Sideshow Passage of the Day

"Horty asked, timidly, 'Are you with a circus?'

'Carny,' said Havana.

Zena smiled at his expression. It made his head swim. 'That's a carnival. You know. Does your hand hurt?'

'Not much.'

'That kills me,' Havana exploded. 'Y'oughta see it.' He drew his right hand across his left fingers and made a motion like crumbling crackers. 'Man.'

'We'll get that fixed up. What are we going to call you?' asked Bunny.

'Let's figure out what he's going to do first.' said Havana. 'We got to make the Maneater happy.'

'About those ants,' said Bunny, 'would you eat slugs and grasshoppers, and that?' She asked him straight out, and this time she did not giggle.

'No!' said Horty, simultaneously with Havana's 'I already asked him that. That's out, Bunny. The Maneater don't like to use a geek anyway.'

Regretfully, Bunny said, 'No carny ever had a midge that would geek. It would be a card.'

'What's a geek?' asked Horty.

'He wants to know what's a geek.'

'Nothing very nice,' said Zena. 'It's a man who eats all sorts of nasty things, and bites the heads off live chickens and rabbits.'

Horty said, 'I don't think I'd like doing that,' so soberly that the three midgets burst into a shrill explosion of laughter. Horty looked at them all, one by one, and sensed that they laughed with, not at him, and so he laughed too. Again he felt that inward surge of warmth. These folk made everything so easy. They seemed to understand that he could be a little different from other folks, and it was all right. Havana had apparently told them all about him, and they were eager to help."
Theodore Sturgeon - The Dreaming Jewels
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"Ten feet from me the sand glittered with silver light, a dissolving mirror leaking into the river. A gondola of the ferris wheel lay in the shallow water among the Edwardian pillars. Dislodged by the night's storm, a section of Stark's amusement pier had collapsed into the river, carrying part of the merry-go-round with it. A small winged horse lay among the debris on the wet beach.

I remembered my dream and the bodies of the frantic birds colliding above the fairground as they scrambled around me in the whirling air. Soon after dawn the river had disgorged this antique Pegasus onto the same beach where I had swum ashore. I approached the horse and pulled it onto the bank. The fresh paint silvered my hands, leaving a speckled trail across the sand.

As I wiped the paint onto the grass, the pelicans watched me from the flower beds. The same vivid light flared from their plumage. The foliage of the willows and ornamental firs seemed to have been retouched by a psychedelic gardener with a taste for garish colours. A magpie swooped across the overlit lawn, feathers brilliant as a macaw's."
J. G. Ballard - The Unlimited Dream Company
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"They reached the carnival in the dark part of the morning, when the distant hills had just begun to separate themselves from the paling sky.

To Horty it was all thrilling and mysterious. Not only had he met these people, but there was also the excitement and mystery ahead, and the way of starting it, the game he must play, the lines he must never forget. And now, at dawn, the carnival itself. The wide dim street, paved with wood shavings, seemed faintly luminous between the rows of stands and bally-platforms. Here a dark neon tube made ghosts of random light rays from the growing dawn; there one of the rides stretched hungry arms upward in bony silhouette. There were sounds, sleepy, restless, alien sounds; and the place smelled of damp earth, popcorn, perspiration, and sweet exotic manures."
Theodore Sturgeon - The Dreaming Jewels
​
 
"Carnival life plodded steadily along, season holding the tail of the season before. The years held three things for Horty. They were - belonging, Zena, and a light with a shadow.

After the Maneater fixed up his - 'her' - hand, and the pink scar tissue came in, the new midget was accepted. Perhaps it was the radiation of willingness, the delighted, earnest desire to fit in and to be of real value that did it, and perhaps it was a quirk or a carelessness on the Maneater's part, but Horty stayed.

In the carnival the pinheads and the roustabouts, the barkers and their shills, the dancers and fireaters and snake-men and ride mechanics, the layout and advance men, had something in common which transcended color and sex and racial and age differences. They were carny, all of them, interested in gathering their tips and turning them - which is carnivalese for collecting a crowd, and persuading it to file past the ticket-taker - for this, and for this alone, they worked. And Horty was a part of it.

Horty's voice was a part of Zena's in their act, which followed Bets and Bertha, another sister team with a total poundage in the seven hundreds. Billed as The Little Sisters, Zena and Kiddo came on with a hilarious burlesque of the preceding act, and then faded to one of their own, a clever song-and-dance routine which ended in a bewildering vocal - a harmonizing yodel. Kiddo's voice was clear and true, and blended like keys on an organ with Zena's full contralto. They were also worked in the Kiddie's Village, a miniature town with its own fire station, city hall, and restaurants, all child-size; adults not admitted. Kiddo served weak tea and cookies to the round-eyed, freckle-faced moppets at the country fairs, and felt part of their wonder and part of their belief in this magic town. Part of... part of... it was a deep-down thrilling theme to everything that Kiddo did; Kiddo was part of Horty, and Horty was part of the world, for the first time in his life."
​
Theodore Sturgeon - The Dreaming Jewels
​
 
"The seasons passed and the carnival grew. The Maneater was still everywhere in it, flogging the roustabouts and the animal men, the daredevils and the drivers, with his weapon - his contempt, which he carried about openly like a naked sword.

The carnival grew - larger. Bunny and Havana grew - older, and so did Zena, in subtle ways. But Horty did not grow at all.

He - she - was a fixture now, with a clear soprano voice and black gloves. He passed with the Maneater, who withheld his contempt in saying, 'Good Morning' - a high favor - and who had little else to say. But Horty-Kiddo was loved by the rest, in the earnest, slap-dash way peculiar to carnies.

The show was a flat-car rig now, with press agents and sky-sweeping searclights, a dance pavilion and complicated, epicyclic rides. A national magazine had run a long picture story on the outfit, with emphasis on its 'Strange People.' ('Freak Show' being an unpopular phrase.) There was a press office now, and there were managers, and annual re-bookings from big organizations. There were public address systems for the bally-platforms, and newer - not new, but newer - trailers for the personnel.

The Maneater had long since abandoned his mind-reading act, and, increasingly, was a presence only to those working on the lot. In the magazine stories, he was a 'partner,' if mentioned at all. He was seldom interviewed and never photographed. He spent his working hours with his staff, and stalking about the grounds, and his free time with his books and his rolling laboratory and his 'Strange People.' There were stories of his being found in the dark hours of the morning standing in the breathing blackness with his hands behind him and his gaunt shoulders stooped, staring at Gogol in his tank, or peering over the two-headed snake or the hairless rabbit. Watchmen and animal men had learned to keep away from him at such times; they withdrew silently, shaking their heads, and left him alone."
Theodore Sturgeon - The Dreaming Jewels
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"Human affairs refuse to be simple... human goals refuse to be clear. Zena's task was a dedication, yet her aims were speckled and splotched with surmise and ignorance, and the burden was heavy...

The rain drove viciously against the trailer in one morning's dark hours, and there was an October chill in the August air. The rain spattered and hissed like the churning turmoil she sensed so often in the Maneater's mind. Around her was the carnival. It was around her memories, too, for more years than she liked to count. The carnival was a world, a good world, but it exacted a bitter payment for giving her a place to belong. The very fact that she belonged meant a stream of goggling eyes and pointing fingers: You're different. You're different.

Freak!"
Theodore Sturgeon - The Dreaming Jewels
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"I crossed the road and approached the untended ticket kiosk of the amusement pier. The freshly painted gondolas of the ferris wheel, the unicorns and winged horses of the miniature carousel gleamed hopefully in the afternoon light, but I guessed that the only people who came to this dilapidated funfair were a few midnight couples.

Behind the kiosk were the almost empty cages of a modest zoo. Two threadbare vultures sat in their hutch, ignoring a dead rabbit on the floor, dreams of the Andes lost behind their sealed eyes. A marmoset slept on his shelf, and an elderly chimpanzee endlessly groomed himself, sensitive fingernails searching his navel as if trying to pick the combination of this umbilical lock, ever hopeful internal emigré."
J. G. Ballard - The Unlimited Dream Company
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“Sideshow” by Mark Doty (b. 1953)

The goat without ears coughs
softly. Canvas flaps ripple,
starred banners; this is the tent
of animals partial or possessed
of extra parts: the four-legged hen,
the ram sprouting a bouquet
of horns. The ewe drags a hooved bundle
on the dirty straw, and in a corner
the most troubling gaze,
a face that looks up as if
through a foot of lake water:
WORLD’S SMALLEST HORSE, B. 1976,
D. 1980. The paint on the rough sign
bleeds. And on the tent flap
someone painted him galloping,
shorter than daisies, on a meadow
impossibly green, mountains stunned
by rain. He never galloped;
the crooked little legs held him
a foot above the dirt he studied
day after day and now cannot
even enter. Cotton batting pushes
the iridescent glass eyes slightly askew,
his mouth sewn up into that crooked
but somehow forgiving smile, as if
even after suffering the lifetime
of a small horse it is all right
to remain on earth with his blind,
satisfied stare—lone star of squalor
in the miserable tent, my teacher.
 
For the benefit of Mr. Kite
There will be a show tonight on trampoline
The Hendersons will all be there
Late of Pablo Fanques Fair - what a scene
Over men and horses hoops and garters
Lastly through a hogshead of real fire
In this way Mr. K. will challenge the world

The celebrated Mr. K.
Performs his feat on Saturday at Bishopsgate
The Hendersons will dance and sing
As Mr. Kite flies through the ring - don't be late
Messers K. and H. assure the public
Their production will be second to none
And of course Henry the Horse dances the waltz

The band begins at ten to six
When Mr. K. performs his tricks without a sound
And Mr. H. will demonstrate
Ten somersaults he'll undertake on solid ground
Having been some days in preparation
A splendid time is guaranteed for all
And tonight Mr. Kite is topping the bill
The Beatles - "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" (Lyrics by John Lennon)
​
 
The knowledge of our eventual demise presented two options: A) find comfort in life as a transitory and purposeless sideshow; or B) find comfort in death as a doorway to a far richer and fulfilling state of being.

We went with B. And we called it religion.

-- The Daily Show with John Stewart presents Earth (The Book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race
 
From The Green Round (1933), by Arthur Machen

"Some light, I think, is thrown on the problem by the strange adventure of Mr Smith of Wimbledon, as I have called him; the gentleman who, paying a chance visit to his favourite seaside town found to his horror and indignation the Green Round, the peaceful retreat on the sand dunes, turned into a sort of 'Fun City', vile with the dissonant jargon of the jazz band struggling against the shriek and clangour of roundabouts, jigging with dancers of uncouth measures, a centre of vulgar and raucous merriment."
 
The Merry-Go-World Or Begat By Chance And The Wonder Horse Trigger (1988-1992), by Edward Kienholz

the_merry-go-world_or_begat_by_chance_and_the_wonder_horse_trigger_frontside_1988_1992.jpg
 
From Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) by Ray Bradbury

In the meadow, the tents, the carnival waited. Waited for someone, anyone to wade along the grassy turf. The great tents filled like bellows. They softly issued forth exhalations of air that smelled like ancient yellow beasts.

But only the moon looked in at the hollow dark, the deep caverns. Outside, night beasts hung in midgallop on a carousel. Beyond lay fathoms of Mirror Maze which housed a multifold series of empty vanities one wave on another, still, serene, silvered with age, white with time. Any shadow, at the entrance, might stir reverberations the color of fright, unravel deep-buried moons.

If a man stood there would he see himself unfolded away a billion times to eternity? Would a billion images look back, each face and the face after and the face after that old, older, oldest? Would he find himself lost in a fine dust away off deep down there, not fifty but sixty, not sixty but seventy, not seventy but eighty, ninety, ninety-nine years old?

The maze did not ask.

The maze did not tell.

It simply stood and waited like a great arctic floe.
 
Two more sideshow sculptures from the eighties:

Bruce Nauman, Hanging carousel (george skins a fox), 1988
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nauman28.jpg

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Martin Erik Andersen, Feststang, 1989
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