Category: General Gabbing

A variety of delighting sights; a smattering of happenings; a compendium of concepts…

Clown School Break Day 36: Empty Spaces

JulianLeave a comment

In which emptiness permeates Our Hero. 

Today I drove in silence. My partner in the passenger seat, surrounded by calm empty space. 

Usually I drive with music or a podcast. This drive was 3.5 hours. 

For the first two hours, just being. 

Once in a while adding a comment. Saying something. Mostly quiet. 

It was nice. 

— 

It reminded me of some time spent on stage. The increased comfort that comes from increased experience. The greater ease that comes from an acceptance of emptiness. 

I’m reminded of the idea variously attributed to Miles Davis and other musical greats: playing the spaces between the notes. 

It’s pleasant to play the spaces between the notes. 

It’s even more enjoyable to let the spaces between the notes play. 

And then

To level up

To the notes themselves playing 

And you simply helping

😌 

Clown School Break Day 35: The New Player 

JulianLeave a comment

In which a new teammate joins Our Hero. 

What is it like to add a new player to an established team? 

Today we added a new player to our 3-person cooperative poker game. 

Upon adding this fourth person, we reverted back to the basic version of the game as it was a fitting level for them. 

Here’s what the experience was like for me: 

  1. Less psychologically engaging. The game was simpler so the intensity was lower. 
  2. More meta-play. I asked more questions, engaged in more conversation, made more jokes. We all did. The game itself was less of the game. We added other games to fill the empty space. 
  3. It was fun for a different reason. The relationship is one I care about. So I prioritized connection and play with this new player. The other players did too. We all wanted them to have a good time. So we left having enjoyed ourselves, but not as much due to the game itself as we had previously. Instead, it was more due to compersion. 

Our new player stepped away. We returned to our triumvirate crew. We took one round to re-acclimate and then clicked back into it. 

Perhaps much of socialization is knowing what game you’re playing at any given time and effectively switching between them. If you have more capacity, add another game. If you’re overwhelmed, let go more. If you’re welcoming a wobbly player you care about, play with them more (outside of the main game itself). And always know which game is most important. 

Clown School Break Day 34: Invention via Iteration 

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero builds upon himself. 

I created a new game today. 

We started with the game I described two days ago. 

We played with three people. It wasn’t as good as with 4 or 5 people. Then we expanded so we each received two hands instead of one hand, for a total of 6 two-card hands. 

Then we gave ourselves 3 cards per hand instead of two. 

Then we gave ourselves 6 cards instead of two sets of three, which we subdivided into our own three-card hands. 

What did I learn? 

  1. Follow the fun. When it’s not fun, find new fun. 
  2. Don’t push. If it’s fun enough, stick with it. 
  3. I like chaos. Compared to my card game compatriots, I enjoyed the more intricate game. (Part of that may be my familiarity with poker — i.e. this end version was farther at the end of my comfort zone while the basic game had become trivial). 

We spent 5 hours today playing that game. Playing variations. Ending at the more intricate one. 

Also this: 

  • To get to the end we had to go though the steps. Sometimes you have to take people through the basics, not start at the end if the end is too complicated. 

Building blocks. Leveling up. 

And one more thought: 

  • In the last hand, I correctly called all three cards in two of my compatriots’ hands. One of my friends half-jokingly called me “the oracle”. 

Perhaps what other people find chaotic is just the space I exist in. Sometimes what’s trivial to you is complex to me. (My partner laughs when I refer to putting frozen food on a plate and microwaving it as “cooking”.) 

This reminds me of one of the lessons from clown school: everyone has their own challenges. What’s trivial for me may be hard for you. Jesus would say “judge not lest ye be judged”. (And after all, today is the day for celebrating his birthday.) 

I’m glad to have seen my classmates trudge through their own challenges. And I’m glad to have built up the self-comfort prior not to judge them during the process. That would be a real dick move. 

🤡 

Clown School Break Day 33: On Planning & Presence 

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero delivers presents (presence?)

Today I delivered gifts to poor families. The town I’m in does a “Christmas effort”: you drive your car to a designated hub; they load in gifts and food; you deliver them to the address.

And once in a while, you see a child jump for joy.

Today, for a few seconds, I experienced that pleasure.

We delivered five boxes in total. Five families whose Christmas gifts and food, from shopping todelivery are provided by donors and volunteers. And by virtue of being at the end of the steps, I get the joy of seeing a 9 or 10 year old jumping up and down with glee.

If I didn’t see this, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much. A friend’s friend’s mother volunteers for this organization as a shopper. That project is a puzzle. It’s trying to answer questions like “what would X person want for Christmas” where the only information you’re given is “12 year old”, “boy”, and “speaks only Spanish” and then you’re limited to the piles of gifts that have been donated. The puzzle might be engaging, but it’s not as visceral. You get pleasure from knowing you’re helping.

I got pleasure from seeing the boy happy.

Comparatively, I did little work. The organization’s coordinators. the financial donors, the shoppers, the wrappers: all did more to actually help than I did. I’m just the last mile. Yet I get that actual, real-time pleasure.

It’s a funny trait consistent in many areas: those who are on the ground, at the end, being the boots: you see the people, you get the experience. But the people before have much more impact. (As a simple comparison: what if we were to pay people to do each bit? Shopping for the gifts $50; the gifts themselves cost $100; organizing a team even more. But replacing me with an Uber would be only ~$10.)

The upstream people must be driven by some internal elements instead. By a rich imagination? A strong internal model? A complete lack of presence.

A clown exists in the moment. By (at least my school’s) definition, they interact with the audience in real time. How much is planned? Sometimes a lot. But the interaction itself is live and present.

I wonder if people enjoy different elements. Not everyone wants to perform. Some wish to be agents or producers. Some care enough about the organization or the mission to rise in the ranks.

I think that’s it. Those who care enough – for whatever reason – are willing to undergo the effort to achieve the outcome. And the effort includes leadership, struggle, and trials.

Find what you care about. Dive into it. Give to others.

Over eight years living nomadically, internationally, on the road, I’ve sought my people. I’ve historically found them few and far between. But those who I do like, I adore. Is it a genetic difference? A difference in interests? An unusual focus? Are they just the right kind of autistic? For whatever reason, they’re eccentric and have impactful ideas. We dive deep into our areas and share our experiences. We see ourselves and the world as porous interactions. I contribute to their lives and they to mine.

And if we do it right,

we jump for joy.

Clown School Day 32: A Virtuous Pleasure Cycle

JulianLeave a comment

In which our hero celebrates yet more acclaim (with utmost humility)

Hearing of my post yesterday, the reader who recommended the game emailed to share their joy: “It gave me pleasure to recommend the game. It gave you guys pleasure to play. It gave me pleasure you liked it … a circle of joy. So happy!”

As I read this message, I smiled. For it felt like the most virtuous cycle of pleasure since the invention of what the French call “le soixante-neuf”.

Perhaps what’s most interesting: I now understand why people engage with fans.

Plus: Not only do I have dozens of daily readers (and some more non-subscribed daily readers); I’m also an accessible human person.

You – yes, you – can communicate with me, and I will respond + engage. An act of engagement mirroring that of the audience x clown. 

Humanizing. Connective. Satisfying. 

“Okay,” I then thought, “What would it be like to explore and isolate this wheel of success? Is it the same in all media  (including clown; public intellectual; and writer)?” 

Looking at it, I saw the following wheel: 1) Make a thing; 2) make it public; 3) engage with those who like it. 

I then began thinking: “Wouldn’t it be cool if I brought even more people joy?” and then, a bit of fear: “What if I got big enough to have people who dislike my work?” 

Doubtless, in any city of sufficient size you will have bad actors. Similarly, in any media reach of sufficient size, there are bound to be haters and/or trolls.

As such, the question is not if, but when. And being a sometimes-catastrophizing sort (even when I’m imagining a future world where people enjoy my artistic work enough to be popular), what would they say? Here’s what I imagine, and my thoughts on them:
1. “I hate you” / “you suck”. (People like to say things like this; they’re non-substantive; next.)
2. “You dive into particular and uninteresting rabbitholes” (I follow what interests me. It’s not going to interest everyone. I hope to be accessible to those who will find me valuable.)
3. “You have X blindspot” / “How can you not know Y” / “What the fuck is wrong with you for Z”. (This is my favorite – unnecessarily aggressive, but at least there’s substance. I’ve spent my life separating the person from the idea, parsing for the gold nugget of truth while ignoring the surrounding turd, so these are responses that I genuinely look forward to).

Yet, upon reflection, many of these notes I’ve already heard at clown school. From our Head Teacher in response to one of my performances, I once heard – direct quote – “We don’t like you”, alongside feedback that I failed at showing my personhood/humanity. Last I checked, I have always been a person (and I suspect the Head Teacher knew this). Perhaps this intensity of aggressive attacking is part of the inoculation of clown school. Or perhaps, as a family member put it when I described the social structure of the first two weeks, “that sounds like brainwashing.”

So if clowning (art?) is about creating games and playing them with others, what games do I want to create for my writing audience? 1) in this post, look at the first letters of each paragraph to find a cute little easter egg, and 2) over the next few days, let’s both be on the lookout for where interaction goes. Perhaps it will go nowhere. Or perhaps I’ll find some fun to share. Since clowning is about so much present-ness, there’s really no way to tell. Guess you’ll have to keep reading 

!🤡

Clown School Break Day 31: To Universal Acclaim

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero smiles at the received positivity. 

A friend of my father’s recommended a game today. She reads my daily blog and, since she knows my love for poker and my interest in cooperative games, she linked over a cooperative poker game. Today my family played it. We had a blast. A new favorite. One for the ages. Such glee.

We sent her a video indicating our excitement. She’s glad we’re glad. We’re glad she’s glad. She’s glad that we’re glad that she’s glad. Etc.

I’m glad my daily blog is having such positive impact. With dozens of daily readers, I’m clearly having a positive impact. And the fact that I’ve received recently a bunch of unexpected positive feedback suggests I’m doing something right. I’m also glad that I have people around me who would tell me honestly if they thought something negative about it. But they don’t, so everyone must like it.

—

It’s a game about accurately ranking your poker hands compared to the other players’ hands. You win or lose as a team: either your whole ranking is accurate or it’s not. Play is simple: you rank preflop, then on the flop, turn, and river. Only the river rankings matter: if they’re correct, you all win. If they’re not, you all lose.

A few lessons:

  1. It’s hard to navigate small discrepancies. 8,7 vs 8,6 is nearly impossible to distinguish if no 7 or 6 comes on the board.
  2. Personal proclivities abound. One person’s confident grab of the top rank preflop means only pocket tens or better, while another’s may be Ace-9.
  3. Have fun. This means A) When a conflict arises, diagnose it accurately (was the problem really on the river, or did this stem from preflop?); and B) when you feel uncomfortable, say “I feel uncomfortable”. It’s shocking how well people respond when you simply say “I feel uncomfortable”.

—

I’ve been writing a daily blog about clown school. I suspect (but don’t know) that plenty of my peers read this blog. As yet, no one has said “I feel uncomfortable”. That’s nice. Guess I’ll continue 🙂 

Clown School Break Day 30: Cooperative Games

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero collaborates. 

My family has recently taken to playing cooperative games. Growing up, we played mainly competitive games. Sometimes team games, but more often individual competitive games.

My partner recently posed the question: What if a person grew up playing mainly cooperative games?

An interesting question.

For one, most sports are competitive. (Sure, some are team-based, but those are still generally against other people rather than a challenge against nature or circumstance.)

For two, most contrived games (as distinct from natural games like science or business) are competitive.

For three, most good contrived games are competitive. Taking board games as a field I know quite well: only over the last ~20 years have cooperative board games taken off, and still they are much less popular and less created than competitive ones.

Bad games are generally not worth playing. They’re unfun and teach poor / useless skills.

Good games are, well, good.

I learned to count and perform basic mental math through the card game cribbage. I’m not aware of a cooperative equivalent that’s as engaging and strategic (and building one’s strategic muscle is worthwhile in itself).

Cooperative games teach communication, team coordination, collective strategy, leading and following, ebbs and flows.

I used to ghostwrite for the founder of the video streaming platform Twitch. He and his brother both sold companies for ~$1B, and they credit their parents’ chore system with teaching them to collaborate and strategize. The chores had to be completed, but the how and the who were up to the children’s choices. (For more, search the word “chore” in this article or this article.)

Collaborative games are excellent. And in the grand scheme of things, many competitive games are really about collaboration on the meta level anyway. Tennis is about (i.e. funded by) encouraging people to play tennis, which is generally good for physical health. Individual competitive sports like running are about setting a new record, thereby pushing human physical ability to new heights.

Perhaps it’s true: Even when we’re competing, we’re collaborating.

Clown School Break Day 29: On Moving Holidays

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero experiments with time.

My family moves holidays.

By moving them, we get more time together. And the ability to do more Christmases with others. (This year, I’m doing one Christmas with my family and then three with my partner’s.)

The official Christmas – or “consensus Christmas,” as I call it – is arbitrarily chosen anyway. Orthodox Christmas is in January; Jesus’ actual birthday is unknown; and Dec 25 was chosen in the 4th century. So we slide things around.

Today was family Christmas Day 1. I received two clownish gifts. 

One was from my gluten-free brother-in-law: a large, baguette-shaped pillow.

[In a French accent: “honh honh honh”]

The second was a sign saying “Beware of Clowns.” It’s visually akin to a normal “Beware of Dog” sign.

Teeheehee.

Musing on this relationship with time, I wonder how much it’s shared by clowns. They’re an immediate lot, making plans for now and changing them when the wind blows. The school allows for drop-ins and drop-outs as desired. You can come for a year. Or for one course. Or leave and return next year. Or the year after. And you definitely can’t take the second year clown course until after you’ve taken the foundational Le Jeu course. Or at the same time: that’s fine too. 

This is a game with time and convention. 

Most people have never considered moving a holiday. “Christmas is on December 25th”, they might say. And they’re right. But they’re only right because people decided they’re right. And social constructs are fertile ground for games. 

It’s also an act of engineering. We found a problem: many demands on the same time. So instead of moving our bodies (see the movie “Four Christmases,” where a couple tries to do all four divorced-family Christmases in one day), we move the holiday. 

Clowning and systems engineering are shockingly similar. One is attempting to achieve a system result; the other an emotional one. But the method is the same: find what’s out of balance and adjust it until the whole thing works.

It’s nice to play with social temporal agreements. But it’s nice because the people I care about agree with it, and all play in similar ways. 

There are also times when I think something’s a game and someone else thinks it’s absolutely not a game. Those times are no fun at all. 🤡

Clown School Break Day 28: Statistical Cheese

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero ages in a cave for 24 months.

This has so far been my favorite Christmas season.

Why?

Is it the general chillness?
The presence of a 16-month-old nephew (our activities constrained by nap windows like a benevolent dictator)?
The absence of sprinting – from task to task, from obligation to obligation – so that family time feels calm instead of stolen?

No running and only a little work means I’m easy and jovial. I like this version of myself.

Part of this is the skill clown school taught me: the ability to choose fun instead of waiting for it to arrive accidentally.
And part of it is contrast: the calm after an absurdly intense storm.

January looms.
I’m buying an apartment.
Interviewing for a job.
Considering family visiting me in France.

For now, though, the assignment appears to be: do less. Enjoy more. Taste the cheese. 

—

Tonight we performed a statistical analysis on cheese.

Ten cheeses. France, Spain, the UK.
Who liked what. How much. Whose tastes clustered. Who outlied in what ways? 

My partner started a masters in statistics during her genetics PhD. This is her preferred form of play: turning pleasure into a dataset. Not just “which cheese did everyone enjoy the most” but “what were the standard deviations” and “who had the most similar taste in cheeses? The most divergent?”

It occurred to me that this – thinking carefully about what we like – is a behavior often poo-pooed. 

Anti-intellectualism runs rampant. In part because it’s easier to form a mob than to compete on precision. If you can’t articulate why something is good, it’s comforting to declare articulation itself suspicious. If you can’t relate to someone who knows 1/7th in percentages, it’s comforting to outgroup them as mad scientist-y. 

And yet:
Some of our favorite cheeses were cheap, mass-market cheeses from France and Spain.

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
It’s funny how the everyday object in one country becomes a delicacy in another—just by crossing a border and being paid attention to.

Maybe this is also a clown lesson.

Attention is not seriousness.
Analysis is not joy-killing.
And play doesn’t require intensity—sometimes it requires rest.

All in all, a very chill day.

Which is nice.
Especially
Because
I’m not in charge of the toddler napping
🤡

Clown School Break Day 27: Beards and Bouffons

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero chuckles at a mistranslation, then engages with the point itself. 

The question was posed earlier today: “How much of your feeling of lack of social fitting at clown school comes from your grooming, or lack thereof?”

A fair question.

I last shaved my face in October. I last cut my hair in 2021.

(To be concrete: at clown school, I showered daily, wore deodorant, and washed my clothes weekly. This topic is about aesthetics, not hygiene.) 

I’ve never grown facial hair before. It was always patchy. Now, since July, returning to my endogenous testosterone production with a little bit of external boosting via a doctor-prescribed chemical called Clomid (a 10/10 experience, but a different story), I have finally been able to grow a beard. It’s nice. My partner enjoys the softness. I enjoy the newness and the exploration (and the scritches).

And then, on the hair front, it’s long. Sometimes (3 or 4 times in the last 4 years) I get it treated at a salon to make it simple and easy to manage. Others, I wear hats or put it in a ponytail.

I’ve heard I have split ends. I don’t care.

So:

Do clowns?

The first answer is: probably. Clowns are an immediacy-focused group. One that cares about emotional presence and current experience. They also therefore care about appearance and presentation. And they should: performers are perceived based on their appearance. A comedian who either gains or loses a lot of weight will need to adjust their behavior and performance based on their new perception. (For a biting and sad example, see either this article about Chris Farley or how many Chris Farley bits involve his size.) 

So yes, my grooming has probably had an impact.

I mentioned something like this to my interlocutor, to which they replied: “Not because you don’t look good, but because you look like you aren’t taking care of yourself.”

This comment seems worthy of analysis.

Like.

I am taking care of myself.

I’m just not doing things with my body that you (the collective “you”) want me to. 

“Not taking care of yourself” is often a polite mistranslation for something else. What it usually means is: you are emitting social signals I don’t enjoy. 

I’m enjoying the beard growth. I’m curious where it goes and what it’s like. I’m enjoying the new experiences, even some of the difficult or disgusting ones. (The presence of my mustache means I have to re-learn the skill of using a napkin.) I like my hair as it is: I’m enjoying it growing out. 

It’s less “not taking care of myself” and more “not playing others’ game”. 

Grooming isn’t just maintenance; it’s signaling. And one of the signals I was sending – intentionally or not – was: I’m not optimizing for your approval.

Which is

perhaps

a fair point.

I’ve opted out of a bunch of life’s societal games. The 9-5 job (or employee status more generally). Living in a fixed location. Dating via specific social rituals. Following a prescribed gender behavior.

It limits who likes me. It limits who spends time with me. But the people who do like me really like me. 

I’m thinking about this with clown school. My goals were 80% spiritual and 20% clown-y. That already separates me from the crowd. I’m not the only one in clown school for spiritual reasons: a classmate shared that her motivation was to re-learn how to play so she could enjoy playing with her children again. The majority of my classmates are professional actors. 

My clown-y goals were 1) learn the practice of clowning; 2) learn the theory of clowning; and 3) make friends. 

If my spiritual goals are not most clowns’ main focus, and most clowns aren’t interested in the theory, then I’m already pretty limited in topic interest overlap.

Add to that the fact that I don’t find fun many things that other clowns do – drinking alcohol; socializing in groups; group texting conversations – and my pool becomes even smaller.

Clowning is about finding games and playing them. It’s about being open and connective and sensitive with others. My first few weeks, when my facial hair looked good rather than just a lot, I was more in flow. Is that a coincidence with the fact that I also enjoyed the class subject matter (Le Jeu) more? Is it true that my focus turned more inward over time, and this didn’t jive with the peers? Complicité is a two way street, and maybe I was blocking the other lane. (As a friend put it: “maybe your flow comes partially from the interactions with others and maybe your appearance changes their interactions with you, which compounds”.)

The most generally-liked clown who I met at clown school was a person who’s constantly generous. Not especially generous with time, resources, or skills, but extraordinarily generous in emotional and social dynamics.

And I

just

don’t value that

as much

as the other

clowns do.

Emotional generosity is the local currency. I value it, just not always above curiosity, theory, or truth. That difference matters more here than I expected.

This isn’t a critique of emotional generosity. It’s a recognition that I underweighted how central it is to clown school, and that mismatch had consequences I’m still understanding.

So I write a daily blog about clowning.
And others
are better
clowns
🤡