Tag: Life

Clown School Day 20: Le Jeu (Game) Over

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In which Our Hero becomes Our Zero

“When Julian enter, was he with [scene partner] or was he alone?”

Audience: “Alone.”

At least I’m consistent.

(That’s a crap joke, but I’m keeping it.)

I’ve now attended two classes here.

Both had a final presentation.

In both final presentations, I received a mark of zero.

Zero is a bad mark.

It means:

  • You were boring.
  • You weren’t even interesting enough to get specific notes.
  • We could not see your pleasure.
  • You were not beautiful.
  • We do not love you.
  • Goodbye.

The Week

Monday: We received our assignments. I chose a partner I liked — skilled, smart, fun.

Tuesday: We rehearsed and found a stupid little game we loved.

Wednesday: We showed it to a trial audience. They couldn’t see the game. So we added another on top.

Thursday: We played again. We had fun.

Friday: We talked through our plan. Then, right before going onstage, my partner suggested a new one:

“Milk the opening if it works. Only go to the game if we need to.”

The drumbeats sounded. Our turn.

We entered.

The audience laughed once.

I thought, Aha! They’re laughing at me!

(Still kinda true: I set up something he executed.)

I did it again. No dice.

My partner panicked:

“We need to do the game!”

And before we even played the game, we were kicked off.

The Problem

I loved rehearsing with him. Genuinely. It was a highlight of my week.

But when I entered the stage, I didn’t open myself. I didn’t share with the audience enough pleasure of being on stage.

And so: I wasn’t lovable.

I’ve only opened myself once on stage. People found me beautiful.

How do I get back there?

Is this lack of openness also a problem in my relationships?

Am I in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing?

Is this biomedical?

Will clown school eventually teach me to play well with others?

Right now, I feel like a lonely, isolated lump of clay.

An ugly one.

It’s not fun to feel like an ugly lump of clay.

Maybe if I did therapy for an hour every day, I’d get better at opening myself. Then I just do that on stage, but lighter.

If the hypothesis is that success comes from being open and light and generous, then at least the openness part is something I can train on my own.

Once my father leaves on Tuesday, I’ll try that.

I’m not leaving yet. The clay’s still on the wheel.

It’s really. Not fun. To be clay.

💩

Also, two students told me they thought Head Teacher was unfair — that I’d actually been beautiful. I trust the opinions of the expert few over the uninformed many. Still, something relaxed in me when I heard that. This must be why people commiserate.

Comments About Me

“Who do we like? We like [my scene partner].”

“You are not beautiful.”

“Do we love him? Not at all.”

“When Julian enter, was he with [Scene Partner] or was he alone?” Audience: “Alone.”

“Zero, zero, zero.”

Learnings

  • Start with the fun part.
  • Stick to the plan. You made it for a reason. (Definitely don’t abandon the plan shortly before going on stage.)
  • Learn that it’s pleasant to be open.

My French classmate learned this. Others have too.

So why the hell is it so hard for me?

I even had a potentially fruitful relationship recently undermined because of this non-openness.

Do I like this? Am I choosing contexts that reinforce it?

After class, one of my peers said:

“I feel joy when I open myself on stage.”

He meant it kindly. I appreciated it.

I just don’t fucking know how.

This isn’t about wanting to. It’s a skill gap.

And it’s funny — my teacher said I’m best when I’m subtle and open, not when I’m pushing.

And now all I want to do is push.

So maybe I should just… give up?

That can’t be right.

Fuck if I know.

A friend who knows me very well commented on these last three lines: “fuck off. Don’t you play better when you’re down 2 and 0? Congrats, you’re now down 2 and 0.”

This must be why people share their emotions.

Clown School Day 16: Crying Beautifully

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In which Our Hero is the Major

It’s nice to be celebrated for crying.

The exercise is simple: receive the ball from your friend → thank your friend → declare with the vigor of a leading actor, “[Loved one], look at me: I’m the major!”

Most people fail for being too small: instantly kicked off, banished forever, like too-polite ghosts. In the summer course, I had been one of those, kicked off after one word.

Not wanting to befall this fate, I powered hard in the other direction.

After receiving the ball and thanking my friend, I turned to the audience, pulled out all the stops, and loosed a booming “YAYAAAAA!!!”

Students flinched in fear.

Head Teacher provided me lines to repeat back:

  • “I’m sorry, Yaya, for frightening you with my shouting.”

Then, Head Teacher dialed me in:

  • Softer
  • More open
  • Gentler
  • Less pushing
  • More subtle

When I had all the mechanics correct but was still missing joie de vivre, Head Teacher asked me who in the class I would want to kiss me. I chose a girl in the front row. Head Teacher asked, “Do you want another?” I said no, one is enough.

Then, whenever I spoke the text with all the mechanics correct but insufficient relaxed openness, Head Teacher signaled this classmate to kiss me on the neck. Later, classmates told me the kiss had opened me up: It stopped me from pushing so hard. I was, perhaps, trying to be liked. If I just sit back and show people who I am, it turns out they find me beautiful.

Eventually, as I opened up, tears began to fall. Not just mine. I saw tears in at least one audience member’s eyes.

What is this releasing? Is it a sadness or a joy or a wonder or a beauty? Is it the physical manifestation of pain being shared?

It reminded me of two events:

  • One, crying in my parents’ shower seven years ago. I had just ended the most significant relationship of my life and was scouring my gut with steel wool, knocking off barnacles attached from that pain.
  • Two, at Burning Man around that same time. Watching the Temple burn, I mourned the end of that relationship and grieved the pain it had caused me.

The first happened in private. The second happened in public. And bawling at Burning Man, surrounded by fifty thousand people, the funniest thing happened:

Everybody kept trying to help. Some offered a tissue; others provided a shushing noise. Well-meaning people, but they were soothing their own discomfort, not mine. Mine wasn’t discomfort. Mine was comfort for the first time in a decade. My tears were the powerful release of pain. And others, in wanting to help, tried to pull me back into their pool of internalized pain.

I’ve had a philosophy since that experience: people who are grieving should be allowed to lead. Sit with them; offer them your kind presence; maybe a hand to hold if they want to. But let them lead. Even that hand-holding is more likely to be top-down controlling than actually helpful and kind. Let them take care of themselves. You are there to serve.

Here, on stage, it was nice to finally be rewarded for my raw, open emotion. To show that rawness and have it accepted. Not just any rawness: it had to be loving (directed at Yaya) and relaxedly pleasurable (from the kiss). But still, a context in which to share my experience. To share my feelings. To share my pain.

If you have deep pain, we’ll accept that here — so long as you offer it as a light, open gift.

Four minutes on stage. One of three people who cried during the exercise. Described as a “breakthrough” by a fellow student.

It’s intoxicating.

Satisfying.

Nice to be alive.

And delightful

to be celebrated

for being myself.

—

Yaya, today, I was the major.

Clown School Day 13: Who’s The Laugh For?

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In which Our Hero learns to give himself away.

Is giving giving?

We created a mob on stage. One leader, fifteen followers. The leader was in Major: loud, powerful, commanding, tall. The followers were in Minor: following along with the Major’s game.

The leader’s task: move for the group. Then, if successful, speak for the group.

Here’s the kicker:

We — the audience — could easily see when the leader was playing for others and when they were playing for themselves. Too delighted by your own words? Too much for yourself. Too fast, too slow, too complicated, too boring? All of it = no good.

It was fucking cool.

It wasn’t just obvious when a leader played for themselves: we could even separate which parts they did for themselves. Some moved for themselves but spoke for the group. Others spoke for themselves but moved for the group.

Me? I moved for the group until I started speaking. Then I spoke for the group but failed to move for them.

The magnetism of a Major doing for others was inescapable. It drew us in — as the audience — as though they were playing for us, too.

I keep wondering what “giving” really is. Is it enough that someone is giving to someone? Or must they somehow give to each person? The latter seems impossible: no one can give individually to a 3,000-person crowd. But you can give, and keep giving, and keep giving…

—

I thought about that today when I found myself in a spat with a friend. They argued — accurately — that I’d been laughing for myself, not for them. And they found that objectionable.

At a minimum, they were fair (jury’s still out on them being right ;). Maybe I’ve found too few people laughing for me, so I learned to laugh for myself. Whatever the reason, it’s unhelpful — on stage and in friendship alike.

That’s why I’m here at clown school:

because I’m a guarded, frightened, closed, selfish, winning-focused person

trying to open up.

—

It’s hard to give and share and open and keep giving in this ever-present openness.

First-year classes are often “weeder” classes — designed to weed out those who aren’t a fit. In college, I lasted one day in Theater 101 before switching to philosophy. Theater 101 was dry history; philosophy had rigor and use.

I wonder if theater students who truly love it endure that drudgery because they care so much about reaching the next level — the acting classes, the real thing.

Here, too, I’m pushing through the bullshit, the trials, the endless tests: chasing skill.

The teachers keep throwing more at you, more and more, just to see who will break.

Those who break aren’t meant to be clowns.

And maybe I’m not meant to be one either.

So I’ll grab what I can from this pressure cooker,

gather the small diamonds I find,

and fuse them with other gold I’ve picked up along the way,

to form

my own

crown of jewels.

Clown School Day 12: If Only You Knew What Makes Me Laugh?

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In which Our Hero is a total grumpypants.

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.

Clown School Day 11: The Joy of Gibberish

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In which Our Hero finally speaks his native tongue

I did it! I clowned! Wahoo!!! !!!! !!!!

Here’s the sitch:

Our head teacher asks for five people who don’t speak Chinese. I step forward. She plays a Chinese song and we’re told to mime along. Then she turns down the music and says: keep going. Continue the song, in this language we do not speak.

I have been preparing for this my whole life.

I’ve always loved imitating sounds. Not faces, not gestures, sounds. The cadence of languages, sirens, shower water hitting my rubber duck. It’s always been a private delight.

Today I let it out. I imitated the music of a language I don’t know, and loved it. The audience loved it too.

It gets better.

On Friday I asked our teacher how to tell when something works. She said: you have to look at the audience and see.

I already knew that, but I needed to hear it from her.

So today I looked. I saw the joy light up their faces. One woman — the same who’d argued with me on Thursday — beamed with glee. My roommate was glowing, proud to see me not only succeed but to know I was succeeding.

And so I kept playing. Kept singing. Kept sharing that joy.

Good news: I have a skill people love.

Bad news: in America, this skill is considered offensive.

Five years ago at a rodeo in Wyoming, I was doing a southern accent for fun. My travel partner told me it was unacceptable. She thought I was mocking. Maybe she was right; maybe she wasn’t. Either way, I stopped.

Now, at last, I’ve found a place where the same instinct — my delight in sound and voices — brings laughter and connection instead of tension and fear.

Sometimes I wander around the house doing silly voices. Usually, people shut this down. But in clown, it’s beautiful.

Or maybe it’s always been beautiful, I just need the right place to perform.

🤡

[My travel buddy of the last two years would like to add this note about me: “I’ve also noticed when traveling that you [Julian] pick up the accent and speech pattern of folks you chat with. I often worry that folks will find it offensive, but, tbh, I think they don’t usually notice and seem to like it.”]

Clown School Day 10: How to Win by Losing

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In which Our Hero finally beats himself

I loved it when a classmate called me a douche. It raised a key question: Am I a douche?

To that, I had to answer yes. Because anyone who steamrolls friends at silly games is a douche. And I’d been playing silly games to win, despite frequently being much better than others.

A knight without chivalry is a douche. An assassin without honor is a douche. The powerful, when they flex on the powerless, are acting like a douche.

(He said this after I grabbed a ball he was juggling. Not a big deal. Still, a douche.)

I wrote in my notebook: Stop always playing to win. Try playing to play.

Then we started wall ball.

Wall ball is simple: hit the ball, it hits the wall, bounces once, next player hits. Compared to my group, I’m very skilled at wall ball. Last time I won the tournament (ahem, ladies 😉)

This time, I decided to try play. My game:

  1. Don’t die.
  2. Give the next player the easiest possible hit.

Using this approach, I eliminated only one person (on a challenging shot where a gentle hit might have put myself at risk). Still, I reached the finals.

At the finals, a question arose: keep playing my game, or now play to win?

I chose my game. Either he’d win, or he’d beat himself.

First to three wins.

He won the first point.

He mis-hits. All tied up.

I thunked one off the side.

He botched another.

Two-two. Next point wins.

He fired a zinger to the corner: unreturnable. He wins.

The crowd went wild.

Everyone loves seeing David beat Goliath.

I cheered too. It felt better than winning the tournament. That had been awkward. This was joy. I led the chant: “Speech! Speech! Speech!”

The victor obliged.

I don’t think I’ve ever thrown a game before. This didn’t feel like throwing. It felt like optimizing for something bigger.

I didn’t lose. I won at a bigger game.

Sometimes the point of the game is play.

In theater, the point of the game is the play.

—

Later, our class watched another student play a game on stage with the same man I’d met in the finals.

The student was far more skilled. My teacher said:

“When you play with someone much worse than you, you must have good humor.”

That’s why I’m here.

To learn good humor.

Clown School Day 9: Clown Fight!!!

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In which Our Hero proves he’s got rubber balls

Today I pissed off a clown.

It’s better to piss off a clown than to be pissed on by a clown.

We were playing 9-square. It’s like 4-square, but with 9 squares and more chaos.

I was playing legally. The rules say you can’t block another player, but you can wander outside your square. I was the King—the occupant of the center square—but I spent the whole game standing off to the side. Because: strategy.

The owner of that square complained.

The ref said my move was legal.

The owner complained again.

The ref asked me to move.

I moved.

Then I taunted the square’s owner.

The owner complained a third time.

The next ball that came to me…

I smacked it as hard as I could at her feet.

She was pissed. The crowd gasped. She appealed to the ref, who shrugged, as if to say: He played the game hard. What do you want me to do about it?

She stormed off. Later, I caught her venting to another player, confirmed later as badmouthing: “Can you believe that?”

Here’s what I learned:

  1. When I feel someone’s playing shenanigans, I get righteously pissed. When I get pissed, I get determined. And when I get determined, watch out.
  2. My classmates will now play differently with me.
    1. The fun-first crowd will avoid my wrath.
    2. The competitive ones will know I don’t back down.
  3. I may have just become the enforcer of clown school. Neither good nor bad—just a role.

It’s no coincidence that the person I clashed with was the second-best at the game. Competitive people find each other. And when they do, sparks fly.

I respect her. She plays hard. She got the ref on her side, a valid tactic. Later I overheard her admit she’d been feeling a bit touchy today. So maybe we both just hit the limit of our light play energy.

And she got me back. In the final round, she served me a tiny, dinky little ball: barely legal, perfectly placed. I was out. No one else noticed.

Well played. Respect.

(Though I’ve since heard others reacted to her venting with a kind of “Wait, what’s she mad about?” bemusement… so maybe the last laugh is still up for grabs.)

—

But what is this about, really?

Is this a story about clowning? About performance? About theater?

Maybe.

In a way, 9-Square is theater: it’s a miniature social hierarchy. The King in the middle. The peasants below. Everyone clawing their way upward by knocking someone else down. Game of Thrones played with rubber balls.

In singles, you play for survival and glory.

In doubles, it becomes a romance—your fate tied to your partner’s. You win not through aggression but through sync, trust, and conservatism.

It’s a lesson in status, alliance, and timing.

And like all good clown work, it’s about how you handle the fall.

—

As for my reputation: some classmates already dodge competing against me. Fair. For me, winning is part of fun, but the real goal is shared joy. I just happen to find joy in playing hard. Someone has to be clown game king: might as well be me.

Clown School Day 7: First Impulse

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In which Our Hero fails via simian ejaculation

“At the sound of the drum, you must make the sound of an animal ten seconds before it has an orgasm,” said our teacher, in his typical Swedish accent.

I chose my animal. I spotted others’ mistakes. I planned my route. I considered the method by which I was likely to fail. And then, when the time came, I failed. Bombed. Flopped. Crashed. Kathunked.

We were playing a game of cannibal chairs. It’s exactly like musical chairs, except your teacher is from Sweden. And when you’re out, if your animal’s orgasm is enjoyable enough, you’re saved.

Some students latch on to the impulse right away. They grab the failure and they start DOing. Prancing about the stage; braying like a donkey; mooing like an aroused cow, etc. Others take a beat. I decided I would be in the second category.

My first impulse is often fear. So I decided I’d wait. Take the second. Build the second wave instead of grasping at the first splash. First impulse is for those who ride external energy; second is for those who find it inside.

I noticed this dichotomy when a friend failed to find a chair, then walked to the side of the room, thunked the wall, and began his performance. The three seconds pause allowed him to collect himself. When he arrived, he arrived. His face was open, eyes shining. We loved him. Life saved.

When I failed, I latched onto the first impulse. I flailed. Yuck.

My first impulse was, as it so often is, fear.

My second impulse. Security. Comfort. Presence. That can be beautiful.

Another lesson I will need to incorporate.

One I have learned before.

Perhaps one day my first impulse will lack fear. Perhaps one day it will be honed enough to succeed. Until then, it is mere panic. And panic has no place in clown.

Clown School Day 3: Fixed Point

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The third principle of clowning: don’t move.

That’s it. It’s not complicated. Stop moving.

Some of you are confused.

It’s called “Fixed Point”: Just. Don’t. Move.

What about this is so hard to understand?

—

Some of the concepts at clown school are intricate and nebulous, fleeting and momentary. Others are utterly, groundedly practical. Complicité is the former. Fixed point is the latter. Complicité is the relationship between you and your fellow performers. The earnest, authentic, deep, rich, kind-but-not-always-nice connection between two best friends that we see on stage. Fixed point is “Stop moving”.

It’s a weird juxtaposition: the ethereal with the mundane. The alchemical with the tactical. Today was about fixed point.

I don’t have much trouble with fixed point. When someone tells me to stop moving, I simply do so. “Remember the game while moving” is much more complex. What is the game? What is the game now? How has the game changed? Have you forgotten any elements of the game? Who are you playing with, and in what ways? What new games will you bring with you, thus heightening and transmogrifying The Game into a whole new game? These questions are complex. Fixed point is simple.

I get that people have different challenges. And that fixed point is important. When you tell a joke; when you make a move; when you hit the apex, you must let the audience catch up. A comedian does not simply begin the next joke right after completing the first. They may let the joke sit, even waft its embers a little. Stand completely still, then raise an eyebrow. The eyebrow is funny because of the stillness. It requires the stillness. If you want people to see you, move big. If you want people to SEE YOU, move precisely.

I just don’t have much trouble with fixed point. When to use it, absolutely: that’s not trivial. How long to do it, same deal, oof. But the physical act of stopping movement; holding still; being in balance: these are easy.

Today was fixed point. Worth learning, yes. Worth dedicating a day to? Perhaps not.

Le Jeu (”the game”), complicité, and fixed point. These have been the first three days, consecutively. Le jeu is not easy. One must always know the game, play the game, be aware of the game. The game is paramount.

Second is complicité. You can play the game without complicité. This is common in solo endeavors. A performer with no game is boring. A performer without complicité is unkind. We accept unkind people if their performance is good enough. We do not accept boring people.

Third: fixed point. It feels out of place. Like someone said “Most important, you must remember the existence of God, keeping Him in your mind and heart. Secondly, you must remember your fellow humans. And third, sometimes you must stand completely still.”

Is the tactic really that important? It probably is, as this is the world’s best clown school, and the teachers really hammer it home (i.e. they likely know better than me, so it’s likely significant even though I don’t yet understand why). Perhaps it’s to solve a common problem? But if the problem is too much action, why is the concept “fixed point”? Why not have the concept be “stillness”? It could encompass isolations. Or balance. Or very slow movements of some parts of the body while holding others completely still. That concept has depth. Fixed point is, well, less of a Big Idea and more of a tactic.

On day 3 of driving lessons, I don’t think you spend the whole day on the zipper merge. Maybe you teach all the different merges and turns. But a whole day dedicated to one maneuver?

Today we practiced fixed point and played human chess. Other students love human chess. I think it’s silly (and not the good kind). It practices the ability of jumping soundlessly. It practices also the ability of being silent when others are playing. Both are good skills. The latter is much more important. Perhaps I don’t really have those troubles. I’m unlikely to be a physical-first performer, for which jumping would be significant. I’m also not bad at silence. Perhaps some people are.

If the question were “when is it your turn to play?” That, to me, is a worthwhile game. A valuable lesson indeed.

Day 3 of clown school and already I’m a critic.

But I’m only here for around 120 days. And I wish to emerge an expert.

So now, for the next 45 minutes, I shall sit completely still. Unless, of course, I find a more interesting game.

Clown School Day 2: On Priorities and Preferences

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Clown school is the study of choice.

Wait, no — that’s economics.

Clown school is the study of…

Well, now I’m thinking about choices.

Here they are:

  1. Study the Shakespeare lines for next week
  2. Drink alcohol at the local bar
  3. Sit with people drinking alcohol at the local bar
  4. Run
  5. Eat
  6. Clear out my email inbox
  7. Write
  8. Rehearse with classmates for this week’s presentation

A day only has so many hours.

School takes four, plus thirty minutes on either side to prep and recombobulate. Add eight hours for sleep (okay, nine — I like to wind down in bed :), and you’ve got thirteen hours accounted for. I like running every day, so add an hour for stretching, run, five-minute abs, and shower. That’s fourteen hours. Ten remain.

So if the math works so well, why have I been failing?

Sequencing.

I haven’t been eating lunch, so I’m starved after school, which is prime socializing time. If I brought my lunch, I’d be less famished at 2 p.m. I like doing movement class fasted, so I’ll keep that. But maybe a nice burger patty and baguette for lunch… could be nice. 😋

And then, who to socialize with?

Drinkers have it easy: go where people drink → drink → hours disappear. I don’t enjoy drinking, nor do I enjoy drunk people, so I’ll pass. (I gave it a try today. “Maybe this context is different,” I thought. Turns out it’s students slowly soppifying, discussing people who aren’t present, maybe one bit of information every thirty seconds, and a lot of “what was that?”. And when someone stands up to leave, it feels like monkeys pulling the escaping monkey back into the boiling soup.)

I’m glad I ran. I’m glad I ate. I’m glad I wrote.

I’d like to be more social. The key, I think, is to socialize in my own way.

It’s day two. I’ve not yet clicked with the people I’m going to click with.

I grabbed coffee with a student today. That was nice. Worth doing. An enjoyable hour.

There are thirty of us. Will I get coffee with everyone? At one per schoolday, that’s six weeks. 😬

I prefer meeting people one-on-one. Spending time in depth. Learning what makes them tick.

I’ve scheduled dinners for tomorrow and Thursday. I hope to find people I enjoy seeing socially.

The class itself has been nice. Not much to it, but nice. We’re learning the definitions of words by repeated use. A few tactical elements (“Show your teeth! We want to see your teeth!”); mainly punishments (“You forgot the game: you get a zero!”).

I want to meet my people. To find the ones I fancy. Then, to build habits around those happenings.

9 a.m. wakeup. 9:15 a.m. rehearsal. 10 a.m. movement class. 11:30 a.m. lunch. Noon improv class. 2 p.m. rehearsal. 2:30 p.m. phone call with my sister, perhaps while running. 3:30 p.m. rehearsal, study, socialize, catch up on life… 🤔

Clown school is about choice, if only because everything is.

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