Tag: clowns

Clown School Day 32: A Virtuous Pleasure Cycle

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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 27: Beards and Bouffons

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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
🤡

Clown School Break Day 20: The Dealer Doesn’t Care

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In which Our Hero recalls, yet again, that feelings are weather, not climate.

Poker.

I don’t like poker.
It fucking sucks.

The intensity, the swings, the way it presses you between two stones: your own decisions and the randomness of the universe. As one poker TV show once put it, “It’s a hard way to make an easy living.”

There was a time I stopped playing altogether because I believed poker was net-negative for the world. You take money from people who can’t afford it. Addicts. The lonely. The poor.

And what do you give in return?

Entertainment?
A distraction?
A slow-motion morality play about risk and consequence?

These were my thoughts after losing two big pots tonight.
One I played fine. Just ran into the top of someone’s range.
The other I played poorly preflop in a $50 splash pot and donated my stack like a confused philanthropist. (“Splash pot” = the casino added $50 to it for free.)

Woof.

So I asked myself, as one does after being spiritually hit by a train:

Why do I do this?
Why are we attracted to what we’re attracted to?
Is it genetics? Happenstance? Praise when we were eight and wanted to feel special?

Clown school has taught me one brutal, luminous thing:
You will be pummeled on your chosen path.
Mocked, rejected, flattened, ignored.
And that’s just by the teachers! 

Your path should therefore be the thing you continue doing despite the punishment.
What’s the thing you’ll walk through hell for?

I’m deeply dissatisfied with poker tonight. But here’s the truth:
Poker is a game of millions of hands.
Variance is a dragon that only bows after thousands upon thousands of repetitions.
This hand doesn’t matter.
This session doesn’t matter.

Clowning, on the other hand, is both slower and faster.
Yes, the craft takes years, maybe a lifetime – but the feedback is instantaneous.
You step out, you try something, and either the audience lights up now, or it doesn’t.

Steve Martin once asked himself:
“What happens if I never release the tension?”
Instead of setup → punchline → laugh from tension relief, he just stacked more and more absurdity.
If someone left the show emotionless and burst out laughing in the car ride home, he considered that a victory.
(His memoir is worth a read.) 

Here’s the thing about Cards.
And the thing about Clowning.

The C’s don’t care about your feelings.
The dealer doesn’t pause because you’re tilted.
The audience doesn’t laugh because you’re sad.

The next hand came.
My body was buzzing with frustration.
But I played fine.
And that was what mattered.

Ugh.

—

It’s now an hour later.
The frustration is gone.

How astonishing, how liberating, how funny it is to remember how fleeting feelings are.

And how little they matter to the game.
Any game.
When the next hand is already being dealt.

Unless you let them play instead of you.
And they are both bad cardplayers and bad clowns. 

—

We’re now an hour after that.
I quit the live game because it wasn’t profitable enough.
I wasn’t having fun.
I asked myself the question “If I lost my stack in the next hand, would I rebuy and keep plying?”
The answer was no. 

So now I’m at the deli, eating dinner with my father…
While we play online poker with a different group. 

🤡

Clown School Day 35: Time for Me to Fly

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When Our Hero closes a door, He opens a window.

All three teachers agree: I should not attend the second half of this course.

That’s nice.

I wasn’t enjoying Neutral Mask. I wasn’t looking forward to Greek Tragedy. Friends have commented worries about my emotional health and about whether the school’s pedagogy implements brainwashing tactics. Perhaps it will be nice to have time off.

One of the main teachers says I analyze too much. Instead of analyzing, they say, I should “sit in the feedback.”

I’m not so sure.

When I sit in feedback, I misread it. When they told me my costume looked like “vomited broccoli,” I thought they were literally insulting the outfit. A friend later suggested it was meant to get under my skin — a non-literal pedagogical tactic.

But how am I supposed to incorporate something non-literal without analyzing it?

If literal doesn’t mean literal, then…?

And anyway, who wants to sit in vomit?

—

The head teacher asked me a question today. I wasn’t performing on account of my fractured foot, so another student took my slot. She looked at me and asked:

“Was your replacement excellent, or could you have done better?”

I said, “I don’t want to answer.”

The class booed.

I felt confused.

I asked her to repeat the question. She did. I said, “I don’t think it was excellent, but I don’t think I could have done better.” Then I named two specific weak points in the scene.

She said, “It’s good to know your level.”

And I agree. I wasn’t being self-pitying or self-judging — just honest about where I’m currently at.

I’ve had trouble with complexity here. A few days ago, we had three mistakes to resolve, and when I chose one hug, one kiss, and one Swedish handshake, I sensed tension as though people thought I was trying to be unnecessarily cute. And that’s literally 1+1+1=3. Complexity seems to be frowned upon. So what do I do when I’m tasked with following the fun, and sometimes find complexity fun?

At coffee today, a classmate realized Los Angeles is on the west coast rather than the east, and mentioned she formerly thought Africa was the world’s biggest country. She’s also had much more success than I have in recent class sessions.

Maybe I’m expecting something different from these clowns than they have to give. I’ve watched people forget a promise five minutes after making it. I’ve watched them make complete 180s in real time. Perhaps an excellent clown is so right-brained they exist only in the present moment.

Regardless, they’re great clowns.

I’m gonna miss them. 🤡

—

I’m excited to have some time away.

In January, a friend arrives to the school. That’ll be nice. We’ll take a course together. Probably live together. It’s good to bring a friend. 😀

I asked the assistant about switching classes; she said it’d be good for them administratively. So I might as well try it for one course: Melodrama. After that comes Bouffon, then Vaudeville. A change of pace. And if it’s still rough, I’ll know it’s not the section.

As for the newsletter: I was supposed to be on winter break from clown school for six weeks (Dec 13–Jan 25). Now it’s nine weeks. I’ll continue writing daily for two reasons:

  1. It keeps me fresh.
  2. It’s the sort of person I like being.

Clown School Day 34: Frustration Sans Fun

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In which Our Hero wonders what specific problem is afoot.

My roommate asked if I’m on the spectrum.

He teaches improv to autistic kids professionally, so the question wasn’t random. He even offered some lightly camouflaged feedback he gives his students:

  • They find the game and play it very hard, but ignore the pleasure of the people around them.
  • They approach situations with a kind of childlike openness, but the moment someone comments on them, they build a thick, impenetrable shield.

I asked him if he is on the spectrum.
He said no.

I’m grateful for his attempt to help. I’m also aware his description fits me in class. What I’m still missing are the “what” and “how” of changing it.

–

I’ve only worked in one real office. I was 19, a sophomore in college, with a summer job at a NYC marketing agency. They paid me $16/hr to make the same repeated mouse clicks, transferring digital assets from one system to another. I downloaded a mouse-recording tool and automated my job. Then automated the interns’ jobs. Then automated my direct superior’s job.

And nobody liked me.

I was there to work. To do the task. To be effective. Clock in, clock out, $16/hr. Promotion was not on the menu. Mostly, they just wanted me swept quietly under the rug.

The connection between that summer and here isn’t skill: I’m far worse at clowning than I was at automating workflows. The connection is the feeling in the room. The details are different, but the emotional texture is uncannily similar. There, as here, I tried to make friends. There, as here, people were cordial but uninterested.

To me, clown school feels like a coworking space. Others have formed friendships; I’m batting maybe 2-for-10 on hangout invitations, with no successful follow-ups/second hangs from the two. Eventually you give up, videochat friends from home, and read a book.

It makes it harder that I’m not enjoying the classes.
Nor am I learning well.
It’s just terrifically challenging.

Maybe that’s intentional: the hardest class comes after the fundamentals.
Or maybe I’m unraveling.
I keep wondering whether the problems I had back in April/May were different ones. I was in a completely different psycho-emotional state then.

–

After class today, a teacher asked what I planned to do with my broken foot.

I told them I’m of two minds:

  1. Take it as a sign from the gods and get the fuck out of here, returning in January.
  2. Stay and see whether this new, legless constraint allows for new growth.

–

Last night a friend told me I only ever talk about myself.
Sure.
My pleasure is in the game. And it is vast. But it doesn’t seem to be in the sharing. More autistic people become computer programmers than clowns. Perhaps I’m less naturally equipped. Maybe my version of sharing the game is the multiple clowns who I helped with visa applications. Maybe it’s in the creation of a clown house so people aren’t stuck with individual roomshares. Maybe it’s cleverness or intellect. Those play poorly on this stage.

High achievers share one trait: grit.
Do I want to grit through this?
Do I even want to be a clown?

At the beginning, my clown school goals were 80% spiritual and 20% tangible. The tangible ones were:

  • Learn the practice.
  • Learn the theory.
  • Make friends.

Right now:

  • I’m injured.
  • People keep telling me they don’t connect with me (and act like it).
  • Peers are also sharing their suffering.

–

One performer friend says the physical restriction might actually help my clowning. Another says being forced to “not try so hard” might help me be better at clowning and enjoy myself more.

Personally, I’m unconvinced the foot bone is connected to the trying bone. Or that either one attaches to the funny bone.

Meanwhile I spent six hours crying on Tuesday.
Cried three more times today.
And feel like I’m banging my head against a wall.
(This feels like a particularly intense few weeks, not my new permanent state.)

With my foot injury, I even lost morning movement class, which I liked more than afternoon improv.

Ugh.

Today in class I performed one of the “substances”: Chloric Acid. I struggled because I didn’t know what specific acid she meant. She said it was something used to unclog drains, so I did drano. She said my rhythm was too slow. My later googling suggests chloric acid can have a fast, popping rhythm—but it is definitely not a drain cleaner. Maybe she meant hydrochloric acid? If this is my problem at clown school, maybe I’m better suited to be a chemist. (Tomorrow, I hope they ask me to play Barium Disodium.)

When it came time for “cream,” I sat out.
Then I lied down on the floor so I could elevate my fractured foot above my heart. Which my roommate later said indicated to him I was autistic.

What’s next?

Ugh.
Time for more searching.
The searching is the practice, I guess.

😮‍💨

Clown School Day 21: Enter Neutral Mask

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In which Our Hero proves that knowing is not the same as doing.

Yesterday, I wrote a taxonomy of clown-school terms.

Today, I flopped.

Intellectual knowing is not the same as embodied knowing.

We say “those who can’t do, teach,” but that’s too glib. Some teachers are former doers; some are doers making rent; and some—well, maybe they can’t do, but they sure can see.

My ability to coach clowning probably exceeds my ability to be a clown.

Partly because I’m a better theoretician than performer writ large.

Partly because certain psychological or emotional doors in me are still locked.

Today in class, our Head Teacher said it was obvious that I was still saying the text—in my head. Which is an insane read. She’s right, though: I was silently saying the words instead of placing them gently atop the game.

That’s fucking wild. How can someone see that? And what does that even have to do with clowning?

Maybe everything. Maybe the moment you’re “thinking” instead of being, you’ve already left the game.

Today we began Neutral Mask.

You wear a mask so we can’t see your face. You imitate water: you see a beautiful lake, feel yourself becoming water, then add text on top of the game.

Here’s what hit me:

Clown school is really fucking tough.

Denser than any Yale course I ever took.

Four weeks of relentless concepts, barely time to digest one before the next arrives.

It’s like going to art school and having one day on each primary color, one day on mixing, one day on three-point perspective, and then being told to paint the Sistine Chapel.

And when you mess up, they just tell you how you failed.

But it’s a brilliant method for a school that wants to produce a thousand different clowns.

The system that made Emma Thompson, Roberto Benigni, Sacha Baron Cohen (who all on his own has a host of diverse characters, including Borat, Bruno, and Ali G) isn’t designed to give you one formula. It’s designed to force you to find your own.

So now I shall learn the Neutral Mask.

Tomorrow, we become fire. Or air. Or despair.

And maybe one of my small discoveries from Le Jeu holds:

I love doing impressions, especially voices.

Maybe that’s part of my clown.

Maybe that’s mine to remember.

Because it’s all mine to choose. And all mine to learn.

🤡

Clown School Day 18: You Must Play the Game

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In which Our Hero misquotes Shakespeare.

“This above all: to thine own game be true.” —Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 3.

It’s very easy to forget the game.

But the game is the most important thing.

Some performance is only game. Tennis, for instance, is only game: and look how much money that earns.

The Rehearsal

My scene partner and I rehearsed today. We lacked pleasure because we had forgotten the game.

The original game was simple: I make my partner lick a thing. Like when children find a bug and dare each other to eat it.

It wasn’t fun anymore. We knew it was coming. We knew he would do it. There was no tension, no conflict.

So we changed it.

Now, we begin with a eulogy for a piece of the space: “We are gathered here today to say goodbye to the power outlet.”

Then we play rock-paper-scissors.

The loser, as a ritual of farewell, must lick it.

As the scene escalates, so do the lickables. The floor. The bottom of a shoe. The teacher.

We didn’t have a game. Now we have a game.

The game? Rock-paper-scissors.

But with stakes!

The Farce

In Improv class, I realized the rule applies to everything.

We played a farce: a train compartment. One person enters, perfectly normal except for one grotesque tic. They repeat it. Then a second person enters, takes pleasure from that game, and — after a long time enjoying their tic (longer than you think) — adds their own tic, heightening the first. Then a third person. Then a fourth.

The game is simple: take the game from the person before you, heighten it through your play, and pass it on.

Simple is nice.

Simple is hard.

You have to feel the scene. Is it falling down? Are you talking over the game with “train compartment” nonsense? Are you heightening or dominating or smothering?

When everyone played the game, the farce appeared by itself.

When someone forgot, everything froze.

The game makes the show. Always has. Always will.

The Handstand

This morning, I flipped upside-down.

My first handstand (wall-assisted), then onto a peer’s back, who rolled me forward, turning us both into a ball.

A new game: gravity as partner.

I’d forgotten the joy of inversion.

The Father

My father arrived in Étampes today. He wants more than anything to see a class.

I’d love to have him: to share my play space. The school forbids it.

No visitors, no cameras, no phones. We even sign a “no recording” oath, like monks taking vows.

Why so strict?

Because clowning is vulnerable.

I’ve seen people bare grief. I’ve seen them make absolute fools of themselves (and not the good kind).

Once, a student scraped his false teeth along the floor before popping them back in. The room gasped. Disgust and horror.

Once, I yelled at the teacher. Their instruction felt like trash; maybe provoking me was the point.

This isn’t for YouTube. This is for us.

The school protects its game.

It keeps the outside world out, so the play inside can live.

The Lesson

The game is everything: the lick, the tic, the flip, the secret room.

When you forget the game, everything dies.

When you play it, life appears.

Protect the space so you can play the game.

Then find the game.

Release all else.

Play the game.

And when you lose it, start again.

That’s what makes it a play.

Clown School Day 17: The LeBron of Tic Tac Toe

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In which Our Hero learns that leadership means getting the simple things right.

THE SETUP

The game is simple: tic-tac-toe.

The complication: teammates.

Two teams of 11 players, across a ten-foot-by-ten-foot tic-tac-toe board. Each team has three handkerchiefs of their team color. At the sound of the drum, the first player sprints to a spot on the board, drops their handkerchief, and sprints back to tag the next player.

When all three of your handkerchiefs are placed, your move is to move one of your handkerchiefs instead of placing a new one.

At three in a row, you win the point.

THE ESCALATION

How is this so hard?

First, foot faults. Were both of your feet inside the square where you dropped the kerchief? If not, your placement doesn’t count. (More than one clown kicked the game board itself, forcing a complete game stop and reset.)

Second, speed. Your next teammate goes when your previous teammate tags them. If you dawdle, the opponents may get two moves to your team’s one: a death knell in tic tac toe.

Third, skill errors. Can you picture the board as it currently is, and how you would like it to be after your play? Can you balance both your team’s desire for three in a row with the importance of blocking the other team?

Fourth, panic. If you’re not sure where to place the handkerchief, you may find yourself overwhelmed by the twenty clowns yelling at you.

THE CHAOS

If this sounds intense, that’s because it is. It’s the most competitive I’ve seen clowns in four weeks of class. One clown classmate commented to me: “Usually you and I are the only two trying to win. In this game, everyone is.”

And the best part: it’s tic tac toe.

You know, the game that even a monkey can play.

When I played this same game in the summer course, I was dubbed “the LeBron of tic tac toe” by a Boston-accented TikTok star who’d gained school-wide notoriety for roasting himself in a Trump impression.

This time, my team came out to a strong start. 2-0 in the lead.

Their team called a time out.

From across the board, I could see one member of their team — a former death row attorney now turned stand up comedian — giving an impassioned speech.

Members of my team jeered at him. I thought of strategic elements I wanted to share — if unsure, play the middle or corners, not the sides; run back quickly to tag your teammate — but kept them to myself, unsure how to make them land. I didn’t want to come off as the pushy, out-for-victory teammate.

The game restarted. Their team came out on a tear. They won three of the next four points, and ultimately took the match 11-9.

All game I mused to myself: What had he said? They started to coordinate so well. What strategies did he share? How did he inspire them to listen to his suggestions without coming off as pushy?

THE REVELATION

At lunch, I asked him. I complimented him on his success, then I asked what he had said.

“Oh, that? Some of our team didn’t understand the game. I just explained the rules.”

There’s a Polish expression I enjoy that translates to “Not my circus, not my monkeys”.

Unfortunately, this is my circus.

And unfortunately, it is not populated with monkeys.

Clown School Weekend 3.1: Simple Precision

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In which Our Hero consumes a couple clowns

Last night I watched two excellent clowns on YouTube.

The first attempted to climb a staircase: first with one foot, then two, then using a harpoon as a pole vault, then trying a taller staircase. Always slipping backward, performing a kind of “moon-crawl,” moving backward while pretending to move forward.

The second performed built visual jokes around pop songs: a blend of clown, prop comedy, and puppetry.

Both chose a single simple game, then repeated it in increasingly heightened variations. With tight physical control, that was enough.

Stand-ups need new jokes to stay fresh. Musicians can live forever off one hit.

Clowns might belong to that latter category — one beautiful idiocy, endlessly re-played. Not note-for-note as a musician would, but a single comedic insight will take you far.

That said, if your art requires physical presence, your reach is finite.

Clown School Day 15: The Honest Audience

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In which Our Hero is too tired to pretend.

One nice part about clowning is that the audience is honest.

By some biological necessity, they can’t fake it.

If the player is light, open, with pleasure — they’ll laugh.

Even if they’d hate you in real life, they’ll like you on stage.

That’s a comfort for those of us who don’t easily make friends:

who click with one in every thousand people we meet,

one in a hundred even here at clown school.

My second goal here is to make friends.

My first — learning the craft — is easier.

It has less randomness.

A good clown should be able to open themselves

and bring pleasure regardless of who’s watching.

That’s what makes it challenging.

That’s what makes it a job.

At the start of sophomore year of high school, I realized I had no friends.

Uncoincidentally, around the same time, I began to find women attractive and desirable.

I reasoned that I could either change the world or change myself.

Changing the world to fit one’s taste is the path of a supervillain

(and takes far more energy),

so I decided to learn how to be a friend.

If you try to be funny, you’ll never be funny.

If you try to be a friend, you’ll never be a friend.

Instead, to clown, you simply have to open yourself:

be kind, generous, caring.

The same is perhaps true

for friendship itself.

But what if you open yourself and discover you’re… kind of a jerk?

“Open” seems to increase attention paid to you. Charisma, one could say.

The others are the ones that keep them coming back for more.

When I’m sick, I hate everything.

My body hurts, my brain shuts down,

and I want to crawl inside the dark and stay there.

And yet, something happens on stage.

The power of giving,

the act of offering pleasure to the audience,

somehow overcomes the weakness of the flesh.

Bam! Pow! Beauty.

So now, I feel lonely, surrounded by clowns.

I’ll probably feel better in a few days,

with zinc and tea.

And then…

who knows.

Who knows.

Who knows.

If you don’t like yourself,

how can you let others love you?