Lessons From (and for) The Circus of Life: Magic

The magician:  Master of the Mystic Arts, or simple con artist?  Like clowns, people seem to fall into two camps -- although for different reasons.  You like magic and magicians, or you don't.

The folks who don't like magic have a point.  We know that the magician is fooling us (i.e., making us look or feel foolish).  What they seem to be doing is impossible, we know, so there's got to be a trick to it, yet the magician appears to be taking themselves and what they're doing seriously -- insisting that our seeing should be believing.

The pictures below show two different approaches to the performance of magic.  In the photo on the left it is clear that I am receiving the accolades of the crowd.  I've done something amazing, and the audience is showing me that appreciate my skill.  And that certainly is one way to approach not only magic, but any kind of performance -- it's about the performer.  Yes, certainly, an entertainer wants their audience to be entertained.  Ultimately, though, it's about the performance itself.  For the magician, that means it's all about the magic.

In the 80s, I was lucky enough to meet a man named Bill Carpenter (who, at the time, went by his clown name, Gusto).  His Midway Caravan introduced me to a new way of thinking about my performances.  He turned the dynamic of performance on its head.  As I wrote in a blog post shortly after I heard of his death, Gusto's approach, 

... didn’t create a dynamic of a passive audience staring up at the impossible feats of the performer and saying, “Wow!  Look what you can do!”  Instead, the audience looked at the performers, who just moments before had been the audience, and said, “Look what we can do together.”  The performance was actually something of a ruse; the real act was the creation of community.

While working with Gusto I began to use my own role as magician/juggler/fire-eater/clown as a tool to take the spotlight that would be thrown on me and turn it back on the assembled crowd, the "congregation" that had gathered, the community-in-the-making.  (Even before I was an ordained minister, working in a parish setting, I understood my performance as a form of ministry, and the people who gathered, who congregated, in the hall or on the street corner where I was performing as "a congregation.")

This is what the photograph on the right captures -- the girl is the focus of people's attention, not me.  My job is simply to facilitate this opportunity for her to shine and, through her, for everyone to feel good about themselves.  Here the magic is not the end in itself, simply the means to the end.  This is why I would announce before each show that I was about to do a number of tricks, the secret of which wasn't really the important thing.  I would invite anyone who wanted to to come up after the show and tell me how they thought I'd done a particular trick.  If they were right, I would always tell them so.  If they were wrong, I'd give them hints to help them think it through again.

Yet if fooling people wasn't my aim as a magician, what was?  The experience of wonder.  I would tell people that I hoped at some point during the performance everyone would have at least one experience of seeing something impossible happen in front of their eyes.  In that moment -- that split second before their rational mind kicked in to try and explain the mystery away, to find its secret -- that's where "magic" happened.  The feeling they had was magic, the trick was simply the means by which I could remind them of what awe and wonder felt like.

That, it seems to me, is a lesson worth learning ... and remembering.  That sudden in-breath of wonder; that widening of the eyes in awe; that quickening of our pulse when we come face to face with the utterly impossible happening right in front of us nonetheless for its impossibility -- all of these feelings are real.  They matter.  They're important to pay attention to.  Albert Einstein is credited with saying:

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the source of all true art and science.  [The one] to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead -- [their] eyes are closed.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

photos taken of one of my performances of the Ithaca Commons, Ithaca New York, in 1986

Lessons From (and for) The Circus of Life: Clowns!

Generally speaking, you either love 'em or you hate 'em, but very few people have no feelings one way or another about clowns.  They creep you out, or they keep you laughing.  They represent childlike wonder and playfulness, or want to lure you to your death (like Stephen King's terrifying Pennywise the Dancing Clown).

Having been a clown myself, I lean toward the more positive attitudes about clowns, although I can certainly understand their power to unnerve.  They are clearly human, yet their exaggerated faces suggest something else.  They are ... extreme ... and they definitely seem to be hiding something.  Whether that "something" is demonic or delightful is in the eye of the beholder.

In 1964, the Lutheran Council produced a film called, simply, Parable, for the Protest Pavilion of the World's Fair.  The figure of Christ is depicted as a clown, with the world as a circus.  It was only 22 minutes long, there's no dialogue, and it is largely unknown or forgotten today, yet the ripples it made continue to this day.  (Some say that it inspired the Clown Ministry Movement of the 1970s and 80s.)

Whatever your particular relationship with clowns, the intent is to represent irrepressible joyousness and play.  A clown is essentially child-like, someone who looks at the world through innocent eyes.  Their actions and reactions are exaggerated, to be sure, yet they are also fleeting.  A clown doesn't stay mad for very long, and they almost always return quite quickly to a giggle or a guffaw.  Nothing phases a clown; clowns are eternal optimists.  Even a sad clown -- like Emmett Kelly's "Weary Willy" -- never gives up, whether trying to crack open a peanut with a sledgehammer, or sweep the spotlight off the stage.  Drop a stick of dynamite down the pants of a clown and they might fly up into the air, but they'll invariably come down into a forward roll with a smile on their face.  This is one of a clown's lessons -- don't give up, don't lose hope, and keep in touch with joy even during hard times.

Clowns also remind us to appreciate even the smallest and most mundane of things.  A clown doesn't need much to fuel their wacky form of whimsy.  Avner the Eccentric, a modern clown, needs only a napkin, a class of water, or his hat in order to generate the review his one-man show received from Joel Seigel on ABC-TV, "I laughed for two solid hours.  The show only lasted an hour and a half."

And clowns always "think outside the box."  While appreciating simple things, clowns are never satisfied to use a thing as it is, asking, "what else can I do with this?"  Clowns rarely employ the simplest solution to a problem; efficient productivity is not their goal.  So, instead, they are always looking for the most fun way.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Lessons From (and for) The Circus of Life: Wire Walking

Nik Wallenda

I am not a wire walker.  I've tried a few times, and intend to keep trying until I get it, but this isn't a skill I can speak to first hand.

I have watched tightrope artists, though, and have read both their own words about the experience as well as the observations of others.  And I've worked with some teachers, and bring their thoughts to this post.  Here are some of the things wire walking has to teach us:

Don't look down:  A mistake that's often made by beginners is to look down at their feet.  This makes sense, you want to be sure that you're putting your feet in the right place.  Yet this will virtually guarantee that you'll lose your balance and fall.  Instead, you fix your gaze at the end of the wire, the place you're walking toward.  And you keep your eye on the goal, perhaps even especially if you begin to lose your balance.

Not too tight; not too loose.  There are both tight ropes and slack ropes, and they are each exactly what they sound like.  Neither, though, is exactly what it sounds like.  A tight rope has to have a little slack in it, a little play.  Similarly, a slack rope needs to be a little taught if order for someone to walk it.  This is like the story of the Buddha hearing a sitar teacher telling her student that a string must be tuned neither too tightly nor too loosely -- too tight and it will break; too loose and it won't make a sound.  This, the story goes, is where young Siddhartha discovered "the middle way" between hedonism and asceticism, which became core to his teachings.

RevWik