Winnicott a few times. A lot of the, his writing and philosophical underpinning have really influenced your thinking about clown and self and laughter. Like he provided a lot of the psychoanalytic framework that you use to think about these ideas.

[00:23:20] Nuar Alsadir:
Well, I really admire his contribution to psychoanalysis, in part because he worked so much with children, and there's so much kindness in his, in his work. And he had this, he had a few ideas that I feel are invaluable in my thinking.

Not only my psychoanalytic thinking, but even my parenting or my interpersonal relationships. One of them is this idea of a holding environment, and that's what he suggested an analyst should provide for the patient, which is a space where they can be themselves, and they can express whatever emotions they have, and you accept and receive everything equally so you don't value someone more when they're happy than if they're depressed. You receive them in the same way so that people start to feel like they can bring anything to you and they don't have to put up a facade or the false self and give you what they, what they imagine you want from them in order to gain your love the way an infant gives the mother, what it imagines the mother wants from it in order to gain her love.

We go through our lives in so many ways, trying to quickly read the codes and give people what we think they want from us. But what if you didn't have to do that and instead you could feel like there were spaces where you could just be yourself and that would be valued. And to give that space to someone, it allows them the space to figure out who they are if they weren't offered that space as a child, as most people were not.

[00:25:13] Chris Duffy:
You also have this quote that I know really resonates with a lot of people. “It is a joy to be hidden, but a disaster not to be found.” Can you talk about what that means?

[00:25:26] Nuar Alsadir:
It, it's so liberating to feel like you, you are hiding. And it's a classic game with kids. I mean, peekaboo, hide and go seek. And even, I used to be a dancer and when I was in college, my troupe was rehearsing a performance, and it was the day before and our leader had us all wear masks as we were rehearsing and with my face covered, I felt like my body was hyper-alive and free, and that's just my face being hidden.

There is some liberation in being hidden, but then there, if you were hidden and stuck in your hiding place, like imagine hide and go seek if no one's looking for you. And you don't know if the game is still going on, and you're stuck in your hiding place and then you realize that no one's looking for you, then that's the disaster, not to be found.

It's only fun to be hidden if someone's looking for you and wants to find you. And in, to connect it to clown, to be seen. To be on stage, not with a facade and not with your armor, but to let that fall to the ground and to be exposed and seen and appreciated, that is the best feeling. And that's what's so powerful about spontaneous outbursts of laughter.

The Duchenne laughter, as the scientists call it, which is the kind of laughter that overtakes your body. You don't even know why you're laughing most of the time, but you can't stop your bellyaches, tears run down your cheeks. That kind of laughter also causes you to drop your armor to the floor because you can't control what you look like, what you sound like, all sorts of noises come out of you.

And also liquids, are you leaky in all sorts of ways, and it's pleasure. And anybody who's nearby starts laughing too. It's contagious.

[00:27:53] Chris Duffy:
For people who are listening and they're convinced of this, what are some things that they should do to apply this into their own lives?

[00:28:02] Nuar Alsadir:
I would say: how can you get in touch with your true self? And maybe another way of putting it is how can you awaken your clown or your unconscious? In psychoanalysis, what I do if someone doesn't really have access is I ask them to try and start remembering their dreams, to write them down, even if it's just an image or a feeling or a sensation, to listen to their daydream as though they’re dreams, waking reveries, and jot them down.

Also, pay attention to intrusive thoughts, or if you don't have access to any of those things, you can pay attention to scenes or moments in TV shows or movies or books that create a strong feeling in you, especially anxiety. Jot it down and then to unpack it. Of course, unpacking it is a little bit more difficult.

I'd like to say some people are like metal detectors. They can beep because there's something beneath the surface. But metal detectors don't do more than beep. They don't dig, they don't analyze. They just beep. And I guess the first order would be to develop your skills of detection and learn how to beep when there's something beneath the surface. And then you wanna figure out how to dig.

[00:29:43] Chris Duffy:
What do you personally do or what do you recommend someone should do when you detect yourself going into the false self? When you see yourself reacting and you're like, “That's not, that's me putting up the, the false self. That's not me being honest and true.”

[00:29:56] Nuar Alsadir:
Socially, if I am putting my false self forward, I try to ask myself what I am defending against. It's usually because I feel some kind of threat. If it is armor, then you put your armor on because you're going into dangerous territory. So what am I threatened by?

For example, with social anxiety, we assume that someone has social anxiety because they're nervous about being social. It's some kind of, uh, shyness. But often it's trickier and more twisted than that. For example, if someone has a natural exhibitionistic impulse, but they've been raised with the idea that being an exhibitionist is a bad thing, they may defend against their exhibitionism, so they keep themselves out of the situation where they might jump on stage and start performing.

[00:31:09] Chris Duffy:
Hmm.

[00:31:10] Nuar Alsadir:
It, it would then be dealt with differently than someone who is actually shy. Maybe what the exhibitionist needs to do is understand why they're defending against their exhibitionism, experiment with releasing it. That was one of the things in clown school that was really valuable also, was we were told to move to a part of our talent we weren't comfortable with.

Someone might not be comfortable as an exhibitionist, but that may be a superpower, and people may love to witness their exhibitionistic performances, and they may tamping down on them, or they may be repressing those impulses because they feel like they're bad or they've been taught that they're bad, but maybe they're really golden.What's wrong with being an exhibitionist?

[00:32:12] Chris Duffy:
You know, this is obviously in the context of performance, but I try in my own comedy to kind of be, I’m not even sure I would say clean, but like wholesome, right? That, like, I don't want people to be turned away. One of my friends, someone who knows me really well and has known me for a long time was pointing out that there was some falseness, right, some space between, like, what I was willing to say on stage and what I was willing to say off stage.

And he des—he described my comedy as “pervertedly nonsexual,” and I thought that that is like a hilarious, well, first of all, a hilarious roast. And also like very funny to be like, “You've identified that you like won't say things that you are concerned about in these particular ways.”

And then two women who similarly kind of perform very like clean, kind of ridiculous absurdist comedy. They organized a, a, a one time late night show that was like the “dirty show” where it was all comedians who never tell dirty jokes, who would perform dirty material that, like, of course we hadn't written before. And it was one of the funniest shows I've ever been on and laughed the hardest because we were all so profoundly uncomfortable with what we were doing.

And the audience knew going in that these are gonna be people who are uncomfortable with what you're doing. And as a result, you know, there is this really cathartic release. And obviously, that's in the context of performing. But I think that finding those spaces where you have fear or shame and then finding a safe, socially acceptable way to explore them, that’s something that anyone can do.

[00:33:36] Nuar Alsadir:
Yeah. If you were in clown school, you would be given the song “I Have a Naughty Secret.”

[00:33:44] Chris Duffy:
Hahaha. Yeah. Even just hearing that, I'm like, oh, my blood pressure just shot through the roof as I'm like, I do not wanna sing that song.

[00:33:52] Nuar Alsadir:
Yeah. You would have to get up on stage and just riff.

[00:33:55] Chris Duffy:
Well, thank you so much for being on the show. It has been such a pleasure and I'm truly telling you, like, Animal Joy is such a fantastic book. I, we've interviewed a lot of people whose books I love, but I don't think we've ever interviewed someone who I've bought more copies of this book and given to, to other people because I feel like everyone should read it. So thank you so much for being here and for making the time.

[00:34:14] Nuar Alsadir:
Thank you so much for having me.

[00:34:21] Chris Duffy: 

That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest, Nuar Alsadir. Her book is called Animal Joy, and I cannot recommend it enough.

I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and other projects at chrisduffycomedy.com.

How to Be a Better Human is brought to you on the TED side by a clown car filled with Daniella Balarezo, Banban Cheng, Cloe Shasha Brooks, and Joseph DeBrine. This episode was fact checked by analysts of the truth, Julia Dickerson and Matheus Salles.

And on the PRX side, our show is put together by a team who encourage animal laughter and also do their best to cut it down into human laughter by the time they put the final mix together. Morgan Flannery, Noor Gill, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzales.

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