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Why designers need the Tarot Cards of Tragedy
Illustrating a tragic design problem, with comedy.
A few years back Tig Notaro did an iconic comedy set at Largo in LA. Just the week after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she got onstage and talked about her diagnosis. It was raw, it was real, it was funny, and the audience wasn’t sure how to handle it.
There’s nervous laughter. There are moans of discomfort, that Tig addresses straight on.
With humor the equation is tragedy + time = comedy. I am just at tragedy…
Guys, relax. Everything’s fine. I have cancer.
The set only got more brutally funny from there. She had just been through some of the worst months of her life. The cancer…that was just icing on the shit cake.
Just after being released from the hospital for a life-threatening C. Diff infection, Tig learned that her mother died suddenly. Tig returned home after her mother’s funeral to find something…
