Becoming Fool of Love: Clown Estado

I am now three hours from Barcelona, on my last bus trip before returning to Québec.

I think I've grown better at saying goodbye and letting go. During the first two months of this journey, I often left whatever place I had come to experience with a sentiment of not-enough-time-!. I felt that bitter sweet longing, not to be passing through only, but yearning, to go to the depths of a people, a language, a place...

But yesterday, as I walked in the neighborhood of Realejo, and then up to the periphery of the Palace - but did not enter - , I felt something different. I was well aware of all the things I wouldn't get to experience in Granada. There is the Alhambra, that famous red palace, known by all locals and visitors as a real moorish architectural jewel.

La Alhambra

Vista Santo-Nicholas,
looking out at the Alhambra,
and the snow-covered Sierra

There's the Apujarra region, just on the other side of the Sierra Nevada, where indigenous (now mixed with many ex-pats from England and else where) pueblos allegedly live a most pristine communal life within the mountains. There's Serromonte too, which is a neighborhood of Granada where people live within the mountain, in caves! And they play a lot of Flamenco there, and it's the real thing. It's not something you schedule as part of a touristic tour. Real Flamenco happens spontaneously, when the spirit moves them. And what about the reggae scene? With such a high rate of dreadlocks per capita, Granada must have a nice scene!

Oh well.

Calle Silencio

I walked slowly, simply, enjoying the tiny narrow curvy paved streets, the murals of Realejo, the omnipresence of moorish architectural details, and later the sound of water running down the gutters of the Alhambra gardens. I was relaxed, satisfied. I didn't need more of anything.

Perhaps it had to do with having those three days of ''Clown, con Danza y Energia'' workshop. I had come especially for that experience, and even though I could just dwell in that space permanently (it's kind of my goal in life), I mainly just left the course feeling energized and inspired.

I feels good to be reconnected with the work.

My couchsurfing mama and I,
having tubos and tapas after the workshop,
talking of a revolution that's happening.

"Clown no es un personaje, y no es tampoco 'tu mismo'... Para mi, clown es un estado." explained our teacher.

A mi me gusta eso.

How can we deny the wisdom in this? Clown isn't a character, and it's not quite your own self either; clown is a state of mind. It's saying "Yes!" despite everything. (Indeed, it's super Nietzschean to me.) It's opening one's self totally, as in 360 degrees of ears and eyes and skin, connecting with the totality of the environment, ready to make new connections at any moment. That's how the clown helps life to open up and renew herself.

In the workshop, we did an exercise aimed at exploring how we each tend to react when thrown off-balance. Disequilibrium is where the clown lives and thrives.

One person would start walking around the room, and a partner's role was to get in the way, pushing and pulling on the first person's body and clothes, thus creating unpredicted and unwanted disruptions and obstacles.

Everyone had their own set of reactions. Some resisted more, some were annoyed, some were more fluid and accepting of the new directions brought upon them.

Clowns y tapas!

Personally, I discovered that I wanted to trick my partner. I felt open to her input and eager to discover new directions in space and in my body; but most undeniably, I just wanted to joke around and engage in play. I wanted to be unpredictable myself, make quick changes in direction,so she wouldn't catch up with me. And simply, because I could!

How informative! And of course saying "yes" and staying light and open is easier to do within the boundaries of this exercise than it is in life. In this game, I knew who and where my partner was. I had a sense of direction that was limited by the stage and didn't involve anything more than walking around.

Still, I guess I discovered that I do live my life in quite a similar way. Perhaps it's easier to play hide and seek, to come up with my own changes in direction, to walk a bit of an erratic path rather than a straight one, to try to escape rather than commit to a specific goal, for fear of getting thrown off.

But it's not only fear. It's not necessarily "resisting." It's also dancing with the essence of existence, which is change. I dare saying that I think there's some wisdom in that.

One more thing. The exercise was very informative indeed, but I personally thought that something was missing in the set up. Some-bodies were so open to external influences; they let themselves be so fluid, that it didn't seem authentic enough to me. In life - as in clown - there's got to be a minimum (or maybe a lot) of self-will (does this phrase exist?). Otherwise there's just no life, no drama, no tension. One remains waiting for external forces to push and pull and guide without ever bringing energy of their own.

Would these forces not empty themselves, after a while of giving, without meeting any "resistance"? Wouldn't libido not exhaust and drain itself? Wouldn't it get bored?

I tired to raise that point to the class, but in a broken spanish I'm not sure the teacher understood my statement. I just thought he should mention that "accepting" change/ disequilibrium/ obstacles doesn't mean completely subjecting to it (as some people seemed to be doing in the exercise) but rather, perhaps, that it means being open to see/ hear and integrate new information at any given time, so that one's sense of will and inner guidance remains fluid.