Back in Étampes, the land of the Clown School. My mother and I are visiting for ~5 days.
My mother asked me what it’s like to be back.
My answer, in anecdotes:
At the airport, waiting for the bus, my mother and I talked about our travels to France: hers through Portugal, mine from Spain. Perhaps its the German genes we share, but both of us have trouble with those local cultures of queueing.
When the corner baker popped up from behind the counter and saw me, her eyes widened and her cheeks shined. “I thought you were gone,” she said. I told her about my broken foot and leaving for the holiday. She told me, “Before you leave, you must tell me!”
My mother asked, “What should we get in our croissant?”. I replied, “Oh you silly Americans. We are going to the best croissant in the whole town. We will eat it as it is.” And we did. And it was good.
“I’m glad I’m wearing my boots, because this is muddy!” (I don’t own boots.)
The two cheeses in the fridge, untouched for 1.5 months, had me wary. One ages for 24 months before it gets to me; the other spends its adolescence stewing in musty caves, which are selected because they harbor fungicidal mold. Perhaps it’s no surprise they’re both not only edible but delicious.
The outer crunch of the baguette; the smear of blue cheese; the dollup of black truffle pâté; the slice of iberian ham. If I lived here, this would be my every day. When I lived here, this was my every day.
Three — now four — times, my mother and I have said “It’s so great to be with you.”
In which… “something, something, cultural relativism. But definitely only a weak version of it.”
A while ago I wanted to play trivia at home with friends. I had stumbled upon a British trivia show that inspired this notion. We played together (i.e. watched the show while guessing along). The problem: we didn’t know the British popular culture.
I then went on a hunt for equivalent shows that we Americans might be able to enjoy. Ultimately, I arrived at… Jeopardy.
That’s right: I hunted around through around a dozen shows and ended up at the quintessential American trivia show.
Why?
Is the format familiar to me?
Is it coherent within my culture?
Does it have form that fits my expectations, simply because I was raised on it?
For a while now, I have been of the opinion that most human preferences are not real but learned. Your influential parent enjoys eating spicy food → you learn to enjoy spicy food. A leader of your country speaks with a lisp → people are still speaking with a lisp centuries later.
It really removes many beliefs about the meaning of “good”, doesn’t it?
Still, some things are clearly worse than others.
I’m reminded of a friend who concluded (after much analysis) that “good” simply means safe and “bad” means dangerous. (Both in roundabout ways.)
How do you branch out? How do you discover other good things? And when is it okay to go back to what you grew up with?
Tonight, my partner and I made enchilada casserole. She grew up eating it with green sauce and was hesitant to make it red. We ended up making two: one red, one green. It was a fun game to compare: the safety of the known alongside the adventure of the new. The verdict? Red won.
It’s fun to play games where even if you lose you win.
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.
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. 🤡
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 🤡
Americans are pushies. Not sensitive. Not gentle. We want it, so we push it.
It’s not attractive. It’s not sensitive. It’s not connected.
—
Today, I was boring. A cause for celebration.
I entered the stage as a mangy, rabid coyote. I loved it. Head Teacher even said I was full of delight and pleasure—but that my pleasure wasn’t reaching the audience.
So she began to chant: “Boring! Boring! Buh-buh-buh-boring!”
The class joined in. Then I joined in. And when I joined, they loved me.
I danced; we chanted; I escalated to “…and dumb!” They loved that too. Real humility—not performance, not irony. I was boring! I was dumb! I was ugly. And we loved that together.
We love someone who makes fun of themselves.
After Head Teacher called out a fellow student for pushing too hard, the student offered to jump out the window. The audience laughed. The assistant teacher helped him open it. We laughed again. Excellent pedagogy. Also: improves student-teacher ratio.
—
After class, I decided to catch the train to Paris. I had four minutes to pack my bag. Then I thought: Why am I rushing? This isn’t fun.
So I slowed down. Decided to take the next train. Stopped by the café instead. And since I was going, I figured I might as well bring a cake for my classmates.
I texted the group chat and showed up with cake. They were so grateful— —or at least they would have been if any of them had been there.
I sat outside and chuckled at myself. A homeless man approached. I waved him away out of habit… then called him back and offered cake.
He asked if I had a knife to cut it in two. I didn’t. So he broke it with his hands.
It brought me joy that he stumbled away without saying merci. It gave me delight to share cake with someone who wanted cake. It was joyful to see him divide it in half— —he’s not greedy, after all.
Sometimes your flops are kinder than your successes. If you stay open, good things arrive. Clowns don’t need cake; hungry (and drunk?) homeless people do.
—
Another homeless man later refused my cake, saying, “If I ate cake, I would die.”
Good to know the homeless are still French.
—
As I write this, I’ve arrived in Paris to buy makeup and a gray shirt. On Friday, I’ll be a stick bug. For camouflage, I’ve chosen gray: dignified, dull, affectionately geriatric.
At dinner, the woman beside me asked what I do. When I said I study clown, she told me I have a kind and happy aura.
The couple who sat down after her asked what brought me to Paris… and then invited me for Shabbat dinner in New York.
The woman in the makeup shop gave me her number as she wants to go for a walk with me.
Clearly, I’m doing something right.
—
What’s the lesson from today’s class? Something about having good humor, laughing at myself, not taking life—or art—too seriously?
For a good time, bring a cake to a gathering of friends. Cut slices for each person. Ask how big they want. Invariably, they’ll say “Just a small slice,” or “Just a little one.”
Then, if you move the knife slowly and ask them to “say when,” you’ll find each person’s little slice is different. In some cases, it’s twice the size of someone else’s small slice.
When they say, “Just a small slice,” for whom are they speaking?
They’re not communicating in your language. If they were, small would mean the same thing. Instead, they’re saying something like: “I’m signaling that I’m not greedy.” Or: “I’m allowing myself pleasure, but a restrained version of it.”
Maybe I’ve always found moments like this confusing. Maybe because I’m autistic. Maybe because I never learned the unwritten grammar of appetite and permission. Maybe because the cultural norm to be small and not enjoy yourself is dumb.
On stage, the same puzzle repeats. How much of myself is the right-sized slice to offer?
I have a great and powerful energy in me. I can give a lot. I have given a lot. My teammates, my teachers, and I all agree: when I was fire today, I burned.
But still—I didn’t burn for them.
Fuck.
I have so, so much pleasure. So much deep, physical intensity. And goddamn it, how do I transmit this to you? So far, I’ve tried:
Give it directly. Too pushy.
Increase my own pleasure. Too self-contained.
Recommendation from friends: play with oscillation—me-pleasure, then share; me-pleasure, then share again.
Complicating factors: (1) I can’t see on stage (I can’t wear my glasses with the neutral mask). (2) I don’t find myself beautiful.
The teacher’s aid begrudgingly gave me her speculation today (directness like this isn’t really part of the pedagogy). She said she senses that I have beliefs about how I’m perceived, and that my behavior on stage is an attempt to offer those perceptions, then shatter them. Which isn’t the same as showing myself—it’s showing my idea of myself, or how I imagine others see me.
Maybe she’s right. When I was beautiful, they loved me. Subtle. Gentle. Open. I remember it dimly: tears streaming, face unguarded, giving.
I want to find that again. Tomorrow, I’ll try.
When the Head Teacher told me I was insufficiently sensitive, she began with: “Not bad.” And when I raised my hand to ask a question, she added: “When you have done something good, it is better not to ask questions, no? It is better to think about what you have done.”
Maybe I’m harder on myself than they are. Or, as a friend put it: “It’s nice to know you’re harder on yourself than the teachers are. It’s nice to know you’re not just failing over and over. Or at least that you’re failing over and over—but it’s working.”
Tomorrow, instead of trying so hard to give that I push, I’ll try so hard to open that I break. And I’ll give that to the audience. Maybe they’ll love it.
You only want some of my joy. You don’t want all of it.
Not the part that finds fascination in injuries at the Olympics.
Not the part that laughs when someone fumbles at a task they’ve been doing for months.
Not the part that goes for blood in silly games.
You only want some parts.
—
School is cultural honing: a repeated sheening and shearing and shaping of an impressionable child into the kind of person we want.
Graduate school is self-imposed honing.
Clown school is emotional honing.
—
Half of this school is calibration: make it light, make it pleasant, make it generous.
Half is tactical: learn the mechanics and try them out.
And the final half (yes, I know) is experience: stage time with a real audience who loves this peculiar art.
But what if I don’t want to be calibrated?
What if I like my joy?
What if I’d miss the parts of it you call cruel?
—
A friend recently said something that ruined my joy at watching this video (includes a severe gymnastics injury). I used to find it fascinating. Now I can hardly watch.
Is that a loss? Once I received a fascinated joy. Now that joy is covered with a patina of sadness and pity.
Why do we do that to each other: sand the edges off one another’s laughter? Isn’t there a terrible beauty in the Olympian moment: a lifetime’s work undone in one leap? It’s comic, in the oldest sense: man plans and God laughs.
The funniest part, perhaps, is the commitment to the bit. This athlete may never walk again. That’s deathly serious. But he hurt himself with flips and spins, in a contrived game, for which the prize is mainly collective fiction (a title, which brings fame and glory). Is that not fundamentally comic? For me, it’s the same humor I saw in the nod of a hotel receptionist in Bentonville, Arkansas. I commented that the front page of their local newspaper was about high school football. She nodded solemnly, explaining, “It’s very important.”
No, it isn’t.
And yes, it is.
With the receptionist, I let her continue her joy.
While my Olympic joy is now covered with dry rot.
Now, when I rewatch, I can barely locate that joy. It’s smaller now, covered in a “But you shouldn’t…”
—
We choose the games we play. I’ve chosen clown school.
And yet, when peers see me on the street, when they ask what video I’m watching on my phone, I hide. I make a joke. I assume they’ll hurt me if I’m honest.
It’s hard to be honest and open.
So hard. Since it’s been so aggressively sanded away.
That’s why I’m here.
Because people don’t generally value openness, or honesty, or play.
We value these in contained scenarios. But an intensely raw emotion, honestly expressed? Best put a lid on that, missy!
—
I generally don’t find the world a nice place. I don’t think openness is generally rewarded. People can be vicious outside the boundaries of their games. That’s why games exist: to make behavior safe.
Within a game (religion, law, sport), there’s form. There’s play. Simplicity. Meaning.
Outside, there’s a new game:
The honest negotiation between what we’re told to laugh at
and what still makes us laugh.
I’d like to laugh at you when you’re being an idiot.
I’d like to laugh at me when I’m being an idiot.
Have you considered joining me?
It’s funnier over here.
And if not,
I’ll take
my ball
and go home.
—
“The child not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth” —African proverb.
On a cold Sunday night with my van heater blasting and a bit of white wine still seeping from my blood, I don’t feel misplaced. Not in the wrong place. Just alone, lonely, sad, and wanting. Maybe that’s this place.
The thing about travel? They don’t tell you it’s lonely. “An adventure of excitement and eye-opening growth.”
Yes, that’s travel. But it’s lonely, too.
It’s me and my dog, one month in our roadtrip. Atlanta, then Texas, now in New Orleans. Friends—some great friends—we met along the way. Yet still it’s just us— me and my dog.
Last night, out til 5, surrounded by parties, I made two new
friends that I’m now gonna see. Interesting people with lives and opinions.
Better than that, unique, fun, funny, too.
But now, when it’s late, and my sleep schedule’s fucked, I see why someone would get drunk again. Then it’s tomorrow. Who knows what could happen? Who wouldn’t have fun at a New Orleans club?
That’s not a solution. That’s open containers. Vessels transporting
liquid from one place to place. People vibrating where they stand, moving
forward only in time. Bleary, wide-eyed blobs drink to replace their cold
sweat.
Why has this city not changed since Katrina? Why did my
cabbie say there’s really no dif?
If you spend your life dancing, you’ve nothing to celebrate. That’s what this is: just an empty, wet kiss. But not one from your grandma or a dog or a lover. Just tongue from someone who, right now, like you, feels alone. Together will be great for the time that it’s lasting, but morning will come and you’ll have to go home.
Julian Wise 