In which Our Hero concludes that brilliance is no match for a red nose.
About once every other day, someone at clown school does something spectacularly disorganized. I sigh and say, “This place is run by clowns.”
And it is.
—
Clowns are not, by their nature, particularly intelligent.
It’s not that they’re stupid.
It’s that intelligence and clowning live on different axes.
An intelligent person may learn the craft faster. But the desire to clown, the joy of it, might even be anti-correlated with intelligence.
Smart people tend to want control. Clowns surrender it.
Smart people tend to want power. Clowns seek to be laughed at.
And yet, in my March course, three of the 30 Americans were Yale graduates.
Plus a single from Stanford.
Just enough prestige to make the chaos feel ironic.
Of course, it helps to be rich enough to spend a year falling on your face.
Still, it’s a funny sight I observed in Thursday’s class:
eight clowns silently arranging themselves in order of intelligence.
The clown they insisted should be at the bottom later thought this was hilarious as he has a master’s degree.
—
Clowning is a craft.
Most work is a craft.
Hell, even medicine is a craft.
And mastery in a craft depends less on general intelligence than on dedication —
and on cultivating the right skills: openness, affability, lightness.
—
This is the first social hierarchy I’ve been in where people organize by skill in a single, very specific craft.
In college, you could be successful at any number of things — academics, theater, sports, journalism.
In elementary school, the options were fewer but still broad: maybe good at math, worse at English, class clown, or owned the good video games.
Here, clowns arrange by everyday charisma.
And charisma in life is decently correlated with charisma on stage.
Add to that: we’re learning charisma.
And the social life becomes pretty interesting.
It’s like a schoolyard where the only question is: how fun are you at play?
Julian Wise 