I Write Today So That Tomorrow I Remember Yesterday
My today with His righteousness for His tomorrow.
I believe patiently enduring the pain of life by sharing it sacrificially with people is my purpose and that process can be summed up in a paraprosdokian. A “paraprosdokian” is the Greek term for “one-liner” and it means “against expectation”. It’s a unit of meaning where the second part of the phrase makes you re-evaluate the meaning of the first, revealing perspective.
“Paraprosdokians” are how I make sense of this crazy life I live. I hope they help you make sense of yours. Here’s one I’ve been re-evaluating recently.
“I write today so that tomorrow I remember yesterday.”
I didn’t write that.
Well, I wrote it down, but I didn’t think of it. Someone else gave it to me and it sums up why I write.
I write to remember and I write to forget. Because if I don’t write that which I’m called to remember, the idea will play in my head on repeat, forcing me to forget everything else except that which I’m called to remember.
Until I relinquish the responsibility of remembering to the eternal page, the prophetic utterance bequeathed to my sensitive mind will plague me until I write it down or say it to someone else. Some call this brilliance, others call it insanity. I call it being a writer.
I’ve never known it any other way. It’s probably why I aced all my tests. I write down everything. It’s also why I sometimes get “tunnel vision” as my exes have called it. Nothing else matters except the idea. Because the idea is the only way I can get back to the present by forgetting the future. I need to write it down. It’s like breathing.
“I write today so that tomorrow I remember yesterday”.
I don’t remember the name of the person who gave me the quote. I wish they wrote it down anywhere else besides just their business card, which I lost years ago. I also can’t find it anywhere on the internet.
It was at an open mic at the Last Bookstore in DTLA called, “The Speakeasy”. The “Speakeasy” was a unique monthly open mic series where artists of all kinds would share their work and then during a brief intermission, an artist would be interviewed by the wonderfully magical Lady Basco, also known as Lady B. Lady B is an open mic aficionado/ extraordinaire/ creative alchemist, someone who can take pieces of art and self-expression and amalgamate them into something you’ve never seen before, something uniquely you.
“Mutations happen in the genome and they can either be mistakes or adaptations, depending on if they work out or not,” the artist being interviewed that night explained, “Artistic evolution is much the same. We try to copy the artists who came before and fail, because we can’t be anyone else but ourselves. Sometimes those mutations are dead ends, other times, they’re the very thing which sets us apart and gives us a unique style.”
The yesterday before this particular today a mutation occurred, a potential dead end: the day before I had a profound bomb.
Starting out in stand-up those profound types of bombs would happen every few months: deep, catastrophic, potential dead ends.
They still happen. These days, the profound bombs are mostly off stage, the lingering failures of trying to fit myself into someone else’s vision, only to end up right back at the drawing board with my original dreams staring right back at me. These days they’re happening a lot more frequently. Maybe I’m onto something, maybe I’m hitting a dead end, maybe most of the time, a breakthrough happens immediately after a profound bomb.
The day before The Last Bookstore, I had performed at the Lyric Hyperion, a cafe and theatre in Los Feliz where the cool kids would perform, or at least the cool kids of the alternative comedy scene. It was the place where hipsters and cigarette-flicking jaded cynics would go to wax poetic about their nihilistic take on why the world was broken and why they alone could funnily fix it, the place where I would profoundly bomb the first Sunday of the New Year.
That night, almost everyone was bombing, because the room was filled with New Years comics: those who had made it their resolution to get back out there and perform however many times they had designated on their list of things to be resolved this year.
I performed to a full room of blank stares. Everybody was there and nobody wanted to listen. And I bombed. So did almost everyone else. But I wasn’t trying to be like everyone else, I was trying to outshine the pack, be the cream who rose to the top. Everybody else, also wanted that as well. So, I was trying to be like everybody else.
And so in my putrid stench of pure inauthenticity, I bombed profoundly, the type where you question everything and anything that you think you might be.
The following day, I got back up and went up to perform at the Last Bookstore, looking forward to the redemption of performing in front of musicians, poets, other artists, away from the comedy scene.
I got up there, knowing the truth, that I was a liar, steeped in pure inauthenticity, one who didn’t belong.
The Last Bookstore would have anywhere from 60-80 people show up, not just artists but patrons and audience members. I did my set in front of a packed crowd, remembering two things: my jokes and my yesterday, reveling in the humiliation of being so painfully out of place, holding onto the stupid hope maybe today would be different.
After I got off stage, another comedian was called up after. In the middle of his set, he said, “I can’t follow that,” then got off stage mid-set, walked over to me, shook my hand and said, “Yo man, that was really good. I couldn’t perform after that, I had to come and tell you how great that was. Thank you.”
My profound bomb was the setup for a profound breakthrough. It always is.
Every single laugh I got during that set came from a place of knowing that yesterday I was lying and that any laughs I got didn’t make sense, because “Don’t they know who I am? I’m a complete fraud. Why are they laughing?”
I guess I was performing my jokes by remembering the truth of yesterday: the truth that I was a liar, and today all I’m doing is telling you that I am.
Another poet went up there and spit a heater of a poem and I spoke to them afterwards. I’m pretty sure their name was on the business card they gave me, but I lost the card.
On the back it said:
“I write today so that tomorrow I remember yesterday.”
I never lost that quote, because I wrote it down. Over and over and over again.
I wrote it on the headboard of my bed, posted it on a piece of paper on my ceiling, sharpied it on pieces of clothing, put it in my one man show, and etched it deep within the recesses of my mind, soul, and heart.
It became a core belief: “I write today, so that tomorrow I remember yesterday.”
It's one of the original reasons I began to write poetry. I had a notebook resting on the right side of the headboard of my bed and anytime I would feel difficult emotions I would turn to the notebook in order to write thoughts down cryptically in a way I’d have to decipher later. It didn’t need to make sense now, but maybe if I was truthful enough about my pure inauthenticity, I’d have to do the honest work of making sense of it later.
I would oftentimes go back through the notebook in chronological order, starting at the latest entry. Over time it would start to serve as a map of where I’d been. It was a reminder that today was going to become a yesterday I had gotten through and tomorrow, today would be another one down in the books.
I’m currently coming off a profound bomb on the back of many, many more. These days it feels like profound bombs are happening every other day. I question everything every time they happen, then every other day it feels like I’m surfing, king of the waves, back on the court hitting my stride. The next day it feels like I’m drowning once again.
Maybe it's because I’m on the verge of so many breakthroughs that the entirety of who I am is collapsing. Maybe it’s because my life has been built on so many lies that every other day, my soul stinks of pure putrid inauthenticity, only to have a tomorrow filled with flowers.
In the past few weeks, I’ve had to re-evaluate nearly all of my creative partnerships, cancel my tour, I re-sprained my knee playing basketball, my job as a substitute teacher ended for the summer, and yet for some reason I keep getting back up, because I know that today if I write and tell the truth, then tomorrow, I’ll remember how much I wanted to give up on yesterday, but got through to today on pure faith.
God always gives me just enough to keep going, and it's always, only, just today. He never gives me tomorrow.
“Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” - Matthew 6:33-34
I write today so that tomorrow I remember yesterday and yesterday I had completely given up on tomorrow.
So now, I write today so that I can forget tomorrow and live for God’s perfect timing.
His timing is perfect, which means complete, not “how I like it”. It means just enough for today.
I write today to forget everything but His Kingdom with My today, His righteousness, for His tomorrow.
Here’s last weeks’ paraprosdokian:
https://www.ppdkproductions.com/p/week-22-why-i-havent-killed-myself
Where I’ll Hopefully Be Headed This Week:
Lately I’ve been on a mission: tell the story of my life or die trying. Despite innumerable setbacks, I made my way from Los Angeles to New York and finally Orlando, Florida—where, stumbling through grief and growth, I developed a new hour of jokes and stories about what it means to “die trying.”
Turns out, the best way to tell the story of your life is to stop trying to prove it matters—and start believing it does. Not because someday somebody will care, but because one day, you realize that somebody is you.
Now, I’m telling a new story: the story of what it looks like to come home:
“Nathanael Mosher is a Winner (Loser?)” is the new hour from award-winning (losing?) comedian Nathanael Philip Mosher, exploring the grief of losing a peer — and the gift of gaining a friend. Discover what it means to lose yourself in endless comparison, only to find yourself face-to-face with the greatest friend you’ll ever know.
I’m performing my new solo show in the comforting sanctity of my own living room:
***there are only 25 tickets available due to the intimate nature of the show; other times/ dates will be added***
After the show, there will be a brief Q&A followed by a reception. This event will be filmed and recorded for future release. Registration includes the potential to appear on camera—please notify us at check-in if you wish not to be included.
Get your tickets here:
More live shows will be added soon so stay up to date here:
Follow PPDK Productions on all social media (mainly Insta and YT) @ppdkproductions and my personal Instagram @nathanmosherisgoodenough to see snippets from all the series I’ve been working on.
If you want to watch every series I’ll be putting out, go to ppdkproductions.com. It’ll be the one stop shop for everything “Paraprosdokianist”
I also have a series I’ve been waiting on sharing called “Nathanael Has Thoughts and Prayers”. It’s a daily stream of consciousness vlog ending with a prayer inspired by the morning pages practice of the artist’s way. I’ve been performing standup the same way where it’s completely freestyled. It’s going okay.
Subscribe to get weekly updates, and eventually the paid will have some exclusive perks, for now everything’s free until I figure that out.
Sincerely Yours,
The Paraprosdokianist
"Paraprosdokian + journalist" = "Paraprosdokianist" Or: one who pens journalistic columns of paraprosdokians. Paraprosdokian: Greek for "against expectation" a rhetorical device in which the second part of the phrase makes you re-evaluate the meaning of the first, otherwise known as a one-liner turn of phrase joke lyric proverb parable quote wise saying piece of life itself summarized in the shortest unit of story resulting in: one's expectations being upheld, subverted, affording one a renewed perspective and sense of compassion
Let all of My Story be used for His Glory/ Let all of My Pain be used for His Purpose/ Let all of my Name be used for His Fame/ Let all of my Work be Turned into Worship