Clown Passage of the Day

"By laughing at me, the audience really laughs at themselves, and realizing they have done this gives them sort of a spiritual second wind for going back into the battles of life."
--Emmett Kelly
​
 
"Incongruity, they say, is one of the main ingredients of humor. Maybe it's because everybody can feel superior to me. I honestly don't know."
--Emmett Kelly
​
 
"'Weary Willie' is very real to me. He is a man who has given up. The boat has gone and left him. The cards are stacked against him. He's content to make out with what he's got. He knows he'll go no further."
--Emmett Kelly
​
 
“I don't feel 'funny' inside when I'm this hobo character. I'm a misfit (as Weary Willie). Life is passing me by. Maybe it's Willie's attempt at a little dignity in spite of everything that tickles folks.”
--Emmett Kelly
​
 
"Tobo stood alone in the center of the ring. Despite the raucous sounds in the arcade, there was a sort of silence in the bigtop, magnified by Tobo's sudden stillness. For the first time all day, the clown looked a bit bedraggled. He didn't move for a long time, and did not know Tina watched him from the darkness.

A real smile shined out from the center of his painted one. It seemed as though he was never sad, although a subtle melancholy fell over him whenever a day was done, unlike every other performer, glad the work was over."
Jessica Amanda Salmonson - "The Clown"
​
 
"Fifteen hours a day or longer, Tobo cartwheeled and hopped about the tent, or, between shows, took to the crowded arcade, drumming up interest in the bigtop. He performed simple magic tricks when even kids could do better, delighting everyone with his ineptitude; he twisted skinny balloons into halos and hats, setting them on the heads of tots; he made silly noises with the conglomeration of whistles and horns dangling and clattering about his hobo clown costume; and he spread general joy to as many people as he could reach in a day."
Jessica Amanda Salmonson - "The Clown"
​
 
"Shortly afterwards, the first curious changes began to occur to our portraits. That evening, as we sat together in the library, I noticed a slight but distinct alteration in the planes of Hope's face on the canvas, a pock-like disfigurement of the skin. The texture of her hair had altered, taking on a yellowish sheen, its locks more curled .

This transformation was even more pronounced the following day. The eyes in the painting had developed a squint, as if the canvas had begun to recognize some imbalance within Hope's own gaze. I turned to the portrait of myself. Here, too, a remarkable change was taking place. My face had begun to develop a snout-like nose. The heavy flesh massed around the lips and nostrils, and the eyes were becoming smaller, submerged in the rolls of fat. Even my clothes had changed their texture, the black and white checks of my silk shirt resembling the suit of some bizarre harlequin."
J. G. Ballard - "Cry Hope, Cry Fury!"
​
 
"At midnight I heard music playing from the abandoned nightclub among the dunes at Lagoon West. Each evening the frayed melody had woken me as I slept in my villa above the beach. As it started once again I stepped from the balcony onto the warm sand and walked along the shore. In the darkness the beachcombers stood by the tideline, listening to the music carried toward them on the thermal rollers. My torch lit up the broken bottles and hypodermic vials at their feet. Wearing their dead motley, they waited in the dim air like faded clowns."
J. G. Ballard - "Say Goodbye to the Wind"
​
 
From Lidelsens Vej (The Way of Suffering) by Ernesto Dalgas:
If the fatally ill Pierrot, when the audience summons him, were to wipe the white paint and the red smile off his face and show his face in all its terrible deathly solemnity, then what would the audience say? A virtuous audience would rightly be offended. But on the other hand there comes a time when Pierrot can no longer accomplish his grimaces. Then a little boy shouts, "Look, Pierrot is crying." And a roar goes through the crowd. He is met with applause and waving and shouts of praise for this new and masterly artistic achievement.​
(The internet tells me that Pierrot, as he is most often depicted, is a sad character, in which case this parable makes little sense. However, in Denmark, where cheery revisionism is rampant, he has somehow been transmogrified into a pederastically smiling git, so keep that in mind.)
 
From "Abertackle" by John Cowper Powys:
Ooly-Fooly had been a famous European clown from the age of fifteen to the age of twenty-four. Then something happened to him the details of which, though gossip and scandal have derived much satisfaction from turning the mystery of this something over and over and over and over, have never really been brought to light. Was it a normal love affair? We very likely will never know. Perhaps it was no love affair at all. Perhaps it was something to do with his mentality. Perhaps he suddenly made the discovery that he had gone mad. Perhaps he had discovered to his horror that he had been mad ever since some secret mental shock which he had never revealed.​
 
This is a very Ligottian poem.

Clown
Henri Michaux (trans. Richard Ellmann)

Some day,

Some day, soon maybe,

Some day I will root up the anchor which keeps my ship far from the seas.

With the sort of courage that is needed to be nothing and nothing but nothing, I will let loose what seemed to be indissolubly close to me.

I'll slice it up, I'll turn it over, I'll break it, I'll make it tumble down.

Disgorging at one blow my miserable shame, my miserable combinations and the shackles forged link by link.

Drained of the abscess of being somebody, I will drink again of nourishing space.

By blows of ridicule, of disgraces (what's disgrace?), by exploding apart, by emptiness, by a total dissipation-derision-purgation, I will throw out of me the form that is thought to be so well attached, compounded, coordinated, matched to my associates, and to my fellow-creatures, my so respectable, so respectable fellow-creatures.

Reduced to the humility of catastrophes, to a perfect par level as after an intense fright.

Degraded from my present rank to less than any measure, to the lowest rank that I know any plan-ambition had made me abandon.

Cancelled in pride, cancelled in reputation.

Lost in a place far-off (or even not), without name, without identity.

Clown, destroying in laughter, in grotesqueness, in guffawing, the meaning that contrary to all indications I had developed about my own importance.

I will dive.

Without my purse into the underlying infinite-mind that is open to all,
I too open to a new and incredible dew,
by force of being null
and levelled . . .
and laughable . . .
 
gveranon said:
With the sort of courage that is needed to be nothing and nothing but nothing, I will let loose what seemed to be indissolubly close to me.
Click to expand...

Brilliant. Thanks for that, G. On the strength of your enthusiasm for this artist/writer I have just ordered the following book:

darkness-moves-an-henri-michaux-anthology-1927-1984.jpg


What a great title!
 
Thank you gveranon & Bleak&Icy for pointing out Henri Michaux. I'm actually not sure if it's that good to learn how good his writings are. Now I feel compelled to buy the 3 volumes of his Oeuvres Completes (which contain over 5000 pages of his output)... but those will cost me 300 USD.:eek:

Well I cannot afford them at the moment... but one day... who knows...
 
A noise wakes him up - somebody has set a glass down firmly on the table in front of him. Looking up, he sees a big dark-skinned man in a shabby suit of violet satin walking away across the circle of light. He sways over to an elaborate organ under an awning, sits down at the keys, turns a few knobs, and sets it going. In the light from the console, the Divinity Student can make him out - bald and heavy, baby-faced with black filigree tattooed around his eyes. A sign on the organ lights up, "The Clown Filemon" it says. Little blue and yellow lights wink over the organ pipes and keys, luminous strands of clear syrup draw a web in the air over his head, clinging to rigid silver wires, and translucent tubes, gathered around the console, glow with bubbling, phosphorescent green liquid. With slow and deliberate motions, Filemon begins playing - a mysterious, confidential humming in the pipes - but his eyes remain fixed, watching the Divinity Student. After a few minutes, he makes a quick gesture, as if lifting a glass to his lips, and jerks his head at him.

The Divinity Student looks up, and then picks up the glass in front of him - all right so far?

Filemon nods, and raises his eyebrows.

The Divinity Student empties the glass.

Filemon smiles and goes back to his playing, soft and low, for nighttime.
Michael Cisco - The Divinity Student
​
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipi9pFoIMS0

Balada triste de trompeta
por un pasado que murio
y que llora
y que gime
como llooooooraaaaa

Ah..aH..aH..Ah
Ah..aH..aH..Ah
Ah..aH..aH..Ahhhhaaaayy

Ah..aH..aH..Ah
Ah..aH..aH..Ah
Ah..aH..aH..Ahhhhaaayy

(tambores y trompeta tocando)
(violin tocando)

Con tanto llanto de trompeta
mi corazon desesperado
va llorando
recordando
mi pasaaaadoooo

Ah..aH..aH..Ah
Ah..aH..aH..Ah
Ah..aH..aH..Ahhhhaaayy

Ah..aH..aH..Ah
Ah..aH..aH..Ah
Ah..aH..aH..Ahhhhaaayy

(tambores y trompeta tocando)
(violin tocando)

Balada triste de trompeta
de un corazon
desesperado.
-
 
"There's a kind of zany, grubby, gritty quality about this play that I love. I suppose comedy is really only possible in a badly fallen world."

"What do you mean by that?" Ben said.

"Well, I mean you've got to have imperfection and disaster to make comedy. Why is a great clown like W. C. Fields funny? Because he makes a kind of parody of dignity, and probity, and virtue. He certainly doesn't have any real virtue, and there probably isn't any on earth. But you understand, somehow, through the parody, what it is, real virtue. And that it's only possible in a very wicked world. There can't be any clowns in heaven."

-- J. R. Salamanca, That Summer's Trance

No Clowns in Heaven.
 
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