142 - Alive! On the Inside - Carnival Wonders and the Essence of Showmanship (Showmanship & Play 24 of 30)

What if embracing play could transform not only our perception of reality but also the world we live in? Join me, Captain Frodo, as we embark on a whimsical exploration of the intrinsic connection between play and showmanship. Together, we’ll question whether play unearths pre-existing truths or crafts entirely new perspectives. Drawing inspiration from cultural phenomena like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and thinkers such as Huitzinger, we’ll investigate how play might be the cornerstone of human constructs like law, art, and philosophy. This episode is an invitation to broaden your understanding of play as a key to unlocking human creativity, growth, and cultural evolution.

Next, we journey into the vibrant and surreal world of carnivals, inspired by Bruce Caron's book, "Inside the Live Reptile Tent." Imagine a realm where laughter and play serve as tools to conquer fear, much like an emotional boot camp. The mythopoetic nature of carnivals offers us a unique blend of reality and imagination, transforming them into metaphors for our own playful yet profound journeys. We'll reflect on the allure and deception of sideshows, questioning their authenticity and exploring how they encapsulate our deepest desires and dreams. Through the lens of both popular culture and personal experience, we'll unravel the carnival as a living testament to the power of imagination.

To wrap things up, we delve into the raw and sometimes controversial power of carnival attractions, reflecting on my personal experiences in uncovering the delicate balance between reality and performance. The intimate nature of sideshows provides a profound connection with audiences, challenging societal norms and inviting us to engage with the world in new and meaningful ways. I’ll share why staying "alive on the inside" through curiosity and social interaction is crucial for any performer and how embracing play can fuel creativity and authenticity. By connecting deeply with our craft, we redefine showmanship, unlocking new dimensions of joy and creativity in both our performances and our lives.

Chapters

• 0:11 Exploring the Concept of Play
• 15:02 The World of Carnival Entertainment
• 31:22 The Shocking Reality of Carnivals
• 35:30 Journey Through the Heart of Play
• 43:46 The Playful Metaphor of Showmanship

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Greetings, fellow travelers, and welcome to the way of the showman, where we view the world through the lens of showmanship. I am Captain Frodo and I will be your host and your guide along the way. I'm, captain Frodo, and I will be your host and your guide along the way, and we are stepping into the last quarter of the exploration of play and showmanship. We are coming to part of the last, where we're going to bring it all together. So we've got to do a little synopsis here of what we talked about in the last episode, as has become the way that we do it these days. It's inspired, I guess, in a sense by me having watched during the pandemic. I watched Awakening from the Meaning Crisis by John Verveke and just like any good lecture series, he starts each episode by bringing together what he talked about last time, some points clarifying some things sometimes, and I remember always having that good little primer and sometimes there was bits in that synopsis that made me go oh yeah, that's right, that's what the point was of that thing, because sometimes when somebody goes on for that length about something, we might sometimes forget why there's so much, because we just get stuck in those details of what it is. So hopefully these synopsis don't feel completely like, oh, I'll just skip past this, but that it actually sums up some of the things that we talked about and prepares ourselves, much like previously on the Mandalorian or whatever.

Speaker 1: 1:46

So last time we in general talked about the playful nature of reality. Is it so that there's an aspect going, weaving through reality and all in all aspects which is playful? And if there is so, then I was contemplating this thing of the joy of discovery. When we discover something in the world, when we recognize a connection, when we understand the relationship between one thing and something else, it has a joyful feeling to it. I certainly love it when I realize that some book that I'm reading is actually really connected to someone else. I remember when I was reading the Beat Poets that I loved that different people arrive and emerge in each other's books and all that sort of stuff. That is right up my alley. So I guess that is a big feature of things like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and that, at these times, feature of things like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and that, at these times.

Speaker 1: 2:47

So, this joy of discovery and the joy of connection, because there is this, this joy and is this joy do we actually have, then, when we play, a particular kind of sense or sensibility that that is in us where we discover these things which are always there? Like, do we discover certain things when we approach the world playfully that are already there, or are they there now to be seen because we are playing? Maybe it's a little bit of both, but I do think that I've certainly made a case for that last time that there might actually be a way. The way that we connect to the world actually affords us different things. You know, if you do it in one way, you are afforded certain experiences and certain aspects of reality, whilst if you're in another frame of mind or so, then you will discover different things and the other stuff might be completely invisible things and the other stuff might be completely invisible. Then we talked more about connection and play, and we talked then finally about how can we, through play, the aspects that we see in the world. Is that the most human things? Is it human culture that we discover? We looked at how Huitzinger kind of claims that play actually gave rise to law, such different domains as law, war, knowing, poetry, mythopoiesis, philosophy and art, which is all pretty key human inventions right there human aspects. So maybe play allows us, or affords us, to see these things.

Speaker 1: 4:29

So, with that said, that was the short end of the stick of what we talked about last time, and if there's any details that you're uncertain about, then I thought last episode was particularly good. When I read it, I felt like, okay, these are some good insights right here. Not every episode is going to be as awesome as they could be. There is a limit to how much time I have available in my life to create this. So any creation, any creative project, will always be the kind of. It is a balance between the work that you would like to put in and all the amount of books that you would like to synthesize and the thread that you're going to make in it. And will it be excellent if I went through this? Maybe two or three drafts more? Yes, it would, and maybe then it would be more like a book. At the moment, it's an excellent manuscript for sharing some of these ideas, even if some of the ways that I express it might need more work. But what I'm hoping is going to happen is that these things are going to be done by you, in your imagination. So, without further ado, let's jump into the world of ideas Now.

Speaker 1: 5:52

After all the things that we've talked about along this way, I believe we both see play quite differently now. Certainly we see it as more than mere play. We've shared so many insights and examinations, like how play is better defined through a list of features than a definition, and this is in part because naming something in thinking we've grasped it, we invariably name it too small and too soon. As we've talked about We've seen how parental love created the original playground where the seeds of play could sprout and grow, that human beings are never more free or more fully themselves than when they play. We've seen that not playing makes you sick, that there is a powerful connection between play and learning and that a great deal of scholarly work places play as a plausible origin process for culture, law, art, ritual and religion. We also looked at how trying to grasp and thereby name play by its features and characteristics and uses in all things human culture, for its role in the survival of the species, the development of the child's ability to function in the world or as a tool for learning, inevitably also names play too small.

Speaker 1: 7:17

That playful interactions, unfolding relations, not random and meaningless but mutually responsive, playing out strings of actions, events and choices, each bouncing off the previous and resonantly responding and in ways that are inherently meaningful. It all creates for lack of a better word stories. Meaningful stories are about interactions and relations between characters, human, animal, plants, things, whether patterns or concepts like narcissism, anger, dreams, death and love, myths, fairy tales and great stories are plentiful, which we have discovered along the way, and that means that they are absolutely serious and funny stories. Funny books are serious too. Terry Pratchett, dr Seuss and David Sedaris are serious even if they are funny, or perhaps because they are funny.

Speaker 1: 8:18

So, after this journey where we have broadened our horizon of understanding, when I write play, when I say play, you no longer see what you saw before when this exploration began. The word play is now more than Just seeing. The word is different. It's bigger and implies more. It's a symbolic arrangement of letters, so much meaning is in it. Now You're no longer the innocent child. You have matured your understanding of it, realizing that the way you understood play before going into this journey was naming it too soon, making it less than it is.

Speaker 1: 8:58

But so this journey will continue when, in seven years, you, on a strange occasion where just enough solitude finds you and you again see, for some reason or other, incomprehensible to you perhaps, and you utter the word play out loud or you see it written, then you will again know, know this anew. And in that moment, seven years from now, you will know, know, know this anew. And in that moment, seven years from now, you will know that the way you named play that time seven years ago, which is right now when you are reading this word, and then you will realize and I had sort of word and realizes it's spelt wrong. Actually I spelt that wrong by this is a little author's joke here that I just a little gag and I just got fully taken in by it. Here I was going oh no, I've spelt that wrong, but I pretended to you that I had written it correctly. Anyway, that was one of those cool gags that happens off-screen in a movie. Anyway, if this was a show that took those kinds of things seriously, we'd probably edit that out. But anyway, we've now lost the thread a little bit.

Speaker 1: 10:16

But seven years in the future you'll realize that even this time when you saw play as something all that much more, and this time right now that we're now, even though it's greatly expanded. Hopefully, in your ongoing relationship with play, you will realize that, looking back seven years, you will be naming it too small now, even after reading this whole book, or that I've read you this book and commented on it in left, right and centers, but also know that a time, seven years in the future, after you have gained so much more knowledge and wisdom, you will once again name play too small. Such is life. It's a game you can't win unless all you want from it is to enjoy the play along the way. If you play in the infinite game, then everyone is winners.

Speaker 1: 11:11

So, with all this in mind, anything that I say about play and its relation to showmanship is going to be naming it too small. It's going to be more than what I say, and I feel like what I have thought on the intersection between the two might just be too obvious and that you are way too smart to want me to have to spell it out to you. So the best conclusion to this is that you now have, after season two's project of understanding showmanship and this season's project of understanding showmanship and this season's project of understanding play, then we have already laid the necessary foundation for this new relational understanding in you, if you have found the time to listen to it all, for the ongoing conclusion where two becomes three, where the twain shall meet, will live on in you. I have shared all these ideas, stories and aspects of play so that you too will have the grounds to grasp the depths of the metaphor of showmanship as play. Keeping the two in mind will be an unfolding conversation in your mind and in your work if you let it. Conversation in your mind and in your work if you let it.

Speaker 1: 12:25

The metaphoric relation between them is the process of them fitting and not fitting. It is how they are and aren't the same. It is how one aspect of one will inform you of how to approach in the other. So, like, one aspect that you understand in one thing will guide you and inform you towards how to do something in the other domain, showmanship and play, going back and forth. And I hope that by keeping in mind lightly, the expanse of all that performing and showmanship is to you, whilst at the same time having this new expanse of play equally lightly in your mind too, will conversationally spark off a never-ending story. A never-ending story emerging from the melting together of the two horizons of understanding play and showmanship, and showmanship, and all that said, I can't stop now.

Speaker 1: 13:27

I must give some indications of what has emerged in the conversation between the two in me, as small as these insights might seem, in the process of naming them. This, what you're hearing now, is kind of like a preamble to the final part of this project and before we go in because what we are going to do is that we're going to look at each of the five criterias for play and then we're going to look, see if I can tell you what you know. Of course, we could go on and go on about this, but I'm going to give you a few ideas of things that I think relate directly between performance and these five criterias. So to give you a sort of a blow by blow kind of guide, not to in any way exhaust it, or so, I'm thinking that you will find these and find your own things, and that's why you're a reflected artist and creator and why you are listening to this podcast. So I think you have all you need. But some indications for those people who are either interested in hearing my thoughts or that might find that these more concrete examples to spark off more of a yeah, more connections in your mind. But before we get on to that, the and that's the topic of today's episode, it's the whole thing is kind of like a mix between a summary of what we have already talked about and then where this is going.

Speaker 1: 15:02

So I'd like now to read a little quote by Bruce Caron, which wrote that book Inside the Live Reptile Tent that I spoke about, where I first heard about Alan White and this idea that there is no intrinsic link between seriousness and importance and all that that we spoke about a few episodes ago. So let's do this quote. Bruce Caron put me on track of taking Carnival, this picture of what a carnival is, as a more poetic, mythopoetic thing, and that book came out in 2001,. And I must have read it a couple of years later, 2003 maybe, or something like that, 2002. Anyway, the quote goes as follows here we need to admit that even carnival laughter cannot overcome our fears the first time.

Speaker 1: 16:00

Like most things worthwhile, the laughter that conquers fears also takes practice and relies on a personal history of acquiring certain skills. The upside is that we can get better at this, with a carnival midway as our laughter boot camp. It may not always be pleasant at the time. But when we tackle carnival risks, we signal a desire to strengthen our own emotions and we gain an awareness of both our vulnerability and our invincibility. Taking a chance at the carnival is a small first step towards knowing where and when to take our other chances, how to laugh when the game is lost and that there is always another chance to win.

Speaker 1: 16:50

We've wandered far along the way together and it's time to take a turn back into the world of showmanship, because the way that we've walked the last almost 20 episodes, 19 episodes or whatever has been pretty much specifically be about play, and every now and then I remember that I'm ringing the bell of showmanship and kong. Do you see the connection here? Hopefully, that will have trained you to hold these ideas lightly and connect them together in your mind. So now we step out of these lofty high ideas, from the high castles of philosophy and academia, and back out onto the showgrounds on the edge of town where, as luck will have it, a carnival has set up, with rides, shows, the greatest fat-fried foods one can find and games of chance that will secure you not only a large plush version of Baby Yoda, but that also will impress the girl that you've had a crush on from school.

Speaker 1: 17:44

The carnival is a fairground where play permeates everything. There is play in the very physical form of getting on the carousel, ferris wheel or roller coaster, and where you literally get spun and shook in ways that you haven't since. Adults were giants who could do similar fun things to you. There are games of chance and games of skill that you might be uniquely suited to play or that you might wish that you were able to win for yourself or to impress some significant other. There is also a constant play with the truth.

Speaker 1: 18:18

Who knows if the barrels of the guns at the shooting galleries aren't bent just enough to make you unable to win that ACDC engraved rock and roll mirror? Who knows whether the woman's beard at the freak show is real? Is popcorn actually healthy? Is there significantly less sugar in the huge bowl of candy floss and fairy floss than a bottle of Coca-Cola? Is there actually a living person inside a canvas tent in the corner with teeth growing where fingernails should be? And will all the girls inside the all-girl review attraction really show at all? These are questions you can only get answers to by participating. Only by buying the ticket can you take the ride and decide for yourself, not only whether it is true or not, but whether that even matters.

Speaker 1: 19:07

Perhaps the most important thing about the ghost train isn't whether it really is the scariest ride ever conceived by carnies, but the opportunities that it affords you and your significant other when you get to ride into that dark tunnel together. Truth at the carnival is a malleable thing, best approached playfully, alive. On the inside, people from all walks of life can come and let themselves be enticed by the allure of the attractions along the midway of a carnival. Attractions lining both sides of the midway are garish and outlandish and colourful. The angles, the embellishments of the architecture is designed for maximum amusement, intrigue and entertainment. So even the venues are strange attractors. On the insides of the canvas and the painted show fronts you can see magicians, strongmen, high divers, girl shows and freaks, real human freaks At least you could have seen all of this in the past. But for us, fellow travellers, in the imaginal space, in the imaginal realm, in the realm of the collective, unconscious carnival of dreams, all this and more is available to us. The carnival of dreams is made from bits and pieces of popular culture, as much from movies and books about carnivals as the real agricultural shows with carnival elements or the modern, mainly mechanical ride-based shows that you might see at a music festival or any odd lot in your own real town at home. The way you live real or not, whether you can see this or that attraction in your own hometown is, for us, beside the point. This domain of the carnival plays out for real in the same way that myths and fairy tales are real as manifestations of deep interests, desires and dreams and dark dramas of humanity.

Speaker 1: 21:03

In the real-life American carnivals of the past the sideshows were a staple sight to be seen, once called a ten-in-one, as in ten attractions in one show, even if in good carny tradition there was probably rarely more than a five attraction. Outside the tent there would be usually a man who would talk to talk and gather the carnival patrons with his stories and his hype, and once he has a crowd he would maybe present on the little outside stage a glimpse or a snippet of something that you could get to see in full on the inside if you bought a ticket. In addition to the live talker gathering audiences, there was the sideshow banners. These were often huge. Some were big like two and a half by five meters or even bigger, and other smaller paintings have a distinct style, a kind of folk pictorial representation, as outlandish and exaggerated as the sideshow and freak shows themselves. The images are rather naive in their execution, but always very to the point and effective, painted with bright, eye-catching colors and powerful imaginative representations of freaks, geeks and strange girls, as the 1995 book's title puts it, in which the title is Freaks, geeks and Strange Girls Sideshow Banners of the Great American Midway.

Speaker 1: 22:23

Sideshow banners were unashamed advertising, hyperbolically, promising the fantastic and the fabulous, and anyone who has spent any time looking at the banners of the American carnivals will have seen the word alive painted inside circles like star explosions on sale advertising signs in store windows. We might find this an odd thing to need to point out, as alive is one of the most oft-repeated words on sideshow banners in general. The alive exclamation was there to tell the carnival patron that there actually was a living, breathing human being resembling a penguin or an elephant or having three limbs inside the tent. Once you've bought the ticket and you've stepped inside the canvas, the promise is now that there will be a person there who actually would swallow a sword or lift an anvil with his nipples, as Rasmus Nielsen did. Why was this so important that it needed to be pointed out so frequently.

Speaker 1: 23:28

Well, the thing is that when Sideshow had its heyday, there were many shows which travel which were more like what we today would think of as museums. These shows had display cases with babies in jars, deformed or otherwise. It had wax figures, rare stuffed animal curiosities like calves with five legs or chickens with two heads, and even just some of them had just photographs of grotesque or alluring people or things that would pad out the show that only had the sideshow talk around a ticket seller and no living or alive attractions on the inside. With the pervasiveness of these kinds of museum shows, it meant that show operators who'd managed to engage, the likes of Frank Lentini, who actually had three legs and could kick a football with his third leg, or the Hilton sisters, who were a pair of Siamese or conjoined twins, and Violet, one of the Hilton sisters. She was a skilled saxophonist and Daisy played the violin. And if someone like this actually sat inside your showman tent, this fact would be the most salient selling point, practically demanding the phrase alive, with a big exclamation point.

Speaker 1: 24:40

After the average sideshow talker was pragmatic. He had one job to do attract attention, gather crowds and make people buy tickets. He needed to create anticipation, intrigue and interest to such a point that the carnival patrons would want to fork over cash to buy a ticket. And hopefully, by the end of this great oration, with all the tricks of a good huckster, an advertising slash salesman, then he would have convinced you that all that really good stuff, it will all happen on the inside. And to see this, all you'd have to do was to buy one of these tickets that weren't even particularly expensive. And not only that, he would make you think that the price paid was low compared to the wonders that you would encounter on the inside. The good talker would make you believe that you got a bargain on account of the glorious wonders awaiting on the inside, alive and on the inside Sacred and profane.

Speaker 1: 25:44

Sacred spaces and profane spaces. Let's explore that a little bit. The phrase on the inside it clearly separates the outside from the inside, which is something that we've already spoken about this here, and it postulates we spoke about this in Alan White and all that which was also in the same book. The original seed for my exploration of that was in the Alive on the Inside. No, not Alive on the Inside, the Inside Alive Reptile Tent. Anyway, the phrase on the inside clearly separates the outside from the inside and it postulates an interior where what is and what occurs is of tremendous fascination.

Speaker 1: 26:27

The sideshow talker, or barker as he's known in popular culture, promises that what happens on the inside is essentially different from the common everyday events of the outside. Mircea Eliade describes this move as central for the creation of extraordinary spaces. Messier Eliade has written about shamanism and has written many excellent things. He's a religious historical thinker Excellent for those who are interested in that and what I'm basing this a little bit on is his book called the Sacred and Profane, from 1957. So in this he describes this move of saying that there is an inside and an outside and what's on the inside is different than on the outside, as the central move for the creation of extraordinary spaces, which he calls sacred spaces, concrete, real places where rules are different, where experiences are more than greater than or other than experiences in everyday spaces, or what he calls profane spaces. And this is a quote For religious man.

Speaker 1: 27:38

Space is not homogenous. He experiences interruptions, breaks in it. Some parts of space are qualitatively different from others. Draw not nigh hither, says the Lord to Moses. Put off thy shoes off thy feet, for the place whereupon thou standest is holy ground. That's from Exodus, and there is then a sacred space, there it is, and hence a strong, sacred space. There it is, and hence a strong, significant space. There are other spaces that are not sacred and so are, without structure or consistency, amorphous, nor is this all For religious man. This spatial non-homogeneity finds expression in the experience of an opposition between space that is sacred the only real and really existing space and all other space is the formless expanse surrounding it.

Speaker 1: 28:34

That's from the Sacred and the Profane by Messia Eliade from 1957, page 20. There are in the world two modes of being distinctly different from each other. Eliade says. One is the profane and this is the mundane world of everyday life. We wake up, we go to school, we work, we eat, we drink, we go to the toilet, organize life and make plans for the future. But in addition to this, there is a wholly different way to experience life. There is a wholly different way to experience life, and this is perhaps not so immediately clear to the secular Westerners such as myself and a lot of my listeners.

Speaker 1: 29:14

Yet when the pandemic came, several months into the lockdown, when animals ventured further into the cities than ever before, when the streets of even bustling metropolises were practically empty. There was a shift in mindset? There certainly was for me. I walked in nature and on empty city streets and I found that almost immediately, as the barrage of information and interactions receded, the cracks that opened up invited a different kind of conversation. The books I read, the courses I embarked on in this time were more poetic and more metaphoric than usual. Poetry became apparent in everyday actions in ways that it didn't normally.

Speaker 1: 29:57

This is a space of being where we perhaps only encounter when we take a camping trip into nature, when we go on a holiday to a place where there is no internet connection Admittedly rare, I concede, in times like this we experience this, but often, after a few days in this kind of space, we can sense a kind of arrival, like we have finally caught up with ourselves. The noise and the speed and the pressure of modern everyday living finally allows us to relax into the present, into the present. Poetry and meaning and the state of being, unlike normal life, starts to emerge. Perhaps it's better to say that, as the clutter falls away, we return to this state of being which at some point in our archaic past must have been all-pervasive when, after a hunt, sitting full around a fire, after a feast, nothing breaking the silence but the crackling of the fire and the wind in the trees and the noise of bodies, poetry, myth and fairy tales trees and the noise of bodies, poetry, myth and fairy tales all of a sudden is not something. No, it's not just florid abstraction, but the only language powerful enough to express what we feel.

Speaker 1: 31:22

Today we glimpse this in moments of personal tragedy, at the loss of a loved one, as we are told a devastating prognosis by a doctor, as we have our heart broken. The incessant chatter of everyday life becomes annoyingly empty and frustrating. And in moments like this, poetry and sacred language once again becomes the only way to express the immensity of experience. This perhaps captures the state of sacred being. For the non-religious, for the religious or spiritually open-minded, the sacred is a reality much closer to experience. One can enter into it through the door of a church or a synagogue and boom shanka, we find ourselves in sacred space. And boomshanka, we find ourselves in sacred space. Quote In the last analysis, the sacred and profane modes of being depends upon the different positions that man has conquered in the cosmos. Hence they are of concern both to the philosopher and to anyone seeking to discover the possible dimensions of human existence. Michel Eliade again. And in this state it can become so real that it's uncomfortable, for playing at the carnival is playing with boundaries. It's a place of questionable taste, coarse caricatures and brightly colored reproductions of questionable taste, coarse caricatures and brightly colored reproductions.

Speaker 1: 32:48

In 1999, lynn Doherty directed a documentary called Sideshow Alive on the Inside, and I don't think this was the first time when I heard this phrase, but it certainly did a lot to cement this phrase in my mind. Alive on the inside, not just as a pragmatic phrase used to sell tickets and advertise on banners, but as a poetic expression of what lies at the heart of the freak show and sideshows. At that time I fully identified as a freak show and sideshow artist. I was aware that I was working with entertainment rooted in unease, but to me there was a distinct beauty and a closeness to reality in these carnival art forms. The sheer viscerality and visceral experience of finding yourself face to face with a genuine human freak is extremely confronting and powerful.

Speaker 1: 33:37

The experience of stepping into a tent after paying for admission and then finding yourself staring at a human being altogether different than you is quite a mindfuck. I have only actually really had this feeling, and it was, as most carnival attractions, based on a certain level of subterfuge, but it was a show called Sixth Sense, where a smooth-talking Dutch guy lured us all into his tent with the promise of a genuine demonstration of a paranormal phenomenon. And on the inside, the man promised you that he would be able to see through the eyes of another person, which is a bold and bizarre claim, no doubt. And I bought a ticket and I stepped inside, finding myself in a rather small tent with an adult man, man clearly mentally different. He sat in a kind of high chair, like what you see an infant in, and the feeling of realizing that I had just paid to see a person with some sort of intellectual disability, it was just shocking, to say the least. And as it turned out, the man and the fellow from the outside which turned out to be his older brother showed us an absolutely astonishing demonstration, proving beyond reasonable doubt that the man in the high chair could indeed see through his brother's eyes. Now, in full disclosure, there might have been magic involved, as in the secular kind of magic, and as with all things belonging to the carnival. The showman played with reality wonderfully, questionably and outrageously. And be that as it may, I got to realise that vulgar raw power of having bought a ticket to see something which absolutely would be considered problematic in the terms of political correctness or any which way you view it, and it was shocking. It was an experience I would not want to have been without.

Speaker 1: 35:30

A person born different presented in such a setting is overpoweringly affective. Not just affective, but affective. The so-called sideshow working acts like sword swallowers aren't born different, but rather become different by presenting unusual skills, but not any unusual skills. The reason sword swallowing has become forever connected with the freak shows is the peculiar power the act has. It is a weird skill which affords a weird experience for the spectator. There is something deeply intimate about it, a participatory aspect where you can practically feel it, to the point that you might gag in sympathetic resonance with the performer. The classic working acts of human blockheads, where the performer puts a large nail or a screwdriver or something like that into their nose, and sword swallowing both quite directly has something to do with pushing into the interior. Metal objects penetrate deep into the head or stomach through the throat of someone and witnessing either makes you feel it in your own gut.

Speaker 1: 36:40

To me, who believed and still believes, that the book of reality is written like poetry, not as a product description of a washing machine, the phrase reflects this deep interior aspect of the sideshow experience, alive on the inside. The arts that belong in the sideshow, as opposed to the main event at the big circus, are qualitatively different to the main event at the big circus, are qualitatively different. The greatest show on earth, the circus, is a wonderful, thrilling and spectacular fun for the whole family and Sideshow is for adults and for the youth, not for the whole family. But when you're coming of age, the transgressive acts of questionable taste tickles you pink. As teenagers, these transgressions mirrors our own fluidity. We are literally changing, boys and girls alike. There are physiological changes to our bodies Breasts emerge, legs stretch, hair arrives on the upper lips, underarms and legs and along with this there is a major inner upheaval too. Hormones sends emotions roiling, like our insides when we're getting on rides and roller coasters. So you're seeing the child you retreat like you're seeing in the mirror. You see the child you are and the child you were retreat behind you in the mirror. But the future you also see the one that you'll become and your role, that way you're staring yourself towards this, is still foggy. You are lost. You're left lost at the wheel, seeking in the outer geography clues to where the chaotic inner geography belongs.

Speaker 1: 38:16

The sideshow acts promoted on the banners are alive on the inside, and it will make you feel alive on the inside too. They will make you feel strongly. They'll make you feel strongly and the phrase alive on the inside promises that the event they will witness will be organic like life itself, that it will be a living, participatory and interactive process. The experience will grab and pull you along, reminding you that the more you engage in it, the richer the rewards will be. It's alive on the inside and you can be too. You resonate with it and you will get richer rewards.

Speaker 1: 38:55

The promise of the Sideshow banner on the outside of an exhibit becomes not just a promise from the Sideshow showman on the outside to the ticket buying carnival patrons. It also becomes my personal promise to myselfhow showman on the outside to the ticket-buying carnival patrons. It also becomes my personal promise to myself to stay alive on the inside, for only by having a living, breathing, endlessly expansive and always learning inner world can I present the pulsing meat of human experience to my audience. As we promise in the showman's manifesto that you can find in another episode ages ago, the performer on the inside will present something important and unique from their own inside. That's what we see in the ring, on the stage, on the sideshow, ballet. We will see acts that are real and the performers are real artists doing real things for real people.

Speaker 1: 39:42

It's so real that it can become quite uncomfortable, and to me personally it has become a reminder that my acts should be alive. They should feel like living things, completely part of myself. It is part of what shaped my understanding of an act as a kind of mimetic organism, an entity that, beneficially, could be thought as to have its own ideas, feelings and willful expressions. The truth of my acts are truths, to a certain extent, that are true to me. I am not an actor playing a role very different from myself. My acts are reflections of me, external expressions of inner truths I find attractive.

Speaker 1: 40:25

So the phrase alive on the inside became a reminder that to create an act of a show that's alive, I have too to be alive, that I have to seek out fuel for my internal fire of ideas, for skills and feelings, and that I always have to expand myself, to keep learning and keep growing, that I need to maintain an interest, an ever-growing interaction with the world to stay alive on the inside, both in an inward fashion, by exploring what lives inside myself, and also by stepping out into new territories of the outer world and engage in those. How can I maintain this? How do I do it? Through curiosity, sociality and play. What am I doing here with the carnival and the alive? On the inside phrase, I'm playing. I'm revealing the many layers and subtle kinds of play.

Speaker 1: 41:27

One encounter in the midways and I haven't written this in a white goods appliance manual, fashion or instructional booklet where I say this is how X feature of play finds its equivalent or can be used as a tool in performing. I've tried to paint the picture of a poetic and symbolic carnival which still is rooted deeply in the carnival actual, like a real carnival thing. I want it to be real and, apart from the occasional indication, I have left this playful literary version here in this. This what I'm talking about right now, and the exploration of the carnival as an exercise for you to conjure up the many facets of the newfound knowledge of play and to use it as a kaleidoscopic telescope to grasp the transactional and playful conversational experience of visiting a carnival than any carnival or anything like this literary carnival of dreams. What does your kaleidoscope, with its, its mirrors of play, reveal about what the performers inside the tents are doing? What does it show the fun of the carnival patrons to be? What's the nature of the way that the carnival barker invites you in to see his brother in the high chair, his brother in the high chair? Or the game of chance or skill operators enticing invitations through the kaleidoscope, through the clear lens or straight up as an actual, screamingly obvious aspect of reality? We see that it is all playful Along the midway of a carnival.

Speaker 1: 42:59

The play is not done within the boundaries, you play with the boundaries. The kind of play reveals the heart of the weird along the midway, the world between, the middle way, the midway, the world between, as it presents before being named and defined. Play reveals the heart of the weird as it is before it is named and defined. All right, that was a journey along the midway, the middle way, the world between the place of interest, the place of interest being between. So I hope that you liked that little riff being between.

Speaker 1: 43:46

So I hope that you liked that little riff. It felt to me like it was flowing quite good and that it was capturing some of that excitement that you might feel along the midway, which is, in a sense, then, the metaphorical home for the showman a possible home anyway and I hope it somehow peaked in you this kind of playful approach to what we do, where we play with the depths of showmanship and we play with play itself and what comes out of having that kind of feeling in the work that we do. So until next time, tell your friends about this podcast, write about it on Instagram, follow me on Instagram. You would be totally awesome if you did that. So until next time, take care of yourself and those you love, and I hope to see you along the way.