Nobody Will Laugh - or will they?

The story behind the name (and why it's okay if you laugh at me)

As I was flicking through a copy of Milan Kundera’s short story collection Laughable Loves, the title ‘Nobody Will Laugh’ jumped out at me.

Ha, yeah, they probably won’t, I thought. As somebody who’s always trying to be funny, I read the title as a self-deprecating statement; the embarrassing feeling of a joke falling on deaf ears condensed into a few words.

And yet, I realised much later, the title has an alternative, much more positive reading: nobody will laugh… at you. I wondered how I’d missed this the first time round, given that I also am deeply afraid of being laughed at.

So, for me, Nobody Will Laugh is something of a double-entendre, an affirmation and my biggest fear rolled into one. It's what both sides of my brain, the optimist and the saboteur, tell me when I try something new, when I, well, you know, start a Substack, for instance. Maybe nobody will laugh, maybe nobody will find you funny. But hey, nobody will laugh at you for trying. You know?

So, what have my neuroses got to do with fashion, art, film, and culture, which is what this blog is about?

For me, Nobody Will Laugh is a mantra; the way that I approach the world. Things don’t have to be so serious - the turned-up noses of the fashion world can be snobbish, the pretences of your garden-variety ‘cinephile’ can make you feel ashamed of your taste in films, your Art History degree will make you realise there’s an entirely different class of highly-educated people out there who can name the year every Modigliani was painted. I can’t call myself a film-lover, because they’ll know I’ve never watched Come and See. I can’t mention my passion for art because I sometimes blank on which one is Cezanne and which one is Seurat. I can’t say I truly love fashion, because I don’t know how to spell Ann Demu Dameul Demeulemeester.

I’ve spent so much of my life feeling afraid to interact with the things that interest me, because I’ve been so afraid to make an embarrassing mistake and be laughed at. I’ve spent so much of my life fearful that I’ll slip up and reveal I’m not as good at or as knowledgeable as other people.

But fuck that.

If you’re interested in something, if you’re passionate about it, even if you aren't quite a fount of knowledge, you should share that passion with the world. If you see an opportunity to make a joke, even if you aren’t sure if it’ll land, you may as well make it. May as well try find the humour in things; may as well make a fool of myself in the pursuit of having fun. And hey, maybe nobody will laugh, but at the end of the day, at least nobody will laugh. And if they do? Fuck it, do it anyway.