Tag: short-story

Clown School Break Day 26: Clowning as Emotional Oddity

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero ends on an unusual question. 

Clowning is an odd emotional experience.
Clown school is an odd emotional context.

Where else is one assigned the task: be emotionally open, vulnerable, generous, light, and kind?
Where else is one given an explicit assignment to manipulate their own emotional state in service of others?

One place that comes to mind is politics.

I recently happened upon a (¿state?) senator. I was coming from a friend’s birthday, and the senator commented on the hat I’d given my friend. The senator exhibited genuine-seeming curiosity about what it meant, then delight in the silly inside joke it represented.

And,
like,
he wasn’t being inauthentic.

But,
like,
that is his job.

I don’t believe he was deeply interested in the game itself. I doubt he’d want to watch it or play it unless it came packaged with votes or fundraising. And yet: the delight was real.

I suppose clowns are the same way.

It isn’t inauthentic to change your emotional state and then share that state with others.
But it is contrived.

It’s not inauthentic to manipulate someone at a poker table either.
But it is manipulative.

So what’s the point?

Is this the core function of most people-leadership roles? From CEO to politician to parent to clown: are they all versions of the same act?

If behavior flows from emotion, is a leader’s primary job internal emotional manipulation, followed by broadcasting the result?

I’m reminded of LBJ amping himself up – working himself into a righteous frenzy – before speeches and political events, especially if it felt like he was behaving in ways antithetical to his values. He told himself he was doing it for people he cared about. That the moral sacrifices were worth it.

And then he sent those people to die in Vietnam.

I’ve known a CEO who practiced a similar kind of self-amping. His former employees now, at a remarkable rate, despise him.

So what’s my point? The connection to clowning?

Is it bad to manipulate your own emotional state? Obviously not. But when does it become bad? Under what conditions? In service of what ends?

What’s my point?

I don’t know. I’m musing.

That’s what this blog is. Thinking out loud. Marking where my thinking currently sits and letting it evolve. I don’t endorse everything I’ve ever written. That’s part of being a writer.

But today I’m reminded of how strange an emotional experience clowning is.
And how much people hate politicians.
And I find myself wondering whether – or more precisely, to what degree and in what ways – they should also hate clowns.

🤡

Clown School Break Day 24: Clowning is for Babies

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero shares a lack of pain.

My sister’s sixteen-month-old child has not yet learned that life is more pleasant when one defecates intentionally in prescribed locations. Instead, he saves time and effort (and I admire his efficiency) by pooping wherever and whenever inspiration strikes.

After completing this task, he begins to smell.
It is not a pleasant smell.
It gives one the impression that all disgust responses originate here.

To rectify (pun!) the situation, one generally places him on his back and swaps out his undergarments for fresh ones, with some cleansing wiping in the middle (pun!).

He does not enjoy being on his back.

Would you enjoy being held on your back by beings eight-plus times your size?

In response to this dissatisfaction, I’ve learned to change his undergarments while he’s standing. This satisfies the basic needs. But sometimes the environment is not conducive.

Such was the case this afternoon at the park.

We – my father and I – flopped the nugget onto his back.

His face screwed itself into a pre-wail.

I noticed something in myself: calm. Comfortable ease. I found it, then sent it his way. His pre-wail ceased. He looked at my face.

I knelt above the boy-child’s head, my face upside-down over his. He gazed at my scruffy visage; I gazed down at his soft, pudgy one. It didn’t take effort. Just a gentle internal returning-to-the-calm.

He did not find this enchanting. (For roughly four seconds during the change, he looked away.) But it was sufficient.

I am not, perhaps, more entertaining than a stubbed toe is painful.
But I can be more engaging than a sudden flop onto one’s back.

—

At clown school, the second-years play a warm-up game with a baby.

They appear on stage one by one. They make a face or a sound or some small action. The teacher plays either a baby crying or a baby laughing. They continue. The question is simple:

How long can you keep the baby laughing?

I’ve wondered for a while whether that’s the goal of clowning: reach some pre-culture, fundamental-to-all-humans level where your pleasure arrives into any audience, underneath their higher-level reasoning. 

I do not yet have the skills to make this baby laugh on command. (Except via the super-secret hack of foot tickles.)

But I do have the ability to Turn On The Calm.

And that

can be

enough.

Clown School Day 28: Boring and Dumb

JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero learns to befriend his flops.

Americans are pushies.
Not sensitive. Not gentle.
We want it, so we push it.

It’s not attractive. It’s not sensitive. It’s not connected.

—

Today, I was boring. A cause for celebration.

I entered the stage as a mangy, rabid coyote. I loved it. Head Teacher even said I was full of delight and pleasure—but that my pleasure wasn’t reaching the audience.

So she began to chant:
“Boring! Boring! Buh-buh-buh-boring!”

The class joined in. Then I joined in.
And when I joined, they loved me.

I danced; we chanted; I escalated to “…and dumb!” They loved that too. Real humility—not performance, not irony. I was boring! I was dumb! I was ugly. And we loved that together.

We love someone who makes fun of themselves.

After Head Teacher called out a fellow student for pushing too hard, the student offered to jump out the window. The audience laughed. The assistant teacher helped him open it. We laughed again. Excellent pedagogy. Also: improves student-teacher ratio. 

—

After class, I decided to catch the train to Paris. I had four minutes to pack my bag. Then I thought:
Why am I rushing?
This isn’t fun.

So I slowed down. Decided to take the next train. Stopped by the café instead. And since I was going, I figured I might as well bring a cake for my classmates.

I texted the group chat and showed up with cake.
They were so grateful—
—or at least they would have been if any of them had been there.

The café was entirely bereft of clowns. Oops.

I sat outside and chuckled at myself. A homeless man approached. I waved him away out of habit… then called him back and offered cake.

He asked if I had a knife to cut it in two. I didn’t. So he broke it with his hands.

It brought me joy that he stumbled away without saying merci.
It gave me delight to share cake with someone who wanted cake.
It was joyful to see him divide it in half—
—he’s not greedy, after all.

Sometimes your flops are kinder than your successes.
If you stay open, good things arrive.
Clowns don’t need cake; hungry (and drunk?) homeless people do.

—

Another homeless man later refused my cake, saying, “If I ate cake, I would die.”

Good to know the homeless are still French.

—

As I write this, I’ve arrived in Paris to buy makeup and a gray shirt. On Friday, I’ll be a stick bug. For camouflage, I’ve chosen gray: dignified, dull, affectionately geriatric.

At dinner, the woman beside me asked what I do. When I said I study clown, she told me I have a kind and happy aura.

The couple who sat down after her asked what brought me to Paris… and then invited me for Shabbat dinner in New York.

The woman in the makeup shop gave me her number as she wants to go for a walk with me. 

Clearly, I’m doing something right.

—

What’s the lesson from today’s class?
Something about having good humor, laughing at myself, not taking life—or art—too seriously?

Beats me: I’m boring and dumb.