The Sacred Clown: From Hysteria to Hysterical When Writing Humor and Satire

I wrote “The Bad Thing,” the opening piece in After the Rapture, in 2015, in a world spinning from the Sandy Hook shooting, the latest in a disturbing and increasingly horrible trend. Both my children were school age at the time, my youngest in elementary school, and active shooter safety drills and lockdowns had become commonplace for American children.

Like many others, I was frustrated with what felt like limited options to respond–yelling into the echo chamber that is social media or sending thoughts and prayers. Neither were doing a whole lot.

I remember 9/11. I was making coffee when I got the call–turn on your television. I remember the shock of that week. And I remember The Onion—god bless The Onion—putting out a very timely edition, with headlines like: “Not Knowing What Else to Do, Woman Bakes American-Flag Cake” and “U.S. Vows to Defeat Whoever It Is We’re At War With.” In the wake of such grief, it was the first time I really understood the power of humor to address and release what none of us had been able to articulate.

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Humor can tell us the truth in ways that cannot always be said straight. Remember, it was the court jester who was able to tell the king what he could not hear from others. Humor, when done well, allows us to see the devastation without averting our eyes while also illuminating the future seeds of hope. Remember: There are always seeds of hope.

So, I knew this project would have to become a sort of sacred clown in order to say anything new about a world that honestly felt like it was falling apart. From 2015 to 2020 you could hardly wake up without hearing more horrible news: The planet is burning. The animals are disappearing. A reality television star is running one of the most powerful countries in the world. Deportations. Exiles. Unchecked racism. Institutionalized sexism. Bill Cosby! I kept hearing Bill Murray’s character in Ghostbusters saying: “Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!”

So … where’s the line between hysteria and hysterical? I was about to find out.

For four years I let humor and satire guide me through the waves of the project. And what is satire but a way of seeing/feeling into the dark future for the edge, then going beyond that edge. To follow the ley lines of the disaster and keep asking how could this get worse?

I balanced on that line until March 2020, when I finally wrote THE END.

You remember March 2020, right?

Krikey! Now what happens when you’ve written an entire satirical world into existence! I’d spent years pushing the edge, I thought. But now it was happening: the grocery store shelves, the panicked governments, unchecked consumerism. The people in my world had been waiting for The Rapture and now it was upon us. I watched my whole manuscript go up in flames. I was too late.

After nearly a year of abandoning the project (and the depression that follows a writer who isn’t writing) I decided to see if it was salvageable. I rented a house in the middle of the New Mexican desert with a plan: Emptiness. Coyotes. Pink and orange sunsets. Stars without light pollution. And me and The Rapture alone again, trying to figure out if there was something worth saving between us.

I arrived on January 6, 2021.

You remember January 6, 2021, right?

I didn’t have a television, but it didn’t take long for me to hear of the situation at the Capitol. And honestly, my first thought was: Here we go again! In After the Rapture, the people, desperate for the Rapture that hasn’t come, storm a Marriott and take all the religious leaders hostage. It was one of the few pieces that hadn’t “come true”—yet.

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And in that moment, it became clear what I needed to do: If the manuscript was going to stay relevant, I was going to have to feel even further into the future than I ever had before. Our collective karma had already shown up at the door. We were already swimming in the tragedy of the pandemic. What we needed now, desperately, was hope. A new vision of a world after the Madness, after the Rapture.

Humor or not, this is the real job of the artist: to be a kind of visionary. I take this role very seriously, and I’m also 100 percent aware that inspired art doesn’t come from me (or you, him, her, them), it comes through us. Our job is to catch it and land it safely onto the page. The work always arrives with its own blueprint, its own DNA. And when we give it autonomy, when we get out of our own way and embrace radical curiosity and wonder … that’s when something profound can happen.

For those 10 days in the New Mexico desert, I listened to the story speak to me. I also listened to Alison Krauss’ “Down by the River” on repeat. And I realized the real ending of the book had already been written, it just needed to be moved to the end.

Today this book releases into the world of 2023–three years after the pandemic changed our lives, and almost eight years since I started. The tragedies and triumphs have continued. The line between reality and ridiculous continues to fluctuate. The hysteria has become hysterical and back, like a baby who goes from crying to laughing and back. We face a new, ever-changing set of circumstances almost daily. The question is: Do we go to the edge screaming or laughing?

If we forget how to laugh, then we also forget how to dream. In every moment, we can choose to participate again. Then in doubt: Choose hope.

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