Ron Campbell's Blog

The Wrestler and the Sensei.

2011-12-28T03:59:00.000-08:00

Mirrorly a Clown, Reporting the Facts.

Osaka

A place is its people and people are their stories and there are two stories that have come to remind me the most about my time in the sister city of San Francisco; Osaka, Japan.

Two people whose stories are so different and yet the same.

Both are artists, gifted practitioners of completely different art forms.

Both lead double lives, like super heroes with their alter egos.

Both utilizing the Mask of Satori.

There is the mask you put on and the mask you take off.

There is the mask that conceals and the mask that reveals.

There is the mask that frees the wearer and the mask that holds him in.

Two examples.

Two stories.

The Wrestler

It is a place like no other.

An ex-pat American told me that its existence made life for him just a little sweeter on this side of the world.

Down a neon clad alley in the formerly red lit Shinsobashi district, its facade adorned with sculptures of Osaka's own clown-like gods of commerce and food- (which will later be depicted by wrestlers only to be thrown around the ring like 200 pound rag dolls) is a comedy/wrestling/party/free-for-all that runs about three hours with an intermission five nights a week.

There are the things you might expect from such an entertainment.

There is a clueless referee.

There are the good guys.

(There is a King who I was rooting for but he got knocked out with a sleeper hold early and spent the next few matches comatose in the center of the ring.)

There are the bad guys.

(Who spit and for whom no body part is off limits.)

There are flying bodies.

There are ringsider girls.

Plus there are:

Wrestling nurses.

Contortionist wrestlers.

Nurses wrestling contortionists.

Vain Kabuki heroes.

Tattooed muscle-bound monsters.

School girls scissor kicking in thigh high stockings and patent leather shoes.

The audience is clearly in on the joke and eats up every face slap, arm break and gravity defying swan dive that ends in a thunderous face plant.

They are comprised of the most varied group I have seen in Japan: salarymen and old ladies and hipsters and kids and aficionados and couples out on dates.

Before Every Moment There Is A Moment.

Presiding above all the mayhem is one wrestler, mike in hand, ready to enter the fray at a moments notice and clearly the queen of this wild kingdom of kip rolls and cheap shots. Though my Japanese is nowhere near good enough to pick up what she is saying it is clear from the audience reaction that she is hilarious.

She does it all.

She is bantering from atop a turnbuckle, then flings the mike to the ref and flings herself into the ring. Three punching, kicking, biting, flipping minutes later she is atop the opposite turnbuckle, mike in hand, pumping out the comedy commentary.

Clearly an audience favorite, she does all this under a brightly colored mask.

Whale.
But don't worry. It's a really small piece. He probably didn't even feel it.

A couple nights later I met her at her "day job" where she works as the omote or "outside the bar" waitress at a sushi bar just down the street from the hotel that is putting up the cast and crew of Kooza.

She is demure.

Respectful.

Quietly efficient.

She brings me the ice cold Asahi that compliments the ootoro, hamachi and unagi nagiri so perfectly.

She is not wearing a mask.

She barely wears a smile.

She has one eye that is sunken and her face, though not unpleasant, is oddly deformed.

I complimented her on her amazing work in the ring.

She had seen Kooza and complimented me on my work in the big top.

I asked if I could take her picture.

She declined.

But then she remembered that she might have her wrestling mask in her purse in which case it would be okay. After rummaging around in her purse briefly she reported that she did not have it so a picture was "not possible".

I said "No problem."

She said "No problemo."

And smiled.

The Sensei.

It's another place like no other.

Down a grey alley in the Awaza district of Osaka remarkable only in its unremarkability, on the second floor of a concrete building with metal crank up doors is The Meishinkan Dojo.

Unlike many of the dojos, practice halls, studios and the like that Iaido is practiced in, Meishinkan Dojo was designed exclusively for Iaido.

And more specifically, Muso Jikiden Eishen Ryu. The well known (in Iaido circles) picture of the armor of Hiyashizaki Jinsuke Minamoto no Shigenobu that adorned the shomen or shrine at the front of the room was evidence of that. Further evidence was in the stains of sweat on the long, toil-polished floorboards.

Through an ex-pat New Zealander named Darryl Lawrence I was invited to train here during my time in Osaka under Hattori Sensei, who was described to me as serious, detailed and above all, practical.

I had no idea.

Training was on Friday nights which amazingly I had off from the circus though I did have a matinee that day.

For my first time at this new dojo I travelled from circus tent to dojo by bicycle, arrived early enough to help the mama-san open the windows she couldn't reach without the aid of a stick, put on my gear and awaited the Sensei and his other students.

They trickled in, grunted cordially in my direction and went about the waza of changing into keikogi, obi and hakama. These were older gentlemen, distinguished. There were flecks of grey in their black manes and the edges of their keikoji showed the frayed evidence of a lifetime in the martial arts.

Hattori Sensei arrived.

I was told he came directly from work.

He looked it.

Smart suit, tie.

(I later found out he was a lawyer.)

He was thirty-five.

He smiled, we exchanged rudimentary greetings, I told him I had just come from Tokyo where I had been studying with Kobara Sensei and of course Esaka Sensei. I think his eyebrows raised a little at the mention of Esaka Sensei. He had heard of Esaka dojo and was glad to take me on as a student for as long as I was in Osaka.

(Amazing how having studied with a 10th Dan can open some doors.)

He quickly changed into his crisply pressed hakama, lit some candles on the shomen, and with three claps- just like back home at Nishi Kaigan in Berkeley- we bowed in and class began.

Same Same

We started with Tata uchi nokarai, working in pairs using bokken (wooden swords) in a series of waza designed to give the practitioner a sense of real contact with a real opponent.

I think they are also designed to give you a real sense of real holy shitness.

My first partner turned out to be the mama-san, who had quickly changed into Iaido gear and turned out to be scarily good.

The thing with Tata uchi nokarai is that even though your mind may know which direction the cut is coming from, your body has to respond with the right timing to intercept the cut with a cut of your own or you are just relying on your partner to stop himself.

The way these guys were going at each other I didn't hold a lot of faith in that ever happening. As we changed partners around the room I had visions of riding a gurney down some hallway of a Japanese hospital, my head cracked open and blood coming out of my ears.

An hour later I was still alive, drenched in sweat and probably with a deeper appreciation of what they call same, which means something like the combination of push and pressure and inexorable.

We put the bokken away and got our swords. I noticed Hattori Sensei's first.

A shinken.

A "live blade".

When it was out the very air in the room changed.

There is the story of the sword that is so sharp that when it is placed with the edge facing upstream in a small brook, it will cut in half a leaf traveling downstream. Then there is the sword that is sharper. More imbued. When placed in that same stream, the same leaf will simply avoid it and go around.

I think Hattori Sensei's is in the second category.

It had no hi or groove along its length, what many misidentify as a "blood gutter" but actually creates a whoosh especially on the arcing downward cut called Kiriroshi.

Hattori Sensei didn't need it.

His cuts whooshed anyway.

All of them.

I have watched a lot of people do Iaido.

I have watched very intently.

I have watched as hard as I know how.

Yet I have never watched anyone summon an imaginary opponent to the room so completely, see him so clearly and after a charged ballet between human bone and steel see that same imaginary opponent so thoroughly dead as when I watched Hattori Sensei demonstrate Mae, the first waza in the Seiza series that first time.

And his face?

A mask.

A mask capable of horrendous violence, but a mask just the same.

I became a "guest" member of Mieshinkan Dojo and was helping the mama-san open windows every Friday night.

The Mask You Put On Or The Mask You Take Off.

Three months went by in a flash.

I got to know Hattori Sensei and his family, his lovely wife and charming daughter.

(When they came to see Kooza I got his daughter onstage with our ballerina during the pre-show and gave them a backstage tour.)

It was nice to see him as the happy young family man, always picked up at the dojo by his wife and daughter, a successful guy with a great disposition.

Or was this just another mask, perfectly calibrated to hide the monster of composed violence underneath?

Hattori Sensei doing Tata Uchi Nokarai with Shinken. (live blades)
To see the video click here.

Painting

Two things that I shall take from my time at Meishinkan Dojo.

Both practical.

First a lesson.

Sensei was watching me do some waza, I don't remember which, it probably doesn't matter.

Hattori Sensei has little English so most of the teaching is done through example and osmosis.

He stopped me and said "This, you." and pointed to a notice on the bulletin board.

It was an announcement of something, in kanji, typed out on a page of paper. "This, Iaido."

He pointed to the large carving of the flowing kanji that spells out Meishinkan in dark grooves that perfectly represented the movements of a brush in the hands of a skilled calligrapher.

"Don't type. Paint."

And finally, on my last night, after a dinner with Sensei and all the students, Sensei surprised me with a final gift.

We had been doing the small gift roundelay since that first night but this was different.

Inside a nami patterned bag with loops of bone to cinch it closed was a box. In the box was an inkan, the chop of my name and a bright red stamp pad.

Sensei had carved it himself.

The Japanese use chop to make official their most important documents. I recently used the one Hattori Sensei carved for me on my latest contract with Cirque.

Sometime later I realized he had probably carved the flowing kanji of the sign in the dojo.

At the time he didn't tell me.

I suppose he preferred to keep his mask on.

Kabukified!

2011-12-28T03:13:00.000-08:00

1794: Sharaku's famous depiction of actor Otani Oniji as Yakko Edobei, a villainous rogue who plots to steal money from the servant Ippei. Sharaku is known as a mysterious Ukiyoe master for he was only active for 10 months and his date of birth or when he died still remains unknown.

2011: Marie Kumamoto's version of me as the hair brained and harried House Manager in Kooza.

2011: Photo by Miron Rafajlovic.

Of Crickets, Flies, The Ghost of Oiwa and the Unexpected

2011-07-26T08:22:00.000-07:00

Oiwa

It was night.

In a time before the intrusion of electricity on the narrow streets that still crisscross haphazardly around Yotsuya Temple in Edo era Tokyo.

Only the waxy glow of lanterns lit the narrow alleyway that led to the home of Iemon, a samurai whom the fates had blessed with the fatal combination of being both luckless and hot tempered.

Iemon has fallen in love with a beautiful girl, as beautiful as the goddess she had been named after, with a face as round and pale as the moon reflected upon a pond.

This was Oiwa.

Earlier in the evening Iemon had asked her father for her hand. The request was flatly refused. Oiwa's father had laughed at Iemon, calling the low born samurai an inconsequential ronin, unworthy of Oiwa in every way. Oiwa's father's friends had joined in the laughter and the incident was quickly brushed under the tatami.

And the lanterns flickered deep into the night.

But now it is many jars of sake later and Oiwa's father is making his way homeward when a figure congeals from the inky shadows, a heaving silhouette, the brushstrokes of his top knot in disarray against the oily lamplight.

"I ask you again for the hand of Oiwa."

Oiwa's father's snort is guttural, dismissive.

"Iemon. You again. Have you not seen the beauty of Oiwa? How could you even hope for my consent when you are nothing but an umbrella mender?"

Iemon's reply is a whisper of steel.

A glint in the lamplight later and Oiwa's father is halved, gurgling briefly from both sides of his bisected throat and then, from the darkness, there is silence.

Thus begins the ghost story of Yotsuya Kaidan.

The tale of Oiwa.

Before it is over Iemon will have disposed of the father's body, married Oiwa, become enamored of a rich woman, poisoned Oiwa, killed his trusted servant, nailed them both to a door and pushed them down the river only to be haunted by the disfigured face of Oiwa as it rises from the lanterns and lashing out at it, he adds the rich woman to his list of victims. It is then that Oiwa finds her true calling as tormentor and eventually draws Iemon to his death one night in the black expanse at the edge of a jagged cliff, far beyond the lanterns' glow.

In my search for the mask of satori this is a cliff I wanted to dangle my toes over the edge of.

I am not alone.

No less than 35 movies have been made depicting the horrors that became of Iemon and Oiwa. Tatsuya Nakadai lent his haunted expression to the tale in 1959. To this day Japanese horror filmmakers visit and pay homage to the shrine of Oiwa to avoid the inevitable curse of delays and even serious injury that befall any production company that does not pay its respects before beginning filming.

Nakadai in Gates of Hell.

The kabuki play Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan is another retelling of the story of Oiwa. In it there is a quick change device called the Toita gaeshi 戸板返しallowing the same actor to play both Oiwa and the dead servant Iemon has killed and nailed to the door with her.

Toita Gaeshi.

So in creating a mask whereby one actor could play both Oiwa and Iemon at the same time I tried to borrow that principle.

So my mask for Oiwa the Beauty is also the mask of Iemon's Avarice and ultimately the mask of what Oiwa would become.

Oiwa and Iemon in the Mirror

In Praise of Sorrows

Woven into all of these stories is a sadness the depths of which I had never witnessed before coming here.

There seems to be a kind of baseline thrum, a mean high tide line as it were, in which sadness rests firmly as the dominant chord.

Sadness as the norm.

Which makes a kind of sense.

For joy is, and must always be, the aberration.

Humor, laughter, excitement all thrive on the same fundamental ingredient: the unexpected.

Rob them of this crucial element and they fade back into the murk of the everyday.

Yet it is this grey tone of sadness that creates the necessary contrast to see all the many joys life has to offer.

Sadness is expectable.

Fun lives in the surprises.

His Name Is Norm.

Proud Tailbone

The understanding of this was illustrated most vividly in a recent workshop I gave on The Search for the Mask of Satori to a Japanese group called The New Expressionists. (More pics and vids here.)

Mind you, this was a joyful night. Aided by my many masks from Japan and Bali, Italy and France plus the talent of fellow clown Sean Kempton and the quick translation work of the wonderful Ryoko Ohtaki, the workshop was filled with laughs, some interesting what I call Juxtaposes and all forms of non-verbal communication. I think I may even have picked up a whole new dialect of body language in the process.

Contempt Plate

Bawdy Parts

The workshop was held in Taki San, our Kooza receptionist's hand made "One Kitchen" located deep in the tangled streets of Yotsuya, a short walk from Oiwa's shrine. (and former home.)

But back to Sadness.

In one particular exercise, which I have done with everything from seasoned professionals to inmates at a maximum security lock up for the criminally insane, involves half the group writing the names of various body parts on slips of paper while the other half writes emotions. I'm purposefully vague in my instructions, quickly saying "Happy, sad, angry or afraid, you know, something like that."

I usually get some interesting ones to work with especially when coupled with the body parts and people enjoy watching their fellow participants struggle with something like "Proud Tailbone" guy with a "Dangerous Chin."

But perhaps unsurprisingly given the underpinnings of the culture, of the fifteen or so emotion cards the Japanese participants had jotted down, nine of them were sadness.

And perhaps this is another form of protection, a lantern light at the edge of the abyss.

For sadness gives joy a place to arrive from.

Hand Sandwich.

Amber Waves of Disdain

Meanwhile I'm performing ten shows a week.

I am happy to report I am no longer killing a cricket.

In North America it made perfect sense (and got laughs) to kill (squash, mangle, smear, eat, snort, fall on, slip on, dance on, have tea with etc.) a cricket at the end of our mad cannon chase through the audience that culminates our 1st clown act in Kooza.

Alone on stage and keeping a wary eye on the cue light that signals me that the high wire contraption has successfully been put up during our high jinks, I would squash an imaginary if recalcitrant cricket to glean a couple laughs before exiting.

In Japan, where crickets are revered in haiku and kept as good luck charms by the elderly that did not fly.

It didn't even hop.

For weeks I could feel waves of disdain cross the footlights.

Finally I switched it to a fly. Flies apparently do not afford the same respect as the vaunted cricket.

And the warm, human, unexpected clown-in-trouble moments came back.

Sorting my yikes and disyikes.

Musashi and the Clown

Recently I've been catching the fly (initially) with my fingers like hashi (chopsticks) in a nod to the tale of Miyamoto Musashi dissuading some bandits at a roadside inn from thinking his disheveled appearance in any way reflected his zanshin (readiness/awareness) nor his skill.

While the bandits were planning what angle they would approach to rob him, he casually plucked out of the air and with lightening quickness the 3 flies that had been circling his bowl and laid them stunned but alive on the table side and continued his meal.

Maybe not the entire circus crowd under the big top gets the reference but enough do to get that little flash in the darkness.

The Unexpected.

Kooza pictures by Stephan M. Landry.
Workshop pictures by Masaki Tokutomi.

Fujisan

2011-07-26T04:06:00.000-07:00

On a recent time off from the Circus I climbed Mt. Fuji.

I shall never see the beginning of a Toho film again in the same way.

Or any of Hokusai's hundred views.

I shall always wave my finger at the nipple of those twin paraboli and say:

"See there? At the very top? Right there?

I've been there."

Satori is Manditori

Actually, the thing about climbing Mt. Fuji is that I pretty much hated it while I was doing it but now have nothing but great feelings about the whole experience.

There were times going up when I was just thinking in chunks of eight steps. Eight more steps. Okay. Eight more.

People were throwing up from exhaustion and altitude sickness to the left and right of me at points. If course this is Japan so they were throwing up in bags that they would then carry to the top of the mountain and back down with them. Some had mountain gear so painfully florescent it competed with the greenish pallor of their oxygen deprived faces. Many huffed from canisters as they squatted slack limbed in the volcanic gravel like taggers inhaling paint fumes in a New York City subway tunnel.

I just got competitive. Eight more steps. Just eight more steps and I'll pass that family of four up ahead.

Climbing down?

Worse.

This is not a respectable descent.

This is falling.

With gravel in your boots.

This is dirt and lava dust and a barely controlled death slide.

I came up what is called the ancient pilgrims route.

The Subashiri Trail.

I went down the poop chute.

Mountain hut my mountain ass.

An exact replica of Mt. Fuji on Mt. Fuji.

The thing is, seconds, literally seconds after getting down, my legs alternating between spastic and rubbery, I wanted to do it again.

It usually takes a little longer for hardship to gleam in retrospect but with Fujisan it took mere seconds.

Summit

The next day, still cursing the ascent of every subway stair I made a pilgrimage myself to Tozen-ji temple in Shinagawa.

(This is not far from Sengakuji temple, where the 47 Ronin brought, as their final avenge as it says in the pamphlet, the head of Lord Kira Kozuke-no-Suke Yoshinaka to show to the grave of their beloved Lord Asano and then turned themselves in to the Shogun and received their orders to commit seppuku a year later, which they did, their 47 bodies nestled under the smoldering incense there to this day.)

Accidental Gauguin

I was at Tozen-ji for another reason.

For it was here in 1859 that the British Legation had their headquarters at what was deemed a suitable distance from the Imperial Palace.

Accidental Jasper Johns at Tozen-ji.

The British Commander, one Rutherford Alcock, decided to take the weekend off and climb to the summit of Mt. Fuji.

When the Japanese Royal Guard got news of this affront they attacked Tozen-ji and killed pretty much everybody.

One of the only survivors was Alcock himself, who hid in a bathtub!

The joke is on the leader of the Royal Guard, who, if he had climbed Fujisan himself, would have known that after climbing that grey lava monster the first place you want to be is in a nice. warm. bath.

I climbed your mountain. You know where I'll be.

Of Masks and Macaques and Swords and Noses

2011-05-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

On a recent week off from the circus I took the opportunity to go to Bali, rent a scooter and bop around the villages of Ubud, Mas and the Padangtegal Sacred Monkey Forest.

(Mandala Wisata Wenara Wana)

Mas Mask Mecca.

I also used the time to ramp up my Iaido training since I would be testing for shodan upon my return. Though this has the distinct quality of something the Japanese call Tsukeyakiba. (literally: added tempered edge)

The hamon of the Japanese sword is the temper line, the pattern of the hardened, martensite steel as it shows on the side of the blade including the transition zone habuchi to the softer pearlite steel.

The sword maker, who is also an ordained Shinto priest in most cases, can manipulate the appearance of the hamon as an artistic expression.

Waves, clouds, mountains, even sunrises can be depicted along the length of this deadly tool depending on the skill of these holy artisans.

Tsukeyakiba refers to the modern practice of adding a fake hamon using chemicals or polishing techniques without actual tempering. It has become a metaphor for last minute study that is of no real long term benefit. In other words you can't cram for your Iaido test.

A blister won't help me.

A callous might.

Sieza before Hidari.

The Town of Mas(ks)

Mas is the town dedicated to mask carving and I was able to meet the top carvers in the country with ease. Unlike Japan where I was only able to meet with the artist after a series of introductions, lunch meetings and an email trail yards of scrolling long, in Bali I just knocked on the door.

Every place is really it's people and Bali is filled with happy, smiling, sloooow moving, spiritual ones.

The women have skin the color of polished teak, eyes like I imagine Mata Hari's must have been (Is smoldering a color?) and teeth like Louis Armstrong.

The men are all named either Wayan or Ida and all apparently own taxis.

Beware of women with knives.

If you want to teach someone how to kick back show them a Balinese person.

They have basically turned lounging into an art form.

They have refined their reclining skills to a very high level.

It's like their ancestors did nothing but build temples for thousands of years and now their just resting for the next couple thou.

Oddly, I found that though they are heavily reliant on tourist rupi, money takes a backseat to... Wait for it... Stories.

They seemed to love to talk and if you can tell a story they open their doors. Literally.

After sharing mine with a restaurant owner (and of course taxi driver) named (unusually) Royan, he took me to see his father, a Brahman artist at his temple/home to tell it again.

There seemed to be no ulterior motive but to laugh!

(I was probably the source of some amusement for the locals at the Villa Sonia who I'm sure wondered who that crazy farang tourist is who gets up at dawn every morning and swings a sword around on his veranda.)

And the masks.

I bought 13 of them from four different artists.

Masks carved by I.B. Sutarja

Masks carved by Wayan Dawig.

Unfinished Masks carved by Ida Bagus Anom Suryawan

Finding Myself (wanting)

Bali is a place people come to find themselves.

The same is true for me.

Apparently I am an ugly, ugly American.

I like my air conditioned, my drinks brimming with ice (a luke warm pina colada does not cut it) and my prices exactly what it says on the sign.

Haggling, though de rigeur here, is somehow embarrassing for me, especially when it is for something- say a hand carved, one of a kind mask, a piece of art, of cultural history and a valuable tool for my future work- that I would gladly pay a hundred dollars for but found myself threatening to leave the store if the price didn't come down from the original 50,000 rupis (about fifty bucks) to the finally settled on price of less than half that.

And I know, from talking to the artists, that these babies take a lot of time to make. Besides the carving, done on the floor, like the Japanese but with the mask held by the feet for quick repositioning, there are literally hundreds of coats of paint on each one.

But I guess time is less of a factor when your belief in reincarnation is so thorough.

The great thing about believing in reincarnation: no deadlines.

Although many of the masks themselves feature prominent features, the inside of the masks are not carved to accommodate my ample proboscis.

I pointed this out to master carver Ida Bagus Anom Suryawan in the temple like grounds of his home/workshop.

He handed me his mallet and chisel and sat me down to chip out the space.

I was tentative at first, lightly tapping the chisel in the fear I would crack the mask I had already purchased and uncomfortable in the Balinese mask carver's pose with the mask held between my feet for quick repositioning.

Ida suggested, laughing, to "take a whack at it" and I finally did and within minutes my western snozz could live comfortably under the mask forever more.

The Nose

Carving the inside of a mask

Held on the floor between my feet.

Mallet hits chisel.

A curlicue of Hibiscus wood

Flies in a delicate arc

And lands

Like a dragonfly

On my splayed knee cap.

Making space for where my nose will go.*

Leaf me alone

Time Peace

Bali time is as elastic as the natural rubber straps that each mask comes equipped with. I felt time bend around me as I scooted from village to village in utter contrast to the way time seemed to hang in the drenched heat of the jungle trails with their vine choked carved idols and macaque infested banyans.

Despite this, and knowing it was only a matter of time before I would be back in Japan with a demanding schedule, I did buy a new watch while there.

Unfortunately I was only able to get the price down to 30 dollars.

For a Breitling.

(Pearl Navitimer)

The most amazing part?

Two weeks later, it still works!

Ancient Dragon

Modern Dragon

Lounging

All puppet Kooza.

Don't look.

Dear Diarrhea

My return flight was an overnight affair that got me into Tokyo at 10 am.

By 13:00 I was in full regalia for my last Iaido practice at Kita Matsudo with the various Esaka dojo Sensei before my testing the following day.

Halfway through class something I ate in Indonesia caught up with me in the form of sinister rumblings down below.

I finished class in a chilled nauseous puddle and got on the train for home.

I will spare readers the details of that evening's frantic hunched scurry from the station to my toilet and the subsequent commode ballistics but suffice it to say that night was a sweaty, cramp ridden, miserable battle with frequent migrations from bed to couch to toilet.

Dawn finally came and I left the sweat soaked Ron-print on my bed and pale and shaky, started the hour long commute to the Iaido testing site.

Before

During

After

Three hours later I received my 3rd Dan in Iaido, the art of Japanese swordsmanship.

(I actually received a public commendation for my technique from the head judge.)

That evening my fellow iaidoka celebrated with lots of beer.

I had a yogurt shake.

And a smile.

*"Nose" reprinted from Scrutinies and Tangentia
Iaido pictures by Pierre Ginet

Surreal Life

2011-04-21T03:44:00.000-07:00

About Face

Andre Breton, in his Surrealist Manifesto published in 1924 described it as this:

SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express -- verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner -- the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.

The “absence of control” part has had a special resonance on my Search For The Mask of Satori over the last month.

First there was the earthquake.

Very unlike the ones I have experienced in San Francisco and Los Angeles, this was a protracted sloshy affair that felt more like being on the deck of a ship than anything else.

I was even able to compose a poem during it. The font of the handwriting in my notebook can only be called Tokyo Earthquake.

Most of the artists and crew of Kooza were looking at each other with wide eyes and weird half smiles as the very ground we walked upon became this suddenly surreal landscape.

Of course the subsequent tsunami and nuclear disaster was unknown to us at the time.

3 days later, when news of these horrors started to come in and the constant aftershocks were busy jangling the nerves of some of my cohorts, many of whom are the most fearless humans I have ever known, Cirque du Soleil decided to evacuate us.

With about half an hours notice I was told to get my ass to Narita Airport. We were all going to Macau where we would be staying at the Venetian Hotel and Casino while they decided what to do with us.

This set into motion the crossing off of three items on my bucket list in quick succession:

To run at full speed down a gangplank and dive into a plane as the doors are closing.

To sit in 1^st class.

To catch a night ferry in the fog from Hong Kong to Macau.

Accidental Keinholz in Macau.

Twangly

The less said about the next nine days in the gilded, carpeted hell of the Venetian with its chlorinated canals amongst the constantly yelling Chinese vacationers with their annoying twangly voices and their razor sharp and ever ready elbows the better.

Surreal.

Suffice it to say we were glad to get out of there.

Arrivaderchi Macau.

Finally the word came down that we would be offered a plane ticket for anywhere in the world.

As long as we had an internet connection and could check in about seven days later to see whether we were to report back to Tokyo and that the show was to go on we could go anywhere.

Many chose to return to Tokyo. Many went back home to wherever it was they lived to see family and lick their wounds.

Some went to ports of call in Asia just to save money and be close.

I went to Paris.

Accidental Faces (Paris/Tokyo)

Accidental Ooooog.

Avid Reader.

Avid Eater.

If these cobblestones could speak...

Thank You, Cheeses!

Dreaming

I rented a flat on Rue Tholoze’, up a cobblestone street from Place de la Abbesses, a few doors away from where Tristan Tzara lived slightly less than a century earlier.

Neutral Mask. Not So Neutral Mask

My nights were about Jazz, Theatre and dancing at the Caveau de la Huchette. My days were museums and food. I visited the Catacombs. I ate many baguettes. I soaked in to the city and apparently it soaked into me a bit as well.

(Many times I was asked directions by tourists, so convincing was my manner. Eventually I would just tell them to fuck off, completing my disguise as typical Parisian.)

Jazz Chats Taking It To The Bridge.

Jazz Rats in the Caveau.

Man vs. Rodin

On the same alleyways and at the same cafes where Dali, De Chirico, Breton, Tanguy and Arp did their thing I scribbled poems and dreamed away.

Everyday Dream.

My wake up call was in the form of an email from Luc Trembley that Kooza would indeed be starting up again in Tokyo.

Three days later I was on a plane. Six days later I was performing again in Japanese for a sell out crowd in the Fuji Big Top.

Surreal.

Zen King

Le Poisson Soluble

Then, on a day off, I went with my fellow clowns and an acrobat to see the Surrealist Exhibition at the Tokyo National Gallery.

It felt like the set up for a joke: “Three clowns and an acrobat walk into a Surrealist exhibition.” but it was really quite thorough and we were all inspired by both the work and the thought behind it.

How do you depict with vigor and accuracy an inner landscape, a world that is ultimately undepictable?

“Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality.”

-Andre Breton

Apparently Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto was written as an article for Le Poisson Soluble. And there in a glass case was an actual copy. Tangible, real.

Yet what it was attempting was to somehow catch the Poisson Soluble, The Dissolving Fish.

And what could be more elusive than a fish that dissolves!

Cadavres Exquis

We attempted a few Surrealist inspired Cadavres Exquis, or Exquisite Corpses the next couple of days and clown alley became a kind of little artist colony.

Joining us in this experiment was our resident pick pocket Pierre Ginet, who did not accompany us to the exhibition but who is, let’s face it, French.

"If Hearts Could Tell" by (in descending order) Ron Campbell, Colin Heath, Pierre Ginet, Sean Kempton

"Breathe" by (in descending order) Colin Heath, Sean Kempton, Pierre Ginet, Ron Campbell

Un Obliged

Things are seeming a little less surreal now as Tokyo gains its equilibrium but flashes of that fine madness do surface occasionally. And I still get that odd feeling, just after I flash my pass at the security gate at the big top that the guard is going to stop me. He is going to say:

“Summimasen Sir. This is not your life. You are not about to perform for hundreds of people. You can’t just walk in here with your coffee cup in hand and your Parisian jacket. You are dreaming, sir. You have to go back to real life.”

But he never does.

And I keep walking.

"It is not the fear of madness which will oblige us to leave the flag of imagination furled."

-Andre Breton

Trying to find a middle ground.

Sakura

2011-03-16T02:54:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning in mourning.
I am mourning for Japan.
And what do I know of Japan?
I haven't been there enough times or long enough to know the real Japan.
The born there, raised there, lived there Japan.
The blood of my great great great grandfather is in the soil of that rice paddy Japan.
Right now something else is leaking into the soil there.
And I am in mourning.

I may not even be in mourning for the real Japan.
I may be too caught up in the Japan I carry in my mind.
The Japan with all that jangling history and controlled elegance.
All that distinctly Japanese Japaneseness.
The Japan of the geisha and the samurai.
The Japan I have romanticized beyond recognition.

But even though the overcrowded Yamanote Line at rush hour doesn't quite fit into the notion of Japan that I carry in my head, the courtesy these bustling salarymen show one another, the restraint they display even as they are packed in like black clad sardines into the trains is a little vestige of the roots of the samurai culture.

And the quiet grace of two giggling Harajuku girls sharing a pastry in a quiet cafe on Mieji-dori is enough to transport me a century or so and transform them into their own geisha ancestors.

But now I am mourning another Japan.
The Japan I saw in the faces of the kids I saw.
And as the news continues to come in the little faces I have shared the world with these last few months are haunting me.
And I am in mourning.

Little boys bundled up by their doting parents, sometimes costumed like little bears or bunnies, Their eyes inquisitive, amused, fascinated by my unfamiliar western features.
Completely unafraid.
A little samurai.

And doll like girls with smiles so sweet just smiling back can give you a cavity.
Each face a little perfect flower.
A Sakura.

I Want To Live Again!

2011-03-12T00:43:00.000-08:00

No Mask.

On a recent day off from the circus I had the good fortune to get a glimpse into the spawning ground of the most subtle, compelling and elusive masks of all.

The masks of the Noh theatre.

Through an email introduction made by Theatre of Yugen artistic director Jubilith Moore, I got to spend the day with Hideta Kitazawa, a famed mask maker who is also a gentle soul possessed of a quiet mastery of his art.

I had traded polite emails with him and told him of my desire to see his workshop.

But he had other things in mind.

He wanted, I now realize, to give me the whole enchilada.

And he did.

The order's a little off, but this is the process.

He picked me up at the train station in Matsuda on the outskirts of Tokyo.

After a fantastic Unagi lunch surrounded by the handprints of famous sumatori, we visited Shibamata Taishakuten Daikyu Temple close to his home and the fantastic woodcarvings that adorn it.

Kitazawa-San is a member of a prestigious wood carving family and it is his own ancestors that carved some of these fascinating depictions of the Lotus Sutra that seem to defy the laws of both time and gravity with their 3-D effects and swooping goddesses.

Burning Down The House.

Dragons grin maniacally from every corner (apparently to protect the building from fire Kitazawa tells me) and muscled, sworded guardians glare at every portal, almost daring evil spirits to tempt their wrath.

These were the works of his great great grandfather and you could almost hear their hearts beating beneath the grain of lifeless wood.

We tossed some coins in the metal box, did our Shinto ablutions, and escaped with our heads intact.

Goddesses and Dragons.

This all only partially prepared me to see he and his father's workshop where the evidence of their craftsmanship and care littered the tiny space like jewels in Ali Baba's cave.

The smell of cedar and toil filled the tiny space. Father and son each had their places on the tatami floor where they worked on their various commissions for shrines and festivals.

The chisels were laid out like the ranks of soldiers preparing for a war, each with their own distinct headdress of oiled steel.

(Kitazawa-San told me it was a sword maker who had changed professions to make them- much like Kitazawa himself had rebelled from being a temple carver to make masks.)

No Sandpaper in Sight.

But the true highlight came when he took me back to his own home where he led me up a tiny stairway to a small room cluttered with the detritus of the artist; books, brushes, pigments, blocks of the pungent cedar wood and jars of crushed oyster shells, sheets of ray skin, (for the hilt of an actor's tanto) the ubiquitous chisels (sandpaper is not used, amazing when you see how smooth his final product can be) and along one wall an overflowing closet of masks.

And as he began to share them (many had their own brocade bag/pillow for storage) and as he told little tidbits about each one- I felt the room fill up…

With actors, other mask makers, characters, generations, ghosts, demons, gods- it was overwhelming.

An African, a Spaniard and a Chinese man walk into a bar...

Same Woman, Different Mood.

Buddha (Note the long ears) not happy with Man and his wars.

Kantan-Otoko, The Noh Hamlet.

I also saw the still unpainted mask that Jubilith had commissioned him to do for her Cordelia project with Erik Ehn.

Paper, Wood, Clay.

I saw also the source material (Tilda Swinton, Kate Blanchett, Glenda Jackson et al.) she had sent him.

He seemed to be at a bit of a crossroads on it.

He was concerned that the audience wouldn't understand that she was the same character under a different mask in the 2nd act (the 1st act mask (not pictured) was a sublime creation reminiscent of the Zo Onna masks I have seen but

wholly original with plaintive upturned eyebrows that struck me as pure Cordelia.) and not a different character.

He even seemed to want my advice on the painting of the mask!

He had a rather sun tanned mask that is in contrast with the ivory complexion of the mask of her 1st act Cordelia.

What could I do? I decided as usual to overstep my boundaries and offer my opinion. (I don't even know Ehn's piece) -though I have done Lear three times so I am familiar with the play at least.

He had a picture of a mask that blended both complexions that seemed right to me for a girl that spoke the truth that becomes a woman that becomes a warrior and that seemed to hit the right note.

After meeting his charming wife and soccer-obsessed son he took me back to the train station.

As I rode back to Tokyo for my Iaido class that evening I kept thinking about the gods and warriors, the princesses and ghosts I had spent the day with.

At one point there were so many laid out on the floor we had to tip toe over them just to get to the door. They all stared up with such varied and distinct expressions but all of them seem to be saying the same thing:

Use me. I want to live again.

The Actor's Shrine in Hanozono.

Two weeks later, Kitazawa-San sent pictures of the completed 2nd act Cordelia.

He had adhered to the traditions of Noh- note the gold eyes and disheveled tendrils of hair of the Deigan mask- yet it is wholly original.

It is a woman.

But stronger than I've ever seen in traditional Noh masks.

It struck me that it would be a fine mask for Mother Courage.

Cordelia, Act II.

I wrote to Jubilith to tell her that Kitazawa-San’s creation for her mask had achieved a beautiful imbalance.

It was clear that the struggle to retain her innocence, so evident in her 1^st act Cordelia, had been lost.

And heartbreakingly so.

The Cordelia of the 2nd act had clearly now seen the battlefields.

And the bodies littered there.

And stepped over them.

As they all silently demanded the same thing:

Use me. I want to live again.

A Rare Ouroboros in Shibuya.

The Trance, The Form, and The Transformer

2011-03-10T18:42:00.000-08:00

Total Buddha (Japan)

Total Inuit (British Columbia)

Total Recall (Hollywood)

The Japantagonist

2011-03-02T18:29:00.000-08:00

There was a traffic sign in Edinburgh I shall always remember.

There's probably hundreds of them all over the British isles but this is the one that always floats up to the top of my brainpan when I'm traveling. It was on Princes Street in the shadow of the Scott Memorial and it said "Changed Priorities Ahead."

A day on the San Francisco Bay with Lol Levy and Nancy Gold hit the spot.

I now find myself, after a couple of weeks back in San Francisco sleeping in the comfort of my own bed and sailing Valhalla with friends and re-haunting my old haunts, in Japan for my next campaign as the King in Kooza.

And though I haven't actually seen it, I feel a new sign flashing in the private Shinjuku behind my eyelids:

"Changed Expectations Ahead."

I used to have 2 horses. Now I have this pair of shoes. Call it even.

Here's what I expected.

I expected to find wonderful similarities, universal truths revealed.

I expected to stumble across fascinating bridges between East and West.

I expected common grounds and shared proclivities.

What I found was differences.

What I found was the inscrutable at its most inscrutiest.

What I found was all the keen contrasts to everything I've become used to.

The virtues of one culture, completely absent in the other culture become the virtues of that culture.

Teamwork Under The Fuji Dome

The 3000 Person Metronome

Where we have individuality, they have teamwork.

Of course a member of the audience at Kooza would never laugh at a fart joke because it may single them out as someone who laughs at fart jokes.

Meanwhile our bandleader Jim Lutz reports that when Japanese audiences clap along with the band during the teeterboard section of our show they clap in perfect time.

In North America and Canada for that matter he would have to warn the band "Stay with the click track, these people will lead you off."

In Japan 3,000 people keep perfect time.

Teamwork.

Human Pachinko

Turn Signals

We drive/walk on the right. They drive/walk on the left.

This adjustment, especially when walking in the crowded subways of Tokyo has been particularly challenging.

And I should know better.

It is the sword, after all, that created this difference.

Didn't use his turn signal.

It seems that during the Tokugawa era the prevalence of duels was getting to be epidemic. The reason was that the inadvertent bumping of swords (worn on the left for quick drawing since there was no such thing as a left handed person) was grounds for an immediate challenge. The Daimyo royalty was killing themselves off because they had to negotiate the narrow byways of old Edo and kept knocking the delicate honoki wood sayas (scabbards) of their swords and this was grounds for an immediate duel, the results of which the offended samurai could only hope for a one in three survival rate. The opponent either drew faster than you- you're dead, or slower than you- you live, or you draw at the same speed in which case you both die.

So the Shogun decreed that walking to the left was mandatory to avoid all that accidental banging of hardware.

The practice exists to this day.

So I have to keep remembering to default to the left when negotiating the hallways and escalators of the Tokyo underground.

Of course there are always exceptions and mastering the slight shoulder turn/dip that works as a kind of body turn signal is one of the many skills one attains just getting to work everyday.

Ultimately, this is an island culture.

And each person seems to be a little master of detail.

Our Dog Dresser's Notes and Set-Up.

Genius is in the details.

The Burnished Mirror

And at work we learn of more differences.

The Japanese culture thrives on responsibility.

The Shinto roots show clearest when you notice that people won't respond to racy material (that has been the stock and trade of we clowns in Kooza) depending on who they came to the big top with.

You're not going to laugh at a scrotum scrunching ball hit if you are sitting next to your dad.

But if you came to the show with a gaggle of your best girlfriends, you may.

Speaking of Shinto: I have loved learning more about this non-religion religion that has no scriptures, reveres both nature and previous generations avidly, relies heavily on the imbibing of gallons of sake and the principal item in the shrine (we have one at Esaka dojo) is a burnished brass mirror.

So instead of a cross, which, let's face it, is a torture device or a book as you might find in the gilded alcove of a Moslem mosque or a Jewish temple, the thing you find yourself bowing to is a simple round mirror.

And of course it must be regularly polished to keep it's reflective property. Reminding us to forever keep polishing ourselves as we tread the path of life.

How's my hair?

There is also woven into the Shinto ethos the concept of purification and renewal.

The 108 "hindrances" one develops in a year may be erased- I guess to make room for fresh new ones- with the simple ritual of a few claps and the ringing of a bell.

Mind you, Shinto is not without it's uglinesses. The Japanese soldiers at Nanking were Shinto too but what religion is without it's perversions?

Our big top was even blessed by lavishly costumed Shinto priests in a ceremony that included all of us and featured the breaking/drinking of a giant wooden cask of delicious sake poured into those square wooden cups that are impossible to drink from without “purifying” all down the front of your shirt as well.

Nothing helps the religion go down like a slug of sake.

Playing Koi

Another major difference is the reticence to show any outward emotion.

Again a virtue that is hard to appreciate at first.

Especially if you're a clown.

But the virtue of restraint is woven into the daily routine.

The most obvious manifestation of this is that eye contact is at a very high premium here.

And I have come to realize that I thrive on eye contact.

For me it's one of the few perks of being a stranger in a strange land.

Being able to look out at the unfamiliar- and the facial recognition software in my brain has yet to calibrate for all these Asian faces so everybody looks unfamiliar- even those I've seen around a lot at the tent- helps me connect to the strangers that swirl around me and not feel so alone.

But these people are masters of eye contact avoidance.

I find myself seeking it on the subway like a drowning man looking for a life preserver.

I finally give up and cast my eyes downward only to glance up to find someone staring at me with such intense concentration that it feels as if they are trying to memorize my face for a future test.

But when I return their gaze the eyes dart away like koi from a rock thrown into a pond.

The Four Ages of Man on the Maranouchi Line

Blame and Blammo!

Onstage we've noticed another difference. The laughs that stem from bodily functions and sexual innuendo have not crossed the time zones well. Here the laughs are born out of the sudden shift of responsibility; blame gets big yucks. Causing embarrassment to someone else is funnier here than doing something embarrassing.

It seems emblematic of a cultural difference that now instead of having our female "involunteer" nail fellow clown Colin Heath in the cajones with a steak, I do the honors and then hand the offending T-bone to her as clown prince Sean Kempton and I hit a gesture that says "She did it!"

To be Here is to be a Witness to the Weirdness.

Still, I'm thankful for all of these various differences.

They have served to wake me up.

To rattle the cage of my own complacency of confirmed expectations and really see things.

To rewire my mind's eye and freshen my perspective.

To sharpen my awareness and seek the deeper clues of behavior hidden in the restraint.

To avoid antagonizing and begin to accept the fact that yes, I am (big) in Japan.

Where I Am.

Workshop With Intent.

2010-11-12T07:23:00.000-08:00

On a recent week off from the circus I gave a four day workshop entitled
The Actor, The Clown and The Mask
under the auspices of the California Shakespeare Theatre and my Fox Foundation Fellowship.

As the Giants won the World Series on the other side of the Bay Bridge a group of extraordinary and dedicated actors (and some of my favorite people) subjected themselves to ten hours of my brand of lunacy and theatrical investigation in what is easily one of the most documented workshops in the history of theatre.*

Tools, waiting to be used.

In accordance with the Fox Fellowship for Distinguished Achievement this was to be a sharing of my findings from the various trainings in Mask and physical theatre that I have received over the past two years in Greece, Japan, Scotland, Canada and the United States. It turned out to be so much more. Once again I was reminded that the best way to learn something is to try to teach it.

I like to have a "workshop with intent" so there was a public showing at the end.
(and a considerable amount of drinking at Berkeley's famed Albatross Pub afterwards.)
This allowed the participants to use the tools they had gathered in front of an audience and see how they held up on "The Killing Floor".

There were some spectacular and informative failures, some moments of transcendent beauty and lotsa laughs.

Nancy Gold under the Cycladean

Jeffrey and Jordan on The Killing Floor.

Lol Levy psychically scarring people for life.

Neutral masks now available at your local supermarket.

Putting the Imp in implacable.

Below is a portion of the final presentation utilizing some Shakespeare and entirely improvised by this talented and plucky group of imps.

Here also is a slide show of some of the work in progress:

The legendary and delightful Nancy Carlin, my fellow Associate Artist at Cal Shakes even blogged about it.

Nancy Carlin playing a politician with a bladder problem.

When I wasn't teaching I got the Vallhalla transported from Neptune Marina in Marina Del Rey back up to my old slip in Fortman Marina next to the Alameda Yacht Club.

Not a bad way to spend a week off from the circus.

"I love you guys this much."

*Special thanks to photographer Jay Yamada and to Ayda Meisami for the video.

"Yep"

2010-10-18T14:11:00.000-07:00

A Master Prepares.

On a recent morning off from the circus I decided to treat myself to a massage at the spa on the sixth floor of the Calgary 5 hotel in Alberta, Canada.

Unlike the rest of the hotel (which is this perfect time capsule of 1973 plus the wear and tear of twenty something years of disgruntled Hewlett-Packard execs and Cow Town conventioneers tromping through it) the spa is done up all bamboo-ey with canned temple bells jingling from hidden speakers and various aromatherapy scents battling for nasal domination.

A lovely (Calgarian) geisha hands me a clipboard with a brief health questionnaire and serves me some green tea in an earthenware cup.

I fill out the form.

One question asks about recent injuries so I make a note about the sore right hamstring that has been giving me trouble all week.

I'm given a soft robe and escorted to the suitably jingling massage room where I disrobe and lie down on the table.

Moments later into the room walks my therapist.

He's a man in his fifty's no taller than five feet with a swarthy complexion.

His face is speckled with tiny moles.

A tiny Asian version of Morgan Freeman.

"My name is Arnold and I will be performing your reflexologies."

He said it quickly as if to stave off any disappointment I might have been feeling about the fact that an old man, and not one of the pretty Asian girls in the reception area, was doing my massage.

I confess I was a little disappointed at first but something about his use of the word performing when he said "performing your reflexologies" pricked my now Enya clotted ears.

He looked briefly at the clipboard the girl from reception handed him and took my right arm by the wrist, shook it loosely, asking "So your right hamstring is hurting you?" and began to poke a finger into my bicep.

I said "Well it's on my leg. It's the hamstring on my leg."

Meanwhile I'm thinking geez, this guy doesn't even know where a hamstring is!

He let out a kind if dismissive snort and then proceeded to give me the best arm massage of my life.

The massage seemed to have an order, an ancient protocol, a sequence of perfectly timed manipulations of muscle and sinew.

Yet it was alive too.

I had the sense that he was improvising, responding to the silent messages he was receiving from my arm itself.

When he was done with the arm, having scoured the tension from every tendon, every digit, every bone he gently placed it back to my side on the table and tucked it in like a sleeping baby.

As he moved to the other side of the table to work on the other arm I murmured

"You are a master."

Without a beat he replied:

"Yep."

There was a confidence in the timing and the tone of that Yep that I envied.

A that is a fact and what's more I'm comfortable with that fact quality.

It was a yep that had been earned.

And was now wholly owned by this bumpy little wizened man.

Later during the massage I asked him where he was from.

"I am from the Philippines. My name is Arnold."

"Well my name is Ronald."

"Arnold and Ronald." he laughed. "We are brothers in name."

And he proceeded to squeeze, prod, coax, cajole and pound every ounce of tension I'd managed to build up in the fifty performances I'd done since my last massage.

When the hour was up he said "Rest now" and- I think intentionally- clinked my tea cup as he exited.

I lay there for a few minutes and did nothing.

There was a knock.

Arnold came back in, a big smile of about fifty gleaming teeth cracking his dark face open like some kind of joyous train headlight bursting through the tunnel of his face.

"You are also entertainment I see!"

He indicated the form on the clipboard.

I had forgotten that under occupation I had written Clown.

"I am also entertainment." he said. "I am a film director. In Philippines. I direct Hollywood movie star."

And here he mentioned the name of someone I had never heard of.

"You see, go to internet. You see. We are brothers. Arnold and Ronald. We are entertainment!"

I paid my bill, shook his hand and went to go be "entertainment".

That afternoon I participated in our latest Cirque du Monde session of workshops where we invite thirty or so "at risk" youths into the big top and give them a taste of acrobatics, trapeze, music and even, with me, clowning.

Afterwards, I led a round robin discussion of their experience that day.

One of the kids, a gangly "first nation" kid with a neck tattoo and a greasy mohawk pointed at me and said "I liked the acting and shit. These dudes are masters, eh?"

All I could think was:

"Yep."

And I went to my loge to start putting on my “mask” for that night’s show.

Masks I designed for upcoming workshop in San Francisco.

More Ron

2010-10-09T23:54:00.000-07:00

“Reviews.

When they’re bad they hurt.

When they’re good they’re not good enough.”

-Richard Burton

VLADIMIR:

Moron!

ESTRAGON:

That's the idea, let's abuse each other.

They turn, move apart, turn again and face each other.

VLADIMIR:

Moron!

ESTRAGON:

Vermin!

VLADIMIR:

Abortion!

ESTRAGON:

Morpion!

VLADIMIR:

Sewer-rat!

ESTRAGON:

Curate!

VLADIMIR:

Cretin!

ESTRAGON:

(with finality). Crritic!

VLADIMIR:

Oh!

He wilts, vanquished, and turns away.

-Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot.

“I’ve always felt about critics the way fire hydrants feel about dogs.”

-Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle

Paper Time Machines

2010-08-30T00:14:00.000-07:00

木 is the Japanese kanji for tree or big.
Add a little line at its base and you have this kanji: 本
It means root or origin.
It also, not surprisingly means book.

A good book is like a hypodermic filled with inspiration that you use to stab yourself straight through to the brain vein.

A hook you bite with your eyes.

A book is a thing of transport.

A conveyor belt of black squiggles on white paper.
A roller coaster ride down a rabbit hole of words.

A good book is also a Time Machine.

That can fit into your back pocket.

And a Place machine too.

A passport.

A vacation you take from yourself.

The artists who comprise Kooza are all on some or other concurrent path while they deal with the stresses of tour life.
For many of us, in many different languages, one of the avenues of finding our own personal Mask of Satori lies in reading.

Here then, are a few of the books I have read in the last few months while on tour.
Or had read to me as an audio book while I was putting on my make up under a pair of powder smeared headphones.

First, some job related fiction:

Then some Memoirs, both real and fictional:

The Millennium Trilogy:

Some pure (and dark) escapism:

And some non fiction:

There's even a Kooza Book Club.
We're currently reading Yann Martel's delightful Life of Pi.

Plus, of course, various poems and plays.
No ebooks for me, I like my books made of trees.
But I do indulge in podcasts including:

WNYC RadioLab

Risk!

The Moth

Storylife

McLeod's Bookstore, Vancouver.

"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."
-Groucho Marx

Seamy Details and The Drip Factor

2010-08-02T16:17:00.000-07:00

Sweat

Sweat is the salty gloss of persistence.

The trout-like sheen of stamina.

Sweat is the condensation of toil.

The slick evidence of will. *

And now for the seamy details:

Sweat Management.

In the course of doing the clown acts in Kooza there will be sweat.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a Minnesota Matinee with 30% of the big top filled or a maximum capacity Vancouver crowd pumping energy back across the footlights at us. Doing the act makes me sweat profusely.

This is not to be confused with Flop Sweat. The chilly, unearned sweat that comes from some internal furnace of anxiety and is more a sign of mental turmoil than actual physical exertion. I’ve had that too, but this is different.

The costume department does what it can. Under my various costumes I wear t-shirts of a futuristic wicking (wiccan?) material. The latest ones have a hole over the left pectoral (fittingly directly over my heart) where I’ve cut the plastic emblem off because it was irritating my skin.

I am also given a small black terrycloth rag to mop my brow between entrances.
I can’t really mop my brow.
I must dab.
I’m not about to ruin the hour and a half worth of make up I have painstakingly applied to my mug.

Of course the make up (with lots of touch ups) remains intact through all the sweating. It doesn’t melt off because I’m using the same products Cirque uses for the performers in O in Las Vegas and that show is mostly underwater.

So sweat is part of my daily routine and I’ve learned to accept it as a fact of clowning life.

Raise your hand if you're sure.

In Praise of Sweat

Our director, David Shiner is reported to have said he never thought much of a clown that didn’t sweat. I’m a sweater by metabolism anyway so I’m inclined to think the same way.

Sweat has a way of reminding us of our animal.

When you’re looking across the stage and a stinging drop falls from its perch on the waxed curlicue of your overgrown eyebrow and lands with a salty splash directly on your retina, staggering in momentary myopia, you know, at least, you’re giving your all.

In fact some of the workshops I was giving at the Berkeley Rep I entitled Theatre of Sweat. I was interested in seeing acting as an aerobic activity.

Sweat tells us that the stakes are high enough to engage the organism fully.

The Drip Factor

I remember a press conference in Tel Aviv when I was doing
The Thousandth Night at the International Teattronetto.
Steven Berkoff and I were seated together at the event. We got into a conversation about the relative physicality of our respective one man shows.
(He was doing his piece about Shakespeare’s villains at the time.)

He fixed me at one point with those impossibly piercing eyes and said “When I do my show the sweat comes off my chin like this: Drip. Drip. Drip.”
I responded that when I do my show the sweat comes off my chin like this: Drip-Drip-Drip-Drip-Drip, doubling the time signature.

It was harmless actor posturing but it’s true: perspiration is a salty by-product of performance and the reality of it must be dealt with.

The same goes for saliva management.
This usually comes into play when tackling the more verbal challenges of Shakespearean roles and one man shows where sometimes you have to chart not only where you have to take your breaths but where to swallow all the extra saliva your jabbering is producing.

Seamy Details

The art of dealing with your own sweat onstage without bringing any undo attention to it, without betraying any sense of labor or effort while you’re sweating buckets and all the while adhering to the maxim of “Don’t Let Them See You Sweat” is just another one of the seamy details you encounter when in search of the Mask of Satori.

* "Sweat" republished courtesy of Scrutinies & Tangentia.

The Charybdis, Surrender and The Wandering Mind.

2010-07-01T02:10:00.001-07:00

I'm not a Narcissist. I'm mirrorly enjoying myself.

The Greeks called it the Charybdis.
The Whirlpool.

Recently, while navigating the twisty waters one finds when in search of the Mask of Satori, I have been noticing the Charybdis in its various forms everywhere.

In Greek mythology the Charybdis was a deadly, ship-sucking sea monster. A swirling thing of chaos which sucked down passing ships without warning three times a day, and only spewed the remains up somewhere else hours later. The captains of the ships which had to sail through the strait of Messina had a choice. Risk the possibility of being pulled inexorably into the Charybdis’ watery vortex or pass by on the other side, close to the rocks, risking attack by Scylla.

Scylla was a monster that snapped up sailors with her long-necked dogs' heads. Homer said she was hideous, with six heads and twelve legs, while Ovid said she was a beautiful woman from the waist up but instead of legs she had six dog-heads. If the ship sailed fast Scylla could only take six sailors, unlike Charybdis which could swallow the whole ship. This is why the witch Circe in the Odyssey tells Odysseus to risk Scylla rather than Charybdis.

Etymologists believe this is where we get the saying “Between a rock and a hard place.”

Between Scylla and Charybdis.

Buckminster Fuller might call the ubiquity of this sweet curlicue a pattern integrity. A slip knot sliding along the rope of life. A natural occurrence that permeates every facet of our perception of the world so integrally that it can be seen as thread in the fabric of the Universe.

I see the various Charybdi everywhere. From the braids in a unicyclists’ daughter’s hair to the diagram of a DNA strand.

From the ascending curlicue of a tendril of smoke to the churning gray mass of a deadly tornado. It is depicted in prehistoric paintings on the rock walls and parched arroyos of the Southwest and in Hokusai’s wood blocks.

I see the Charybdis in my twist doughnut in the morning and the corkscrew for my wine in the evening. It even lurks in the coils of my mattress while I sleep.

Twists of fate and flushes of victory.

I always wondered: If toilets flush counter-clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere what goes on in the toilet that straddles the Equator?

And how is this principle manifesting in the whirlpool of my own mind?

Is the Charybdis at work in the mental eddies we allow our thoughts to wander into when we daydream?

The Wandering Mind.

A recent study by Keith D. Markman, an Associate Professor of Psychology at Ohio University proves that “mind wandering” is a necessary caesura from work-a-day goal-oriented tasks that creates more creative and dynamic solutions to the Scylla of obstacles one encounters in the modern world.

Flotsam? I got some. Jetsam? I’ll get some.

Extreme surfers learn to not fight against the monstrous Charybdis of the sea when they are hauled under by the churning foam of a big wave. They do not fight against it. They surrender to it,

knowing that if they can hold their breath long enough the green Charybdis will spit them out eventually.

Battling such a monster would only prolong your stay in its swirling belly.

Better to let go of all expectation of survival, to let the Charybdis digest you completely. Only then do you have a chance of being burped back to shore and join the flotsam and jetsam of the living once again.

This surrender may have been what my fellow clown Colin Heath and I were talking about when we discussed the puzzling phenomenon we both have noticed over our years as performers.

When you let it all go. When you let all the artifice and effort and technique float away in the reverse tornado of expectation. When you feel free enough to just give up. When you say a mental “whatever” to your audience and stop worrying about results. As a clown it’s when you stop trying to get laughs and start giving them.

It’s when you surrender to the whirlpool.

Charybdis *

I blame you, Charybdis.

I blame your fatal curves.

Your hurtling curl.

Your primal, viral spiral that weaves its way into the web and weft of the world so insidiously.

I see you in the cyclone of evaporated hopes spinning through the fingers of graspless hands.

I see you in the diamond tip of the drill that pierces the skin of the Earth for its black blood a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

You are in the fractal whirlpool of the stars and in the dizzy nebula of the nanosphere.

You can be found in the calcified coil of the conch and in the sweet lure of the couch.

You are the curl in Fibonacci’s fern.

Oh Charybdis.
You are the power that reduces oceans into carnival spin-art abstracts.

And it's you in my thoughts, circling the dark drain of memory, where you curl hard in the private armadillo of my heart.

* Reprinted my permission from Scrutinies & Tangentia.

Walking The Tightrope Over The Uncanny Valley

2010-04-09T15:45:00.000-07:00

Trying to enlighten the coulrophobes by beating them with a steak.

First, some etymology:

Canny is from the Anglo-Saxon root ken: “knowledge, understanding, or cognizance; mental perception: an idea beyond one's ken. Thus the uncanny is something outside one's familiar knowledge or perceptions.

Sigmund Freud was fascinated by it.

He tried to understand that uneasiness, that frisson of revulsion one senses the closer one gets to the almost in Almost Human.

He called it The Uncanny.

He said this feeling is what “unconsciously reminds us of our own Id, our forbidden and thus repressed impulses perceived as a threatening force by our super-ego.”

More recently Masahiro Mori, roboticist and author of The Buddha in the Robot (Charles E. Tuttle Co.; ISBN 4333010020.) did a study that produced this

handy graph below, illustrating the sudden chasm of revulsion you find the closer you get (but not quite) to human replication.

Putting The Art in Artificial

I believe the roots of coulrophobia (fear of clowns) resides somewhere on the pratfall inducing slippery slope of The Uncanny Valley.

The clown is a kind of simulacrum of an actual human being. The make up, the wig, the sheer deranged unpredictability of the clown has an artificial sheen to it. A glint of malevolence seems to lurk behind those red noses. According to Freud people are afraid of the anarchic presence of clowns because they are afraid they will become one themselves. Just jump into their little car and join the circus. (Sounds familiar.)

Coulrophobia is a genuine fear just like acrophobia but instead of fear of heights, it is a fear born of being perched on the precipice of the yawning chasm of the Uncanny Valley.

Compensating for this natural human reaction is a kind of tight rope act for us clowns.*

*I am in no way comparing what we clowns do to the real high wire act in Kooza, where the fifth generation Quiros circus family nightly taunt gravity armed only with a combination of balance, poles, swords, bicycles and pure nerve.

Taking The Robot Out of Repitition.

I’m not sure where clowns fall on this graph but I imagine them bivouac’d somewhere on the perilous slopes of Mori’s Uncanny Valley where we run the danger of alienating 2500 people nightly.

Repetition can make a robot out of anyone.

Re-attaching to the human, child-like innocent nature of the clown is like picking a scab you can never allow to heal.

Of course repetition has its up side as well. It helps you find the economy of movement, the precision, the sheer physical geometry that allows you to do, say, a particular pratfall 10 shows a week for months at a time.**

**The adaptability of certain falls comes in handy on long runs.

You have a great shoulder roll. When the right shoulder gets bruised, can you adapt the same fall to the left shoulder?

(I trade off nightly which butt cheek I land on in one of my falls in Kooza.)

The Zen of Falling Down

There is a delicate duality at work here.

You’re a clown and the audience knows you may fall down in the course of your high jinks.

They kind of expect it.

But the clown cannot expect it.

That will kill the laugh.

Guaranteed.

The banana peel slip is only funny when the fallee’s mind is elsewhere.

When the oblivious meets the obvious and KE-BLAM!

(This seems to resonate with the idea that the clown lives perpetually in the present with little or no concern for the future.)

Meanwhile the clown, under all the brightly colored finery and his mask of make up must perfect (and maintain) the fall with mindful accuracy to avoid serious injury.

This is all under the penetrating perusal of a ravenously observant audience of 2500 or so that give you the instant feedback on the effectiveness of the bit.

And if they see you giving any indication that you know the fall is coming they will not laugh at it.

The best falls are surprises to everyone.

Especially the one doing the falling.

The clown then must be as surprised as everyone else in the room.

Maybe more so.

Tricky Landscape

Your basic pratfall is kind of like doing a three fold trick:

A trick that you didn’t know you were going to do while you trick yourself into not knowing what’s next while you perform the trick of making something look painful without hurting yourself.

Staying Human under the artificial layers, protecting the delicate latticework of tendons and bone and muscle and leaving your mind behind are just some of the handholds we cling to on the precarious slopes of The Uncanny Valley.

KE-BLAM! 10 shows a week.

"My turn!"

The Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex And Getting Out Of Your Own Way

2010-02-04T15:49:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the way is not a path. It's an avenue.

Jazz musicians do it.

When they want to access that place inside themselves where the improvisation flows unfettered.

When they want to stretch the boundaries, bend the rules, get their jam on.

When they want to fully immerse themselves in the sea of sound and happily drown in it.

When they want to catch the spacebus to the Wayoutisphere.

When they want to get out of their own way.

They close their eyes.

Why?

They did a study at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Charles J. Limb, M.D., assistant professor in the Department of Otolaryngology and a trained jazz saxophonist himself conceived of a way to put musicians engaged in this kind of spontaneous combustion into an MRI machine.

He wanted to see a brain on jazz.

They had to create instruments that

wouldn’t interfere with the powerful magnets of their functional magnetic resonance imaging apparatus.

The MRI.

While the musicians spontaneously improvised, they were able to monitor the brain activity.

They found the usual increase in activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, which sits in the center of the brain’s frontal lobe. This area has been linked with self-expression and individuality, such as telling a story about yourself.

It’s what lights up when we confess.

Brain On Jazz

But when they slimmed their findings to just those captured when the musicians were spontaneously improvising they found a pronounced decrease in the region of the brain known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a broad portion of the front of the brain that extends to the sides. This area has been linked to planned actions and self-censoring. This is the area known to govern our inhibitions.

Clowns' Dressing Room Door at the Jay Leno Show

When Jazz musicians close their eyes they may not be doing it to cut out the distraction of their sense of sight. It may just be the physical manifestation of their attempt to shut down the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

Play

Under the big top I do not have that option. My eyes must be open and alive to all the possibilities, scanning the audience, keeping connection to my fellow performers and alert to any comic ore that may be available to mine.

But I still need to foster that sense of spontaneity with every gesture, word and action.

How?

The amazing acrobats in our show train hard every day to keep their bodies in the condition necessary to perform their acts. They are like musicians playing their scales diligently in preparation for a difficult symphony.

The acrobats, for their safety, must adhere to a set routine. If something goes wrong, they have their hours of training to fall back on.

The acrobats are like classical musicians.

The clowns play jazz.

So even though I know our comic acts like a saxophone player knows the chord changes of a well-worn standard, I must infuse every moment with a percolating sense of spontaneity.

And like a good jazz musician, I’ll try to shut down the inhibitions and restraint that live in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, get out of my own way and just play.

Jazz Musician

Haragei, Breathing and the Elixir Field

2009-12-26T18:54:00.000-08:00

腹芸

Haragei

腹 Hara: Belly.

芸 Gei: Art.

In my ongoing "Quest to do Less" I have come across the Japanese concept of Haragei.

Haragei comes with three meanings:

1. a technique used by actors to convey emotion without verbal speech or gesture.

2. a skill of achieving one's objective by influencing others but not by explicit action or speech.

3. a performance of drawing a face on one's abdomen and moving it by dancing to create funny expressions.

Japanese businessmen use Haragei as a non-verbal communication for negotiating without the use of direct words.

In Iaido we use it as a barometer to sense our opponents timing and intent.

Scientists call it "Proprioception". *

I’ve heard it described as everything from “Intuition” to “Stomach Sense”.

*Proprioception is not Haragei but like Haragei is not listed in the usual lists of the five human senses. Our tactile sense is achieved through the nerve endings in our skin and throughout our body (the most fun parts of our body are the ones that have the highest density of nerve endings). Our sense of balance and orientation comes from a different organ: our inner ear. This is what allows us to know whether we are upright or prostrate without opening our eyes. None of the traditional five senses gives us this information. Only our inner ear can tell us that but what is this information and power coming from the gut?

The Gei of Haragei

The more I read about the quiet territory of Haragei the more I wanted in.

In the dojo large amounts of time are devoted to breathing techniques and physical exercises designed to strengthen the Hara, and keep an individual centralized, because with centralization comes the balance that is necessary to gain control over an opponent who is wavering.

The Elixir Field

The Hara of Haragei is of course located in the abdomen about three finger widths below and two finger widths behind the navel. The Chinese call it Tan t'ien.

Hara literally means "cinnabar or red field" and is loosely translated as "the elixir field".

It is described as an important focal point for internal meditative techniques and not coincidentally happens to be your center of gravity. That’s why when you’re using it (or breathing from it) you feel “grounded.”

In Aikido it’s referred to as your “One Point” from which all your quiet balanced power emanates.

It is sometimes called the “Golden Stove”.

I’ve had tastes of this “elixir” in iaido and I wanted to explore the possibilities of using it in my work as a clown. I figured the way to tap in to the calm power of Haragei was through breathing.

Our director David Shiner’s voice admonishing us to “Breathe! Just breathe! Everything else will take care of itself. As long as you’re breathing.” still rings in my head.

Then I read the story of the Buddhist monk who was able to cross a mile long bridge on one breath. What if I could enter the stage with that kind of deep, grounded breathing?

I Am An Organism.

In the martial arts learning to prolong your breath helps to control your organism in an aggressive encounter, to cut right through undue tension and the momentary panics so that the body and mind can respond more fluidly to outside impulses. That is exactly how I wanted to be working onstage.

My first attempt at this came on the Saturday performance last week. It also coincided with the premiere of the latest incarnation of our clown trio, now comprised of myself, the effervescent and delightful Sean Kempton and Stephan Landry, taking time off from his Innocent role while Jimmy Slonina is on paternity leave, spending time with his lovely wife Robin and their latest creation Leo.

Don’t just do something. Stand there.

Our fanfare started (Miron Rafajlovic and Jim Lutz on trumpet and trombone blasting with both barrels) and I was pushed onstage aboard my chariot, breathing the deepest hara breath I could muster and…

I forgot what was next.

In a good way.

It was a fraction of a second.

Or a thousand years.

And I may have been closest to the core of my characters clueless center than ever before.

Of course I remembered in time (and in character) enough to not destroy any timings but that glimpse into the “elixir field” was enough to have me hooked and each night I’ve tried to incorporate hara breathing a little more.

I find I’m straining less, sweating less and who knows, perhaps accessing my personal Haragei has made me more sensitive to the audiences ebb and flow.

But there was no panic, no uh-oh moment.

I just calmly had no idea what I was supposed to do next.

This is after more than 250 performances.

I just stood there.

A nincompoop king.

A clown in a crown.

A scarecrow in the “elixir field.”

A dopey dinosaur standing center stage.

Clownosaurus Rex.

Clueless but breathing.

Navigating and Narrating

2009-12-05T23:45:00.000-08:00

Video shot by boatswain and buddy Ben Thompson (Widsith)