Joshua Imhof | news editor

Come a little bit closer

Hear what I have to say

Two lines into Neil Young’s 1992 hit “Harvest Moon,” and I am already irritated.

Young didn’t do anything, believe it or not. His song is actually pretty good. So good that it almost won a Grammy, and so good that I decided to spend my Saturday afternoon trying to sing and play it with my friend, Evan.

The problem is that I sound nothing like Neil Young.

We sit on a bench outside of a horse show ring in North Park, guitars in hand. The smell of rain and fallen leaves fill our nostrils as the trees around us change from green to shades of red and gold autumn magnificence. A photographer captures a family of deer grazing beyond the fence.

This is probably what Young saw when he wrote the song.

However, as I begin singing the verse, my strained, pitchy vocals cannot match his soft, grandfatherly timbre. His words are like a reassuring hug, mine feel like a forced embrace with a sweaty, distant uncle you see once every five years at the family reunion.

Woof.

Shake it off. Onto the next line.

Just like children sleeping

We could dream this night away

OK. The uncle just tried to hug me again.

How does Young do it so effortlessly? Why can I not?

With each passing note, my thoughts are less about having fun with my friend and instead:

‘This is stupid. I am not good at this. I do not want to be here anymore.’

We finish the song, and I tell Evan I’m done for the day. He drives me home, and I go upstairs with a feeling of disappointment. The two of us hoped to get a recording of us playing to upload to Youtube, but instead, we came away with nothing.

Normally when this happens, I will brush it off with a self-deprecating joke. Ask any of my friends at The Duke or outside of it, and they can attest, for better or for worse.

“All I do is mess up,” or “I’ve really done it this time” are both regular parts of my vocabulary.

I think it is funny when a small error is met with an extreme overreaction. And so do my friends. My reaction usually gets a laugh out of them, even if it is at my own expense.

However, I am now by myself and without an audience. So why am I telling myself the same things?

These jokes at my own expense have slowly become less ironic and more of a coping mechanism for my actual insecurities. They are a way to distance myself from the negative emotions I feel about something rather than dealing with them head-on.

They also allow me to preemptively shield myself from any judgement from others. It’s not as embarrassing if someone tells me I did a bad job on something if I have already joked about how bad of a job I did.

In a world where comedians like Bo Burnham and John Mulaney have made careers out of making fun of themselves, it is no wonder I have picked up on it. They have fed into my compulsive need to comment on my own shortcomings and turn them into a punchline.

Some of my favorite bits from both comedians revolve around them turning their lowest moments into jokes.

Burnham’s song “All Time Low” joyfully explains what it is like to have a panic attack, while Mulaney’s “Baby J” comedy special pokes fun at his “star-studded intervention” after he became addicted to drugs and alcohol.

This type of comedy has a place in the world and should be celebrated. Laughter is said to be the best medicine.

But I can’t help but wonder: Are they able to separate these jokes from what they tell themselves in their private moments?

For Burnham, it doesn’t seem like he always has. The comedian would often have panic attacks on stage in front of live audiences and eventually had to step away from the public eye altogether.

“I quit, and I didn’t perform for five years and I spent that time trying to improve myself mentally,” he says in his song “All Eyes on Me.”

He returned in 2020 for his special, “Inside,” but has since vanished once again.

I feel the same way, Bo.

Recently, I have tried to get better about this self-deprecation. Instead of responding with a “Wow, I suck” when I make a mistake, I have started to replace it with an appropriate reaction.

“Josh, you forgot to change the date on the front page.”

I now respond with, “Thank you. I will try to remember next time.”

For many, this is a normal human interaction. For me, it is a new skill to learn.

But like all new skills, this one will take time to develop, and there are two main difficulties I am having.

The first is how easy it is to slip back into old habits. The second is how easy it is to joke about slipping into old habits.

“Josh, you spelled the person’s name wrong on page two of your story.”

“Wow, I am a terrible editor and should be fired. Oh no, I accidentally made a self-deprecating joke. I should quit my job and move to a remote island isolated from the public so I can never make a mistake again.”

I do not know how long it will take me to stop self-deprecating. As funny as I sometimes find it, I know how harmful it has been to me and my mental health, and I know that the reasons I say these jokes aren’t always to make people laugh.

They are to make me feel better about myself.

I am going to continue trying to speak to myself in a more positive, level-headed way, if only to make it through “Harvest Moon” on a Saturday afternoon.

Joshua Imhof can be reached at imhofj@duq.edu