Tag: Personal

Clown School Day 26: Something is Rotten in the State of Julian

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero wants to run away from joining the circus

Fuck all you hoes. (Get a grip, motherfucker.)

I don’t feel connected. I don’t feel like I belong. I don’t feel… part of anyone’s anything. Is that them? Is it me? Did I watch too much TV? Is that a hint of accusation in your eyes?

Mondays after class, everyone mills around forming groups for Friday’s performance. And every Monday, I feel like I’m picked last in gym. It’s not that anyone is doing anything wrong. It’s that my internal meter flips into nobody wants you. Even though I have no idea whether that’s true or not.

In Movement class, too, I somehow end up in the group of three more often than not. (“Everyone in pairs, one group of three.) Some part of me takes this as evidence. Evidence of what? That I don’t fit. That I’m the odd one out. That I’m in the wrong place even when I want to be here more than anything.

None of this is rational.
It just feels real.

I’ve asked people a few times to grab dinner or go for a walk, and the responses have been mixed. That should be normal. It is normal. But this week, the rejections land harder than they should. My brain turns each one into a thesis on exile.

And so I keep circling the same questions:

  • Is it that I don’t like them?
  • Is it that they don’t like me?
  • Or am I simply struggling to be open?

Is this why I can’t clown? Is this the same issue: some belief that if they saw me, they wouldn’t like me → so I don’t show them myself?

Head Teacher once said that even if I don’t want to perform with others, I still have to perform for the audience—to give. I keep wondering if she can see the part of me that prefers single-player games. The part that only trusts what I can control.

So yeah—Friday requires groups of 3 or 5. I still don’t have a group. I posted in the group chat. And a small, childish part of me wants to take my ball and go home.
Fuck this.
I don’t need this.
Except… I clearly do.

—

After class, someone asked how I was.
“I’ve been better.”
She tried to give me a hug. Kind, if a little awkward. I walked away still feeling disconnected, but I guess appreciating the attempt? That’s the weird part: even gestures of care glance off me this week.

What the fuck is going on?

They say you’ll see sadness in the eyes of a clown.
Is that because clowning attracts people searching for joy? Who else dedicates themselves to fun except those who’ve had to hunt for it? It’s the old question: Who is the clown for the clown?

For me, the work is spiritual. The connection, the nakedness, the earnestness. And right now, all of that feels out of reach.

I sobbed three separate times today. Is that sensitive enough for you, Head Teacher?

The first time was after class, when groups were forming. Historically, I’ve had terrible luck picking groups—worse than random probability—so now I let randomness decide. There’s also the small practical matter: I came here to learn to work with whoever shows up.

But still: no group. Again.

I’m clearly struggling with the social part of clown school. And it stings, because this is the place people come when they feel misaligned with the “normal” world. The circus is for the outsiders. But what happens when you feel like an outsider inside the circus?

So today, when I tried being an ostrich and got one laugh before retreating into my shell, I felt that same old instinct: run, hide, disappear.

Maybe that’s part of the training. They apply pressure and see what cracks, what softens, what finally opens.

In my case, the message I keep hearing from the teachers is:
They don’t love you because you’re not showing them you.

And fuck, that’s hard. It’s hard to show yourself when you already feel unwanted.

Anyway—
I still lack a group.
So that. Really. Hurts.

P.S. Head Teacher said my clothing looked like broccoli vomit. I believe she’s suggesting I dress differently. So tomorrow, I will. Change.

Clown School Weekend 5.2: Good at Games, Bad at Play

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero muses on play

Do I like play?

For someone who has historically liked games—loved games, spent thousands of hours inside them—it’s a surprising question to ask.

There’s no question I like games. And play is what we do in games. So I suppose I like play?

This explanation feels insufficient.

I like lighthearted engagement in low-stakes, real-world-mimicking activities. In that sense, I like playing.

But often when others play with me, I generally don’t experience it as mutual play. And often when I try to play with others, they don’t experience it as playing together. (They sometimes experience it as me playing at them or against them, which has its own problems compared to us playing with each other.) It’s rare for me to find someone with whom play becomes mutually satisfying.

This isn’t necessarily about my love of play. It may be about my skill at play.

Eight or so years ago, a friend told me I didn’t know how to play. It was one of those moments you remember: if not for the bluntness of the comment, then for the proximity of his anger to a fist arriving at your face.

Learning to play requires paying attention to others. It’s a feedback loop: you stoke their fires, they stoke yours. And with rare exception, I’m not interested in stoking fires. The pool of people I like is small; my interest in socializing outside that pool is also small. So perhaps I simply have less experience in social play—either from lack of historical interest or poor methodology.

This, to be clear, is about social play.

Only two (three?) weeks ago did I first play a game to play rather than to win.

Historically, my engagement with games has been more optimization than play. Perhaps that’s why my win rate is high: if most people play, the one who optimizes will win. I analyze, comprehend, break down, and rebuild. These are fun for me, thus part of my play. But how many people do you know who approach a casual board-game night like this? And how many people want to rejoin someone who plays a board game night like this?

My clown teachers say I need sensitivity. I think they mean gentleness, and sensitivity is one route to gentleness. Sensitivity is letting experiences permeate you. Those who know me—family especially—would say I’m already very high in sensitivity (i.e. sensing the world around me, including the experiences of others). My teachers may mean a specific flavor: gentle sensitivity with lighthearted reactions. Not that I lack sensitivity, but that I lack lightness of spirit and gentleness of response. 

Yesterday at 4 a.m., a bird flew into my apartment window. I learned this at 11 a.m., when my roommate showed me the box he’d put it in. We called French animal rescues; none were helpful. I made a joke about how the French might simply eat this sort of injured bird. He said (paraphrasing), “Come on. This is an opportunity to be sensitive, man!”

As a classmate, he knows I’m working on this skill. What he might mean is that the joke felt heartless. Some people don’t like dark humor; some don’t like cultural humor. Perhaps what they really mean is: give what your audience wants.

I used this skill when running sales at my previous company: give them what they want; say less—always less—as less is more.

And perhaps my teachers are saying that almost no one wants me without gentleness.

In competitive games, my strategy is often to use my strength against the opponent’s weakness. It’s a good way to win. But it only attracts people who love competition.

So if I want cooperative relationships,
I’ll have to learn to play.

(Closing the loop on that earlier story: I have never been punched in the face. I’ve only been punched once, by someone experiencing a very different reality. I have, however, been threatened with face-punching roughly five times. I’d like to keep that streak—and ideally reduce the threats.)

—

Today I watched a clown show. Afterward, I left the theater to go home. And upon stepping outside, I realized that part of sensitivity is patience. So I went back, stood outside, and let myself be sensitive. Two people I enjoy talking with emerged, and we walked to the train together. It was lovely.

+1 for sensitivity and patience.

Clown School Weekend 5.1: Toddler Logic

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero discovers a new kind of intelligence.

Yesterday I saw a clown show. The second-year students performed scenes they had been rehearsing, and one moment in particular brought the house down.

Two clowns were locked in a strange duel of one-upmanship using nothing but bananas. The first clown sat down for dinner. The second pulled out a banana. The first summoned a waiter to bring him two bananas on a silver platter. The second peeled his banana with quiet superiority. The first snapped his fingers again and had the waiter grind fresh pepper over his bananas like they were a Michelin dessert.

And then came the pièce de résistance.

The second clown peeled a banana, attached a vacuum hose, and sucked the fruit straight into the machine. He then opened the vacuum’s little plastic compartment—the one where attachments live—and inside was a perfect, ready-to-eat banana. The crowd exploded. It was ridiculous. It was ingenious.

And I sat there thinking:

How can something be this dumb and this smart at the same time?

A friend of mine likes to say, “Clowning logic is toddler logic.”

I’ve mused on this for weeks. Yesterday, it finally clicked. It’s a theory. A remarkably precise one.

It explains why the banana gag was both silly and clever. It wasn’t adult intelligence at work. It was toddler intelligence.

1. Logic That Doesn’t Work (But Feels True)

In clown logic—just like toddler logic—objects don’t always behave according to physics or reason. But they do always have a logic.

A banana is shaped like a gun → so it can be a gun.

A banana is shaped like a phone → so it can ring.

An unpeeled banana enters a vacuum hose → the vacuum outputs peeled bananas.

The logic doesn’t hold, and yet it feels inevitable.

The clown isn’t being stupid. He’s using a different rule set.

2. Infinite Positivity and Grit

Toddlers fail to do the same task twenty times with unwavering optimism. They pick the block up wrong, drop it, pick it up again, grin, try again. They don’t even know someone might be embarrassed or self-conscious.

Clowns do this too. Failure is not a setback; it’s an ingredient. The clown delights in trying again and again. It’s part of the charm. The audience roots for them because they never sour, never collapse, never scold themselves.

A clown can fail joyfully, a kind of emotional intelligence most adults have misplaced. (Is this why we love to watch someone embrace the flop? Perhaps it’s just failing joyfully.)

3. Lack of Control; all is Fate and Luck

A clown sits at home. Someone rings his doorbell. The clown opens the door. He gets pied in the face. The door closes. The clown returns to his chair.

Three seconds later: ding-dong!

The clown opens the doorbell again, just as excited as before.

Clowns operate in this same looping causality. No matter their behavior, they’re going to get pied in the face.

A friend’s baby hates bath time. He will wail and scream, sometimes strategize and connive. But whatever happens, he always ends up in the bath.

4. Repetition With Heightening

Toddlers adore repetition. Say “boo” ten times, and the tenth might get the biggest laugh. Their neurons seem to knit new connections in real time.

Clowns use this too. A repeated joke—with slight heightening each time—lets the audience see the clown’s mind working. Each repetition says: “Look, I’ve learned something!” At some point it might stop being funny. Why knows why? But bring it back up later in an unexpected way? Hilarious.

The game grows because the player grows.

5. Invented Rules That Aren’t True

Toddlers create miniature physics for their world:

“Only mommy can open drawers” (perhaps because mommy said this one time)

“If I hop, you must clap.”

“Dogs are male, and cats are female.”

Clowns do the same. Everything cone-shaped is an ice cream cone. A microphone, a traffic cone, a wizard’s wand: all delicious. Entire scenes arise from treating objects according to invented, toddler-esque rules.

These rules create friction, miscommunication, and comedy because the audience watches the clown operate inside a world only the clown understands.

The Banana Returns

So why did the vacuumed banana land so hard?

Because the clown applied toddler logic with adult-level precision.

He located an absurd rule—”in the vacuum” means “in the vacuum”—and committed to it fully. The magic wasn’t the trick; it was the conviction. The childlike law was obeyed so faithfully that the result felt surprisingly “smart.”

And then, later, the same clown tried to feed cake ingredients into the vacuum and produce a cake from offstage.

This time, the audience didn’t bite.

Why?

Two reasons:

  1. We’re doing bananas, not cakes.

    The world of the scene had already established a rule: we’re playing with bananas. Switching to cake is like arriving to the toddler’s wizarding world as a sci-fi character. You tried, but it’s the wrong game.
  2. The cake came from offstage, not from the vacuum.

    The previous joke worked because in the vacuum means in the vacuum. Pulling a cake from offstage wasn’t “the logic continuing”—it was creating new logic that doesn’t even make sense. (If they had put bananas and a strawberry into a blender, then pulled out a strawberry-banana yogurt from that same blender, that would have worked.)

The banana moment worked because it honored the rules.

The cake moment didn’t because it ignored them.

The Closing Thought

Maybe clowning can appear stupid because adults forget how to use toddler intelligence.

Toddlers aren’t dumb. They’re just operating a different operating system—one built on delight, mischief, repetition, and possibility. And one where the rules of the world aren’t yet solidified.

A clown steps onstage and reactivates that OS.

And for a few minutes, the audience gets a fresh start too.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, my banana is ringing.

Clown School Day 25: Successful Elements

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero’s class sets records.

Today, our class succeeded. Five of us earned fives, two earned sixes, and many of the rest pulled in strong marks. Even I received a “not bad” for one of my two performances. (The other got a zero.)

Why did today work so well? 

  • First, we were all pulling for each other. Cheers before and after each performance. We didn’t previously do this. It’s very helpful to your peers. 
  • Second, the exercise was fundamentally fun: embody an element (earth, fire, water, air). Enjoyable to do, and powerful enough to allow for layering the text gently atop. 
  • Third, the exercise was simple. Embody an element. Low stakes.

My first element was fire. One line in, I lost the text. They kicked me off for it: six hours of memorization, gone. The takeaway: start memorizing on Monday. Use sleep cycles for the memorizing. Earlier, lighter memorization beats late, intense memorization. 

My fire received these notes: 

  • “This is not fire. This is fire with petrol.” 
  • “When he starts to speak, we see something. He is sensitive. I think, ‘Ah, something is coming.’”

My second element was snow.

I began with the same image as yesterday. I watched it. I barely moved. I started saying the text (the same text as we used for fire). The teacher yelled: “Shut up!” then “Move!” then “Snow falling down from the sky!”, then repeated these three over and over. (Said one friend: “It seems funny to me that you’re asked to memorize lines but then she doesn’t actually want you to say them”.)

My favorite part was that she said “Shut up” and “You talk too much!” after nearly every sound I made—and several times when I wasn’t speaking. She’s freakishly skilled at spotting when I’m reciting text in my head. This is an impressive superpower. I need a big, strong, vivid image to overpower my love of text. Or maybe to make myself brilliant enough to be dumb: know the text well enough to forget it, but still have it when I need… #writerproblems

A few notes from the day:

  • The exercise that gives you the breakthrough isn’t necessarily the one you should perform. (I possibly should have done Earth, not Snow.)
  • When the rhythm of the lines matches the rhythm of the movement, it becomes boring.
  • What I like doesn’t always matter. The audience tells me what they like.

Head Teacher’s comments on my snow: 

  • “Not bad, but this is not snow.”
  • “You need good humor always. Something funny in your mind.”
  • “Even when you aren’t speaking, we see you speaking text.”
  • “You were sensitive.”

Teacher comments to others (because they’re funny):

  • “This is ‘theater de mi cajones.’ You know what it means? It means theater of my balls.”
  • “It’s a good image but it doesn’t arrive to us because of your shitty voice.”

Memorizing the lines isn’t actually that important. Being able to say the lines is. If you only know the first three, you can still earn great marks if you perform them well (*cough* one of my roommates *cough*).

I over-invested in learning the lines. I under-invested in being able to do the lines while doing the exercise. That’s the part I should have practiced. Or visualized. Or practiced and visualized.

Just because the assignment involved memorizing lines does not mean the assignment is to share the lines you memorized. Ain’t clowning great? 

My goal this week was sensitivity/openness/gentleness. Today showed more glimpses (I opened briefly during Fire, and on-and-off during snow). I’ll keep working on this. For now, it’s nice to be landing it more often. 

I received a zero and a “not bad.” The zero came with a comment that I was sensitive and open. Win. The “not bad” came with the same comment. I’m improving at this key trait. 

Intensity: check. Voice: powerful. Game: reliable. Impulse: alive.

Sensitivity/gentleness/openness/giving: getting there, if only Our Hero would shut up.

Clown School Day 24: Snowfall

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero melts.

Today I finally heard it:
“You were sensitive.”

Not “You’re being a fascist.”
Not “You’re pushing again.”
But:
You were sensitive. You were open. You were beautiful.

This has been my quest for the last four or five days: trying to soften without collapsing, open without weighing down, give without pushing. So when the assistant teacher said she could tell I’d been trying to be sensitive, something in me loosened. Like the wall I’ve been kicking finally cracked.

They then called “Julian and four others” onto the stage. And somewhere in that transition, I started crying. I don’t remember the moment. The whole experience became one.

The exercise was “snow.”

The teacher gave a confusing description of snow. Something like: “It’s the kind of snow that shuts down a city.”

Which… is just a quantity of snow. That’s not an image; that’s an amount.

So I asked a question that she didn’t answer. And then I started being snow. I grabbed an image that moves me: Lorelai in the first season of Gilmore Girls, stepping outside as the first snow falls. That little gasp, the cup of coffee, the anticipatory thrill, the “I smell snow.”

That image speaks to me. So I used it.

They asked for lighter. I moved lighter.
They asked for less movement. I slowed down.
And then the crying came—like a release of walls I didn’t even know I was holding.

I felt open. Present. Immersed. And I tried to stay there as long as I could. Even after class, I tried to keep it alive. I wandered to a café because it felt like “the present thing to do.” Then I left, because that also felt present. Then I ran into classmates outside the café, so I went back in. Presence, it turns out, has a sense of humor.

Then, I called a friend.
That was hard.

It felt like I came home excited that I’d thrown a baseball for the first time—look, look, I did the thing!—and they said, “Careful not to break a window.”

Not malicious. Just… a mismatch. And when you’ve just cracked open a new emotional door, mismatches hurt more.

After class, one of the teachers said: “You were very sensitive, and very beautiful. You had an intensity—but it wasn’t bad.”

I laughed at that. I’m glad it isn’t bad, because my intensity ain’t going away.

Later, I asked the teacher, “Did I do it? Did I actually finally successfully give?”
She didn’t answer directly. She asked, “Were you sensitive? What did you feel?”

Here’s my experience:
On stage without my glasses, I am legally blind. I couldn’t see anyone.
I didn’t listen to them either. The audience was mere shapes. Just the snow and me. And once in a while, a teacher’s comment.

So if the question is “were you sensitive to the audience?”, the answer is no. I was literally senseless. Ah clown school: you ironic farce.

They don’t mean sensitive. They might mean gentle. One way to arrive at sensitive is to notice that you’re too much for the audience. Another, apparently, is to channel the perfect childhood you never had in idyllic smalltown America.

Sometimes total silence is a good sign, the teacher said. It means the audience is engaged. “A quiet room can be as good as a laughing one. No one doing this [shuffling around, moving in their seat]”.

Yaya, today, I was sensitive. I did it right, entirely without sight. Senseless, yet somehow more sensitive.

Clown school, you rascal.

Earlier in the day, I channeled a storm. They told me I looked “obsessed with the game.”
I laughed. “This was the least obsessed I’ve been in days. I literally set myself the gentle mantra, ‘This is for you[, audience]‘”. Light. Open. Giving.

The feedback wasn’t about my intention; it was about my appearance.
They saw obsessed. I must change that appearance.

Perhaps I need extra lightness to counterbalance my baseline intensity.
Some people need more power or voice. I might need 10x the gentleness.

After class, a fellow student said to me:
“Good on you for staying up there. You could have sat down.”

My brow furrowed.
Sat down?
Why would I sit down? That made zero sense.

This is bottom of the ninth and I’m pitching a no hitter.
I will remain here until you drag me off this mound.

It’s funny what other people reveal about themselves when they comment on you.

Somehow, after I left the stage, the right person knew I needed a hug. He gave me one. And, lo and behold, it was good.

All afternoon I kept trying to hold the feeling: café, walk home, phone calls. I wanted to stay cracked open. Even though it’s uncomfortable? Especially because it’s uncomfortable.

I did my first cartwheel today. I went up as the guinea pig because I wanted more than anything not to.

Somewhere in all of this, I realized:
This experience with snow is a metaphor of the friction I’ve been having with the social life of clown school.
Pushing instead of being sensitive.
Wanting to give but not meeting others where they are.
The effort to be open met with a congratulations about remaining on stage or a warning about windows.

What next?
Maybe the answer is simply: more on-stage openness.
Maybe I’ll find some new challenge.

But today, for a moment, I did it. I gave what they’ve been telling me to give.
I didn’t perform emotion.
Nor pretend.
Nor simulate.
Nor mimic.

I was open.
Light.
Warm.
Gentle.
Like the first snow
And it’s You.

Because this snow.
This tiny, infinitesimal flake of snow.
If you do it enough.
Could cover the world.

Clown School Day 23: Everybody Wants a Little Slice

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero measures how much to give.

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: 

  1. Give it directly. Too pushy.
  2. Increase my own pleasure. Too self-contained.
  3. 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.

Clown School Day 22: Storm Warning

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero mistakes force for generosity.

Today I was a storm. A mighty tempest, raging.
I had INTENSITY. I had GIVING.
But… I was pushing.

Well, shit. I keep hearing this feedback, don’t I?
One classmate keeps being told he looks like a gorilla who needs a banana, so at least my comment wasn’t that.
But still: pushing.

Yes, pushing. Pushing. PUSHING!!!
The thing I do in all too many areas of life.
I want X to happen, so I force it into existence.
I want to avoid Y, so I shove it away.
I don’t really nurture things. I don’t calmly cultivate.

And when I perform with such intensity—without either (A) checking in with the audience, or (B) easing up enough to wink that it’s all a game—people find it frightening.

Maybe that’s the problem.
My performance curve—intensity vs. time—starts high and just stays there.
But it should breathe: rise, relax to dip slightly, rise higher, dip again.
We don’t want someone who punches full-force out of the gate.
We want someone who plays with us, gently escalating.

I demonstrate competence, but not alignment.
And that feels familiar.
Maybe I’m just not well-aligned.

I don’t like authority.
I don’t trust institutions.
I rarely side with the masses.
So people don’t trust me?
Am I fundamentally out of sync?

It’s odd to feel both like a lump of clay being molded, and an alien dropped into a land with a new language.

Clown school does weird things to your psychology.
I’m doubting a lot—really a lot.
Questioning my preferences, my desires.
Wondering where my heart and my head line up.

I’m not used to being part of a group.
After decades of being ostracized from them—since kindergarten—I now both crave belonging and violently resist it.

Here, I must give to the group.
I chose performance as a solitary act: me and the audience, a controlled parasocial exchange.
Turns out: no.

Clowning is about relation. Taking and giving.
And I’m trying to give so hard.
I just want them to like me.

But I’m not actually likable when I’m like that.
Because a truly likable person doesn’t need to be liked.
They simply are kind, generous, and light.
They offer themselves, and we like them for it.

It’s telling that my first thought was, “I should do an impression of that kind of person.”
Because underneath it all… I don’t think I am one.

Maybe that’s the real problem.

“Hey, therapist: I’ve got a topic for us!”

Clown School Day 21: Enter Neutral Mask

JulianLeave a comment

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 Weekend 4.2: Clowning is Serious Taxonomical Business

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In which Our Hero undertakes a herculean task (probably the one about shoveling poop)

I’ve spent the past few weeks trying to reverse-engineer the game we’ve been playing at clown school.

If we think of clowning as a game, what are the rules of that game?

I’ve started building a taxonomy — a kind of manual of play — mapping what seems to make pleasure multiply on stage: impulses, generosity, major/minor dynamics, how to avoid destroying your play, and so on.

It’s still a work-in-progress (I’m sharing it with classmates to stress-test it before publishing the full version).

But the process of writing it has already clarified a few things for me:

  • The clown’s “goal” isn’t to win — it’s to maximize total pleasure (without harm).
  • Pleasure is contagious; it’s the currency of play.
  • When you’re failing, contribute to the game and share your pleasure (don’t try to be funny or clever)

I’ll publish the full taxonomy soon. For now, there’s a little taste of what’s coming — and a reminder that even codifying play is, itself, a kind of game.

P.S. If you’ve ever tried to articulate something that resists articulation, you’ll understand how funny this exercise becomes.

Or, put another way: sometimes people ask me, “What is the point of your Yale philosophy degree?” Now I can say: “I made you a taxonomy of Clowning!”

Clown School Weekend 4.1: The Present of Presence

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In which Our Hero hypothesizes a virtuous cycle.

Maybe when I’m present, open, and giving to others, I acquire fewer regrets.

That would be a powerful feedback loop: the more I give of myself, the lighter I feel; the lighter I feel, the more I give.

At clown school, le jeu is about play — but it’s also about generosity. Not for applause, but because shared pleasure multiplies. Maybe that’s what being funny is. Or at least what being kind is.

(I’m working on a larger analysis that’s still half-baked. Please enjoy this musing while that cogitation continues to cook.)