Keeping this idea for a clown essay: The Clown at the crossroads: becoming quicksand in shifting times. How can one disappear into and through the clown? The clown as portal, the clown as time creator.
In the US we have a distaste, dislike for the clown, we despise it. Unruly, uncontrollable, farts, wears impossible clothing. I have come to despise the man’s dress clothes. I live in a hippy, natural town. Rarely do I see men on their lunch breaks with loudly clacking shoes and belts tightened into their belly fat. In fact my mouth starts to bare her teeth reflexively when I see this costume in the grocery store parking lot. Insensible, for one, in 80 degree weather, cheap plastics materials pants gathering crotch and ass sweat, itchy, uncomfortable, ill fitting. A beautiful blue suit to show off at a special occasion is one thing, a flapping Men’s Wearhouse gaping kneed every day wear item is another. “This makes me look professional.” Stamped “Professional.”
The hobo clown wears this kind of disheveled ill-fitting suit. Ugly colors, too big or too small, sad face, sticky hair, battered briefcase. Moaning, can’t catch a break. The act could just be wearing this face and doing a regular office desk job. Not Funny. Sad. Our culture is one of slogging through, and for what? I see the clown mime hanging himself with his neck tie. Or. an idea becomes him. A golden light begins to glow from his desk, his face, above. He takes off his suit, peeling it back like Clark Kent to reveal—just himself, just a glowing body, a quick swipe through face and hair transforms him. golden body paint, smudged upward from the heart would do the trick. Suddenly radiant, he looks in the mirror and sees his Baby self, and his smiling parents shining back at him, he remembers, he is crying with excitement and his tears become golden streamers, coming off his hands, off of his face, his hair, he is lifted into the air over his office and his body is obscured by the streamers, he is hooting and shouting and the streamers trail through the desks and his coworkers are radically transformed as well, peeling back their own office gear for beautiful garments or going bare. It doesn’t all have to be glowing. The desks become full of flowers growing from the office pots as the light comes in, the overhead halogen lights stop their buzzing and purplegreen light. Appletrees sprout from apples left on desks, windows open and people holler and scream out of the them, into the streets, light flooding in, birds fly in, there is more light inside than outside and things start to flicker back and forth, it becoming TOO MUCH of a scene and the trees and flowers are growing obscenely large and taking over everything and the people start to panic but it is too late for panicking and they are consumed by it, by joy, by the muchness of it, the flood of loveliness, of nature, of the power of the sun and the force of growing, when given a chance. The birds grow to human size, take the place of the characters, become the characters in a new story, building their houses, their nests from the streamers and the flowers and the beautiful items ripped from the usedtobedesks—shiny handles and pieces of machinery and well,there aren’t really curly telephone cords anymore but in this scene there could be, and they just go on about their lives, flying off, coming back, worms, eggs hatching, pushing from the nest, fighting, etc, the whole thing of life and death (the worms eat the dead birds, you know). The Clown Sun has been forgotten by the audience maybe, he is a streamer ball at the top of the stage left. At some point he is lowered, as the light becomes purple starry, and gives a wave or a smile as the lights go down. The End.
