Tig Notaro's "Cancer" Set

Wow. New York, huh? Needless to say, it's been a surreal week. I have been so lucky to be minimally affected by Hurricane Sandy. Both my apartment and studio were unharmed, we didn't lose power or heat, and I don't drive, so I have not personally dealt with the gas shortage. At the same time, so many people around me are suffering and it's impossible not to feel for everyone around me. It's especially frustrating as a fellow New Yorker, because none of us are able to get to the places that need the most help with the trains down and no gas to get our cars to the places that need us. If anyone is looking for a good place to donate money, these guys have been doing lots of good things, getting to Staten Island and the Rockaways when even FEMA wasn't able to mobilize in time.  It's exciting and moving when a grassroots effort can have such an impact, and Occupy Sandy is proving an inspiration  This post isn't going to be all about the hurricane, but I wanted to make mention of it before moving on to lighter things, because while I sit in my warm apartment writing this, there are so many people in the outer boroughs, and of course, the projects of Brooklyn and Manhattan that are cold and hungry, and need our help.

Ok! Enough of that bummer stuff. Or actually, maybe in total keeping with it, I have become absolutely obsessed this week with listening and re-listening to Tig Notaro's thirty minute Largo "Cancer" set. This set is exactly as it sounds; the incredible comedian Tig Notaro recently got onstage at Largo, and did a thirty minute comedy routine about receiving, that afternoon, a diagnosis of breast cancer.

Maybe one of the best people ever?

Louis C.K explains it very well on his website. A few months ago, he was also doing a set at Largo and ran into Tig getting ready to go onstage. He asked her how she'd been, and she said that, well, she'd just that day been diagnosed with breast cancer. He was of course deeply upset by that news,  and asked her if she had anyone that could take care of her during this time. She said, well, yeah, she'd had her mom, but she'd just died a few weeks ago after falling down the stairs. Then she pointed to a scribbled on paper in her hands and said, basically, "well, now I'm gonna go talk about all this onstage."

I can't say this next bit better than Louis C.K. can (and honestly, who could?), so here is what he says:

"I stood in the wings behind a leg of curtain, about 8 feet from her, and watched her tell a stunned audience "hi. I have cancer. Just found out today. I'm going to die soon". What followed was one of the greatest standup performances I ever saw. I can't really describe it but I was crying and laughing and listening like never in my life. Here was this small woman standing alone against death and simply reporting where her mind had been and what had happened and employing her gorgeously acute standup voice to her own death.

The show was an amazing example of what comedy can be. A way to visit your worst fears and laugh at them. Tig took us to a scary place and made us laugh there. Not by distracting us from the terror but by looking right at it and just turning to us and saying "wow. Right?". She proved that everything is funny. And has to be. And she could only do this by giving us her own death as an example. So generous."

This set is everything Louis says it is. Tig has such a succinct way of saying things that feel incredibly complex, and she's had quite a year to prove this. For some time I've been a fan of her podcast Professor Blastoff, which is a fun, round table discussion with fellow comedians Kyle Dunnigan (Sarah Silverman's Boyfriend...oooh, sexyyy) and David Huntsberger about sciency kinds of things with a funny spin.  But in the past six months the podcast has gotten increasingly personal as first Tig's mother passed away unexpectedly, Tig then came down with a sever intestinal disease called C. diff, then got broken up with by her girlfriend, and was then diagnosed with breast cancer. FUNNY, right!? Yet somehow, it was, and it is. As Louie said, it has to be.

As Tig says, "It's OK."

As an innate brooder, I so easily go to woe-is-me mode about the littlest things, and this set Tig did is so important to come back to. Everything, especially death, is funny, because it's all so inherently absurd.

I highly, so highly, recommend you download this set for a measly $5.00 here. A bunch of the money is going to cancer research, and besides that, we should all get paid a fare wage for the work we create, am I right ya'll? I promise you it will be a worthwhile $5.00 because this set is mood/mind altering.

Check out Tig's website here.

Also, while you're at it, check out the inimitable Louis C.K.'s website here.