The Thing About Being in a Coma, Part 1
Hella Immaculate is thoughts/FEELINGS, peculiar music, and actions to improve our world, from me, writer-performer-comedian Dave Maher.
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This is essay 1 of 4 in a series roughly overlapping the time I spent in a coma, October 22-November 17, 2014.
“Here’s the thing about being in a coma.”
I was at a reimagined version of Faust, staged in a Chicago apartment, where the actors mixed autobiographical monologues into the play. This one was about the actor going into a coma when she was little and hovering over her body in the hospital room.
That was “the thing.” She hovered. But she didn’t say she hovered. She said, “You hover over your body…”
And my kneejerk thought was, “Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG! You hovered. I didn’t! So clearly, that’s NOT the thing.”
It’s absurd to think there’d be the thing about anything. You can rarely reduce even the most shared human experiences to a single common point.
The thing about getting married is your wife leaves you at the altar.
The thing about playing the guitar is you write Purple Rain.
The thing about losing your virginity is you have to pee the whole time.
Like, what? The fuck are you talking about, “The thing about being in a coma…”?
But my second thought was a little jealousy-insecurity combo number. “Why didn’t I hover? Was my coma broken?”
My life was definitely broken before the coma. Active addiction and mismanaged type 1 diabetes (i.e. the main things) aside, I had just turned 30, and I was crumbling.
A couple snapshots from that summer:
Robins Williams died. It was suicide, I assumed from depression [note: not exactly]. High on a break at my job running a test prep center for preschoolers trying to get into elite kindergartens, I had the thought, “That could be me.”
I got a birthday email from a new friend in response to a request I’d made to help me figure out how to “get out of my own way.” It included these lines:
I don't know what it is, but you do seem to be giving off a vibe of holding back.
I think what's causing people to tell you that you need to get out of your own way is the cognitive dissonance people get when they talk to this like, smart and funny dude (you), who has a goal, and has a plan, but is just kind of sitting on the couch talking about it.
I think YOU think cutting down on smoking is part of what will help you move forward.
You gotta look in your inside heart and brain, man, and say out loud to yourself in the mirror what you find and then value yourself enough to move forward with it.
You know this. I know you know this. (And I know you are going to do something about it)
But I wasn’t doing shit about it, just talking. I was spinning.
I was going to work high, getting higher at work, doing standup at open mics at night or retreating to my bedroom with depression and getting even higher either way, and repeating. Every day.
I was hiding.
The thing people ask when they find out I was in a coma is, “Do you remember anything?” I’m not my Faust actor coma comrade, so my answer is “no.”
But on these anniversaries, I try to remind myself I’m living dates on the calendar I didn’t one year, and a couple days ago, I imagined, what could I have been thinking if the answer was, “yes”?
…Oh, my heart is hurting. The world has been a wave crashing at my neck for so long.
I didn’t know what to do. I just wanted a break, and now I’m stuck. Please forgive me, friends.
How could I have known what this would be? I went into it, like so many things, half aware. Now so tired, frozen in time, not knowing if I like it here or if I even want to leave.
At the end of that summer at the end of my 20s, I was exhausted. And the thing about being in a coma is you get to sleep.
This Week’s “This Is Your Afterlife”
Very simply, Annie Donley is one of the funniest comedy people alive. She’s my friend, but I’m not so biased I’d rank her TOP 3 for that.
As with all TIYA guests, Annie gets tender too. She describes the visceral, physical experience of mothering, and she’s willing to get reflective answering “Why even perform anymore?” after the what-more-attention-could-you-ever-need? experience of having a kid.
I’ll have bonus content from this episode up at patreon.com/davemaher, including Annie’s Animal Spirit reading and her answer to “What’s your coma?,” which I left out solely to keep the main episode lean.
Wamp Wamp (What to Do)
Read some shit to figure out what the fuck is going on beyond headlines with these big stories. They’re all things I know next to nothing about beyond: they are happening, so let’s educate ourselves together! (I’m not including any ACB/Supreme Court stuff because, honestly, is anyone genuinely confused about how that’s gonna change the landscape?)
The police killing of Walter Wallace Jr. in Philadelphia
The #EndSARS protests against police violence in Nigeria
NXIVM (jk who gives a shit)
Take a class with me! Unblock the Artist Within (my mystical-but-no-bullshit creativity class) starts Saturday, and I’ve got storytelling workshops coming up (Storytelling for Beginners and 1-on-1 sessions).
Donate to the Love Train, a one-woman mutual aid organization bringing family necessities like diapers, baby formula, food, and PPE to communities around Chicago. I donated $15 and tweeted to her about it, so I’m feeling extra accountable this week. Reply with what you donate, and I’ll post our total next week.
Thank you ❤️ https://t.co/YXVckPbWlp.@nita_bud making the love train the weekly fundraiser i plug in my podcast/newsletter!! if you wanna share, i've got links! LOVE what you're doing
Dave Maher @ThisIsDaveMaherLAST WEEK, we donated $20 to Liberation Library to get books to youth in prison.
May I Play You a Sound?
During this series of essays, I’m gonna include “coma music” in this section. That can mean a few different things:
songs with lyrics about comas
songs that feel like a coma
songs from the time of my coma I remember vividly
songs from the various Dave Maher Coma Show pre-show playlists that convey themes of the show
Danny Brown’s “Kush Coma” is 1, 2, and 4. It reminds me of the smoked-out chaos of my life immediately pre-coma. Just constant head and life noise, with weed providing reprieve for up to five whole minutes at a time.
This song is that, but bangin’.
The thing about this newsletter is I’ll send you another one next week,
DM