"Delicate, elusive and unstable"

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on March 21st, 2008

No, that’s not a description of comedians.

That’s how laughter is described by Will Durst in the article by Steven Winn, on SFGate.com (the SF Chronicle’s online component), which delves into who laughs/doesn’t laugh at what, and why/why not. It’s well worth reading the whole thing.

Stand-up comedian Will Durst knows it as well as anyone: Laughter is a delicate, elusive and unstable thing.

“So many factors can affect it,” Durst said by phone recently from Florida, where he was getting ready to entertain a group of lawyers. He ticked off some of the threats– wrong sound system, too much light on the audience, a ceiling that’s too high or absorptive to bounce the laughter around and a crowd’s lack of shared references with the comic, not to mention its collective blood alcohol level.

“And oh yes, whether you’re funny.”

There’s a lot of quotes from theater types, comics, scientists and professors.

Wallace Chafe, a research professor of linguistics at UC Santa Barbara and author of “The Importance of Not Being Earnest” says the desire for laughter is so strong that humans had to invent humor to justify it.

“Laughter, physiologically, is an expelling of air spasmodically from the lungs,” he said by phone, comparing the feeling to that provided by sex or drugs.

Astute readers will notice that this is our second reference to UC Santa Barbara today. The first being in a post about comedians Mo Mandel (scroll down), who studied creative writing at UCSB. Hmmm… it is a small world indeed.

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