Offering: September 2024
Clowns, fools & new gods (plus an announcement!)
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On Autumn Equinox this month we’ll be kicking off the winter session of Sunday Meetings, which I’m super excited about. Sunday Meetings are a series of twenty-two virtual get-togethers, focused on the major arcana—according to the sequence in the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot—in which we look at each one with kaleidoscope eyes, from The Fool all the way to The World. (Sunday Meetings are open to paying subscribers only at this point, and more details and links to sign up are below.)
In my commentary for the first round’s meeting on The Fool, I drew on philosopher Jacques Derrida’s idea of a real future, which he describes as “that which is totally unpredictable”—and Dionysus’ arrival to Thebes in The Bacchae, the new god who shakes up an old order. Lately, I’ve been thinking about The Fool in a context of clowning, comedy, and carnival, especially since last week’s Offering on the elements of comedy in the Old Testament’s Job.
Before I read (part of) Nuar Alsadir’s Animal Joy, I thought clowning was all about getting laughs. It is that—and laughter is serious business, “one of the essential forms of truth concerning the world as a whole” according to theorist Mikhail Bakhtin—but it’s more than that, too.
As playwright and actor Carolyn Ratteray has said, “the journey of clown is an invitation into the present moment, into being and that’s it…and the logic that governs that being is very different from the logic that governs this world.” Favoring instinct and presence over social niceties and norms, clowns have the potential to expose constructs that we tend not to question. Like the truth-telling fool of Shakespeare’s King Lear.
Derrida was interested in exposing constructs that we tend not to question, as well. In an interview for a documentary about his life and work, he responds to a question about the origins of deconstruction—his complex and ever-evolving philosophical approach—and begins by exposing the “completely artificial character” of the situation they’re in. They’re not having an organic dialogue, they’re having a conversation in the built context of documentary film-making.
There are lights, make-up, and Derrida’s wearing an outfit he admits he would never be wearing at home where they’re filming, if it weren’t for the cameras. Simply by pointing to all of these factors he’s begun replying to the question about deconstruction, “because one of the gestures of deconstruction is to not naturalize what isn’t natural. To not assume that what is conditioned by history, institutions, or society is natural.” So it seems to me that deconstruction and clowning and fools may have something in common.
I became interested in clowning because of Animal Joy, and have been thinking about it again these past weeks. From what I’ve since gathered, the art of clowning is a lot to do with getting out from social expectations, truly taking in what’s happening around you, and responding in an instinctual way. Which as it turns out, can be pretty funny. (The first few minutes of this clip of theater arts professor Kato Buss’ Tedx Talk is a good example of this, I think.)
And it’s funny because it reveals the “cover-up operation1” so many of us live underneath, much of the time without knowing the extent to which we live our lives pandering, presenting, and putting on shows. When Kato Buss steps on the stage, he stands quietly in awe of the crowd, visibly moved by the experience rather than launching straight into the typical “How’s everybody doing tonight?!” By not doing what’s expected of him, he creates tension by illuminating an expectation, and refusing to meet it.
Rather than show up how she thinks she’s supposed to, or according to a clever idea of what will likely be funny, a clown makes herself vulnerable by seeing what happens and responding in an instinctual, uncontrived way. “It’s subversive not to hide behind a prototype, to take up space, to resist behaving for the comfort of others. To act according to instinct,” writes Alsadir. Because, as her instructor Christopher Bayes said, “It’s easier for other people if you’re less.”
In his paper on theorist Mikhail Bakhtin and carnival, scholar Ben Taylor notes that carnival imagery exposed “the supposed naturalness of the social order as artificial.” Which I think is part of what great clowns can do, too. In the Offering last week, I wrote about Job—who is blameless in God’s eyes—as somewhat clown-like.
Job is this exaggerated embodiment of a person who, as his world crumbles around him, becomes obsessed with exclaiming his innocence. He strikes me as being wholeheartedly real, and in doing so reveals all these constructs; the fixation on innocence and guilt, the collective impatience with grievers, the inflated sense of responsibility for our fates (if I am good, all will be good).
The tensions Job’s character illuminates—between both the honestly mourning self and its social world, and the constructs revealed in that tension—are sort of funny to me because I can relate. I’ve definitely stood still in flaming piles of wreckage thinking complete guilt or pure innocence were my only two options, either self-flagellating to an excessive degree or refusing self-confrontation entirely. Or with that puffed up sense of self one can have when in pain, needing to know what I did wrong to make bad things happen. Or repeating myself again and again and again and again and again and again and again, because I felt rushed or unheard.
In his preoccupation with asserting moral purity Job reveals the folly in that. Because he’s so desperate to prove that he’s innocent, it seems impossible for him to actually accept, attend, and respond to what’s happened. And in displaying his logic of total personal responsibility for all that’s occurred—constantly asserting that his behavior doesn’t line up with his fate—Job caricatures how easy it is to buy so fully into the power of the individual will, that we forget the big stuff working through us.
I’m stopping a little bit short this week, but thank you so much for reading & please do come again!
Hi, hitting the heart button is a great & free way to support these Offerings. <3
To listen to me read this Offering aloud, click here.