• Ōhope author and personality Barry Rosenberg shares another colourful story with Beacon readers …

AS everyone reading this well knows, the prime purpose of civilisation on planet Earth is to provide entertainment for one another.

Oh sure, food, water and shelter have their place, too. But since the beginning of time, entertainment has been of the essence.

Those paintings on pre-historic cave walls? Ancient musical instruments archaeologists keep finding?

And forget about Gutenberg’s printing press, centuries prior partridge feathers and ink on dried papyrus gave birth to the written word. Need begets deed, and boy, are we ever in need of boredom and doom-and-gloom relief at the moment.

Following failed goes at several gigs in America, for which either I wasn’t really suited (engineering) or I found reprehensible (public relations), I tried serious theatre (once played Tevye in Fiddler) and later took a shot at standup (third place in a major comedy club competition). But I always knew that at best I was a B-grade stage performer in a population laden with A’s.

It was my late wife who pointed out the obvious. “You have a need for expression, and you’re pretty good at writing. I’m earning enough to support us both, so take a couple years off and write”.

In fact, it took three-and-a-half demoralising years of rejections during which I got frustrated and fat from stressed-out comfort eating, plus weaving in and out of depressive episodes, before I finally sold a piece.

But I must have paid my dues, because suddenly the floodgates of acceptance opened wide and I found I could earn a freelance living through the printed word.

When I came to New Zealand, I was warned by well-meaning people (Keri Hulme was one) that my Yank sense of irony, the keystone of most of my writing, just would not go over here.

I tried writing Kiwi/Crump style, but it wasn’t me, not at all, and I felt like a pretender.

So, back I went to what I know, and amazingly, it worked.

My yarns of personally experienced absurdities made people laugh and feel good, and that’s what’s always mattered most.

I see myself as the proverbial fool who continually gets himself in sticky, wholly ridiculous, self-effacing tribulations, but somehow manages to venture forth relatively unscathed.

In other words, I’m doing classic standup sitting down at a laptop.

May I let you in on a little secret? I derive more pleasure contributing yarns in my community newspaper than I did all those years publishing in the likes of Playboy and Rolling Stone.

Major mags were good for my ego and wallet, sure. But, now quite often, someone I don’t even know will mosey up to me on the street or in the supermarket, someone who in my narrow judgmental bias I’d never expect to appreciate my caustic Jewish-American vision and ironic self-effacing wit, and she will proclaim how my words have provided thought and laughter to an otherwise dreary day.

And this makes my day.