Shaman Showman - part 3

The Shaman-Showman's Obligation

Wikipedia tells us: Shamanism is an anthropological term referencing a range of beliefs and practices regarding communication with the spiritual world. There is a lot of research done by anthropologists and religious historians like Mircea Eliade that explores this line of thought. Daniel Pinchbeck defines Shamanism as “A technology for exploring non-ordinary states of consciousness in order to accomplish specific purposes: healing, divination, and communication with the spirit realm.”

Personally I don’t believe there is any need to postulate a spiritual world as a separate realm of existence to explain phenomena in this world. I believe the answers to our questions and mysteries lies firmly rooted in reality. Explanations given along supernatural lines only complicates things and raises more questions then it answers. In my writings I am treating the shaman as a guide for an exploration of non-ordinary states of consciousness or an altered experience of reality. Lessons learnt in this state of mind does not teach us about the spirit world but about ourselves and our place in the real world.

I believe the shamanistic tradition and experience has been important for humans for the same reasons as religion. The beneficial traits of these traditions has worked to strengthen unity, binding communities, finding meaning in complex things by providing answers to unexplainable things, and it exists throughout the world, most likely because it’s positive effects are real, regardless of the ultimate veracity of the teachings. I will get back to these underlying positive effect in another post.

Blogger Tai Carmen describes the shamanistic state eloquently in a great post on her blog: “A systematized disorganization of the senses via trance states induced by intoxicants/hallucinogenics, music and/or dance, with the goal of personal transformation/liberation from social constraints, and communion with a divine or supernatural principal. ”

The tools of the trade seems to be drums, chanting, and also demonstrations of supernatural skill. All employed to bring the participants a state of ecstasy. A word whose original meaning came from the Greek word Ekstasis, which means ‘standing outside oneself.’ He who stands outside himself would be able to see himself from the outside.

The mindset of the participants is described as a trance, but perhaps for those that can’t or won’t reach the full ecstatic state themselves watches the shaman as a representation of themselves. They watch the shaman as they watch themselves. He becomes man’s representative, the symbolic human.

A Showman Shows Man - Man. For a Showman, the altered state is the mindset of the Crowd. Their minds connected watching time slowed down and controlled by the Showman as he draws them into a symbolic reality, and leads them into Ekstasis in its original meaning, standing outside oneself to be able to watch and understand oneself.

Shamans are keepers of secret knowledge, they explain unexplainable events and increase the odds of survival and the moral in the group. They are the mediators between the spiritual or altered experience of reality and the real world. In this symbolic world order they find hope of control over stochastic processes in the real world.

The shaman manifests our dreams and collective imagination. They give hope. Hope of healing, hope of direction when lost and so on. Through his role as an outsider, a wounded healer, someone who has suffered and learnt, one who have gone out on the ice and lived there alone for many months until he could finally hear the voice of the Universe, have certain obligations to fulfil.

From BBC's Human Planet

From the TV series Human Planet I learnt that on coral islands where it is possible to fish within a lagoon as well as out on the open sea, fishermen are more superstitious about fishing out at sea. This means there are more rituals connected to the open sea variant. This is because added risks. Random uncontrollable processes like bad weather and dangerous prey increase risk of injury and death. The open ocean is a treacherous place and the beasts pulled up can be dangerous. The more random the process, the easier it is for us to become superstitious. Situations of gravity, such as open-sea fishing, or big game hunting would all bring on a desire to control the outcome, to gain an advantage and security in a very uncertain situation.

BF Skinners superstitious pigeon

 In risky circumstances where randomness is unavoidable normal pattern recognition no longer suffice and as demonstrated nicely by B.F. Skinners famous superstitious pigeons, our minds makes sense of unrelated events and outcomes. The pigeons belived that their actions such as wing flapping and turning was an important part of receiving food. The fact was that the food was delivered completely at random with no reference to the pigeon’s actions. When food was delivered the pigeon remembered its last actions and attributed it to the food delivery. And hence persisted to repeat the half turn, the wing flap and so forth it had done immediately before the food arrived. The pigeons quickly developed a set of beliefs to make sense of the randomness.

Minds were made to make sense of things and it is so eager to do so it often makes sense out of things that have no sense at all. Mistaking events following each other in time for causality, that the first event is linked to the next. Like linking a successful and injury free hunt to correctly following a groups rituals. If the ritual was executed and the ensuing hunt was successful and injury free it would be attributed to the ritual. The tribe now have ‘proof’ that the ritual worked. Once this thought pattern occurs it can be very difficult to escape. To the point that if someone did die in the hunt, the question would not be whether the whole system was wrong, but what alterations must be done to the ritual, which bit was not done well enough, which part of it failed. In this way a simple superstition can become a complex set of instructions meaningful within the community’s belief system.

Minds makes sense of things that have no sense at all.

Superstition aside, as I mentionioned earlier the veracity of the beliefs seems to be unimportant. The benefits from following religious practices and rituals are all equally helpful. We have yet to find one type of prayer that gives 100% return of your prayers. All rituals and spiritual traditions has similar outcomes so the important thing about them is that something about them ‘works’ for us as humans.

The shamanistic ritual before the hunt becomes a time for focus and for unification of the hunters and through them the whole tribe. It changes the mindsets from I to We and in that there is immense power. We are social beings, together we are invincible, together we will prevail, and together we shall grow. This is the obligation of the Shaman Showman.

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 44

When a Showman understands the role of the audience, a new freedom will fill him. Exhibitionism withers away when the Showman sees the audience not as judges or censors or even as delighted friends but as a group with whom he is sharing an experience.

Beyond the Mat

This is an awesome documentary about wrestling; the sport, the craft, the risks, the wrestlers, the passion, and the spectacle. Wether you love wrestling or don't get it this story will interest you.

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 43

The most important thing is that you know that you want to be there and

that you trust the Crowd wants to be there.

They are the audience you are the performer. Step up, be the Showman. Let them be the crowd. Guide them, they want to follow, but are afraid to come with you unless they feel safe with you as a guide.

Shaman Showman - Part 2

Mythopoeic nature of Wrestling

Wrestling and Shamans

(Read part 1 here.)

Perhaps shamanism is like Pro-wrestling? As a kid you think it’s real then at some point you learn the whole thing is a masquerade. It is theatre in a square ring.
All the spectators suspends their disbelief, pretending to watch sport, whilst it’s actually theatre, sports-themed theatre of the simplest sort. Very powerful stuff though.
When an older boy decides to expose the lie, or initiate you into the true knowledge concerning the reality of wrestling, I hope they do it gently. As the house of childlike beliefs shakes and falls, you want the insight broken to you in a way that allows you to transcend the broken reality by picking up the pieces and stack them back up into a new foundation. A foundation of understanding and rationality.
Wrestling isn’t real but it's still awsome and this teaches us that wheter its real or not is not the point, the point is the story, the action, the hotdogs and soft drinks, the girls in the skimpy outfits, and the massive warrior wrestlers.
Real or not it still speaks to thousands.

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 42

It is necessary to become a part of the world around us and make it real by touching it, seeing it, and smelling it. This is valid for stage and life.

Shaman - Showman

Roald Amundsen and the Shaman

Roald Amundsen, polar explorer and hero.

One of Norway’s relatively unknown heros is Roald Amundsen. ”Who?” You probably think, and that’s my point.

Just so you all know, I’ll briefly introduce my childhood hero. On december 14 1911, Amundsen and his team were the first men to reach 90 degrees south - the geographic Southpole! To make the story even more exciting the quest for the Southpole had been a race against an English man called Captain Robert Falcon Scott. So if he won why don’t we know his name?

Captain Scott was quite a hopeless case. He brought horses and tractors to take him to the pole. The tractors never started and the horses died of exposure before the expedition set off towards the pole and Captain Scott’s team reached the pole finding a tent with a swaying Norwegian flag. In the tent was a guest book, with Roald Amundsen’s name first. With broken spirits Scott began the return journey but succumbed to fatigue, partly brought on by scurvy. The tragedy of Captain Scott ecclipsed Roald Amundsens acheivement.

Reaching the Southpole was not Amundsens first polar triumph. A few years earlier in 1903, and this brings me to the point I am making, Roald Amundsen set out on an expedition hoping to find the North West Passage. Which had been sought by the English for four hundred years. They sailed to Gjøahavn on King William Island and spent twenty three months there. During this time Amundsen studied Inuit way of life and collected etnographic material.

I found this quote on a blog about Amundsen’s encounter with an Inuit Shaman. This will be a perfect introduction to my thoughts and ramblings on shamans.

Amundsen and his men at the Southpole

”Roald Amundson passed the winter in the Arctic Circle among the Inuits.  He lived with the tribe’s shaman.  After months of watching the many sleights of hand and minor tricks the shaman used to hold the tribe’s attention with his magical power, Amundsen finally asked him: Didn’t it bother him that all his ‘magic powers’ were nothing but  cheap parlor games?  The shaman smiled. He replied, ‘My magic power is not in my tricks. My real power is that I have gone out on the ice and lived there alone for many months until I could finally hear the voice of the Universe. And the voice of the Universe is that of a mother calling after her beloved children. That is my real magic.”

Inuit Shaman. Look at those sweet hands.

This brings us to shamans and my interests in them as proto Showmen. Roald Amundsen experienced a shaman performing slight of hand. To his tribe the shaman was a powerful healer and communicator of secret understandings. What did the tribe see in their shaman’s prestidigitation? What can we learn about the Showman from studying the Shaman? What can we learn about his craft and the deep meaning presented in his performances that will benefit our own shows? How did it all start?

Whether because of his understanding of ice and polar knowledge taught to him by shamans or not, the expedition found and sailed through the North West Passage in 1906. Becoming the first ship in history to travel successfully through it. Adding another feather to my polar hero, Roald Amundsen’s hat.

(Read part 2 here)

Shanghai Circus School Doco

I went to a circus school in 1996. I paid for the three-month course with money I had made performing with Dad and doing street shows. Let me just say Circomedia was nothing like the Shanghai Circus School.

The kids in this PBS documentary are pushed to the edge and beyond. The results are extraordinary, pinnacles of human achievement in body control, but so I would hope, for the sacrifices and struggles are great. But in the end when you have mastered your craft, created your art and overcome the obstacles the triumph of the Showman makes it all worth it.

The documentary is hard to watch sometimes, but these kids are amazing. The kid in this picture fights hard, they push him, but man, the results are unbelievable.

Hope you all enjoy this glance of the work involved in becoming an Acrobat. 

Thanks to Circobat over at the Kicking Sawdust blog for putting me onto this.

Watch the documentary on youtube by clicking here.

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 41

Everything that happens on stage is part of the show. The act, the mistakes, the random interactions from the crowd are all part of the Crowds experience. Each opportunity missed is a brick in the fourth wall. Sealing you off from the crowd, driving them out of the moment. Enjoy your mishaps, they make you more human, and the performance more real.

The Showman's Guild?

I was disappointed with what I discovered when I began researching the Showman’s Guild. I very quickly found an organization with that exact name. It was all so easy, too easy... so mundane and plain. No secret symbols, no secret knowledge just a regular trade organization. 

In the National Fairground archives I got a good insight into the nature of the Showman’s Guild’s and it’s history.

The formation of ‘the United Kingdom showman and Van Dwellers' Protection Association’ in 1889 was and still is the decisive and important event in the history of travelling showpeople as a community.

In 1917 the Showmen's Guild of Great Britain, as it became known, was recognised as the trade association of the travelling funfair business and acquired the right to stand as representatives for the business at both local and national levels; a position it still occupies to this day.

Although claims for earlier organisations can be found in the pages of the World's Fair and other publications, these were usually temperance or charitable foundations more concerned with the moral and spiritual salvation of the showpeople than their everyday business and way of life! The incentive for the start of the van dwellers association was the proposed legislation by George Smith, a self styled expert and evangelist from Coalsville. He believed that his mission was to reform and educate all members of the itinerant community in the United Kingdom, whom he referred to as:

“Dregs of society, that will one day put a stop to the work of civilisation, and bring to an end the advance in arts, science, law and commerce that have been making such rapid strides in the country.”

This no doubt had been an important organization, but it was far from what I had hoped to find. As I perused the available information I didn't want it to be true. I was after was a secret brotherhood of showmen which sat on powerful knowledge about the showman’s craft. Not an organization which lobbies politicians, and contests and gets showmen exempt from regulations. I had hoped to find a secret society that would have the key to make my performance as meaningful as I had found uncle Certini’s shows. This was when I was about 17 or 18, still in school and at that point I felt silly for having believed the ramblings of a mad old magician. I was disappointed and through that I realize how much I wished for it to be true. It turned out I had found a trade organization when I wanted a secret society. At that point I thought I gave up.  But little did I know, it would all come back to haunt me when I least expected it.

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 40

 The Crowd’s ever watching eye brings meaning to our craft.  You are there for them. Let them know how grateful you are for their attention.

Nepals Lost Circus Children + Mary Ellen Mark...

An investigation into the trafficking of Nepalese children to work in Indian circuses. A darker side of circus is exposed and explored by film maker Sky Neal. It follows the Esther Benjamins Memorial Foundation as they rescue children from circuses they have been sold to and taken to a refuge run by a woman called Shailaja CM. They are doing some great work to rid circuses of this archaic and abominable method of recruitment.

See the 25 minute documentary right here.

This is of course not the only side to Indian circus. My first exposure to Indian circus was through Photographer Mary Ellen Marks book 1989 called Indian Circus. I am lucky enough to have a copy I bought from Reg Bolton at a circus festival in Tasmania one year.

Mary Ellen Mark, ‘Twin Brothers Tulsi and Basant’ 

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 39

A Free Showman can Free the Crowd.

Whispers of the Showman’s Guild

The first time I heard about the Showman’s Guild was from my Dad’s uncle Certini. He was a Norwegian magician and the one who got my father into doing magic. As often happens the Apprentice became a very different magician to his Master. 

Certini was a manipulator. He made cards, coins, thimbles, and lots of cigarettes, appear and disappear at his finger tips. Dad was always more interested in the shows as events and happenings than in the practice of slight of hand. Dad worked miracles with mechanical marvels and electro engeneering from his own workshop rather than producing endless streams of coins. But the main difference seemed to be more of a feeling. As you watched Dad you got pure escapism, perfect entertainment, whilst with uncle Certini there was a different intent. Although he did standard gentleman magic, by his presence, poise and intense presentations each coin that materialized in his empty hands seemed symbolic. Like it was one thing but meant something much more significant.

On rare occasions when I visited uncle Certini he talked about a secret brotherhood of showmen, called the Showman’s Guild. He talked about how the Illuminated Showmen had a different mindset, and different goals to most magicians. This kind of talk didn’t seem so strange to me since I was also part of a secret brotherhood of magicians. I mean the Magic Circle of Norway wasn’t a secret society as such, but it certainly was a society with and about secrets. What made the Guild different was partly my father’s reaction to uncle Certini talking about it. Dad always tried to end the conversation and get onto more practical matters.

Life Death

Uncle Certini had bad nerves I was told. He sometimes had to travel to rest them at a sanatorium in the Fjordlands. Dad later told me that he believed there was a connection between uncle Certini needing to rest his nerves and his preoccupation with the Showmans Guild. I was never so certain.

A product of mental instabilities or over active imagination, this all piqued an interest and a life long research project into first of all trying to establish the reality of this obscure organization, which proves to be most difficult, then puzzle together the tenants of their teachings which they called the Way of the Showman.

Through snippets found, quotations interpreted, reviews found in old news papers and most of all the hand written notes from uncle Certini’s inheritance I’ve got a fair outline of the societiy’s secret history and the goings on in this most singular initiatory Guild.

Lessons from the Way of the Showman – 38

I love it when I’m performing and someone in the crowd loose themselves in the moment. Uncontrollable laughter, childlike gasps, pantomime hands mimicking what they see on stage, or just sheer primal joy and excitement manifested in screaming, whistling, stomping and clapping. When a person no longer worry about anything and is just consumed by the power of the Craft.

In moments like this I see other spectators giving that person envious looks: I whish it was me.

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 37

 Throughout your shows react to what happens around you. Be there with the Crowd, in the moment. Don’t just go through the motions.
Act without letting decisions pass through the filter of others' opinion. Then begin the work on freeing yourself from your own filters. Few things are more enjoyable to watch than a Showman reacting totally free.

Silent witness sometimes speaks loudest

Charlie Chan at the Circus.

Yes, there is a gorilla in the film...

A murder mystery set at a circus, starring a perfect stereotype of a Chinese American detective. Played by the Swedish actor Warner Oland this portrayal has been the subject of much debate as to whether the role is racist. Some critics can not see past the fine Detective’s broken English and never ending fortune cookie wisdom, like; "facts are like negatives from film, must be exposed before developing," and "not always best to jump on simplest solution, mind like parachute, best when open." Others compare Chang to the Chinese’s portrayal in contemporary films, which at the time were sinister and wicked. This last interpretation was the explicit aim of Earl Derr Briggers which was the creator of the books on which the Charlie Chan movie series was based.

Charlie Chan with Olive and George Brasno.

The film is cute, a real life married short stature couple Olive and George Brasno features quite a bit. Complete with George as a cigar smoking baby, reminiscent of Tod Brownings ‘the Unholy Three.’ As they are introduced in the film we get to see one of their acts, a fantastic dance number.

The film is definitely worth having a look at, and you can do so, for no added fee, right here. Hope you enjoy it.

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 36

The moments of spontaneity are most like life. No rehearsal only reactions. Once you can create this feeling with your practiced and prepared material you have mastered a very important Lesson.

Beauty is all about patterns

In a very interesting article for wired magazine, Jonah Lehrer suggests that our feelings of beauty are:

“A particularly potent and intense form of curiosity. It’s a learning signal urging us to keep on paying attention, an emotional reminder that there’s something here worth figuring out.”

Salvador Dali, the persistence of time.

He then thinks this peculiar variant of curiosity is hijacked by art. Experiencing beautiful art we get sucked in to the undulating tones of a Beethoven symphony or into Mona Lisa's smile. Great works seems to always imply something, to set up information in patterns that then keeps us waiting for their conclusion. The final line of a Bukowski poem becomes immensely beautiful since it has been so cleverly built up. The feeling of beauty tells us there is a pattern here, and that we have a chance of figuring it out.

“Put another way,” Lehrer says, “beauty is a motivational force that helps modulate conscious awareness. The problem beauty solves is the problem of trying to figure out which sensations are worth making sense of and which ones can be easily ignored.

Great art seems to contain promises of great patterns. The beginning of a symphony sets up a pattern and then the rest, more or less, is a tantalizing “flirtation with – but not submission to – our expectations of order.” 

He quotes some interesting studies that suggests a particular area of the brain, specifically in the medial orbital-frontal cortex involved in our experience of beauty, regardless of whether its source is music, painting, weaving, reading or otherwise.

This  is one of the least understood parts of the brain. But what we do know is that it’s instrumental in sensory integration, it regulates how powerful our emotional responses are to stimuli, its also key in decision-making and expectation. In particular, the mOFC is thought to regulate planning behavior associated with sensitivity to reward and punishment. I guess it is then not so unexpected that our experience of beauty resides in this area already known as an important part of our pleasure spectrum.

Auguste Rodin, the Kiss.

“…That brain area has consistently been implicated in the recognition of delightful things, from the taste of an expensive wine to the luxurious touch of cashmere,” explains Lehrer.

As we begin to discover how our experience of beauty originates in the brain we can perhaps answer the philosophical question of what the common quality of Bach, Rodin, Dali, and ancient cave paintings all have in common.

The scientist behind the experiment which localized the beauty responses in the mOFC, “Ishizu and Zeki think that the “peculiar quality” lies not in works of art themselves (pieces of music included), but in the brains of their beholders.”

The objects of art are not so much beautiful in themselves as suggestive of patterns and emotions that stimulates a particular part of the brain. The work of art can in this sense be seen as a trigger for feelings of beauty. And a skilled artist might be said to have an understanding of how to form an object, music or perhaps any type of performance into an experience which triggers beauty trough setting up a pattern and holding off on its completion. Something a little mysterious that cries out to be understood and also gives off the hopeful feeling that you will be able to grasp it.

From the Chauvet caves in France, artist unknown...

In exploring aspects of life as diverse as hallucinatory drugs, meditation, dancing to repetitive music, partaking of religious ceremonies, and studying evolution many of us have had the sense that life and everything is riddled with patterns. I certainly have. Life itself, its origin and development is about order and patterns in seeming chaos. Most early Origin myths are about order from chaos. In fact our minds were made to create meaning from chaos. It is part of what makes us human.

So if beauty is akin to curiosity what exactly is curiosity?

“The first thing the scientists discovered is that curiosity obeys an inverted U-shaped curve, so that we’re most curious when we know a little about a subject (our curiosity has been piqued) but not too much (we’re still uncertain about the answer).”

When there is a gap between what we know and what we want to know we get something like a mental itch and desire to seek knowledge to bridge this gap. This seems to be a fundamental aspect of curiosity.

“The lesson is that our desire for more information – the cause of curiosity – begins as a dopaminergic craving, rooted in the same primal pathway that responds to sex, drugs and rock and roll.”

So the thing that keeps us interested is incompleteness, rather than perfection. A stray hair on a Japanese Zen painting, a gold tooth in a carny’s crooked smile makes something beautiful and interesting.

Researchers in Montreal discovered, through the use of fMRI machines and PET scans that our experience of beauty whilst listening to music is highest fifteen seconds before the climax. As themes, and threads are coming together and the promise of completion looms our experience of beauty is the strongest. We peak emotionally just before the climax.

“It is the suspenseful tension of music (arising out of our unfulfilled expectations) that is the source of the music’s beauty… ‘For the human mind,’ Meyer writes, ‘such states of doubt and confusion are abhorrent. When confronted with them, the mind attempts to resolve them into clarity and certainty.”

Beauty urges us to pay attention to keep looking. It hints at the mysterious, but also gives us hope that understanding is within grasp. It encourages us with its imperfections to want to know more, we want to know how it ends.

“We know just enough to know that we want to know more; there is something here, we just don’t know what. That’s why we call it beautiful.”

x

Perhaps this article can Illuminate aspects of the fundamental structure in our perception of beauty and through it help elevating Showmen’s creation’s as they journey along the Way of the Showman.

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 35

Be completely committed to the path that you choose,

but be ready to turn off any time to peruse.

 

To be Spontaneous brings the reality of the moment into focus. A moment  of personal freedom for the Showman. The Crowd see you faced with reality, and how you explore it and act accordingly.

the Clown and the New World - part 4

Here it is dear readers, the next and final part of our old Clown's tribulations and explorations of the New world. For those of you that made it all the way through I hope you enjoyed the ride.
If you didn't, read from the beginning here, and follow the links from there.

Part 1 - Tragic beginnings and the Livid Storm
Part 2 - The Carnival is Dead
Part 3 - The Clown and Robert Johnson
Part 4 - The Angel and the Greatest Show on Earth 

Now all aboard the circus train its time to head back into the New World.

8

He wanders on as born anew

ruminating on what’s true.

“What is truly part of me and of my desires?

Do I still retain in me what my work requires?”

The road is long, the country vast

he travels slow and fast.

The road slowly eats his shoes.

He’s almost ready for a snooze

when some papers blow right past.

“It is two circus flyers.”

His heart starts pounding very fast.

And there it is so splendidly

standing in a field.

It’s trains and wagons all around,

a Big Top and Menagerie

so lavishly revealed.

It is the greatest show on earth,

finally, he’ll show his worth.

This is his perfect chance.

So happy is our little clown

He jigs a little dance.

It is the great big circus’ charity matiné,

he hears the proud ringmaster say.

‘Are all the kids from the Orphanage here?’

from the tent, a great big cheer.

‘How ‘bout the kids from the hospital?’

the response, not quite as capital.

Some kids too weak and others broken

but their smiles are their tokens,

they never could have loved it more.

It makes their spirits soar.

‘This is it, this is the day,

now can come whatever may.

No more masks.

The nose is gone.

I never willed

to be the best

I just wanted to be me.

I was stupid not to see

What is done comes not undone.

No longer will I run.

I’ll be doing this for them

For all those who remind me of

my only little love.

He sneaks inside the grand big top

looking like a hobo.

There’s no one there to tell him stop.

As he enters through the canvas flaps

his luck of luck it is

the clown brigade

is on his way to stop a fire’s fizz.

Stupid looking firemen in baggy pants and suits,

other grotesquely smiling clowns

dressed in giant boots,

are stomping on a fire.

Whilst they fall and run around

our hobo clown stands still

with tension and a zeist for life -

his dreams so soon fulfilled.

Then the clowns they notice him.

“Is that hobo clown a bum?”

The Clown Captain runs across

to evict him from the ring

but our hobo clown plays dumb

he doesn’t care about a thing.

Then the crowd all notice him

he goes out on a limb.

As the Clown Captain grabs his neck

our clown he wrestles loose

and gives the Captain’s cheek a peck.

Then he falls down to the ground

in the most surprising manner

he rolls and squirms just like a snake

towards the circus banner.

The children laugh at the funny man.

That makes the other clowns get mad.

‘Who is this guy stealing laughs and joy?

Who makes all the gags we can employ

seem tiresome and old.

Let’s get the intruder out of here.

When we get our funny hands on him

he wont be so bold.

But as they do the best they can

to grab the clumsy man

he falls or drops or spins around

to the music of the band.

His tricks miraculously saves him

from the fury of the clowns.

Which makes them chase him harder,

sawdust flying from the grounds.

The Ringmaster did shout:

“Who is this guy I want him out

he is ruining the show.”

The mighty swarm of clowns

is closing on our funny man,

his chances they look slim,

but it doesn’t seem to bother him.

He jumps inside the centre ring

where the tiger cage is set.

He runs inside and quickly stops,

kicking sawdust and some bottle tops,

then all the clowns gets in the cage

with sinister looking props.

But just before they jump on him

comes the most surprising stunt.

He jumps out through safety gap,

so tight it makes him grunt.

And snaps the lock down shut.

Then he stands alone.

The only in the ring.

For a moment there he thinks

he hears the angels sing.

He is the only one not in a cage.

The clowns all are looking

like lions in their rage.

The thunderous applause

and the loud appreciation,

so powerful that it shook

the entire nation

The ringmaster says:

“Who is this guy?

I need to know

I want him in the show.”

Everyone inside the tent,

there is more than

ten thousand

stands up in their ovation.

Which is quite unusual

for a clowns creation.

“I have never witnessed this

and I have been around,”

said the stirred Ringmaster,

he was breathing ever faster.

“He doesn’t wear a painted face.

No red nose sits in place.

It’s just a man.

The applause it has become so wild

it’s drowning out the band.”

All the crowd is clapping

Except one little girl.

Warily the girl stands up

and strokes away a curl

Eyes locked at the hobo

She walkes out in the ring.

For the first in the longest time

the old clown is happy.

Forgotten is the strife and grime.

He’s feeling rather sappy.

Then he sees the little girl

and her long blond hair.

Like an angel, she’s so fair.

She looks just like his little girl.

So beautiful she can’t be

of this retched world.

The crowd’s noise,

so loud it makes him dizzy.

His little brain is way too busy.

‘It cannot be.

Was I not free?

Why come this apparition now to me?’

His heart is pounding in his chest

Almost bursting from his breast.

‘Now, I am possessed.’

He holds on to his breaking heart.

‘This is it.

She has come to take me home.

My heart has broken.

Thank you lord for letting me

make them laugh again.

Smiles abound so nice to see.

Just one more time before I died.

Thank you and amen.’

He holds his arms out to the side

towards his angle girl

Now let us fly. Take us home

up through the circus dome.

Let eternity unfurl.

If my mind is playing tricks on me,

if this all is a dream,

then dear God let me please

just sleep and sleep and sleep.

His eyes are now so filled with tears.

He he can not see her face

The girl holds out her hands

into empty space.

And the crowd quiets down a bit

Some in the front now sit.

His tears makes him strain his eyes

makes the spotlights shine like stars.

Then he sees the necklace

on her neck so slight.

It fills him fast as fright:

A picture of that night.

The Necklace that he knows so well,

the ship of holy writ.

The very recreation.

The very Noah’s ark

he gave to her before the swell

ate her like a shark.

Now she comes on over

and whispers out his name.

And after that our old clown

never was the same.

The old man buckles and falls down to his knees

She puts her arms around her dad.

‘Please now father don’t be sad

You promised me: ‘it won’t be bad.’

And now I know its true.

I have so much to tell to you

I clung so long to the broken mast

But please now father

hold me fast

and never let me go.

They said that you would never come

but I always told them no.’

The father cried and cried and cried

He couldn’t make it stop.

No matter how he tried

He flung his arms around his girl.

‘My precious little pearl.

The miracle of miracles,

It finally came through.

Standing real before me now

it is really you.

It really is my gorgeous dove

my only little love.’

x

Thank to all those of you who found time for the full experience.

Yours truly

Captain Frodo

Saved by Sideshow - Rasmus Nielsen

A Carny Hero

On 8^th of July, 1946, two days after the worst circus catastrophe in recorded history, the Hartford circus fire, a local paper called the Hartford Tribune, ran the headline reading:

SAVED BY SIDESHOW FREAK

Underneath was a picture of a short stout woman with a young boy of about six, both holding up their unused tickets to the fateful matinee-show where 169 patrons of the Greatest show on Earth was burnt to death.

‘I had bought tickets to the circus and took Frankie Jr down early so he could experience the midway.’ Frieda was quoted as saying.

At one of the Sideshow stages they stopped to watch the ballyhoo presentation of the sensational Scandinavian muscle man Rasmus Nielsen. I have had an interest in this unique sideshow performer for some time so reading this article thrilled me, to the point of creating a routine as an homage to him  back in 2003, but I digress. This veteran showman with the Ringling Brothers Sideshow was no ordinary strongman. His body was covered crown to heal in tattoos. Two fat steel rings pierced his nipples, like bones through a savage nose. His feat of strength and endurance consisted of clamping his nipple and chest flesh between two metal bars attached to a chain wrapped around an anvil! The wing nut screws tightened around his flesh hard enough to allow him to lift the 250 pound blacksmith tool off the ground. As he struggled he let out a stream of offensive guttural sounds.

‘To transcend the pain,’ the sideshow talker had explained. His noises and screams invigorated the crowd but, according to the article, it scared Frieda’s boy witless.

‘I was mesmerized by this barbaric performance, when Frankie Jr. tugged at my skirt. Looking at him I saw horror in his eyes. I got no idea what scared him so much but he was terrified and no amount of mollycoddling was going to stop it. Actually it just got worse and worse, until he screamed louder than the strongman himself. It was embarrassing, so I grabbed his arm and we left.’ Frieda said.

Her boy was so gripped by fright removing him from the strongman’s display didn’t calm him. His piercing screams, like “from a beaten dog,” became an ominous augury of the looming arson havoc.

The Gentle Strongman

After about half an hour of fruitless coercion with everything from treats to threats Frieda took little Frank home, hoping to be able to use her unused tickets for the evenings performance.

‘It gives me goose bumps to think about. Now I just want to thank Rasmus Nielson, the Scandinavian Strongman for saving our lives.’ Frieda finished.