Clown and Spirituality: Principles of Nogaku Theater and Clown

Contemplating the relationship between one’s sense of humor, one’s sense of joy and one’s spirituality, and their relation to the word Clown has become a preoccupation of mine. Spirituality?  Laughter can be cathartic, especially shared in large groups in positive situations. Calling on one’s sense of humor demands this immediate presence and awareness so often associated with meditation,  with ‘the now.’ One is born with a sense of humor and joy, it is one of those ethereal qualities that connects us to THE juice.
Was I aware of this 27 years ago when I did my first juggling show in the old town of Annecy in France, and discovered that the audience laughed and I was making that happen? Well most likely not.
Now, is another story.

How about you, the reader?
Does the word Clown conjure up an important person in society to you?
Images of bulbous red noses in striped pajamas running around with cream pies ? Do you look to clowns to offer a contrarian’s perspective within a somewhat heightened spiritual context?
Probably not if you are like the 94% of American children for whom Ronald McDonald is the first clown to come to mind.

On this  pathway of exploration, digging into the deep history of clown, fool and jester in human history, I dug into Benito Ortolani’s book about Japanese theater, focusing in on Zeami’s Aesthetics for the Noh Stage. Having studied Kyogen, the comic side of Noh theater, I have a certain understanding of the depth of their tradition that goes back at least some 600 years.

I recall watching my teacher’s teacher’s father, Shigayama senior, perform in Japan (1993), his comic presence was powerful,  without doing anything, just standing there on stage. It was defined by a deep mischievous grin that resonated in his voice as well. There was little doubt about his comic intentions. He embodied the humorous spirit, no superficiality in sight.

What follows below is a condensed look at the principles that Ortolani discusses in his book.

Zeami, with his father Kan’ami, established Noh theatre in Japan in the 1300’s. Nogaku comprises of Noh, deep theatrical pieces often tragic, and Kyogen, comic stories that come between Noh to relieve the tension.
Toraaki (head of the Okura school of Kyogen in 1646) distinguishes the two forms: Noh concerns mostly illustrious or even divine roles, while Kyogen aims at the ordinary -even reducing to an ordinary level people belonging to the aristocracy, or the supernatural world. …the function of the kyogen is to provide relief from the tragic atmosphere of the no, but not to destroy the dignified and refined no atmosphere of yugen.

Toraaki  goes on(courtesy of Benito Ortolani) :  “Kyogen should offer a sense of human equality, and a search for truth under the veil of the joke-practical and unpretentious truths of common sense…this search for truth eliminates the coarse, low, indecent comicality which elicits an easy but sick and superficial laughter, deprived of profound compassion and understanding for the human situation.”

What branch of clowning does that apply to?

One needs look no further than 2008, and an interview in a Chicago newspaper with David Shiner, great modern clown, and director of Cirque du Soleil’s latest production “Kooza”. Explaining the work and philosophies that went into the show’s creation, he is asked:

So what clown wisdom did Shiner take with him from all those many years ago on the streets of Paris?

“Wow, I guess it would have to be the importance of the human existence,” he says, contemplating his next words. “Not to let people feel isolated and alone. We need each other. It’s important to laugh, to have hope. That was the essence of what I did as a clown, what I still do, what I wanted this show to do. It’s all about finding what’s human in each person and connecting with them on that level.”

This role of the clown, or clowner ( I prefer to think of clowning as a verb), in connecting with the audience is the first of Zeami’s principles: Hana (flower). All of his aesthetics have strong resonance and relation to the world of clown. It is extraordinary how Zeami relates performance to the deepest, and lightest realms,
once again all explanations all courtesy of Ortolani-san’s book:

Hana: flower. the most crucial concept in understanding the relationship between the actor and his audience.  According to Konishi, the Flower is an effect resulting from an excellent performance, when the audience is caught up  in the actor’s performance.
Zeami distinguishes between the temporary flower, that to do with the natural beauty and fascination of youth, and the true flower, which is the result of long years of rigorous training. “It manifests itself in a number of nuances and degrees of perfection reaching the peak in the mysterious flower of the miraculous that sublimely unites actor and audience in a unique experience of the Absolute.”

Kokoro
‘Kokoro is used by Zeami to indicate the ultimate foundation of the art of the no, the source of the greatest impact upon audiences, the ultimate source of genuine  yugen performances, and the explanation of the secret of the unique fascination of the moment of “no-action.”  According to Pilgrim, kokoro in Zeami’s use “encompasses such things as feeling and emotion, soul and spirit, mind and the objective knowing process, consciousness and self, intent and will, a pure and non-conscious mind, and a spiritual state representing the deepest levels of the total self.”

“The reality of kokoro is therefore rooted in the true essence of all things, or the all-encompassing, unchanging pure Buddha-nature…the artist eventually becoming one with the heart of everything, unconsciously and spontaneously following the rhythms of the One, the Absolute, the primordial Energy…. The great master in a real sense becomes its appearance on the stage, moving the  kokoro of the audience deeply in an indescribably way…Zeami used the image of puppets and strings Puppets are not self-moved; the strings effect the movement.  So it is for the supreme master.

Yugen   Originally yugen referred to the hidden meaning behind the surface of the sutras. In the tenth century in Japan, it was used in poetic criticism with the meaning of ”profound”. At first Zeami used the term to refer to elegant beauty, and later to a combination of elegance with depth and a touch of cosmic truth. Ueda writes: “if the term  yugen is etymologically analyzed, it will be found the yu means deep, dim, or difficult to see,, and the gen, originally describing the dark, profound, tranquil color of the universe, refers to the Taoist concept of truth…..Zeami perceived mysterious beauty in cosmic truth: beauty was the color of truth, so to speak.””

Rojaku Old age, tranquility. The quiet beauty of old age. The great challenge for the real master, the reduction to the real essence…being able to cause the flower while portraying old age ( without the elegance of a court lady, or the strength of a warrior)

What a thought that one can approach the cosmic truth through Clowning. Actually one can approach from an infinite number of directions and art forms. In this case the art form happens to be ‘the Funny’.

“Think Buster, not Bozo” (from 500 Clowns in Chicago)

Interview with Utah Phillips

I was saddened, like many others, to hear of Utah Phillips passing. The warmth of his gravely voice rides deep in my heart. In June of 2002 I interviewed him backstage at the Kate Wolf festival on the Black Oak Ranch in California. We had crossed paths numerous times at folk festivals. I was aware of his connection to old time Vaudeville, and new time Vaudeville. I wanted to ask him about clown, how the profession was regarded in Vaudeville days, and his thoughts on humour. I received a lot more than that, including an in depth discussion of how he worked the stage. I would like to share his words with the world at large. Here is the interview that I recorded :
Moshe: What I’m looking at is funny. What’s funny, what does funny mean to people and do people relate clown to funny. I’m also interested in a historic perspective, specifically did you go to see vaudeville when you were young?

Utah: Yea let’s start with vaudeville and let’s examine it. My father, I was adopted when I was five by Sid Cohen and moved into a Jewish neighborhood. My father very briefly managed the last vaudeville house in Cleveland called the hippodrome. That was the end of vaudeville, that was right after the second world war 45-46 and then it was a few decaying vaudeville acts and then Nat King Cole trio, whatever else he could find to book there. Then we got to Salt Lake of course the lyric theater was still doing vaudeville. Probably a pale form of it, maybe two nights a week, no matinees that I recall. Gosh I loved that too. My father really worked hard to get live entertainment on the stage. The theaters in Salt Lake were big vaudeville houses, 1500 seats, in Salt Lake City because that was the end of the Pantages circuit. They could fill those houses.

So he looked at them, saw the 74 foot catwalks, for hanging your backdrops, the dressing rooms most of which had caved in…there were all these old posters down there of the playbills. He really brought live music, live theater, live entertainment back to those houses because that is what they were built for, they weren’t built as movie palaces.

Moshe: Your father was doing that in Salt Lake City?

Utah: Yea, but I dug into vaudeville and there came up at that Vaudeville Nouveau conference that Jeff Razz put on in San Francisco the difference between vaudeville and vaudeville nouveau and that’s where I come into it. I’m certain of this that the vaudeville nouveau was defined as funny. That if you are not making people laugh or go “cho” (exclamation of being impressed by a marvelous feat) that you’re not doing well.

Vaudeville had the monologists, vaudeville had people singing ‘ the Baggage Coach Ahead’ and ‘Mother, Queen of my Heart’ and ‘Daddy, Come Home with me Now’,; it had people weeping, from sentimentality and feeling heroic with the great monologues. That’s what was missing ( in vaudeville nouveau) that was the difference, you still had the comedy, you still had the song and dance but there was this full play of human emotions. I guess the reason that I was invited to that conference is because some of the vaudeville nouveau people saw that I was doing that : that in the characterization that I create known as Utah Phillips, that I was doing things with some passion, stories with some passion and definitely story-telling, but that there was pathos connected with it.

I could sing ‘The Blind Boy’s Dog’ or ‘The Drunkard’s Son’ and at the same time talk and sing with great passion about Everet massacre, the Centralia massacre, these enormously powerful events in American labor history, just American history-the part that never gets talked about much. After that I always felt invited in to that circle. Paul Maggid, from the Karamozovs’ said you’re included in this because he understood. That’s the way he understood it the same.

The live part of it, is the part that I like the best. Call it accessibility, the difference between the trade and the industry. I work at a sub-industrial level, I have nothing to do with the entertainment industry because it’s isolating and alienating and it robs you of control over your creative process. In the trade, you make all the rules, you’re completely in control of what it is you create. You take a stiff price break for it, you know. You make an honest living but you don’t make a killing and that’s fine with me as long as you can be free but you got to work at it you know. You’ve got to work at it more because you don’t have people in the front office hustling you.

That’s why I learned pretty early, that with marginal vocal and instrumental skills, I was going to have to do other things. That’s where the stories happen.

But also I was going to have to do things like come into town early and beat the streets: go to the organic food store, go to the battered women’s clinic, go to the local union headquarters. Arrange in advance to go visit those people and find out what was going on in this town. I always had the local newspaper sent to me a week before I got there so I could read the want ads, see what people were selling. Get some place names, hooks to hang things on. People needed to understand when I got to their town I wasn’t doing the same show I did the town before. That I really knew where I was and who I was with. Really paying attention to them and who they are and if there was a hold-out line, and in later years there got to be hold-out lines, even in the dead of winter I’d go out and stand in line and kind of make jokes about this schmuck….you know “Who is this guy?” for the benefit of people who didn’t know who I was and to amuse who did, and that way I had done my warm-up by the time I walked on stage- (voice of a spectator)”That was that guy!”…see cheap theatrical tricks.

The idea was that the performance didn’t begin when I hit the stage and when I left the stage. It began when I hit the city limits and then when I left the city limits. And that’s the way that I would work it. I would read about each town, the demographics. I want to be boarded, not in a hotel, I want to be boarded. I would make sure people would understand this, people who were booking me; somebody who is familiar with the politics and the culture and the authenticity of the town and it’s history. That can take me around and show me this stuff so I can ask questions, like being paid to go to school. And that gives me the substance of songs and the substance of stories-it’s got to come form somewhere.

I learned this really early when I got into the trade when I left Utah where it was a habit of people who were doing $25 a night, sleeping on floors-we’d all get together in a bar and sing until sunrise until it was time to move onto the next town. I might as well stay in the same town if I am doing that . I am not learning anything, I’m not getting enough to make the stories, the make the songs out of. It got to a point, finally, and I only learned this when I had to stop touring because of the congestive heart failure that some other folks decided that the stories stood by themselves, so I was invited to storytelling festivals-it felt really odd to tell the stories and then not have a song, just kind of leave, really peculiar but that seemed to work OK. People asked me see, feel like making a record of just the stories? We want just the stories. They were probably music critics, and so I did that.

Now I feel that the stories are really working better, and I would rather do that than sing. I feel a strong kinship with old vaudeville, that the work that I am doing now was possible then and that the only medium that it is possible now is in the folk music world.

Moshe: Right, I don’t really see a circuit for what I do in today’s culture. I guess vaudeville just kind of disappeared really.

Utah: Well vaudeville got killed, it didn’t just pass away. It was killed off by the depression, by motion pictures, by people…part of vaudeville was that people could go there and sing. The latest song that the publisher was flogging from bar to bar would show up on stage. You wanted to take that song, that was hot off the presses, sheet music; people would go into every bar and get somebody to sing it, then soon it is going to show up on the ‘vaud’ stage and the whole audience is going to sing it, then you’re going to sell sheet music. That whole thing collapsed with recorded music and with radio.. It was no longer the piano with the sheet music n the living room, people singing those songs.

Vaudeville was killed essentially by technology. And isn’t it true that the role of the clown back then was much broader than it is now. That today people say kids….

Moshe: Right. Birthday parties.

Utah: Yea, stuff like and that is really unfortunate because it demeans the trade.

Moshe: Right that is what I was going to ask you about. Back then clown meant something else. What did it mean back then. Were there performers in the vaudeville circuit doing non-verbal comedy?

Utah: Oh yea, sure, there were also the tableaus which were a unique kind of mime. Did you ever see those?

Moshe: no

Utah: Oh that is where you would take the sinking of the battleship Maine and the curtain would open and there would be a tableau of living human beings and props and it would be there for about five minutes and people would look at it and study and the curtain would close and that would be it.

Moshe: and it wouldn’t move the whole time?

Utah: No, it was like a three dimensional painting, and then it could be something else, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The curtain would open, it would be a whole, people in every attitude.

Moshe: Were people laughing when they saw this?

Utah: No, no , you could have Willie the Weeper who was pathetic. And a clown-he would be called a clown but he wasn’t making people laugh, he was making people cry.

Moshe: Clown, just like you were saying, it can cover the whole spectrum.

Utah: Well the whole range of human feelings. I think that if a clown isn’t studying to do that, isn’t trying to do that, I’m not saying that it is mandatory, but I think that you are missing a whole lot if you are not trying to move people in every possible way. That’s the way I feel about it when I’m on stage. I want to move people in a variety of different ways and laughing a part of it.

Moshe: In those days there would be performers in the vaudeville circuit who would be called clown or considered clown?

Utah: Yea

Moshe: So that was a term that meant somebody…so like Charlie Chaplin in those days, I mean he was a clown as far as I can tell-I mean much more he was a wonderful great spirit. I mean would people call him a clown?

Utah: I think so, that he was clowning around.

Moshe: That he was clowning around?

Utah: You see clowning around was part of what he did.

Moshe: So hold out line, does that mean people who couldn’t get into the show because it was sold out?

Utah: People just waiting to get in, because see you’ve sold out the house, and so you know there’s a hold-out line and some people aren’t going to get in. I might go out, if I know there are people who aren’t going to get in, I might go out and sing a song just to say hi, to say I’m sorry that you can’t get in.

Moshe: You were on the bill solo then?

Utah: Yea, oh yea. I’ve worked the single and after some years moved it away from the bars, and into the concert setting. For me that is a two act play called “Utah”. I do act 1 and act 2 with an intermission.. Each half is a little better than an hour. I do a long show. Everything is strung together in a very specific way. Can I describe that to you?

Moshe: Sure if you feel like it.

Utah: Sure, it’s an interesting process, and I think that a ‘vaud’ act is constructed in a somewhat the same way although of course in vaudeville you are talking about 12 minutes of boff material and here I am talking about two hours so I have a little more time with it. OK here is a pure vaudeville concept.. Max Sennett, who was in vaudeville before he made movies. Here is the Sennett formula, the Sennett formula was used by Jack Benny, by Fred Allen, the great radio comedians; but he (Sennett) was using it in vaudeville.
You’ve got four kinds of laughs. You got a chuckle, a guffaw, a belly laugh and a boffo. A chuckle just ripples through an audience, a guffaw is so absurd that everybody just gets it at the same time so that the laugh curve is blup blup (Utah’s hand rises straight up in the air and then straight down). A belly laugh goes off like flash bulbs. You wait for a while because it is going to ripple through the crowd and then as soon as that dies you use the laugh that kills, the boffo, that takes all the energy out of the audience and you start over again with your chuckle because you can’t build energy unremittingly-you know this –you’ve got to start over again.
So, the Sennett formula I ran into listening to Myron Cohen in Las Vegas. My father used to take me down there in his old Buick when I was a kid just to listen to Myron Cohen, my who was my idol. Myron Cohen was the one said to me when I asked him how he chose stories, he said I only tell stories that have no victims, because I don’t want to hurt anybody, that’s not what I ‘m getting paid for. He said’ I’d hear these dumb bar jokes and these dirty jokes, I hear racist-he didn’t call them racial jokes you know-I hear these Negroe jokes. I take out what is funny, the comic value and I reshape it into another story that is more benign, that has no victim. Unless the victim is myself he said, I make fun of myself.
That is a good lesson too. So how do you know what you’ve got? If I come across a line, hear somebody use a line, if a line occurs to me or I hear a whole story, how do I know whether that’s a chuckle, a guffaw, a belly laugh or a buffo? Well you work it out socially. My friends always know when I am going to leave town ‘cause they say “Oh God, he’s doing it again”….you try it out socially so you can put them in the right place. Having done that, you’ve got your material and you know what sequence it is supposed to be in, how do you time your audience?
Well there about four different audiences. Say, the New England or eastern seaboard is really authority over conscious, they respond to anything done with a modicum of authority. Then there is the mid-western audience who really don’t care how you get there. You see the west coast audience is full of refugees from authority, so they want You, they want to know more about you when you leave the stage then when you walk on. That’s why I know people like the great Gamble Rogers who didn’t work well in California, because they didn’t know more about him…he was great but he was the same, they knew the same when he went off as when he came on. There is that, that I am dealing with three types of audiences, one that avoids intimacy, one that embraces intimacy, and the middle one who doesn’t care how you get there.
But then given the evening and the condition of reality, the news, how is this particular audience time. You see me at the beginning do a song, “Railroading on the Great Divide” and I am going to do three stories in-between the verses, and those stories are going to time that audience, so I can adjust the timing through the whole program you see.
Now I want to get people to laugh and to sing together who are friends. There is nothing more lethal than an evening of political music. Now I am going to give myself in a six song set, I do two six song halves; I’m going to give to myself two songs right towards the end, the fourth and fifth song to do what I am there to do, politically. That window, that intense thing, and then I am going to come out of it. And we’re going to sing and we’re going to laugh some more. That’s the only way the politics take. Because it’s like I say, unremitting tension, you can’t do that you know. You’ve got to break the tension so you can build it again. And that’s essentially how it is constructed. Through the intelligence I get through the newspapers, through asking questions, through studying the town I’m going to, working the line, the hold-out line, timing my audience and then creating windows when I can deal with them seriously.

Moshe: That sounds great! It brings up a thought-I’m thinking about a conversation I had this morning with a woman from adult camp (Winnarainbow) whose wanting to take this character out on the street and play it. It is a parody of a military figure and she is very upset, not upset, but angry about the war, the supposed war on terrorism-the shift that the country has taken in terms of repression of expression or encouragement to tow the line and not break it. I brought up the thought that you can go into certain venues where you are preaching to the converted, not in a negative sense-that that is a negative thing to do –but if that image if you are trying to change the minds or at least affect the minds of the people who aren’t going to go into those venues, and you at the same time you don’t want to piss them off, and you want to reach through to them, well humor you can try to bring it to them through humor rather than trying to tell them off or tell them that this is the way it should be…do you have any comments about that?

Utah: That’s my whole game. I never, in fact I’ve resisted vigorously, being typed as a political singer, I want to be a folk singer. I want that general folk music audience, I want people who’ve been working all week and say ” Honey let’s go see this guy” or “we’ve heard this guy’s pretty good.” I want to make friends with them, first, and then I’m going to deal with them seriously, yes! Over time people have turned around some and said “yea, that’s worth thinking about” or “I’ve rethought that some.” I’ve seen that happen. It’s a slow careful kind of surgery.

People have to change their own minds, you can’t change people. They change their own…you just give them the tools to do that and the time and the space to do that. And then change is going to happen. Beatin’ people over the head or saying you’re wrong, yelling at them, I see that doesn’t work. I want a general audience, the mainstream folk music audience out there, Manisty, Michigan or whatever, the folk society of Columbus, is right in the middle, or a little bit to the right. (Those are the) People I want. The worst times I have, in fact the worst organized concerts I have are done by political people because the political people treat me like an organizing tool and not an American worker, and then I have to yell at them. You know: ”here’s my union card, now treat me like a human being”; and they’re the worst audiences as far as that goes because everybody expects me to do their political agenda. I know people who can do that like Fred Small, I can’t. So, I avoid that kind of situation.

Moshe: that’s wonderful to hear you talk about that. It sheds some light.

Utah: OK. Well I’m going to go find my wife and my dog. Hey thanks a lot for getting that out of me. I don’t talk about that much.

thinking too much

ahhh slip into the warm waters of the hot spring, feel your muscles slowly melt into rythms of gentle laplets of liquid shaking you loose of all things and thoughts.  you sink into the feeling of graviational support as the waters embrace. after extended time in such environments there is a danger of becoming oh so spiritual in such luscious natural environments. after months of non stop, i stop and settle into the waters for two days.

the second day, in the midst of a series of hot and cold water plunges,each of them longer than the previous, memories of a long ago sweat lodge memory open up on my horizons. i recall the jump in the creek after the last round, after intense sweat and prayer,  floating in the water in a fetus ball. what i recall is the clarity of that moment,  it was the sensation of no sense of body, just the sense of being.

and so in the midst of said hot and cold plunges, i seek to open up that experience again, that sense of no body floating in cold water. a lot of the ritual and prayer is missing, not to mention the intensity of the heat in that little darkened sweat lodge. those aspects of the experience don’t come to mind as, after a good number of plunges,  i sink into the cold water, a curl up slightly and focus in on my sense of being.

there is a quiet accumulating in the float, any sense of cold water or other thoughts are absent. there is calmness to this place as  i breath in deeply. Then there is a big  Bonk! as my head bumps none too gently into the side of the cold pool. Oh, I did feel that.

If no one witnesses it, is it still funny?

Amsterdam Vondel Park offers up SAcred Mischief

of sorts one could say…a bicycle ride through the park, finding a quiet stretch of green to stretch out next to a small canal and a willow tree, and what should I see?

A performer taking in some practice with metal objects….

not your average juggler…especially when he was swirling these major metal massage tools around…

that proved to be of interest to the woman making the abstract film across the way…

she moved her operation across the way to be filmed sleeping on her big pillow with the juggler swinging his sticks neaby….

now how often do you see that?
yoowho

Amsterdam 4.23.08

A short look at Clown and Zen

here’s a short piece about parallels between these disciplines written in October, 2005

About Clown and Zen.

It might seem a complete paradox to offer up for consideration that there are strong parallels between the world of clown and Zen. One first might have to be a little more specific by narrowing it down to the world of European or Contemporary Clown, one who engages in performance in complicity with the audience.
It might seem like a paradox to search for similarities as Zen Buddhism is such a serious endeavor and clowning, well isn’t that about joy and laughter. The first clue that leads beyond the paradox is the sheer good natured ness of many Zen practitioners. The second clue might be how serious many clowns can be when they are off stage. The true nature of the similarities however lies more in the practice than in the practitioners.

One might say in general is that the main similarity between clown and Zen is that if you are you are thinking, then you are not where you want to be. In metaphysical terms one might say that it is an activity led by heart and spirit rather than intellect. There are several ways to break this down:

Listening. Attention, concentration. One major parallel between clown and Zen is the practice of listening and hence focus and concentration. In the world of Zen meditation, the practice involves placing ones attention on breath, on listening to one’s breath, and whenever thoughts arise, letting those pass so that one can bring one’s attention back to listening to one’s breath. In clown, one’s attention is also placed on listening, in this case to one’s performative energy and to the audience’s response to it, listening to how the audience is reacting to one’s actions, or inactions. If there is more than one person on stage, one is also listening to what one’s partners on stage are doing, or not doing, and how the audience is reacting to that.

In the moment. In Zen, and Buddhism in general, there is a strong emphasis on being in the moment, in other words not thinking about the future or the past but to live what is happening in the moment. Clowning has a similar emphasis the focus is to play what is happening in the moment. Whether it be something being generated by the clown or by the audience, the focus and potential humor is what is happening for everyone, audience and clown (s).

Light-Enlightenment . On a more esoteric level one might consider the goals of the two practices. The Clown seeks to bring lightness into the hearts and spirits of their audience. This is most often interpreted as laughter, however poetry, charm, beauty are also a form of light that the clown seeks to share with their audience. In their most powerful moments, the clown brings light into the darker emotions such as anger and sadness. One goal in the practice of Zen is reaching enlightenment, which perhaps could be interpreted as being full of light? En-lighten, to bring in the light. Could one be so bold as to suggest that these are similar paths?

Of course there are many differences in the practices, perhaps the most obvious being that where the meditator will let what arises dissipate, the clown may well seize that as an opportunity for action.

where is my cellphone?

well i hardly use the thing

but just

when it’s time

to go out

and i want to take it with

the phone is not to be found

i look everywhere

hi and low

finally

i give up

i go to put on my hat

and on my head…

a few words from Leris Colombiani

Nani and Leris Colombiani at Anjos Do Picadeiro Festival, 2002. Photo Celso Pereira

Extract from an interview with Leris at the Anjos do Picadeiro festival in Rio de Janeiro in 2007.

Leris: Clown seeing everything like a child, is a parody of life.

Moshe:  What do you think about Tortell’s words, that Clown is a provoker of sentiments, his  language is that of feelings?

Leris: Eco , Si.  To offer human feelings, human generosity….Clown it is not only the show, the performance.  The clown has to give to the audience, I don’t know why.  If the performer doesn’t give something from inside, Ok the show is swell, but after a few days, nobody remembers; if there is no soul, no heart.

Buddha’s Birthday. BohdiSong’s ClownZen Moment.

Please enjoy a description of what BhodiSong (a.k.a. LooneyTune) created as a Humor-full performance ritual to follow the Zen Center of Los Angeles’ celebration service of Buddha’s Birthday….

LooneyTune on the right. (from Buddha’s Bday. 07.Temptation of stealing flowers)

From egyoku@zcla.org
PS Buddhas Birthday was terrific – Bodhi-Song did a routine, which was quite funny!

To: jsgraham@
From: yoowho@yoowho.org
Subject: what did you do?

Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:21:06 -0700
what did you do??

From: jsgraham@ (a.k.a LooneyTune, BhodiSong)
Ah,
Balanced the elephant on one finger.
Oh wait, that was the week before.

Hmm…
During meditation (since I already had the enlightenment thing happening) I was pondering some possibilities for sacred mischief. The story goes that when the Buddha was born he pointed one finger at the sky and one at the ground and said something profound. So the statue that we pour tea over has a finger in the air. A lot like the famous shot of Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. I thought a little disco dancing might be fun.

During the story of the baby Buddha, I snuck over to the apartment and I put on a flowered komono, and grabbed some percussion instruments. I noticed a black bag with a strap, that if slung in front, looks like a rakusu, so I put a few things inside, and went back out. I gave Reeb, Katherine and Darla the drums and tambourine, and told them to be ready for a little disco beat.

Everyone had presented flowers already, except me, because I was playing the taicho drum, so after the story, Senshin in her big voice announced that there was someone who didn’t offer a flower yet. I had yanked a huge leaf off a squash plant, so that was my offering. People seemed to get it that there was mischief afoot, perhaps it was the nose.

I went to the flower bower and goofed with the incense box, removing the lid etc. Then I went around to the back of the Baby buddha alter so I could play the audience. I had to figure out a way to offer the big leaf, that took some solving. Then I picked up the spoon and poured some tea over the statue, but wasn’t satisfied with the volume I was getting. So I reached into my “rokusu” and found a nice sized ladle. (At this point someone, I think Egyoku muttered “oh no”) The major ladeling of tea was strangely attractive to the kids who came up close to watch.

The statue has it’s finger in the air pointing up, which I deemed a safety issue, so I carefully placed my nose over the dangerous digit, as a protective cover.

At that point I started imitating the skyward point then moved into the disco move. It got a chuckle, and the band, who had started playing from the beginning, didn’t pick up the back beat, so I went to plan B. I went to my rokussu and brought out a nice wine glass. I proceeded to ladle some tea into it and played with the notion of having a sip. I offered it to the kids, who were quite close, but no takers. Then I was inspired to offer the water wisdom, (from Jukai and Tokudo ceremonies) I found a choice bit of foliage to simulate the pine needle whisk Egyoku uses. I dipped it in and got immediate recognition from the crowd. I did the swirling and the spritzing, to great delight. Then got carried away dipping my finger in, using it for cologne, then flicking it on the kids. Finally I ran out and started flicking tea on the crowd, who clapped and cheered, indicating that I had come to the end of their attention span.

Good fun, about 10 minutes worth.
Keeping the pump primed for next time

Z ya Zoon,
Looney Tune

Buddha’s Bday. April 07.

Sayings by Marc Jondall

Marc Jondall and Judy Finelli, from Juggler’s World, 1987.

My upstairs neighbor, Marc Jondall, former performer with the Pickle Family Circus, gave me these comments as we quipped about clown and zen. We were in the midst of cleaning off construction dust on big sheets of plastic as the artist’s collective we live in, Developing Environments, is undergoing building code upgrades.

Here’s what he says:

What’s the sound of one clown laughing?

To the clown, the present is to be present.

The clown that can be named, is not a true clown.