Rob Auton: ‘Why I’ve been going on body safaris’
Comedian Rob Auton has been painting pictures of washing up liquid and selling them at his gigs.
It’s a bit peculiar, he admits, but all will become clear during his act. “They are just based on lines from the show,” he says.
“I’m describing my favourite things in life, and one of them is that I saw a message on the back of a washing up liquid bottle and there was an instruction that said, ‘Wash the less dirty dishes first to keep the water cleaner for longer’. And I just really liked it that they thought that they'd put a bit of a tip on the back of it. So I've been drawing Fairy Liquid bottles with that message and selling them after the show.”
Apparently he’s been painting “loads” of them and they are £30 a pop, although he hopes that’s not too pricey. It seems like a steal for a genuine painting.
Known for his whimsical observations, Rob has been thinking about other favourite things, which have included the new telescope he got for Christmas and going on “body safaris”.
“I firmly believe that there's an infinite amount of universes and life everywhere,” says Rob.
“It's just that we're not capable of seeing it. And I love that. My favorite thing about my telescope is it really does make me feel very small, which frees me up to do what I want on stage. So when I feel like a piece of dust with a heartbeat, I'm like, well, it doesn't really matter, and that there's a certain freedom with that.
“Also, I feel like a person is more trustworthy and reliable if they own a telescope. It's given me more confidence, like on the bus. I just think that I always wanted to be a person who owns a telescope, because I feel like those people are quite legit.”
The telescope wasn’t expensive, he explains but it still creates an emotion when he sees the stars and planets.
“That's what the show is all about," he says.
“I want to try to make me feel something. And if I can do that, then I've got half a chance of making other people feel things as well, whether that be contemplative or feeling kind of freed up by silliness.”
He has called the new tour The Eyes Open and Shut Show, which he describes as “a kind of clarion call for getting through the day, from eyes open to eyes shut, and doing it in as many different ways as you can; just everything that I'm seeing and then the peacefulness that shutting my eyes brings me”.
His idea for the theme originally came from reading a well known self-help book by Eckhart Tolle, called The Power of Now.
“He said, if you shut your eyes and think about a part of your body, it does it good. And that led me on to experiment with these kind of body safaris, a guided meditation where you shut your eyes and you think about a specific part of your body, like your shoulder, and apparently it helps. “
Part of the show now includes one of these guided meditations.
But the book also helped Rob set some goals for the new year. “The Power of Now book really did have a massive effect on me. When I finished that book, I shut it, and I thought that's me sorted. That lasted for about an hour. And then I was started worrying again. But it's led me on to discovering other things, like the turn pf phrase, ‘The only point of power is now’. The only time we can ever affect anything is right now. Canceling out the worry of the future and just focusing on what we can do in the present is something that's absolutely massive for me, and it's really helping me out, and this year, especially. People start off out of the blocks in January, trying to really go for it with no more drinking, eating well, and I'm determined this year to try and keep it going for a year and just stopping drinking. I’m also trying to focus on the now and meditation, I don't know. I mean, I've started making a point every night to turn my phone off at 10 o'clock and just write down five lines that I've from my day, and I've done that every day so far, and I just love how it builds up. And you know, all these self help accounts on Instagram saying things like ‘Discipline can take you where motivation can't’. I'm fully into that.”
Another thing he discusses in the show is a realisation he had about time. “I was watching something on the news the other night and it made me laugh when they said the earth is 4.5 billion years old. And I thought to myself, well, hold on, I did a show in 2014 and I said that the world was 4.5 billion years old then, and it kind of makes me realize that it's exactly the same, and it always will be. In my lifetime, it's always going to be 4.5 billion years old, you know, and has been for all of our ancestors.”
He also admits that while he hopes people agree he is funny on stage, he’s not the funniest person in his family. “That’s probably my sister," he says.
“She's got a really good sense of humor, and she definitely makes people laugh more in company than I do. I wish that I could be a Billy Connolly-type character who makes everyone in the pub laugh. But I'm just not, you know. It’s more about saving up my ideas and then sharing them on stage. And that feels like the place where me trying to be funny belongs.”
He reckons that his humour is “a coping mechanism for me to not get bogged down in kind of the catastrophes of the world” and “trying to look 100 percent on the bright side of things, and just trying to tap into the humor, beauty of the world, instead of going to the other side of things. Because when I go there, I get really sad, and I don't want to do that.”
Rob Auton is at Cambridge Junction on Thursday, 13 February. For tickets, priced £20.50, visit junction.co.uk.
