I’ve been feeling dumber lately. Having trouble finding the right word. Finding myself thinking slower. What’s up with this?
Hypotheses:
Clowning makes one less intellectual
The work that I’ve been doing has been effective, but not intellectually stimulating
Something else
The first seems likely true. Does clowning make one less intellectual? Yes. Less intelligent? No. However, among the many types of intelligence, it does not contribute to improving one’s smartness. In fact, it teaches one to focus on pleasure and emotion to the detriment of smartness. Sacrifices must be made at the altar of pleasure!
The second: also likely. I’ve recently been doing a lot of important and procedural, but not intellectual, work. (Among them: buying and renovating an apartment; writing articles that are squarely in my wheelhouse.)
The third: maybe it’s hormonal? The speed of my verbal fluency was stronger on œstrogen. ‘Twas notably stronger. And now, I have much more general go-go-go (whether that’s testosterone itself or simply my familiarity with the hormone, I’m not sure), but less verbal speed. I make fewer moves but each move is stronger.
Another option for the third: a life transition that requires adjustment. Selling my previous home. Buying a new one. Moving internationally. Building a relationship. All of these can wear you down.
A final option for the third: lack of exercise. Since I broke my foot I have been a complete lazypants. The brain thrives on exercise. Perhaps it will return when the activity returns. This one seems very likely to be influential :!D
It’s an odd experience to feel myself being duller than I previously was. And the people around me aren’t noticing… or at least aren’t noticing enough to say anything.
Then again, would they notice? And if noticed, would they say? 👀
In which Our Hero remains visible without belonging.
Let’s talk about social place.
In 2018, I bought a van. My most formative non-familial relationship was ending, and I was on a personal journey.
I spent seven years seeking my place. Living in a van, driving around. My place had been shattered, my foundation upended. I sought the right group of people, the right social place.
I found the regional Burning Man community. Not the community at the big Burning Man festival itself, but the smaller independent organizations that circle the same principles. I found, perhaps for the first time, a community that accepted me and to which I wanted to contribute. I made art that touched people’s lives. Some of them still speak about it, 5+ years later.
I moved to New York City in search of a partner. Nearing 30, with my friends all partnering and beginning to spawn, my situation became one of “Is this a part of life you want to have? Because you can seek it later… but it’s much easier if you try now.” One woman broke my heart. I flew to Australia to write a play. Returning to New York a year later, I met my now-partner. Our first date was 11 days long. For our second date, we drove across the country together. She sublet her apartment, and joined me in nomadicness for the last 2 years.
I wonder sometimes about social place. I occupy an unusual position. Enough of a dilettante in most areas to be able to hold my own. Friendly and affable, generally found to be helpful, but without roots.
For most of my childhood, I had a single dedicated friend. Schoolwork was trivial; most of my fellow students I found uninteresting. I’ve left each major experience with some dedicated friends. And a host of pleasant acquaintances, too.
I’ve never really been a group guy. I have the sort of preference: “Instead of camping with your Burning Man group, how about I camp next to you and we hang out every day?”
If part of life is finding who you are and doing it on purpose,
at some point it’s worth accepting that I’ve never found a group to be home.
And probably never will.
Perhaps my belonging is episodic, relational, and lateral (not collective).
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.
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:
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.
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.
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 🙂
In which Our Hero remembers the audience and the performer are on the same team.
Today I didn’t buy a painting.
I could have. There are worlds in which I walk out of that studio holding a canvas, or at least a print. I like his work. It’s good enough that I’d happily see it on my wall. I also, frankly, think this guy could be very successful. And while I don’t know anything about investing in art, I do know that he does good work.
Instead of buying, I did something arguably more valuable: I gave him one mental shift that might change the way he sells forever (hard-won after nine years of being a creative freelancer myself).
The shift was this:
You and the buyer are on the same team, trying to get to the sale together.
Most artists don’t think that way. They imagine selling as hoodwinking, convincing, persuading. Commerce as a low-grade con.
But when I exchange $20 for a meal, two true things are happening at once:
I am saying, “I’d rather have this meal than this $20.”
The seller is saying, “I’d rather have this $20 than this meal.”
We both win. That’s the point.
If someone wanders into your studio already 50% likely to buy your painting, wouldn’t you both be better off if a sale happens?
That’s what my friend was missing. He felt like he was pushing against the customer, trying to “get them” to buy, and he hated it. Instead, he should walk next to them, shoulder to shoulder, helping the buyer cross the line they already half-want to cross.
Sales, at least for an honest artist, is a cooperative game.
Clowning is the same game
This is also the part that many performing artists (including clowns) forget: the audience wants you to succeed.
When we audience members sit down for standup, for a play, for a clown show, we’re not secretly hoping it’s terrible so we can be right about humanity’s decline. We might predict it will be bad, but given the choice between:
“I knew it would suck,” and “It blew my expectations out of the water,”
almost everyone would rather be wrong and delighted.
Even the pessimists would rather go home saying, “Honestly, it was great.”
So performance is also a cooperative game:
As the clown, you are the leader.
The audience is your team.
The “sale” you’re closing together is shared pleasure.
You’re not dragging them, hostage-style, toward your weird art. You’re inviting them into something – pleasure – they already came to find.
This, unfortunately, is not my default setting.
Competitive games vs cooperative games
I am more experienced with competitive games than cooperative ones. Poker, for instance, is the opposite:
There, the goal is to hide.
To show nothing.
To give away as little information as possible while extracting as much value as possible.
Clowning is about the inverse:
Openness instead of secrecy.
Generosity instead of extraction.
“Let’s enjoy this together” instead of “Let me get the best of you.”
One of the purposes of clown school (for me) is to re-train this reflex. To make cooperation feel as natural as competition.
Right now, the questions I’m wrestling with include:
How do I lead the team gently? Guide the audience without shoving, nudge without bullying, care for each teammate without over-focusing on any one.
How do I actually lead, instead of hiding behind stronger personalities? Be the tip of the spear, not the person comfortably in the second row.
When I’m with a partner on stage, how do I treat them as a collaborator instead of a combatant? Remember that “winning” is making the scene sing, and that often occurs when you’re playing harmoniously.
How do I remain open when uncomfortable? Oftentimes, I’m shutting down. And that… is not… helpful. 😦
These are not just stage problems. They’re life problems. Which brings us to the cocktail party.
When I forgot we were on the same team
At a cocktail party today, I met a few people I genuinely liked. Smart, funny, curious. The kind of people I’d happily see again.
They asked about my relationship status. I told them a technically-true (and engaging), but far-more-boring version.
Here’s what I told them:
In college, I was interested in a girl who was dating a woman. A friend told me she only dated women, so I filed that away as “ah well, not for me.”
Ten years later, we reconnected. It turned out my friend had been wrong:
She does not, in fact, only date women.
And here’s the part I didn’t share – not because it’s shameful, but because it’s intimate, and intimacy is precisely what I tend to withhold when I get scared:
At the time of meeting her, I was taking exogenous estrogen. I had grown breasts. My emotional life was much closer to that of a woman than a man.
So even if she had only dated women, I still might have qualified.
That’s the good bit. The twist ending. The painting on the wall I could have offered.
Instead, I hid it. I offered the flat version. And therefore, the next bit that I added – when I later tried to connect – didn’t land. I’d already collapsed into myself, ending the cooperative game.
I protected information, staying “safe”. But they weren’t my opponents. They were potential teammates. We were building something delightful together. And that collapse — the retreat instead of the play — is exactly the reflex I’m trying to rewire.
(To be clear, the issue wasn’t that I “should have” told strangers something deeply personal. It’s that I noticed myself collapsing inward even though both they and I wanted to play, to connect, to stay in the cooperative game.)
The update
So: today I didn’t buy a painting. I also didn’t honestly sell myself.
In both cases, the correction is the same:
Be in situations where we’re on the same side.
Remember we’re on the same side.
Act like the game is cooperative.
Offer the real story, not the safe one.
When I become excellent at those in daily life, I’ll be a better clown. And when I become a better clown, maybe I’ll finally remember, in the moment, that we all walked into the room wanting the same thing:To leave having created shared pleasure. And in that pleasure, created Value.
In which Our Hero learns that ease is its own form of status.
The skills of upper-class social engagement and the skills of clowning: shockingly similar.
Can you keep it light—even when the topic isn’t? Can you remember the game? That this is a game. That life is a game. And the more you remember it’s a game, the less you’ll feel poked. The less you feel poked, the less likely you’ll commit a faux pas.
When meeting someone new: Can you stay present? Open? Emotionally available? Can you find pleasure in what they’re saying, find pleasure in yourself, and entertain yourself while entertaining them? Do you make eye contact instead of studying the floor or the ceiling?
Can you jump to the new game quickly? Roll with the punches without letting irritation leak? Or if you do get irritated, can you metabolize it quietly so others don’t feel it?
In short: are you easy?
Even shorter: be social soy sauce: enhancing whatever flavor is already present. Do not be social tofu (merely a warm body), nor wasabi (adding too much kick), and certainly not ginger (an entirely unrelated taste altogether).
Some people don’t need to be easy. They have structural reasons to be included—money, skills, status, connections. Their mere existence provides value.
If you have those advantages, you can afford a little heaviness.
But if you lack them, ease becomes an important asset.
—
I met someone today who was surprised to learn a fairly large fact about her husband.
I get that. It’s also foreign to me.
When one (A) has enough happening that there’s no need to narrate every detail, and (B) is so deeply present with others when actually together, the result is fewer facts shared and more connection felt. This is an instance of putting the text on the game.
Perhaps these people live such driven, full lives that they don’t need to lean on each other for conversational ballast. They’re satisfied by the things they’re doing. Their overlaps shrink. Their presence expands.
—
Maybe this is why the skills of social ease and clowning feel so linked for me. I had to learn lightness. I had to learn the game. I had to learn to entertain myself, then others, and to orient toward warmth and pleasantness.
Other people don’t always need those skills. They build companies, hire teams, command rooms, confer opportunities. What do I confer? Stories. Emotional resonance. Connection.
I’ve lived as a writer for the last decade. I’ve flown around the world, lived in a van, written books, attended clown school, played competitive pickleball, lived as an œstrogen-powered life form. These things made me interesting, but they did not give me structural advantages to hand out.
What I offer is not leverage. It’s wisdom. Presence. Delight.
So it sure as hell helps if I’m light.
Airy. Gentle. Easy. Fun. Funny. Generous. Kind.
This makes it possible to add me to your car, to your dinner, to your team. It makes me someone who lightens your load, even when you carry me on your shoulders.
In which Our Hero finally plays the writing game, not merely performs the genre.
Yesterday’s post set a record in responses. So I found myself asking:
Why did people like it?
If we assume it wasn’t merely well-written form, it likely was one of these three traits:
I wrote about two games I know extremely well. (I played poker as a method of money-making previously, in the pre-solver Jurassic period.)
I compared two activities everyone recognizes, even if only through cultural osmosis. (Everyone knows what a clown is. Everyone knows what poker looks like.)
I accidentally wandered into a space my sister claims is my superpower: the philosophy of games.
Two months ago she called to tell me I had a gift.
She’d asked for help diagnosing an unspoken social game at her workplace, and when I broke it down for her, she said:
“You could be the expert at this. Not ‘an’ expert — the expert.”
For clarity: philosophy of games ≠ game theory.
I’m not a game theorist and have no ambition to become one. (Though one of my closest friends is probably top hundred in the world at the practical application of game theory.)
Instead, I love:
games
what games do to people
how humans use games
the mechanics and sub-mechanics inside games
the social physics that games create
the playing of games
fun
This has always been true. As a kid, I invented strategies in schoolyard games so effective that fellow students rewrote the rules the next day. As an adult, I earned second place in the Hoboken Open pickleball tournament, which is exactly as prestigious as it sounds. In college I studied philosophy to understand the rules of our life’s game (hint: start with Aristotle).
But here’s the truth:
Yesterday’s writing, to me, felt bland. I haven’t been having many fresh clowning insights. I’m on break from clown school because of a broken foot. I haven’t been around many clowns — except myself.
So instead of writing about clowning, I jotted down what I thought were painfully obvious observations.
And two people found them profound. Compelling. Insightful.
Why?
Clowning offers two simple rules:
give the audience what they want, and
follow the fun.
One mistake people make is assuming “what they want” means “repeat the product.” But that’s not it — at least not entirely. If I reposted yesterday’s essay verbatim, nobody would care. This exaggerated example makes the point:
The audience doesn’t want the same product. They want the same emotional experience. The same arc. The same sense of discovery. The same journey.
Maybe one reader liked my emotional growth. Maybe another liked the simple clarity around two games they’d only ever observed from the outside. Maybe someone else just enjoyed seeing me think.
Writers know this: readers fall in love not with the thing but with the transformation.
Van Gogh didn’t sell paintings until his letters were published. Until people could see his suffering. Until his bed wasn’t just a bed but the first possession of a poor, unraveling man. Stories create meaning. Meaning creates attachment.
And that’s why Starting today, I’m going to include writing about hormones.
Yesterday I talked for an hour with my parents about my four-year experience taking œstrogen. It was medical, emotional, biological, and sociopolitical. It reshaped my values, which reshaped the games I chose to play. It rewired my physical and emotional landscape. It altered my comfort with strangers, my sense of risk, and my appetite for play.
I was on œstrogen when I decided to go to clown school. I was back on my natural testosterone when I actually started the school year.
That contrast was… intense.
My desire to play poker changed with my hormonal profile. My social ease changed too.
On œstrogen, my fluency with strangers soared: top decile of my life. Now that the ease has dropped, I’m having to relearn it. And with that comes fear. Not melodramatic fear. More like the fear of an aging driver noticing their reaction time isn’t what it used to be:
“I used to be good at this. What if I’m not anymore?”
But here’s the secret about fear: It’s freezing. But it’s also your friend. If you don’t embrace it and step through it, You’ll always be under its power.
This was as true yesterday — staring down an A6s decision on a 4-6-7-A-K board facing a river jam — as it is about my long hesitation to share my hormonal story.
In that hand, I should have called. In this life, I should speak. Not because you’re entitled to know. You’re not. None of this is “your business.” But I chose to be a writer. Which makes it my business.
Said differently: I chose this writing game. Time to stop playing it like a wimp.
A friend says my attending clown school is selfish.
A second friend concurs.
The second friend, at least, says it without judgment. They think it’s a selfish act, but not necessarily a bad one. (I didn’t ask the first whether “selfish” = “bad,” so I can’t report on their view.)
The second friend is a professional poker player. I asked if studying poker is selfish. They said no. I asked why. They gave reasons like: “it keeps my mind sharp,” “it teaches me skills I use in other areas.” I pointed out that clowning does the same. Just swap “understanding randomness and variance” for “learning to connect with others and bring them pleasure.”
I’m surprised people find clown school selfish. I don’t find it more selfish than acting school, sales training, or learning accounting. Maybe slightly more selfish than learning to be a plumber. Definitely less selfish than being a momentum trader or a poker player.
I get that performers are self-involved. Sometimes self-obsessed. But selfish?
The job of a clown is to bring people pleasure. Joy. Happiness. Are the best in the profession—Jim Carrey, Sacha Baron Cohen, Robin Williams—selfish? That seems unfair.
So what do people actually mean when they say “clown school is selfish”?
They might mean something like:
“Clowning doesn’t contribute much to other people.”
“Julian will get more personal joy out of clown school than he’ll generate for others.”
“Clown school isn’t contributory (either because clowning isn’t, or because clown school won’t lead to clowning).”
“Clown school interferes with more contributory things you could be doing.”
Here’s how these land:
1. “Clowning doesn’t contribute much.”
I’m dismissing this outright as a misunderstanding of what this school teaches. This school teaches how to find pleasure in order to share it. You can believe pleasure is unimportant, but if you believe it matters, clowning is clearly contributory.
2. “You’ll get more out of this than others will.”
This becomes a comment about skill. If I will always be a bad clown, then yes: clown school would be more self-pleasure than other-pleasure. But that assumes failure as destiny. I’m earnestly trying to learn these skills. I want to be good at play, connection, and generosity. Multiple people—people with no incentive to flatter me—have said clowning seems like a particularly great fit for me. I think so too.
3. “Clown school won’t lead to clowning.”
This is the critique I take most seriously.
My goal isn’t to become a professional clown per se: it’s to become a better performer, a better player, a better connector. I want to learn charisma. I want to learn to bring joy not just onstage but in everyday life. I want to learn to play for the sake of fun rather than optimization. I want to play well with my nephew. I want to play well with future kids of my own.
If I’m truly seeking personal enrichment more than professional clowning, then yes, one could call that “selfish.” But personal enrichment that increases one’s capacity to love, play, and be present seems… not exactly a moral failing.
4. “Is clown school the best use of your time?”
Honestly? I don’t know. A year is long. (Well, seven months of actual school.) But I’m not locked in. Students drop in and out. There’s one course in March I’m particularly excited about. For the rest, I’m open: if more-contributory opportunities appear, I’ll take them. If someone offered me a full-time job tomorrow, I’d consider it. (And, notably, I applied to one recently.)
At the moment, my time is quite unoccupied. I’m writing for one company, and that leaves plenty of space. So: clown school.
I want a family someday. I want kids. Cultivating lightness and play feels deeply aligned with the values I want to bring into a home. And I’m at a turning point: many friends are settling down. If not now, then when would I ever have the time to go to clown school? When else would learning to stay light during stress be so valuable?
I was bumming around the U.S. in a van. I was working half-time, sometimes quarter-time, vaguely searching for more. Given that reality, filling the time with something joyful and growth-oriented seems… pretty reasonable.
But if someone wants to hire me for something more productive, I’m here for it!
(Finally: when pressed, the poker friend admitted he couldn’t clearly articulate what he meant by “selfish.” He guessed it was closest to number 3, but also said his inability to articulate the position probably means it’s weakly held. That’s reassuring. I thought this assessment was more associational than well-considered. Still, it’s good to check.)
[P.s. I’ll share this write-up with the first friend, too. They might have a whole different analysis of how the selfishness works, in which case I’ll jot up a part 2 🤓]
In which Our Hero muses on the interaction of these forces.
The question came up at dinner: What’s the relationship between play and depression? Is play the antidote? Is the lack of play the cause? Or are they simply two dancers who keep stepping on each other’s toes?
My take:
I love Play. Play is enlivening and delightful and deeply satisfying.
Play is a sign of a healthy environment: one that nurtures the growth and expression of its members.
Some environments don’t require play or can’t support it, especially high-stress or high-stakes ones in intense moments.
If you lack play long enough, you will feel like crap.
If you can’t play with people, you won’t feel good around those people.
Blockers to play:
Lack of safety. If you can’t experiment or express, you shrink. The body contracts. The options narrow. The world gets small.
I often think of depression as a kind of flatness. A greying-out of inner movement. And a lot of what prevents play, at least in my own experience, is fear/anxiety. So the loop becomes: fear/anxiety → no play → depression. It’s not the only description of the loop, but it’s a fair one.
Another view:
Maybe depression is fundamentally the lack of experienced pleasure.
If that’s true, then you can find pleasure through play. But also through other avenues, including observation and appreciation.
In that framing, play is one antidote, but not the only one. (And it may not be the proper antidote for a specific situation, nor a permanent fix.)
Still, I think social play is necessary for social satisfaction. It’s a treadmill you have to keep running on—just enough—for the system to stay stable. Stop for too long, and you get flung off the end, cascading into a wall of lonesomeness. Start running again, and the world comes back into color.
However, you can’t force play. You can only create the context for it to naturally emerge. Even if you’re a player? Even if you’re the game.
Julian Wise 