My close-knit network of family
and friends has expanded to include Joe Pera, a man I’ve never met who lives over 3,600 miles away, yet who I feel
a very warm affinity to.
Joe lives in Michigan, and is a choir teacher,
although he can’t sing. Brought up by his grandparents, he appears old before
his time: he moves slowly and tentatively, like someone afraid of slipping on
ice (Michigan is very cold). His voice is low, hesitant and cracked, like
someone recounting a deathbed memoir. A single man with mainly elderly friends,
Joe is both part of and apart from the community. Quietly eccentric in almost
every regard, he is also sweet and kind and trusted, although he has a tendency
to focus much too hard on his singular obsessions (the perfect Christmas tree;
Canadian rats; The Who song ‘Baba O’Riley’). Small town mid-western life suits
him perfectly. Indeed, it is hard to imagine him surviving in any other
environment. He likes trees and barns and rocks, and he fantasises about sharing
these enthusiasms with a wife and family.
Each episode of Joe Pera Speaks
With You is just over ten minutes long, and centres around a specific topic
that Joe wants to tell us about. Life fills the gaps in the monologue, and we get
to meet Joe’s friends and his Basset Hound, Gus, see some amazing scenery and
follow his delicately poised romance with a survivalist band teacher called Sarah
Conner. It’s a warm, wonderful and often moving programme, in which little
things mean a lot. Small gestures and moments have a resonance that would be
lost in most dramas, but then this seems like life rather than art, despite the
fact that Joe Pera is really a comedian from Buffalo, New York.
The second series is winding to a
close, and has included some major events, but these are handled gently and
sensitively. Joe the choir teacher is a disconnected person whose life has been
shaped by loss, but saved by love, and he grows with every episode, taking
slow, measured steps towards becoming the community elder he already resembles
in looks, manner and voice.
I wish they’d make an episode
every day for the rest of my days: each ten minute visit is like an hour of transcendental
meditation.
