Hannah Gadsby: Nanette Page #4

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Could you imagine me

working in a gallery

with an asymmetrical woolen poncho

with an aggressive... fringe?

Nasty jewelry, having the opinion?

No. There's... You know,

art history is highbrow.

I don't belong in that world,

I'm not from that world.

I'm not from money, or even that

much chat, if I'm honest, but...

high art, you know, that's what

elevates and civilizes people.

You know, galleries, the

ballet, the the-a-ter.

All these things, you

go there, you get better.

Comedy? Lowbrow.

Well, I'm sorry to inform you,

but nobody here is leaving

this room a better person.

We're just rolling around

in our own sh*t here, people.

But I... A couple of years ago, a

man came up to me after... my show.

He had an opinion.

Lesbians give feedback.

Men? Opinions.

Now, in the show, I'd spoken about

taking antidepressant medication,

and he had an opinion on that.

Now, interestingly,

I'd also spoken about how

unhelpful unsolicited advice is

in a... mental health plan, but

he mustn't have heard that bit.

He came up to me after the

show to give me his opinion.

He said, "You shouldn't take

medication because you're an artist.

It's important that you feel."

He said, "If Vincent van Gogh

had have taken medication,

we wouldn't have the sunflowers."

I never, ever, ever thought

that my art history degree

would ever come in handy.

But, oh, my lord.

I tore that man a college

debt-sized new arsehole.

I said, "Good opinion, mate.

Except that he did medicate. A lot.

He self-medicated a lot. He drank a lot.

He even nibbled on his own paints.

Problem.

And also, you know what else?

He didn't just paint sunflowers,

he did quite a few

portraits of psychiatrists.

Not even random ones.

Psychiatrists who were treating him.

And medicating him.

And there's one particular portrait

of one particular psychiatrist,

and he's holding a flower,

and it isn't a sunflower.

It's a foxglove.

And that foxglove forms

part of a medication

that Van Gogh... took for epilepsy.

And that derivative of the foxglove

plant medi-f***ing-cation... "

I must have skipped a dose

that day 'cause I was feeling.

"The derivative of the foxglove,

if you overdose it a bit,

you know what happens?

You can experience the color

yellow a little too intensely.

So perhaps... we have the

sunflowers precisely because...

Van Gogh medicated.

What do you honestly

think, mate?" I said.

"That creativity means you must suffer?

That is the burden of creativity?

Just so you can enjoy it?

F*** you, mate. If you

like sunflowers so much,

buy a bunch and jerk

off into a geranium."

Know what he said?

He goes,

"No need to be so sensitive."

I'm not being sensitive. I'm an artist.

That's feeling.

"Don't be so sensitive."

That is the most common

nugget of advice I get.

'Cause I'm a very sensitive person.

And I get told to "stop being

so sensitive" an awful lot.

And it is always yelled.

Which I find very insensitive.

I don't get it.

"Stop being so sensitive."

I don't understand.

Why is insensitivity

something to strive for?

I happen to know that my sensitivity

is my strength. I know that.

It's my sensitivity that's helped me

navigate a very difficult path in life.

So when somebody tells me

to "stop being so sensitive,"

you know what? I feel

a little bit like a nose

being lectured by a fart.

Not the problem.

I feel like, in a comedy show,

there's no room for the

best part of the story...

which is the ending.

You know, in order to finish on a laugh,

you know, you have to

end... with punch lines.

Like, take my coming-out

story, for example.

The best part of that story

is the fact that Mum and I have

a wonderful relationship now.

More than mother and daughter,

we're friends, we trust each other.

Look what I did to the room. No tension.

You're just going, "Good on you.

Got a good relationship

with your mum, have you?

Can you go back to the tension?

That was hilarious."

But, yeah, Mum said to

me last year, she said,

"I'm very proud... that I raised

you kids without religion."

I'd love to give you

guys context on that,

but that's not how my

mum runs a conversation.

I have no idea why she

brought that up in Target.

No idea.

She said, "I'm very proud that I

raised you kids without religion

because, you know, I've raised five

children with minds of their own."

And I've just sort

of gone, "Good on you.

What aren't you proud of, Mum?"

I was home for a week. We had time.

Because Mum and I have established jokes

around this difficult time in our life.

We really do. The banter, if you will.

I say things like, "Mum, you

made my life very difficult."

And she'll go, "Yeah, well, I

don't think I liked you very much."

And we laugh!

'Cause you've got to laugh. And...

But not this day. She went

quiet and... got tense.

But what my mum eventually said to me

is pretty much... at the core

of why I'm questioning... comedy.

She said to me, "The thing I regret

is that I raised you

as if you were straight.

I didn't know any

different. I am so sorry.

I'm so sorry.

I knew... well before you did...

that your life was going

to be so hard. I knew that,

and I wanted it more than anything

in the world not to be the case.

And I know I made it worse,

because I wanted you to change

because I knew the world wouldn't."

And I looked at my mum in that moment

and thought, "How did that happen?

How did my mum

get to be the hero of my story?"

She evolved.

I didn't.

See... I think part of my problem

is comedy has suspended me in a

perpetual state of adolescence.

The way I've been telling that story

is through jokes.

And stories... unlike

jokes, need three parts.

A beginning, a middle, and an end.

Jokes... only need two parts.

A beginning and a middle.

And what I had done, with that

comedy show about coming out,

was I froze an incredibly formative

experience at its trauma point

and I sealed it off into jokes.

And that story became a

routine, and through repetition,

that joke version fused with my

actual memory of what happened.

But unfortunately that joke version

was not nearly sophisticated enough

to help me undo the damage

done to me in reality.

Punch lines need trauma

because punch lines...

need tension, and tension feeds trauma.

I didn't come out to

my grandma last year

because I'm still ashamed of who I am.

Not intellectually.

But, right there,

I still have shame.

You learn from the part

of the story you focus on.

I need to tell my story properly.

Because the closet, for me, was

no easy thing... to come out of.

From the years 1989 to 1997, right?

This is ten years.

Effectively my adolescence.

Tasmania was at the center of

a very toxic national debate

about homosexuality and whether

or not it should be legalized.

And I'm from the northwest coast

of Tasmania, the Bible Belt.

Seventy percent of the

people... I lived amongst...

believe that homosexuality

should be... a criminal act.

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