Friends, Romans, Comedians

To be driven by success also means to have a competitive soul. Always looking for a way to do better, to improve upon mistakes made in the past, and constantly comparing yourself to others. It’s an attribute most useful in sports or perhaps, if you’re satan, politics. Art, in all forms, to me never seemed to have much room for competitiveness. At my most pretentious, I like to believe that “true” art is only achieved in something of a silo, a monk-like state of being where the artist becomes one with their nature, where any type of competition or jealousy takes away from the beauty of it. There is that old saying, “comparison is the thief of joy,” and while that’s probably true, most great writing, painting, and music of history have all come out of a desire to show someone else that they aren’t shit. Comedian, writer, and actor Ryan Arrison showed me that there’s another way of looking at competitiveness that isn’t so black and white.

“Once I found the thing I cared about, which was comedy, I was like, oh — I’m competitive with myself to get better,” he told me at the Brooklyn Public Library. Rain threatened to ruin our walking interview, so instead we opted for one of the last places of free refuge. Dozens of people escaped the rain with us, gathering by the closed coffee shop, hoping to dry off a little. One of the first things Ryan ever told me about himself was that he was competitive, but sitting across from him at the library, partially wet, I would’ve never guessed such an easy-going guy to have such a fire in him. I myself have a competitive streak, so much so that it kind of ruins the fun of creating for me. But Ryan looks at it as something internal, a constant effort to be better than the version of himself before, which seems to give him great satisfaction. If self-competition is what encourages him to get better, community is what keeps him around and he’s in a lot of them. “People community hop, in a good way. It’s nice to exist in all of them. Sometimes it’s great to hang out with comedians for a night, but it’s also great to be in a room with screenwriters who want to ask you about being a comedian.”

Ryan definitely comes across to me as the type of person that can fit in with anyone, however, that doesn’t mean he feels like he belongs everywhere. “I was the news anchor host for my middle school and I always put a funny spin on it. I just couldn’t do the sixth grade news seriously. It physically couldn’t be done seriously. I remember getting bad grades in the news class because they were like, ‘Ryan, you can’t take this seriously.’ And I was like, so I probably shouldn’t do something I’m being forced to take seriously,” he lamented. I enjoy a person who can’t commit to anything considered “real.” The biggest irony of all is that Ryan takes comedy, his communities, and the world at large very seriously. It’s part of a trend I’ve been noticing, where the people who want to goof off the most, take the world’s problems the most seriously. My theory is that funny people work hard to fix the world, so they can go back to a world where they can feel funny again. Odds are the person who cures cancer is also a person with a great sense of humor.

Ryan also cares about his audiences and knows that the priority, his job, is to make people laugh. “I think it’s just the job of a comedian to know where the audience is and meet them there.” And as much as I love how considerate Ryan is of others around him, I’m most impressed with his ability to stay positive and motivated. “I’m actively tricking myself too. I’ve just learned that it’s way easier for things to happen if I manifest them in any sort of way.”