Tag: Philosophy of Art

Clown School Break Day 4: Return of the G

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In which Our Hero gets his groove back. 

Friend: “We’re looking for ladyfingers”
Grocery store employee: “What are those?”
Me: “They’re like chicken fingers but made out of women.”
Employee: “I can’t stand men, but that’s a good one.”

A friend told me I’m funnier now than before clown school—that I tell jokes for other people more than I used to.

That’s nice.

I do feel myself joining other people’s worlds more readily. It feels more comfortable, somehow safer. Like I’m less afraid of being hurt by them. Like I’ve internalized the fact that the pain of rejection is both temporary and unreal. 

And I am still unquestionably afraid. But the fear is now useful. It’s a companion. A friend. I just need to embrace it, befriend it, and place it properly so it doesn’t own me.

At dinner, my dad asked me to do an impression I’ve done before: one of the teachers from my Le Jeu course this summer. I did it, and it was fun. The fact that sharing pleasure is more important than the impression’s accuracy put me at ease. Historically, I’ve refused in spots like this. Maybe because doing someone else’s game felt uncomfortable. But why? Who cares? Might as well give pleasure. Spread joy. 

I was more open and comfortable and relaxed in general.

And noticing the spots when I wasn’t. And releasing them. 

These are nice.

Thanks, clown school. 

Clown School Day 25: Successful Elements

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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

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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

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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 Weekend 1: The Tragic Flaw

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In which Our Hero contemplates monkey business

Why is it funny to watch someone trying so hard? Repeating the same failed strategy over and over? Exaggerating a single specific trait?

Is clowning the humor version of a character’s tragic flaw? Is the same element that drives us to extrapolate a whole character from one personal or physical or psychological deformity also the same that makes us love this repetitive, heightened, exaggerated play?

Do monkeys clown? They certainly have tragic flaws. Do they goof? Perform mockery? Satire?

—

I visited a clown performance today. Half a dozen clowns stuffed into one small stage. One read the story of Snow White and walked oh so slowly across the stage. Another pantomimed a horse and played the audience like a musical instrument. A third sang Disney songs and perhaps was a burlesque performer not a clown. My favorite was a clown singer. Here’s what he did:

  • Appeared on stage in a shiny jacket and ascot to announce “and for my final song…” (which is already a funny opener)
  • Followed it up by announcing it would be “one from my new album…”
  • Cued the DJ by referring to him as “song boy”
  • Performed precisely three funny gestures
  • Sang the beginning of a song
  • The song had some small snag, so he stopped and refused to sing again until we the audience showed him enough love (eg by demanding an encore)
  • Repeated from the beginning

I loved the whole thing. My only gripes were 1) the women behind me who were talking during the show, and 2) the ending could increase our love for the performer rather than merely end it.

I have a few hunches on how to execute #2. I’ll share them with the performer when I see him. (It’s unfortunately not legal to execute #1.)

—

The funniest-in-concept performer was a poet who wasn’t obviously a clown nor obviously a poet, who prompted the audience to not know whether it was intended to be earnest or funny. I couldn’t stop laughing.

After the show, I approached this poet. I needed to know if he was real or not. My conclusion: he’s a real poet who really did just find himself repeating reordered sequences of the same sentence of words at an underground clown show.

Maybe that’s the secret: the clown, the poet, and the rest of us: each repeating our flaw until it becomes a performance worth watching. And perhaps that fact is the funniest of all.

I hated Uncut Gems; it’s one of the greatest movies I’ve seen.

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(Contains spoilers.)

It’s an odd arc for a movie to follow Goodness itself. Most stories teach us lessons by showing us a person: we match the Good parts of ourselves with this protagonist in the film. The Good parts undergo trials but ultimately prevail.

In this movie, however, bad behavior is punished. It’s the sort of movie that would answer the question “Is murder a sin?” with “Depends: who are we talkin’ about?”   

In uncut gems, the protagonist is Goodness, we follow the plot arc of Right, and Right, as it should, ultimately triumphs in the end. The vehicle for this lesson, however, is a sad sack of a meatbag: Adam Sandler watches a basketball game instead of tucking his son into bed; he explodes in anger instead of listening to his girlfriend; and he gambles with borrowed money instead of paying it back.

We empathize with the people around Adam Sandler: the three kids, the wife, the loan shark, the girlfriend. We even feel sorry for Sandler sometimes: He’s compulsive, but he’s right. We think, “I’m compulsive but right.” But Uncut Gems shows us: “Here’s where those two traits can lead you…”

So we’re oddly satisfied when Sandler’s big bet finally pays off… and is punctuated by him being shot in the head. “Those who gamble with others’ lives should pay with their own.“

This movie does not merely show us how the world is; it describes how the world ought to be. Good should prevail while bad gets shot in the head, even if it’s that adorable goofball who starred in Happy Gilmore.

It’s not a pleasant film. You probably won’t enjoy it. Or you’ll enjoy it the way you enjoy going to the dentist and hearing stories about The Holocaust: it hurts but it’s ultimately good for you.

So process your trauma, overcome your compulsions, and watch Uncut Gems when you want something reeeeeeally intense.

My daily arting requirement this year (from 190521 to 200520)

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1. Compose from my place of emotional vulnerability until satisfied.

2. Edit such that I like it sufficiently. (ideally, I would edit until I like it maximally, but 1. One can only do so much in limited time and 2. It’s better to edit something over multiple days than to avoid editing it altogether because I can’t make it maximally satisfactory in one.)

3. If it’s safe for public consumption, share it.

If I die Monday, may my tombstone read,“Died doing what he loves.”

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On Monday I go in for Jaw Surgery. If I die, I want my tombstone to read, “Died doing what he loves.[1]”

I’ve never seen a footnote on a tombstone. Nor ellipses. I’m updating the medium. The joke makes it more palatable.

I joke because I’m afraid. I’m afraid because it’s frightening. I’ve never been closer to death than I will be on Monday.

I’ve always mused on death. I wrote my first auto-obituary at 13. The same way some people use the largesse of space to decrease their anxiety; I use death to accept depression. When I wake up late enough that I feel grumpy, the phrase “death and taxes” echoes in my mind. It reminds me of two crucial elements – timeliness and humor. One makes today matter and the other makes life worth living.

I’m spending tomorrow and Sunday advising a local high school youth group, and Saturday with my dad. If I die, let it be known I went out doing what I loved.

 

[1] Self improvement.

…

…

…

Okay, cocaine.

On Art, pART 2

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The more that art affects lives, the better it is. (Assuming it affects lives in a positive way).

This can be broken down into two dimensions:

  1. How many people it affects.
  2. How much it affects them.

You could define “expected impact” as (Total number of people) x (Average amount of impact).

A few methods for creating art with a high expected impact:

  • Create a valuable message
.
  • Make the message easily digestible (more memetic).
  • Create a message that lasts a long time
.
  • Widen the audience it appeals to (target more demographics).
  • Focus your art on the influencers (powerful/social people, good promoters). 
(Creating art that impacts other artists would fall into this category)
  • Make your art have less of a negative impact (be harmful to fewer people/less sizably harmful to those it harms).

 

Other musings:

  1. People often make the art they would want because:
    • It’s relatively easy to do it well (easier than doing market research on an audience)
    • Their own taste is an approximate proxy for “people who are like them”.
  2. If someone had every trait in the world, they’d make the most popular art because it’d be the most relatable (which increases digestibility of messages)
  3. Good art should add value to people’s lives. Value is important to note as distinct from perceived value (which is what money measures).
    1. Children produce great value for a few people. Cat videos produce little value for many people.
  4. Historically, creating evergreen content has been a stronger strategy than creating one-time impact, as that includes future generations in potential audience.
  5. Assuming its impact is good, the art you choose to do should be the one with the greatest expected impact. That is often similar to what you want to do most*, but not always.**
  6. I’m starting my career doing what I want to do most because I currently have the strongest ego (as you get older, your drive decreases) and may end up more on the intellectually-driven side later. (Editor’s note: a conversation earlier today redefined the word “ego” for me. I have more musing to do on this topic.
  7. Another approach is changing what you’re passionate about.
  8. Famous philosopher/author Nick Bostrom wrote a book that convinced many, many people to worry about AI as an existential risk. This prompted many people to start researching friendly AI, which may save the species and therefore have a HUGE impact on the world. (the hugest from here on out, perchance, because it’s necessary for all other future positive impacts.)
    1. This would suggest that a solid course of action for me—if there are any existential threats to humans—is to use art to fight them. (If it’s a thing that I could impact significantly. It’s not the only choice—my talents may be better used elsewhere—but it’s certainly a reasonable choice.)

*: You’ll want to do the thing that matters the most to you, and it mattering a lot to you is a good prediction that it’ll also matter to others. It mattering to others is a good predictor of how much it affects them.

**: That math has two spots of “good predictor”, so it’ll be exponentially removed from truth.