About this clown

My photo
I often feel that we're all spinning slowly... like a mirror ball. Yes, we are all mirrors to each other. And so, it is the Light between us that I hope to help reveal and celebrate. /// J'ai souvent l'impression que nous sommes une boule disco qui tourne lentement. Nous sommes tous des miroirs pour les uns les autres. C'est donc la lumière qu'il y a entre nous que j'espère contribuer à souligner et à célébrer.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Naivete & Nativeness

How often do we think about Native peoples around the globe?  How often do we ponder the concept and history of their realities?
How often do we feel guilty about the deeds of our ancestors?
I want to see (help lead?) group drama therapy being used in a form of "Healing the Wounds of History" fashion. I also dream of seeing drama therapy being used at the U.N.
This is where I know that I am an eternal dreamer.

Strength and Fear
Love and Fear
Fear
and shame, and guilt.
Acceptance
Patience.  How much?
Resilience.

Check out the work of Armand Volkas:
http://www.livingartscenter.org//Healing-Wounds-of-History/Page/About-Healing-The-Wounds-of-History_14.htm

thoughts

Today I went to visit the Edgewood Center, the mission statement of which runs like this:
"Edgewood helps children and families overcome some of life's toughest challenges like abuse, neglect, mental illness, and family crisis."
In a couple of weeks May May and I are going to start our 6-week community clowning component.  We're gonna go spend an hour with Edgewood kids every Sunday, for about an hour.  They come from the hardest environments.  And as far as I'm concerned as of today; they are still beautiful angels.
On our visit we met the responsible and liaison person for Circus Center.  He was an interesting fellow of course, for his affect and personality were quite unique, somewhat flat though one can tell he had forged a shell to protect himself in doing the work he does.
He showed around the propriety.  The whole place is architecturally quite pleasing, with its pink buildings and its modern cottages - as they are called.  Our host took us around and introduced us to a few kids that were playing outside.  (Today was a rare sunny afternoon in the Sunset District.  The pacific ocean was grandiose, as always.)  I was fascinated by our guide's interactions with the kids.  It's one thing to be vaguely told about the severity and types of emotional, sexual, physical (et cetera) traumas these young humans beings have had to endure.  How should we relate with them?  How can we?  We don't know shit.  We can imagine.  Some of us (functional adults who want "to help") have experienced some form of trauma ourselves,; some of us are wounded healers indeed.
This experience is already "boulversante" (upsetting) and we haven't started yet.
And I think of Phoenix and her path.  I think of the work she has been doing, of he job she's scored in the East Bay.  I think of how consuming it is.
And I understand why somebody would have such zeal in this crusade.  Children are angels.  
It saddens me so much.  I hurts and angers me so much.

Monday, January 17, 2011

thus broke et cetera

I feel like I could snap into some dissassociative depressive psychosis of some sort.  I wish I could rid myself of the pain and pressure that pervades me.  I lie when I say I got nothing to lose.  I got a lot to lose.
Right at this moment, I see nothing ahead.  I see the void, nothing under my feet, nothing to hold on to.  I tell myself it must be part of the process, some kind of ego death again.  But what if I actually lose my mind this time?
I got nothing! I got nothing for you.  I got no motivation.  No motive.
I just want to be with nature.  There I couldn't compulsively judge everything around me.
My inner judge is killing me.
I got nothing.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

to expose

To expose, to express
All the voices in my head, including that of the judge, that of my therapist, that of the martyr, that of et cetera.  To expose the voices that do me violence... to expose the turbulence.  People enjoy seeing people fighting themselves
There is no comedy without tragedy.  I have the tragedy, and I am learning to move beyond it, and to laugh at myself when I take myself so seriously.
We are learning to move beyond the idea, that there is virtue in suffering.  It is not necessary to be a martyr.  It's necessary to lighten up, to laugh.
Zarathustra is so intense, so judging, so exuberantly dramatic.  If I own his words as mine - and I do - then the voices that come up will be invited too.. and there we have it.
I'm so hard on myself.
Philosophy with a hammer.
Gotta move beyond judgement, beyond not only good and evil, but even good and bad.
It's a service I can offer.  It's an offering.  My psyche multi-layered, meta-thinking, constantly.  It makes me tired.  It makes me floaty. It makes me heavy.

I feel safe with Dara.  She's known me for years and I feel that she's on my side.  She feels with me.  But what about the audience?  What about my peers?  In front of their eyes I feel judgement: she's too intense, she's too analytical, she's vain, superficial, she doesn't know how to act, she's scattered, etc.  She's giving too much away, and it's vain.  Or she's got nothing to say.
And I'm not funny.  I'm not comedic.  I mean, I don't even know what I mean.  I got something to say. I just don't know what it is.  Oh! Poor me!  What a curse to be so perceptive and unable to express what I know.  Oh! Poor me! So alone! /Shut up you whiner!/ No you shut up!

Sunday, January 9, 2011

states

states of mind...
I've travelled miles, today
from pre-historical Greece (or almost there) to metaphysical improvised performance art with other clowns.

Clown.  I still don't know if I like the word or not.  It evokes so much, it evokes the flux/the wave of moods and thoughts and impulses of all sorts.  Clowning for me is about unlearning.. as if I could unlearn to the point of meeting an enlightened, pure mind...
Does this pure mind even belong to one person?  Can I call it mine when it has opened up the ego?

Some of this last weeks' emerging truths:
This dichotomy of doing and being, which obsesses me because I can't seem to be able to just be... or rather because I notice that my happiness and my sense of security and relaxation are directly connected to whether or not I feel that I'm doing something; that I'm being "productive".
What is that about?
Well perhaps it's fundamental, or essential, for mankind to find meaning in its work?  Isn't it true that work could be sacred?  I think of the Bible again.. could we have mistakenly misinterpreted that part too?

I feel free when I think.  I am indeed a free-thinker?  Or so I like to think.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

with words

I dream of silence.. but communication nevertheless.  Because languages fill my mind and I want to live in my body mainly.  I want to live and talk with my body, because language alienates people.  Language assumes subjects and objects and divide things to get a grasp of them.  Ancient languages were sacred, because they were considered as such.  It goes like this for everything.
Different drawers, in my brains, where I organize concepts and sounds and phrases.
Don't get me wrong, I love languages.  I love to look at the world with different lenses and different perspectives.  I love to discover new ways to think about things.   I have often said that what I love about languages is that you get to be a child again, looking at the world through fresh eyes, re-learning.
Language then, another one of those love-hate relationships.
Comme quoi, tout est perfect.