I write this on a fast train to the lavender fields of Goult. The sun and moon hang simultaneously over the French countryside, lush with purpled vineyards and bucolic pastures.
Love,
Erik
Monday, 16 July
The course is halfway done, and it's a day of firsts: the first day I remember to put on my red nose before an exercise, and the first time clowns emerge through the broken glass of our shattered egos. (Luckily, this is sugared glass, easily dissolved).
As a warm-up, we do expert monologues on a variety of subject, injecting our speeches with a Rolodex of self-generated sound effects, including a Soviet washing machine, a trumpet, a punctured bike tire, a newly-invented Swedish folk song, a lisp and a young rabbit's fart. Then clown couples must re-enact an obscure play by Jacques Deval which neither the clowns nor the teacher are familiar with and, of course, You must be beautiful, funny, and do it for the King of Sweden! The play must include gibberish explored in the warm-up and, If we don't love you from the moment you enter, we never will! How thrilling that, through this labyrinthine task, the idiot with the beautiful dream rears its head at last - not for me, but at least for others!
Overheard:
In every country, there is an idiot who says, "No problem!" That is clown.
Flop gives clown his humanity.
All bad clowns try to take the first bow.
An empty stage full of possibilities is better than an actor without love for his audience.
That was halfway between "deeply boring" and "fucking boring"!
We smile a bit, embarrassed for you, but you are not funny.
Who takes the body of this student and sends it to the Chinese restaurant to make pork and pineapple?
After class, I browse the autograph shops of Saint-Germain-des-Pris, featuring everyone from Chopin to Chaplin, experience my first rose petal and coffee petit macarons from Ladurée patisserie (exquisite), and visit Rue de Buci flower market (thank you, Charlotte Neuville). Again, I am struck by the older women here; it's amazing how they grow more stunning when regarded with care. The Metros, too, say a lot about the culture: they are furnished with glass benches, paintings, sculptures, video installations, condom dispensers - and no one eats or pushes you on the train. In fact, they actually hold the door for you when you exit!
Tuesday, 17 July
Our jump rope game is divided into groups: A Group (those who also take bouffon in the morning), W Group (those who only take clown), Handicapped and Super-Handicapped (those who've made mistakes, myself included!). We explore the grimace and the grimace with text, the concept of major and minor clowns, and the power of clown conflict onstage. Another beautiful idiot pops like kernel to corn before our eyes, and we collectively hope the pop won't stop!
Gaulier admits the first auditor to class, a former teaching associate, with the disclaimer: Nobody can see who doesn't know the spirit of the house! Clearly Linda knows the spirit of the house because Philippe's feedback grows even more decimating than usual in her presence. Heading to the stage for an exercise, one feels like Slim Pickens about to ride the missile at the end of Dr. Strangelove.
Thus spake:
If you were clown in a hospital, they would die!
I would be happy to know when I'm supposed to laugh?
Only when you leave the stage are you good... can you enter as if you were leaving?
If we don't like you, you are responsible!
You are funny like my sister Claudine who didn't want to pay six euro to put roses on the grave of our mother.
I wish Gaulier luck with his hospital procedure the next day; his eyes are at first armed, then there is a tenderness. Walking home, I witness the rapid shifts of perception this course triggers: elation, determination, resignation - and hopefully, rebirth. I think about that soft moment with Gaulier, the trickster guru and clown incarnate who defies the malaise and insists on laughter - even in the face of failing health and, from what I understand, a fractured family life.
Wednesday, 18 July
Day off.
I train to Vernon, rent a bike, and ride in a state of perpetual Oh my God, feeling, for the first time, that I understand Impressionism. On my way to Giverny, clouds like cotton lattice slice the sky and amber fields track like Van Gogh's. Farms of ostriches, llamas and pigs flank Monet's house, heavy with Hiroshige and Hokusai. His spirit really lives here, perhaps because the flowers he planted now face us in full bloom. I feel him especially in the dining room of radiant yellow. Everything reaches for the light, and suddenly I'm awash with the undeniable presence of my unseen elders.
It is at Monet's lily pond, among a symphony of accents, that I experience my first disdain for Americans. Wherever I go, we seem to be the loudest and least sensitive of tourists, mooing at cows, speaking loudly of our hamburgers, jostling others to aim cameras at who-knows-what in lieu of seeing things for ourselves. I'm ashamed to admit it, but... ooh la la!
On the Quai de Seine at Île Saint-Louis, classmates and I join droves of young Frenchies for a riverside potluck. After sunset, I pass through the Latin Quarter and Le Sorbonne, entering my idea of heaven: three revival cinemas on one street, featuring retrospectives of Cary Grant, Sidney Lumet and Woody Allen, respectively. The French are notorious cineastes; it's no wonder their word for movie showtime is séance.
Thursday, 19 July
Gaulier advises: If you are not funny, don't try to be. Be unfunny, and we see what we can do with you! I successfully demonstrate a lion's roar for an introverted student, then bovine sex for the class. We have an imaginary ice cream eating competition, to unlearn any mormon mouth tendencies. Then we must manifest a 20 minute show because the tamer has been eaten by his lion - and we are timed to see how much clown time we can log onstage. Most don't make it past a minute; after playing my gangster clown, I am branded as a nice boy - but fucking boring!
We hate you more and more!
Yes, and if my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle!
"I never saw something so idiot, but I loved it!" is top compliment for clown.
I leave class for the first time in despair; an Aussie classmate advises me to care less. My sister assures me that The man of you is the perfect, trusted vessel for the raw beauty of a child to unfold safely and in pure play.
Some friends and I visit the Tour Eiffel and my heart is eased by its beauty. I am further cheered by finding a glorious photo book of Jacques Brel on sale for just five euro, and meeting an American director friend for Ethiopian.
Before falling asleep, Pema Chodron:
Stop seeking something more, better or different.
As long as you ask for things to change, they never will.
As long as you're wanting yourself to get better, you won't.
As long as you're oriented toward the future,
you can never just relax into what you already have and are.
Friday, 20 July
It dawns on me we've a week left, and I awake questioning all of my abilities. They say the antidote to fear is art, so I visit Musée de l'Orangerie, open this time. Monet's water lilies are indeed a balm, evoking that aqueous vision from days earlier in Giverny as if it were a dream. Good to remember that what is framed here was once blank canvas - and that, if you stand before Renoir's Two Young Girls at the Piano long enough, music inevitably enters the picture.
In class, we dance in pairs, suspending tennis balls between our foreheads. We repeat, to the best of our abilities, an intricate French poem recited by Philippe, yielding hysterical results as more clowns emerge. The exercise continues with orations in Swedish, Hebrew, Cantonese, Portuguese, Greek and Austrian... I do pretty well with it! Tomorrow we're requested to present our clown names. (The French verb for "request," by the way, is demander.) 99% of the class and I fail the next exercise. Do nothing, a Spanish clown advises me, but don't "do" doing nothing! I wonder if Zen monastery life is much different than this.
A good clown doesn't panic - never!
Never love the exercise more than the audience.
A clown plays with flop the way a prodigy plays piano.
In an effort to self-medicate, I visit the Jardin des Plantes to photograph flowers, each one a tiny universe, and sample an extraordinary Arabic pastry at La Grande Mosquée de Paris. I meander along the Seine, spotting a two year old howling with delight as he runs in and out of an open door, then a five year old with his balloon sword, imagining he's a swashbuckler. These are clowns, I think. How did we get so far from this?
Saturday, July 21
We present our clown names, lifted from the horserace papers. They range from Toot Sweet to Coming Up The Rear. I am Firefly! We're told we must imitate a classmate's clown next week - but today's task is to create a spontaneous show for 600 deaf audience members. Again, more idiots emerge through Gaulier's modifications; he has a genius for unearthing the subtle checks and balances that transform a boring performer to a funny one. It is a combination lock for which we all seek the code. Gaulier informs us that he is only interested in those who will fight to stay onstage. Despite my fights, however, my clown remains M.I.A., and I leave class asking myself if I'm ready to give up.
You don't have to be sorry - you have to be funny!
I visit La Cinématéque Française, Shakespeare & Co., then join an American friend for prosecco, fromage, and relentless self-enquiry on the Seine.
Sunday, July 22
Morning walk to watch the swans in Bois de Boulogne, a park that borders the northwest edge of Paris, its streams thick with the moss that sank Ophelia. On my way to the Metro, I encounter the same Moroccan singer whose chant haunted me a week ago. Today I give her change, she looks at me and utters, Courage! The root of the word is Coeur - French for heart. Heartiness, bravery.
In class we jump rope four at a time, and present clown numbers which must surreptitiously advertise the sale of orange juice in the lobby during intermission - as well as implement the use of "the emergency clown." Gaulier senses the heaviness evoked as a result of yesterday's critique and, for the first time, the lion shows his belly:
This school is generous enough to give you one flop a day - very necessary for clown! You go home, call me a bastard, things move around inside your body, and you try again tomorrow. It is painful, for sure!
"Ah," sometimes I think, "perhaps it's a good day for this one." Or sometimes I think, "Oof, the same shit!" But if I receive a little message to help you, I do it. It is a privilege!
Everyone is allowed to have their corridor. I respect your corridor, but I don't enter it - otherwise I am your nurse, and not your teacher. But everyday, I'm going to ask, "Ah, is it a good day for this one?" with pleasure! And, whether you are good or bad, we are all stupid human beings trying to understand something. And for a nasty guy like me to love everybody the same - to respect your corridor - is rare, no?
If you cry and say you're not a clown, for sure you are not. "Okay," you must say to yourself, "perhaps I'm not "ready-ready." Perhaps, when I am in Étampes, I am not funny - but that is Étampes! I love to be onstage and I know, in the bottom of my heart, that I am funny!" After all, if you die with the flop, the flop wins.
I perform today's drill and fail again. For me, you don't exist, says Gaulier. Despite his promising prologue, it hits like a barrel in the chest.
Two choices: commit suicide, or get light!
If you don't do Shakespeare or Chekhov with a special light round your body, you are boring - and when you are boring, you are ugly!
She was funny yesterday, but not today! They are funnier in Kosovo.
After class, I attend Jim Haynes Supper Club, a weekly soirée hosted by an American ex-pat, where I am recognized from Into the Woods by a visiting Baltimorian, and enjoy chatting with a group of students studying American writers in Paris. A classical musician from Ashland, Oregon insists I will do "great things in the world." I'll settle for Étampes.
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