Travel – Julian Wise

Clown School Break Day 30: Cooperative Games

December 21, 2025 JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero collaborates.

My family has recently taken to playing cooperative games. Growing up, we played mainly competitive games. Sometimes team games, but more often individual competitive games.

My partner recently posed the question: What if a person grew up playing mainly cooperative games?

An interesting question.

For one, most sports are competitive. (Sure, some are team-based, but those are still generally against other people rather than a challenge against nature or circumstance.)

For two, most contrived games (as distinct from natural games like science or business) are competitive.

For three, most good contrived games are competitive. Taking board games as a field I know quite well: only over the last ~20 years have cooperative board games taken off, and still they are much less popular and less created than competitive ones.

Bad games are generally not worth playing. They’re unfun and teach poor / useless skills.

Good games are, well, good.

I learned to count and perform basic mental math through the card game cribbage. I’m not aware of a cooperative equivalent that’s as engaging and strategic (and building one’s strategic muscle is worthwhile in itself).

Cooperative games teach communication, team coordination, collective strategy, leading and following, ebbs and flows.

I used to ghostwrite for the founder of the video streaming platform Twitch. He and his brother both sold companies for ~$1B, and they credit their parents’ chore system with teaching them to collaborate and strategize. The chores had to be completed, but the how and the who were up to the children’s choices. (For more, search the word “chore” in this article or this article.)

Collaborative games are excellent. And in the grand scheme of things, many competitive games are really about collaboration on the meta level anyway. Tennis is about (i.e. funded by) encouraging people to play tennis, which is generally good for physical health. Individual competitive sports like running are about setting a new record, thereby pushing human physical ability to new heights.

Perhaps it’s true: Even when we’re competing, we’re collaborating.

Clown School Break Day 29: On Moving Holidays

December 20, 2025 JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero experiments with time.

My family moves holidays.

By moving them, we get more time together. And the ability to do more Christmases with others. (This year, I’m doing one Christmas with my family and then three with my partner’s.)

The official Christmas – or “consensus Christmas,” as I call it – is arbitrarily chosen anyway. Orthodox Christmas is in January; Jesus’ actual birthday is unknown; and Dec 25 was chosen in the 4th century. So we slide things around.

Today was family Christmas Day 1. I received two clownish gifts.

One was from my gluten-free brother-in-law: a large, baguette-shaped pillow.

[In a French accent: “honh honh honh”]

The second was a sign saying “Beware of Clowns.” It’s visually akin to a normal “Beware of Dog” sign.

Teeheehee.

Musing on this relationship with time, I wonder how much it’s shared by clowns. They’re an immediate lot, making plans for now and changing them when the wind blows. The school allows for drop-ins and drop-outs as desired. You can come for a year. Or for one course. Or leave and return next year. Or the year after. And you definitely can’t take the second year clown course until after you’ve taken the foundational Le Jeu course. Or at the same time: that’s fine too.

This is a game with time and convention.

Most people have never considered moving a holiday. “Christmas is on December 25th”, they might say. And they’re right. But they’re only right because people decided they’re right. And social constructs are fertile ground for games.

It’s also an act of engineering. We found a problem: many demands on the same time. So instead of moving our bodies (see the movie “Four Christmases,” where a couple tries to do all four divorced-family Christmases in one day), we move the holiday.

Clowning and systems engineering are shockingly similar. One is attempting to achieve a system result; the other an emotional one. But the method is the same: find what’s out of balance and adjust it until the whole thing works.

It’s nice to play with social temporal agreements. But it’s nice because the people I care about agree with it, and all play in similar ways.

There are also times when I think something’s a game and someone else thinks it’s absolutely not a game. Those times are no fun at all. 🤡

Clown School Break Day 28: Statistical Cheese

December 19, 2025 JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero ages in a cave for 24 months.

This has so far been my favorite Christmas season.

Why?

Is it the general chillness?
The presence of a 16-month-old nephew (our activities constrained by nap windows like a benevolent dictator)?
The absence of sprinting – from task to task, from obligation to obligation – so that family time feels calm instead of stolen?

No running and only a little work means I’m easy and jovial. I like this version of myself.

Part of this is the skill clown school taught me: the ability to choose fun instead of waiting for it to arrive accidentally.
And part of it is contrast: the calm after an absurdly intense storm.

January looms.
I’m buying an apartment.
Interviewing for a job.
Considering family visiting me in France.

For now, though, the assignment appears to be: do less. Enjoy more. Taste the cheese.

—

Tonight we performed a statistical analysis on cheese.

Ten cheeses. France, Spain, the UK.
Who liked what. How much. Whose tastes clustered. Who outlied in what ways?

My partner started a masters in statistics during her genetics PhD. This is her preferred form of play: turning pleasure into a dataset. Not just “which cheese did everyone enjoy the most” but “what were the standard deviations” and “who had the most similar taste in cheeses? The most divergent?”

It occurred to me that this – thinking carefully about what we like – is a behavior often poo-pooed.

Anti-intellectualism runs rampant. In part because it’s easier to form a mob than to compete on precision. If you can’t articulate why something is good, it’s comforting to declare articulation itself suspicious. If you can’t relate to someone who knows 1/7th in percentages, it’s comforting to outgroup them as mad scientist-y.

And yet:
Some of our favorite cheeses were cheap, mass-market cheeses from France and Spain.

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
It’s funny how the everyday object in one country becomes a delicacy in another—just by crossing a border and being paid attention to.

Maybe this is also a clown lesson.

Attention is not seriousness.
Analysis is not joy-killing.
And play doesn’t require intensity—sometimes it requires rest.

All in all, a very chill day.

Which is nice.
Especially
Because
I’m not in charge of the toddler napping
🤡

Clown School Break Day 27: Beards and Bouffons

December 18, 2025 JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero chuckles at a mistranslation, then engages with the point itself.

The question was posed earlier today: “How much of your feeling of lack of social fitting at clown school comes from your grooming, or lack thereof?”

A fair question.

I last shaved my face in October. I last cut my hair in 2021.

(To be concrete: at clown school, I showered daily, wore deodorant, and washed my clothes weekly. This topic is about aesthetics, not hygiene.)

I’ve never grown facial hair before. It was always patchy. Now, since July, returning to my endogenous testosterone production with a little bit of external boosting via a doctor-prescribed chemical called Clomid (a 10/10 experience, but a different story), I have finally been able to grow a beard. It’s nice. My partner enjoys the softness. I enjoy the newness and the exploration (and the scritches).

And then, on the hair front, it’s long. Sometimes (3 or 4 times in the last 4 years) I get it treated at a salon to make it simple and easy to manage. Others, I wear hats or put it in a ponytail.

I’ve heard I have split ends. I don’t care.

So:

Do clowns?

The first answer is: probably. Clowns are an immediacy-focused group. One that cares about emotional presence and current experience. They also therefore care about appearance and presentation. And they should: performers are perceived based on their appearance. A comedian who either gains or loses a lot of weight will need to adjust their behavior and performance based on their new perception. (For a biting and sad example, see either this article about Chris Farley or how many Chris Farley bits involve his size.)

So yes, my grooming has probably had an impact.

I mentioned something like this to my interlocutor, to which they replied: “Not because you don’t look good, but because you look like you aren’t taking care of yourself.”

This comment seems worthy of analysis.

Like.

I am taking care of myself.

I’m just not doing things with my body that you (the collective “you”) want me to.

“Not taking care of yourself” is often a polite mistranslation for something else. What it usually means is: you are emitting social signals I don’t enjoy.

I’m enjoying the beard growth. I’m curious where it goes and what it’s like. I’m enjoying the new experiences, even some of the difficult or disgusting ones. (The presence of my mustache means I have to re-learn the skill of using a napkin.) I like my hair as it is: I’m enjoying it growing out.

It’s less “not taking care of myself” and more “not playing others’ game”.

Grooming isn’t just maintenance; it’s signaling. And one of the signals I was sending – intentionally or not – was: I’m not optimizing for your approval.

Which is

perhaps

a fair point.

I’ve opted out of a bunch of life’s societal games. The 9-5 job (or employee status more generally). Living in a fixed location. Dating via specific social rituals. Following a prescribed gender behavior.

It limits who likes me. It limits who spends time with me. But the people who do like me really like me.

I’m thinking about this with clown school. My goals were 80% spiritual and 20% clown-y. That already separates me from the crowd. I’m not the only one in clown school for spiritual reasons: a classmate shared that her motivation was to re-learn how to play so she could enjoy playing with her children again. The majority of my classmates are professional actors.

My clown-y goals were 1) learn the practice of clowning; 2) learn the theory of clowning; and 3) make friends.

If my spiritual goals are not most clowns’ main focus, and most clowns aren’t interested in the theory, then I’m already pretty limited in topic interest overlap.

Add to that the fact that I don’t find fun many things that other clowns do – drinking alcohol; socializing in groups; group texting conversations – and my pool becomes even smaller.

Clowning is about finding games and playing them. It’s about being open and connective and sensitive with others. My first few weeks, when my facial hair looked good rather than just a lot, I was more in flow. Is that a coincidence with the fact that I also enjoyed the class subject matter (Le Jeu) more? Is it true that my focus turned more inward over time, and this didn’t jive with the peers? Complicité is a two way street, and maybe I was blocking the other lane. (As a friend put it: “maybe your flow comes partially from the interactions with others and maybe your appearance changes their interactions with you, which compounds”.)

The most generally-liked clown who I met at clown school was a person who’s constantly generous. Not especially generous with time, resources, or skills, but extraordinarily generous in emotional and social dynamics.

And I

just

don’t value that

as much

as the other

clowns do.

Emotional generosity is the local currency. I value it, just not always above curiosity, theory, or truth. That difference matters more here than I expected.

This isn’t a critique of emotional generosity. It’s a recognition that I underweighted how central it is to clown school, and that mismatch had consequences I’m still understanding.

So I write a daily blog about clowning.
And others
are better
clowns
🤡

Clown School Break Day 21: The Egg Game

December 12, 2025December 13, 2025 JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero encounters an eggregious machine.

Walking through the casino today, I saw a brilliant game.
A perfectly engineered one.
A real bad egg.

It’s a slot machine called something like The Egg.

You put in your money. You slap the button.
Standard procedure.
Nothing shell-shocking.

But instead of reels to spin, there’s just an egg on the screen.

Every time you slap, the egg cracks a little more.

And when the egg is fully broken –
crack –
you win a jackpot.

The jackpots (at the $1 play level) range from about $3 to just over $10,000.
All of them are progressive.
They grow the longer you play.

The egg takes a variable number of slaps to break.

It’s a well-made game.
Eggsactly balanced.

Here’s why.

1. It redefines winning.
You will win.
The only question is when.
Just keep putting money in until the egg hatches.

Winning doesn’t feel like if.
Winning feels like eventually.

2. You feel progress.
Every slap cracks the egg a little more.
You’re getting closer.
A chip here, a fracture there.

Are you actually closer?
Who knows.
But it looks like you are, and that’s all your nervous system needs.

3. Everything is a jackpot.
I watched a man spend $70 chasing one $10 jackpot and two $3 jackpots.

He won three times.
He lost $54.

But emotionally, during the process?
Sunny side up.

After he left?
Fried.

4. It’s intelligible.
Most modern slot machines are incomprehensible.
You don’t even know what the rules for winning are until you’ve played for a while.

That confusion creates a false sense of mastery:
“I’m learning the game.”

You are—but learning doesn’t help.

The Egg is different.
Egg → crack → jackpot.
No shell game.
No mystery meat.

Immediate understanding.
Immediate hook.
Egg-ceptionally approachable.

A game egg-zactly positioned to attract newbies.

5. It creates tension – and guarantees release.
The egg will break.
That’s the promise.

When that suspense releases, however,
the yolk (“joke”) will already have been on you.

6. Your action feels causal.
Slap the button.
The egg jiggles.
A crack instantly appears.

Your body doesn’t care about RNGs or payout tables.
Your body says: I did that.

7. You can mash.
On a normal slot machine there’s a pause between spins.
The Egg?
You can mash the button 30 times in 30 seconds.
(I saw a guy mash 70 times in under 3 minutes.)

So if you spend $40 and win $20, you feel frustrated.
And to relieve that frustration:
Have you considered mashing the button?

The feedback loop is tight.
The illusion of control is strong.
The design is…
let’s be honest…
eggstraordinary.

That’s it.

I’ve cracked it.

And now I’m walking away, before I get completely scrambled. 🥚

(Author’s note: I did not actually play the game. I am not a fan of slot machines. I did, however, admire it from afar. Here’s a video of someone playing it.)

Clown School Break Day 20: The Dealer Doesn’t Care

December 11, 2025 JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero recalls, yet again, that feelings are weather, not climate.

Poker.

I don’t like poker.
It fucking sucks.

The intensity, the swings, the way it presses you between two stones: your own decisions and the randomness of the universe. As one poker TV show once put it, “It’s a hard way to make an easy living.”

There was a time I stopped playing altogether because I believed poker was net-negative for the world. You take money from people who can’t afford it. Addicts. The lonely. The poor.

And what do you give in return?

Entertainment?
A distraction?
A slow-motion morality play about risk and consequence?

These were my thoughts after losing two big pots tonight.
One I played fine. Just ran into the top of someone’s range.
The other I played poorly preflop in a $50 splash pot and donated my stack like a confused philanthropist. (“Splash pot” = the casino added $50 to it for free.)

Woof.

So I asked myself, as one does after being spiritually hit by a train:

Why do I do this?
Why are we attracted to what we’re attracted to?
Is it genetics? Happenstance? Praise when we were eight and wanted to feel special?

Clown school has taught me one brutal, luminous thing:
You will be pummeled on your chosen path.
Mocked, rejected, flattened, ignored.
And that’s just by the teachers!

Your path should therefore be the thing you continue doing despite the punishment.
What’s the thing you’ll walk through hell for?

I’m deeply dissatisfied with poker tonight. But here’s the truth:
Poker is a game of millions of hands.
Variance is a dragon that only bows after thousands upon thousands of repetitions.
This hand doesn’t matter.
This session doesn’t matter.

Clowning, on the other hand, is both slower and faster.
Yes, the craft takes years, maybe a lifetime – but the feedback is instantaneous.
You step out, you try something, and either the audience lights up now, or it doesn’t.

Steve Martin once asked himself:
“What happens if I never release the tension?”
Instead of setup → punchline → laugh from tension relief, he just stacked more and more absurdity.
If someone left the show emotionless and burst out laughing in the car ride home, he considered that a victory.
(His memoir is worth a read.)

Here’s the thing about Cards.
And the thing about Clowning.

The C’s don’t care about your feelings.
The dealer doesn’t pause because you’re tilted.
The audience doesn’t laugh because you’re sad.

The next hand came.
My body was buzzing with frustration.
But I played fine.
And that was what mattered.

Ugh.

—

It’s now an hour later.
The frustration is gone.

How astonishing, how liberating, how funny it is to remember how fleeting feelings are.

And how little they matter to the game.
Any game.
When the next hand is already being dealt.

Unless you let them play instead of you.
And they are both bad cardplayers and bad clowns.

—

We’re now an hour after that.
I quit the live game because it wasn’t profitable enough.
I wasn’t having fun.
I asked myself the question “If I lost my stack in the next hand, would I rebuy and keep plying?”
The answer was no.

So now I’m at the deli, eating dinner with my father…
While we play online poker with a different group.

🤡

Clown School Break Day 18: More than Flavor

December 9, 2025 JulianLeave a comment

In Which Our Hero Eats Theater for Dinner

“What do you plan to do after clown school?”

Gonzo theater in NYC
Play with children
Live a damn good life

That’s about it.

Clown School Break Day 15: The Lightness Advantage

December 6, 2025 JulianLeave a comment

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.

But when I’m heavy?

Well.

🎈

Clown School Break Day 12: Poker vs Clown

December 4, 2025 JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero manages his emotions (and plays poker because, with a broken foot, what else are you going to do?)

If clowning is about managing your emotions in service of giving pleasure, then poker might actually train part of that muscle. The emotional management is enormous.

Earlier today I lost three spots in a row.
One I misplayed slightly.
Two were just unlucky.

I assumed my strategy wasn’t working.

But it was.

I do this in clowning, too: I try a thing, it doesn’t land, and I immediately abandon it. But that’s rarely the answer. Sometimes you need to push the thing farther. Sometimes you pivot to a different game. But the one thing you don’t need to do is collapse inward and quit. You don’t just give up and take your ball and go home.

Instead, check your fundamentals.

In poker: Is this still a good game? Am I playing well?
In clowning: Have I found the game? Am I playing it?

Yet the two arts couldn’t be more opposite.

Poker is about hiding.
Showing nothing.
No emotion, no tells, no generosity.

Clowning is the opposite: openness, earnestness, authenticity, giving.

Poker is selfishness.
Clowning is generosity.

At one point today I was down $650. I kept playing because I was playing well—and because, in theory, I’d been winning the whole time.

That’s another key difference: poker has theory.
Clowning has only practice.

Poker’s truth reveals itself over hundreds of thousands of hands.
Clowning’s truth reveals itself instantly.

If everyone’s laughing at you at the poker table, you’re the fish.
If everyone’s laughing with you on stage, you’re the clown.

—

I was also especially open with my family today. That was nice 🙂
Time and place, boys. Time and place 😎

Clown School Break Day 8: Selfishness

November 29, 2025November 30, 2025 JulianLeave a comment

In which Our Hero… is selfish?

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 🤓]