On living as a mime, trapped in a clown’s body
and the gap between what we want and what we get
Some people go to school to learn.
Others go to school to get a credential and land a job.
Me?
I went to school to be funny. Not that the schools that I went to were places that specialized in being funny. Actually? Being funny was pretty much universally condemned at most of the schools I went to.
Then there was this one school I went to - the Dell Arte International School for Mime and Physical Comedy.
I did that when I was 24 years old.
I was young. I went there with a pretty open mind.
I wanted to explore and experience it all.
There, I’d live every day, moment to moment taking in what the moment was putting out.
And the goal much of the time?
Be funny.
But despite my ‘take things as they come’ attitude, I still went there with dreams and desires.
I dreamt that by the end of my time there, I’d be a fully certified, clown. Fresh meat, on the market. Ready to work, Cirque Du Soybean will beg me to join them!
But then?
We remarkable fools sometimes have a bit of a gap between our expectations and our experience.
Not only did the Soybean Circus not come begging for my services, I didn’t graduate a clown at all.
I got there, went on a spiritual journey with some local Humboldt County cookies and discovered that I am not a clown nor have ever been a clown.
I am in fact a mime.
That’s right.
I can’t keep living the lie that I belong in the world like everyone else.
I’m going to say it out loud, I’m a mime and I’m proud!
One of my ‘guides’ on this journey?
His name was Carlo. Carlo’s business card read: Carlo Mezzone Clemente: non verbal humanist.
Non Verbal humanist?
That’s just a fancy, European way of saying mime, or what we in the scene call the invisible wall crew.
That’s right. I’m now self identifying as a mime.
Hello, my name is Jimmy and my pronouns are
And instead of having words as pronouns, I’d mime pulling on a rope that gets out of control for one pronoun and then I’d mime blowing up a ballon for the other pronoun.
That would be incredible.
Convincing some incredibly caring, generous person who’s just trying to do the right thing convincing them that in order to speak about with pronouns, they’d have to do a big ornate mime routine?
That would be incredible.
Imagine this?
Anytime you had to say him, you’d have to pretend to blow up a balloon, you would talk a lot less shit about that person.
It just wouldn’t be worth the effort.
It’s pretty lonely being a mime.
How do you meet people?
Go the gym to lift weights and spend all of your time pretending to lift heavy things?
This seems like a good way to get beaten up.
It’s not like a mime can just go out to a nightclub and pick up someone. How could they? They’d never last past the punch line.
You pick your own, but the set up?
A mime walks into a bar…
It’s depressing,
I tried getting a therapist but do you know how bloody difficult it is to find someone who speaks my language. It’s so difficult getting any health care as a mime. So few even understand the basics of the memetic language.
I was once so depressed I wanted to end it all.
So I had a plan.
I’d travel across the planet, see a bit of the world, then feed myself to cannibals.
So that’s what I did, I started flying around the world.
And along the way to kill myself, I was having a pretty good time.
Finally though, the day for me to meet the cannibals and face my doom arrived.
I went to the spot where they were going to cook me in a pot and eat me.
And I did one last wall routine for these little cannibal people.
And as I did, they all looked so disappointed.
Their leader came forward and spoke their concerns:
We’re sorry but we will not eat you. You are a brilliant mime. And a mime is a terrible thing to taste.
(And if you didn’t get that joke I did that big long build up to the pun based on ‘a mind is a terrible thing to waste’. This attempt was likely unsuccessful.
Ta-da!
CREATIVITY
(Moves hands with jazz hands gesture while running sideways towards getting off stage)