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Erik: What makes your work meaningful?
Matt: Well, I mean I think there's different aspects of the meaning, I mean I think if
you're doing your job well as a comedian, and you make other people happy or laugh or
articulate something they haven't been able to articulate before, you know, you tell them
some truth that is crystallized for them, I think that's a neat thing to do for other
people and you know then obviously there's a selfish aspect to it also, which is like
you get to express yourself and say whatever is, you know, gnawing at your brain, or that
you think needs to be said, or pointing out the hypocrisy that exists elsewhere, or you
know silly things that you think need to be made fun of, and you know when you get to
express that, I think there's some satisfaction that you get from that personal expression.
Erik: And when you think about that satisfaction is it something where you're in one mindset,
you know, when you're mid-performance and in another mindset, when you're reflecting
back upon, you know, a series of performances, a series of years?
Matt: Yeah, I think—well, I think when you're in the middle of performing, you're kind of
lost, you know, it's considered that concept of flow where you're not even knowing exactly
how long things are taking or what's going on which is, you know, a neat state to be
in. It's almost like a trance or something where you're just kind of going with the flow
and riding the energy of the room, and when you get off stage, or when you're listening
back to shows or thinking about, you know, what you've done over the past few months,
yeah, it's definitely a more, you know, reflective sort of like, "Okay, you know, how much material
have I written, how much more time, you know, since—do I have a new 10 minutes in the
past, you know, few months that I can do on stage now?" And that's more of an analytical
sort of reflecting on what you've done.