All language subtitles for Masterclass David Sedaris Teaches Storytelling and Humor - 09.Ending With Weight

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Often when I read
aloud from my diary,

people laugh, and then they
don't remember anything

anymore.

I remember my sister Amy
used to be at Second City,

and I would go to her
shows, and I would

laugh and laugh and laugh.

But when I left, I
couldn't remember anything.

So I feel like sorrow often
gives weight to the humor

and makes it more memorable.

But you don't want to
be formulaic about it,

because then it just
becomes a gimmick,

and it doesn't mean
anything anymore.

But I think I'm naturally drawn
to kind of what's sad, or grim,

or depressing about something.

And when I find it, when
I can put my hands on it,

and I can put it in an
essay, those are the essays

that people remember.

And I want the essays
to mean something.

It's not always going to happen.

There's nothing wrong
with just laughing.

But I think the
difference is when

I've started out as a writer,
I just wanted people to laugh.

And then after a while,
I thought, well, OK.

I know I know how to do that.

What if I try for
something more?

What if I try to move
people, in a way?

What if I try to engage
them in that way?

And I wasn't so desperate.

Like, I look at some
of my earlier writing,

and I just see someone who's
so desperate for a laugh.

And I want to say to that
person, gosh, just calm down.

It's OK.

My father said to me a
million times, don't force it.

And he was talking about me
trying to force a knob back

onto the television,
or trying to--

but it is good advice.

Don't force it.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I'm often asked what
writers I admire,

and there are any number
of writers that I admire.

But a person who really
had a profound impact on me

was Whoopi Goldberg.

Whoopi Goldberg did a
Broadway show in 1983 or 1984,

and I remember it
aired on on HBO.

And we had a tape of it, and
I must have watched that tape

40 times.

And what I liked was that
she did different characters.

And then you would laugh,
and you would laugh,

and you would laugh.

And then something
would happen, and you

would feel like such a
monster for having laughed.

And you would just
think, oh my god.

What kind of person am I?

It wasn't so
distracting that you

were unable to continue
with what she was saying,

but I love laughter that kind
of turns around and becomes

something else, like
a joke that becomes

a finger that points at you.

It's a worthwhile question,
what kind of person am I?

And I don't mean to be the kind
of author that says to people,

what kind of person are you?

I don't want to be a scold.

I don't want to be a nag.

But often, I'm the
one in the essay.

I'm the example of somebody
who was laughing and laughing.

And then I realize, oh, maybe
it's not such a joke after all.

So there's a sound
the audience makes,

and there's a way I feel
reading it out loud,

there's no greater pleasure than
reading the correct ending out

loud in front of an audience for
the first time, and having it

work, and you just
feel like a king.

Even if you realize, OK, I
still need to cut two pages out

of this, or I need to
pick up the middle,

or I need to do this.

If you've got your
ending, gosh, that's

just a beautiful feeling.

The danger is writing
something that just stops

instead of something that ends.

I like the audience to
make a little noise.

That's what I like, at the end.

I like to make a little
noise that's almost

like you were kicked
in the stomach,

but like not by a grown
man, but more like a baby.

Like, the ending,
it just hit you.

The ending hit you.

It wasn't displayed.

It came out and actually
did physical damage to you.

I like that kind of an ending.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Your sister dies giving
birth in the hospital.

What is the ending--

her funeral, when she's put
in the ground, a year later,

four years later?

You know, one thing
kids like to do--

and you see this all the time--

is teenagers will write a story
that the alarm clock bolted

Frederic from a sound sleep.

They write stories that begin
with a character waking up

and end with a character
going to bed that night.

And I think they're
just thinking

of a day as a good
beginning and end point,

but it's ridiculous, really.

I mean, it would be a
good little assignment

to write an essay that would
begin with you waking up

and end with you going to bed.

But it's hard to imagine
doing it in an unironic way

and writing that
essay without sort

of making fun of
the whole precept,

because there are so
many endings, right?

There are so many endings
to every situation.

Your sister dies giving
birth, and she's buried.

And two weeks later,
you have a car accident.

Your sister dies in giving
birth, and is buried,

and you are arrested
for drunk driving

on the anniversary of her death.

I mean, or you wake
up the next morning,

and you listen to the radio,
and that's your ending.

So again, because there
is no prescribed ending

to your life, often your
ending, it's just made of air.

It's just made of words.

And so often on my
drafts, at the beginning

underlined is end, underlined,
underlined, underlined.

Like, the ending just
didn't feel earned to me,

or it felt rushed to me,
or it felt cloying to me.

And sometimes, I will
spend weeks on the ending.

And then I'll think, all right.

Obviously, I made a
wrong turn somewhere,

because I can't seem
to find the end.

So I'll go back three pages,
throw everything after three--

let's say I'll go
back to page nine,

throw everything else away, and
then take a different direction

on page nine.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I wrote an essay called
"The Spirit World,"

and it began with my
sister Amy telling me

that she'd gone to a
psychic and telling me

what the psychic had said.

And I was with my family, and
we were at this beach house.

And it was one of those
essays that I just

couldn't get the
ending, and I just

felt like I made a
wrong turn somewhere.

So Amy had gone to this
psychic who told her

that she had contacted
our sister Tiffany who

had committed suicide,
and my sister had messages

for us, right?

And that led to me writing
about how I don't really

kind of believe in
that sort of thing.

But the psychic had
mentioned, had asked Amy,

did I have a lot of
butterflies in my house?

Which is sort of
crazy, because my house

was full of butterflies.

They come in in the fall.

They fly into the
house, and then

they just are living there.

And then when you
turn the heat up,

they kind of come back to life,
and they're looking for a way

to get out, dozens and dozens
of butterflies in my house.

So again, I'm not the kind
of person who believes--

I don't want to
believe in psychics.

I don't want to open
myself to that possibility.

I just am one of those people.

I don't-- so I wrote this essay.

And again, I was pounding
on it and pounding on it.

And then I went back.

I said, OK, what happens if
you go back three pages, right?

And when I went
back three pages,

I found myself writing
about the last time

I saw my sister Tiffany.

And I was doing a show at
Symphony Hall in Boston,

and I hadn't spoken to her for
like five years by that point.

We'd had a big falling out.

And I was getting ready to go
into the lobby and sign books,

and I heard, David, David.

It's me, your sister, Tiffany.

And there she was.

And there was a man
backstage whose job

it was to look after me.

And I said, will you
close that door, please?

And he closed the door
in my sister's face,

and I never saw her
or spoke to her again.

And I didn't mean to
write that in the essay.

It's not-- I don't think
shameful is the right word.

I mean, when you have a
difficult relationship

with somebody, or if
you've got somebody

in your family who's
difficult like that,

it's understandable in a way,
but it sounds really bad.

And once I had written
it, I couldn't unwrite it.

And it just felt
like I was a liar

if I didn't include
that in the essay,

even though I knew
that a lot of people

were going to really
hate me for it, or think,

well, you're not the
person I thought you were.

And that is indeed what
wound up happening,

but it just felt
false to erase it.

But once I included
it, then I immediately

had an ending to
my story, my essay.

And it wasn't the ending
that I had before,

and it went into a
completely different place.

But that can often happen.

I often do that to myself.

And I'll take an
essay, and I'll think,

what if I dug deeper here?

What if I sacrificed my laugh?

What if instead of
getting a laugh here,

I say what I really felt, or I
admit to how I honestly felt?

And I think that that always
makes it a better essay.

And I think it makes
it easier for people--

I was going to say
it makes it easier

for them to relate to you,
but I don't know that it does.

I mean, you're certainly showing
the world that you are fallible

and that you are not
always a great person.

For me to sort of explain
why I did what I did

would have added another
three pages to the essay.

It would have felt
like me, well,

justifying what I had done.

And it just would
have stood out,

and it would have
distracted from the story,

so I just didn't include it.

But it's funny, you know,
I heard from so many people

after that book came out.

And I heard from
so many people who

have a mentally ill
person in their family.

And they'll say,
I read that essay,

and I felt so close to you.

They seem to understand.

It was the people
without that, I think,

that just saw somebody
being cruel and shutting

the door in somebody's face.

But often, it's the case
when you have somebody

like that in your family,
you learn over time

to kind of protect
yourself, and to say, OK,

I can't do this right now.

Like, if I talk to
this person, I'm

going to be paying for it
for the next several months.

It's going to be the
last thing on my mind

when I go to bed
and the first thing

when I wake up in the
morning, because it's not

going to be pretty.

And so when I had the
door shut, I didn't mean,

I will never talk to you again.

I just meant, I will call
you when my tour is over.

And then when the
tour was over, there

was another excuse not to call,
and another excuse not to call,

and then she committed suicide.

But it was not pretty,
but it's not really

your job to be
pretty all the time.

It seems there was a
perfectly good explanation

for all the butterflies
in our Sussex house

the previous winter.

From what I'd read
since Amy brought it up,

they flew in through our
windows in early autumn,

then passed into a
kind of hibernation.

Hugh and I were away until
right before Christmas.

And when we returned
and cranked up the heat,

the butterflies, mainly tortoise
shells, dozens and dozens

of them, awoke,
wrongly believing

that spring had arrived.

They were on all
the second floor

windows batting against the
panes, desperate to get out.

As symbols go, they're
a bit too sweet.

Right for Lisa, but
all wrong for Tiffany,

who'd have been
better represented

by something more dynamic--

crows, maybe.

Two big ones flew down
the chimney of my office

that winter and tore the
place apart, systematically

overturning and then shitting
on everything I cared about.

What, I wondered, placing the
cucumbers back over my eyes,

with my symbol be?

The last time I saw
my sister Tiffany

was at the stage door at
Symphony Hall in Boston.

I had just finished
a show and was

getting ready to sign books when
I heard her say, David, David.

It's me.

We hadn't spoken in four
years at that point,

and I was shocked
by her appearance.

Tiffany always looked like
my mother when she was young.

Now, she looks
like my mother when

she was old, though at
the time, she couldn't

have been more than 45.

It's me, Tiffany.

She held up a paper bag
with a Starbucks logo on it.

Her shoes looked like she'd
found them in a trash can.

I have something for you.

There was a security guard
holding the stage door open,

and I said to him, will
you close that please?

I had filled the
house that night.

I was in charge, Mr. Sedaris.

The door, I repeated, I'd
like for you to close it now.

And so the man did.

He shut the door in
my sister's face,

and I never saw her
or spoke to her again.

Not when she was evicted
from her apartment,

not when she was
raped, not when she

was hospitalized after
her first suicide attempt.

She was, I told myself,
someone else's problem.

I couldn't deal
with her anymore.

Well, the rest of my family
said, it was Tiffany.

Don't be too hard on yourself.

We all know how she can be.

Perhaps like the
psychic, they were just

telling me what
I needed to hear,

something to ease my
conscience, and make

me feel that
underneath it all, I'm

no different from anyone else.

They've always done
that for me, my family.

It's what keeps me coming back.