In which Our Hero muses on clown/creative culture
I forgot the game.
The game is simple:
Give. Them. Pleasure.
No more.
No less.
You choose your pathway.
Jim Carrey: freedom from worry.
Eddie Murphy: deep, unshakable, cool self-love.
Steve Martin: “isn’t this ridiculous?”
Sacha Baron Cohen: “behold, the bouffon.”
Somewhere along the way,
I forgot the game.
A friend who once worked at Cirque told me my struggles aren’t moral or personal—
they’re cultural.
Theater-people culture has its own rules:
Smile and support, regardless of whether you actually like someone.
If you stab, you stab from behind—
and always with a smile.
Offer yourself to help, as a kind and generous act…
but only when it gives you more stage time.
Plans aren’t plans, either.
You don’t schedule someone—
you slide casually into their life.
Explicit agreement is too intense; the dance is in the implication.
A calendar invite for 4:30 doesn’t mean 4:30.
It means the text that comes later saying it’s now 5:30.
And the day-of update pushing it to 6.
(People actually show up at 6:20).
These aren’t gripes.
This is just culture.
In New York, people book three weeks out.
In L.A., you confirm the night before, the morning of, the hour before…
and still they might not show.
But in my current hyper-literal, emotionally-flooded state,
I couldn’t adapt to the culture
and so I lost sight of the game.
And the game is all they ever wanted:
Play
Pleasure.
Freedom from pain.
Excitement.
Delight.
Whatever I can give that gives them pleasure—
that is the work.
If you’re not playing the game,
there’s no need to play.
But if you are playing the game—
then play.
I didn’t come here for the meta.
I came to play the game of clowning.
To learn it.
And clowning,
I will learn.
And clowning,
I will play.
Julian Wise 