Fireflies / Week Three: Birth Canal

Dear Friends,
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.

Fireflies/Week Two: Gestation

Fireflies are a five-part travelogue detailing my adventures at French clown school - and subsequent Couchsurfing odyssey through Europe this summer.


Saturday, July 7

Our first day off is spent costume shopping, starting with the giant flea market, Marché aux Puces de Montreuil.  A dozen or so of us scour the hundreds of stalls, then frip (vintage) stores, for outfits ranging from a newborn babe's to Van Gogh's. I pass Fontaine des Innocents, the last Renaissance fountain standing in Paris, look to the sky and take a deep breath. The clouds move in extraordinary ways here - easy to see why so many artists find their inspiration - and why so many lovers kiss - beneath its spell.  Something tells me to turn onto a tiny street on Île Saint-Louis, where I discover one of Paris' only bio (organic) restaurants, and treat myself to a respite from the carnivorous (albeit exceptional) local cuisine. I pass the sixth French version of an American friend on the street, smiling at the thought of my parallel existence here, and learn that Notre-Dame Cathedral has a Gregorian mass the following morning. Being the sucker for chant I am, I add it to the agenda.


Sunday, July 8

An overcast Sunday morning which I spend with music legend Jean-Luc Ponty, his daughter Clara (my host) and her daughter, Clémence. I head to the Montparnasse Flea Market (Marché de la Porte de Vanves) for finishing touches to my mafiosa costume, then take an impromptu turn toward Cimetiére de Montparnasse, where Ionesco and Beckett truly wait for Godot. There is something very right about a country where the road to the graveyard is lined with sex shops... la petite mort indeed!  I come upon Bobino Theatre, where Piaf sang and Josephine Baker played her last show before dying in her sleep. A nearby trio croons I Can't Give You Anything but Love outside Paris en Chansons, a fantastic exhibit of France's greatest singers, from Minstinguett to Azanvour. I pass a hare krishna fair where I am gifted with a free vegan dinner. The city holds me in her hands today.


Monday, July 9

Our afternoon at school begins with a series of games (le jeu). If you lose, or are denounced by a classmate for lying about losing, you are subjected to a series of international tortures by Gaulier: Paris shampoo, Chinese acupuncture, Guantanamo! We sing a chorus as 1977 Miele washing machines, parade our costumes (alternately lauded and eviscerated), then follow with clown interviews conducted by yours truly playing Monsieur Loyale (The Ringmaster). This is a role for which I am praised for days... Intriguing. I dash out of Étampes to Montmartre, where I shop for an alternate suit and borselino hat for my gangster clown... more fripperie! The sun sets, yellow and radiant as Van Gogh's fields, at 10 o'clock.


Tuesday, July 10

A morning of unexpected beauty as I head to Musee d'la Orangerie, which turns out to be closed, strolling instead through the Tuileries. The city is quiet and I have left my map at home. The statues that flank this royal walk have seen more than I ever will and contain such motion in their stillness. Winding through an abandoned fairground, I stop in a tiny Algerian patisserie for breakfast, happy to see morning motorcyclists in form-fitting suits smoke beneath their helmets. Appreciation flows freely and I am filled with it today!  I walk into what I don't realize is the private showroom of Cartier jewelers. Scanned by security, my clown training seems to be assimilating as I do a genuine triple take at the sight of the sparkling gems, trying to mask the Chekhovian squeak of my shoes with a cough. I walk, dazed, past the Comédie Française and a British period film being shot in the Place des Vosges, then head to Étampes for a day of blockages and (tiny) breakthroughs in class.

Overheard (in mixed French and English):

Not enough pleasure to be an artist.
Does she exist in your eyes, or not at all?
You are forbidden to have a child - too boring!
Fantastique? Or really fucking heavy?
You cling to the stage like a crab on the pubic hair of the Archbishop of Canterbury!


Wednesday, July 11

No Gaulier today, he has a doctor's appointment to check if I have another 500 kilometres in this vehicle!  Three classmates and I rent bicycles at Versailles, thanks to the suggestion of Joan Juliet Buck. Riding for hours through golden fields, farms, majestic gardens and ponds where coy swarm for breadcrumbs near the surface, we stop beneath a tree for the best cherry gelato I've ever had, then tour the gargantuan estate of Marie Antoinette and Louis XIV. It is astonishing. This is the day I realize that something isn't working in my clown, but I don't know how to change it yet. A tipping point?


Thursday, July 12

Morning trip to Pére Lachaise, the most ornate of Parisian cemeteries.  Proust, Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf and Sarah Bernhardt, whom I've learned is a distant cousin, rest here. On my way to school, a Moroccan beggar drags sickled feet through the train, ululating for food. The song haunts me for days.

After a successful exercise as a dancing chorus, the afternoon turns to tears for many students. We've reached a primary breaking point as the room temperature rises 20 degrees and the floor seems to melt like Dali's. For the first time, Gaulier discusses when a person should question if clown is the route for them... after 10,000 tries! During our break, he asks if I am Jewish, and we discuss Sasha Baron Cohen, one of his students, and the Marx Brothers, all of whom, he says, have a special soul. I am the first student to ask him direct question at the end of class, and it breaks the ice for others. Gaulier tells us of the time his troupe performed in The Czech Republic and their plate-breaking routine was considered a revolutionary statement by the government.

Overheard:

To surprise yourself is a great beginning. To surprise others is great!
If you are bad without a dream, mon petit lapin, you are nothing.
We don't love people who aren't happy. If you aren't happy, you have to leave the stage!
I'm not going to be nice today, as usual!
You think it's funny to say you're horrible?  (Pause.) Yes it is, I love it!
When you speak, it must taste something like a strawberry in the mouth - not this boring voice of a Sunday school teacher.
Her voice is "Ay, yai, yai, fantastique," or "Ay yai yai, my balls"?
In the name of erections everywhere, kill her!
When you watch him, are you proud to be a human being?  Or you start to doubt your very existence?
Do they have the quality of a good chorus... or that of a tiny, tiny shit?
Thank you, this group... you break my balls!

Two friends and I visit Au Lapin Agile, the Montmartre tavern where ten French musicians entertain per night. Picasso came here for inspiration; Steve Martin wrote a play about it. We end the night, quite by accident, tucked into a small Venezuelan wedding party, welcomed like family over arepas and honeyed lemonade.


Friday, July 13

Today's theme brought to you by Meister Eckhart:
It is not by your actions that you will be saved, but by your being.

Last day of school for the week and we play a complicated game of tag which I win for the group - then we have an exam, Gaulier says with twink. The exercise involves the pleasurable entrance of the clown, presentation of his character's "motto," then the clown's satisfaction for putting over his character's motto so well. Gaulier gifts me with a surprise ovation from the class, in order that I discover the notion of a clown's pride after performing poorly. It is very moving. The concept of wanting to be bad in order to embody the poetry of the bad student is difficult to embrace, particularly for those Chinese and German students who are culturally indoctrinated to be "good" at all times. This training is the opposite of the poise we normally force on ourselves, yet it is strangely the seat of all things authentic.

Overheard:

When you rush, you escape being ridiculous in front of the audience and we don't have time to love you. 
A bad clown is a pianist with glue on his fingers. A light touch, a tickle for the imagination, allows us to dream around you.
If your pleasure doesn't exist, neither do you. 
A shadow on the pleasure is no good for the clown! We want to see your genuine pleasure - not your pleasure "Made in Hong Kong."
The little boy who doesn't know what to do is the beginning of clown. He who "knows something" is just an idiot.
A clown is not ashamed to be an idiot. The worse the clown, the more he dreams of decoration.
When you go through a flop, you learn a lot!
She was boring, or am I drunk?
Don't dribble on her balls!

Philippe explains that he must reschedule another day for a hospital procedure. I worry for him.  On my way out, a British student, Hattie, says she loves my -ness.  When I ask what that is, she says your Erik-ness!  I explore Paris bars for the first time, and am invited The Fireman's Ball - a large outdoor charity event for les pompiers. Hundreds of frogs and I dance beneath under a canopy of colorful parapluies in the rain.


Saturday, July 14

The Marché aux Puces de St-Ouen is peppered with buffets in celebration of Bastille Day. Among 15 acres of every collectible and not-so-collectible imaginable, from doll's heads and hotel soaps to exquisite furniture and taxidermy, I happens upon a vintage postcard vendor. Scanning through dozens of vedettes of stage and screen (including one Miss Poppy Wyndham), Pierre Brasseur leaps out at me. Though we've never met, I'm drawn to him and purchase the card. The saleswoman turns it over to reveal a handwritten note from the actor, explaining that the collection was purchased from his great-great-granddaughter. He becomes my mascot for the trip. I walk with Brasseur to the antique glass section, where the marchande and I discuss the poster of Gena Rowlands on her wall. She, too, is a fan of one of my favorites, and tells me about a Cassavetes retrospective in town.. Ambrosia!  A short browse through Montmartre for a crépe au miel (honeyed crepe) before meeting classmates for a performance of the neocircus, Compagnie XY, at Parc La Villette. Easily the best circus I've ever seen - netless, truly death-defying feats of acrobatics by this exceptional company. They embody the complicité Philippe speaks of; love for the audience and for each other as they hold each others' lives in their hands. Something gels about the clown work tonight. After the performance, we watch fireworks from a peak near Sacré Coeur.


Sunday, July 15

Chance meeting with Pierce Brosnan on my way to the sunbaked majesty that is Jardin du Luxembourg. Among an impressionistic palette of carousels, donkeys rides, and dogs doing dressage to calliope and accordion, I am mistaken for the son of the chief puppeteer of the marionette show! Again I am struck by the notion of well-tended public gardens bearing direct relation to well-grown societies. On the streets of Paris, 20,000 bikes are available for rent from automated Vélib' vendors, encouraging residents to soar when they want to, returning their wheels anywhere. I attend an Hommage John Cassavetes screening of A Woman Under the Influence and walk through St-Germain-des-Prés with classmate Edan, chewing exquisite Nutella nougat as the sun sets over the Seine.