Hello,

I hope you’re well. I don’t know where to start this. The last few months, I’ve been mostly on a single creative track, which is very unusual for me. Most of the time, it’s trying to figure out where the impulses are leading, and if need be, attempting to corral them in one direction or another. Between stand-up, sketch comedy, music, podcasts, photography, fiction, collage, essays, “poems”, books, and more obscure projects, it can be hard to keep up with it. And I say this not to surreptitiously say that I am this artistic paragon and polymath – I’m barely passable at most of this stuff. I’m just interested in a lot of things. It’s a lot of navel gazing, I guess.

I’m always reticent to say that I’m artist. Feels gross and high-falutin’. I’m more liable to say that I participate in the arts. I just realized how much I’m saying “I” in this so far. Yuck. I was talking to my girlfriend, as I do sometimes, and grousing about… something. And I said “Don’t get involved in the arts, Emily. It’ll leave you heartbroken and with a pathological need to do more.” I’ve been thinking about the nature of art and creativity a lot lately. Bo Burnham’s third appearance on You Made it Weird with Pete Holmes is a really interesting talk about this. Part of me feels like it’s a sickness. Then you vomit it out, because your body is trying to get rid of it, but it only leaves the body sicker. Maybe the actors who retire and just live the rest of their lives have it figured out. Why can’t I just be a person? Look at a bus bench. Walk around. Fart in a hat. (What?)

There’s a lovely quote from Martha Graham. It’s quite long, as it’s part of a letter to a friend, but she says “It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions.” Maybe. Feels good to hear those things. I encourage you to Google it.

So what has this one track been? I’m making a movie. A full-on, 4K, feature-length, pitch-to-festivals comedy showcase special and documentary. Never done anything like this before. Hey, did you know making a movie is hard? Lil bit. I want to support and champion Canadian, local artists whom I love. It took a few people saying I need to be in it to convince me to do a set as well. Otherwise, I would’ve been too busy freaking out. And I think that’s why I enjoy this and it feels so good – it feels very outside of myself. Comedy feels very “me”, but music (cos I suck at it) and other art projects feel very much like they exist outside of myself. I’m not a spiritual person, but some projects TELL YOU what they need to be. And though this is a lot of people coming together to make something cool, it’s a lot of “Taylor’s doing this, Taylor’s doing that”, which is fine, I guess. Mostly, I just think the thing needs to exist. And, if through me, okay.

Thanks for your support on this. The crowdfund campaign ends tomorrow. I gotta get to work, but here all the relevant links.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-mixtape-a-comedy-showcase-concert-film/x/10669241#/

https://tickets.admitonelive.com/event/mixtape-vancouver-7337356/listing

Cheers,

Taylor