The career trajectory of a clown

a birthday riff on goals and shared experiences

I remember the moment it happened. I was in my second year of university. I had just left the theatre. The play that I saw was an exploration of anger. The performers were clowns. The sensations in my body were unfamiliar. I felt like I had drunk jet fuel. I felt all of my nerve endings prickling with static electricity. My arm hairs were standing up on end

I felt so alive.

I knew then that I wanted more of that. More of that feeling for myself. More of that in the world.

What was it that I was experiencing? I’m not sure. They described it as a clown play. The whole clown thing made a lot of sense to me in a whole lot of ways. I saw how laughing while dying reconnected the dying with each other. I saw how laughter connected the dying with their sense of pleasure, of joy and their own vital energy. I learned this a few years prior. 

This play showed me that deep and heavy laughter not only has psychological and psychological impacts, but spiritual ones as well.

It was then that I vowed that…