You have to learn to love the bomb.

August 28, 2015 2:37 PM

The Late, Great Stephen Colbert “The level of emotion you're getting from me right now—I'm not saying it's dishonest,” he said. “I'm just saying it's not normal. I'd really love to go to bed. I promise you, I do not spend my time on the edge of tears.”
posted by anazgnos (22 comments total)

Only in Monroe (previously)
posted by filthy light thief at 2:42 PM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

This article is so moving. I've always felt he was a cut above, was more tuned into the truth part of "truth in comedy"; this piece reinforced that, with an exclamation point:

I asked him if he could help me understand that better, and he described a letter from Tolkien in response to a priest who had questioned whether Tolkien's mythos was sufficiently doctrinaire, since it treated death not as a punishment for the sin of the fall but as a gift. “Tolkien says, in a letter back: ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” Colbert knocked his knuckles on the table. “ ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” he said again. His eyes were filled with tears. “So it would be ungrateful not to take everything with gratitude. It doesn't mean you want it. I can hold both of those ideas in my head.”

He was 35, he said, before he could really feel the truth of that. He was walking down the street, and it “stopped me dead. I went, ‘Oh, I'm grateful. Oh, I feel terrible.’ I felt so guilty to be grateful. But I knew it was true.

posted by wemayfreeze at 4:02 PM on August 28, 2015 [25 favorites]

I really love it when Colbert discusses his process. There is this depth and intensity, just this vast intelligence at work, and he clearly has examined it so much himself. And he is aware that he has an unusual gift and that he is lucky for it. And grateful.
posted by louche mustachio at 4:13 PM on August 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

I have this nagging suspicion, this fear that what he's going to do on The Late Show is going to be way over most people's heads. And it won't be until about five years after it gets cancelled and he goes all Howard Hughes on us that it will dawn on everybody how utterly brilliant it all was. A Slow Slow Burn, he'll turn The Late Show into one of the slowest Slow Burns of all time and all we'll be able to do is applaud him vigorously out of shame for having Missed The Joke. Only by then it will be too late and he'll be a sheep farmer in Togo or something, and too deliriously happy to be bothered to dignify that acclaim with a response.

Actually, that would be pretty awesome, too, I guess. I just really want to see him succeed.
posted by the painkiller at 5:06 PM on August 28, 2015 [9 favorites]

That was wonderful. Thanks so much for posting it.
posted by Chipeaux at 5:10 PM on August 28, 2015

"... our lives are compendiums of loss and change and what we make of it."
posted by Xavier Xavier at 5:18 PM on August 28, 2015 [9 favorites]

Saint Stephen
posted by Golem XIV at 5:18 PM on August 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

There were tears running down my cheeks by the end, and I am glad I didn't have to explain to anyone I was reading an interview with Stephen Colbert.
posted by louche mustachio at 5:25 PM on August 28, 2015 [7 favorites]

He's one of the few Catholic celebrities where I don't want to crawl under the rug and pretend he isn't when he talks about his faith. I feel like I can point to him as having "smart people Catholicism" where he's very educated in the intellectual history of the Church and doesn't take simple or surface ideas for his faith, but really wrestles with it and isn't ashamed to share his wrestling. I don't know, really you should just read the piece, I'm making a hash of saying why I like it/him.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:07 PM on August 28, 2015 [14 favorites]

Nothing better than seeing a genuinely good person do well. I am pleased as punch for him, and I bet his new show will be a ratings goldmine that does fantastically well with people of all ages.

I wish he somehow gets the Pope on the show when Pope Francis is visiting the U.S. this fall. It would make for a wonderful interview.
posted by sallybrown at 7:46 PM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

Good, smart man, and funny as fuck besides. I'm glad he's got the chance to get out from under the limitations of the Colbert Report character shtick and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:47 PM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

I love that when Stephen is performing, you can seethe depth of the well he's reaching into.
posted by dry white toast at 8:35 PM on August 28, 2015

Also I have total faith in him to understand his audience on The Late Show.
posted by dry white toast at 8:36 PM on August 28, 2015

Yes! I know (and appreciate) that Eyebrows is the token catholic MeFi of late, but she's right. Colbert is the kind of catholic we lapsed Catholics look up to. For good reason.
posted by Xavier Xavier at 8:46 PM on August 28, 2015 [5 favorites]

‘Oh, I'm grateful. Oh, I feel terrible.’

I wonder if this awareness is what Stephen Sondheim saw in Stephen Colbert that made him want to invite him to sing in Company.
posted by knuckle tattoos at 9:11 PM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Colbert has always struck me as the Platonic improvisor. When he is a character he strikes a superhuman, other-worldly balance between intellectual situational awareness and utter loss of self. And he does it so, so easily. There's no struggle, there's no coming in and out, there are no leaked tones. It's so deft that I think most people don't really even know it's there until it's gone. I hung out with a comedy crowd during my early 20s who did improv, some of whom have gone on to be big names in the NYC scene, and the level of work that goes into having the skills that Colbert does are just... they're astounding and awesome.
posted by TheNewWazoo at 9:12 PM on August 28, 2015 [5 favorites]

And the fact that he doesn't have to be a walking human disaster area in order to have something to draw upon for his art, as so many other comedians do is inspiring. Imagine if Andy Kaufman, or Jack Black, or John Belushi had been able to find what Steven has found. It's all that more amazing.
posted by TheNewWazoo at 9:14 PM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

The bit immediately before the part wemayfreeze quoted has really stayed with me since I read it:

He was tracing an arc on the table with his fingers and speaking with such deliberation and care. “I was left alone a lot after Dad and the boys died…. And it was just me and Mom for a long time,” he said. “And by her example am I not bitter. By her example. She was not. Broken, yes. Bitter, no.” Maybe, he said, she had to be that for him. He has said this before—that even in those days of unremitting grief, she drew on her faith that the only way to not be swallowed by sorrow, to in fact recognize that our sorrow is inseparable from our joy, is to always understand our suffering, ourselves, in the light of eternity. What is this in the light of eternity? Imagine being a parent so filled with your own pain, and yet still being able to pass that on to your son.

“It was a very healthy reciprocal acceptance of suffering,” he said. “Which does not mean being defeated by suffering. Acceptance is not defeat. Acceptance is just awareness.” He smiled in anticipation of the callback: “ ‘You gotta learn to love the bomb,’ ” he said. “Boy, did I have a bomb when I was 10. That was quite an explosion. And I learned to love it. So that’s why. Maybe, I don’t know. That might be why you don’t see me as someone angry and working out my demons onstage. It’s that I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.”

I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.

I've tucked this bit of wisdom away inside myself, knowing that someday I will need it.
posted by yasaman at 10:15 PM on August 28, 2015 [11 favorites]

Christ almighty, for the briefest moment the FPP title made me think that national treasure Stephen Colbert had died. Opened the link with great trepidation to find I was more or less completely wrong.
posted by brecc at 10:51 PM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Oh, Stephen. Almost thou persuadeth me to be. Catholic
posted by Doleful Creature at 11:53 PM on August 28, 2015

That last paragraph is what got me crying. That and the idea that it is possible to broken, but not bitter.

Stephen Colbert is an extraordinary man, and this interview probably only captures a small percentage of his extraordinariness.
posted by kalimac at 5:09 AM on August 29, 2015 [6 favorites]

Had the opportunity to see him live at RSA 2014. He came on in character, which was great of course. But then he switched to himself and he was even greater.

Having lost a parent at 14 I can only admire how he's coped, it's not something I've managed to do.
posted by tommasz at 5:42 AM on August 29, 2015 [2 favorites]