the Way of the Showman
Philosophical and esoteric perspectives from a modern day Showman.
Each season is different in its approach. S1 is essays. S2 is one book length attempt at Understanding Showmanship, S3 is conversations with remarkable Showfolk. The brand new Season 4 explores the relationship between Showmanship and Play.
The host, Captain Frodo, internationally renowned circus performer, director, writer, husband and dad lays out, in great detail, his practical performance philosophy for performers who seek to deepen the conversation with their audiences and themselves. You can find him, and more of his writing at: www.thewayoftheshowman.com
the Way of the Showman
144 - Toilet Plunger Aliens and the Value of Effortless Attention (Showmanship & Play 26 of 30)
There's a profound paradox at the heart of play – we're told it's "apparently purposeless," yet this very quality might reveal its deepest value. This episode dives into the second criteria of play and examines how it mirrors the essence of showmanship in fascinating ways.
When we attend a circus show, comedy performance, or music festival, we don't go primarily to learn something or accomplish a task. We go to have a good time – to experience life fully in the moment. Yet society has conditioned us to view such experiences as frivolous, less valuable than "productive" activities. The Protestant work ethic and educational systems have trained us to be suspicious of enjoyment, to dismiss it as "mere entertainment" without serious purpose.
This dismissal of pleasure as a worthy purpose is precisely what creates the illusion that play is purposeless. When we recognize that experiencing joy is itself a profound purpose, the apparent purposelessness dissolves. As Tolkien's Gandalf wisely notes, "All we have to decide is what to do with the time given us." Filling our limited time with experiences that make existence enjoyable seems not just reasonable but essential.
George Saunders' epiphany about Kurt Vonnegut's work provides a perfect parallel – he discovered that profound truths could be communicated through humor and accessibility, challenging his assumption that "great writing was hard reading." Vonnegut's toilet-plunger aliens conveyed more about the absurdity of war than many serious treatises. Similarly, JF Martel's distinction between art that astonishes versus didactic art designed to teach specific lessons shows how the most transformative experiences often appear to lack obvious purpose.
When performers focus primarily on delivering messages rather than creating authentic shared experiences, audiences sense this ulterior motive. Captain Frodo shares a personal example of his own show being rejected by educators but chosen by students, demonstrating how authentic playfulness creates experiences that resonate deeply even when – or perhaps because – they appear purposeless.
Ready to bring more playfulness into your life and performances? Subscribe to The Way of the Showman and explore how embracing the "purposeless" quality of play might unlock your most meaningful creative expressions and life experiences.
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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, and we are really getting into the final steps of this thing. Here Today will be part one of the we're talking about criteria two, of how play is apparently purposeless and done for its own sake, and we're going to see how that lines up with showmanship sake. And we're going to see how that lines up with showmanship. It's going to take two episodes, because it turns out I had a lot of conversational ideas about that, but there's these two episodes and then I believe there might just be three more. So we are within four or five episodes, five episodes probably, of what we have left to talk about, and after that, who knows what will happen? Well, one big thing that we're going to talk about. It will be something along the lines of what I've done here, possibly not quite as large, but I will write another manuscript, but that'll take another year. Once this is done, I guess, and in the meantime maybe we'll go back to more conversations, maybe, since I'm recording this ahead of the time, maybe things have changed. Maybe the world has collapsed by the time this finds you. Well, certainly hope not Before the world collapses. It'd be totally awesome if you could get someone that you know to start listening to this episode, or to any episode. Really, it would be totally awesome. Go into Instagram, go into real life, make a painting and hang it up on the street Like the best kind of street art. Follow the way, share the symbol, share your passion and enthusiasm for the podcast. That would be totally awesome.
Speaker 1:So last time we spoke about metaphor, we spoke about how metaphor means to carry over, that there is making one thing connect to something else. We spoke about how Ian McIlchrist has some brilliant thoughts on how this gap that's in between and it is by metaphor that we can reach over from the world of language, for instance, where the word we spoke about was human. When I say human, I am equating a meaning, the kind of being that I am and the kind of being that you are. But the word, the sound, is not actually the same thing at all. The map is not the territory, as we've already spoken about. So he says that there's this gap there, yet there is actually a real, actual reaching across. When I say human, it carries in it what it means to be human and we understand it and thus can talk meaningfully about what it means to be human. We don't want to name it, we don't want to define it too much, because it's always expanding, always growing, and we can always see it from another point of view.
Speaker 1:We looked at Lakoff and Johnson and their book Metaphors that we Live by, where they claim that, in fact, all actions and all thinking is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. So that gives this powerful philosophical underpinning to this giant project of 25 or 30 episodes. It'll be, by the end of it, about exploring play and showmanship as a metaphor, where we're constantly trying to keep each one loosely in mind and connect them up. Then we sort of just uh, in getting into the what this final section of the podcast will be about, whether showmanship actually is like play. Is it like play or is it actually indeed a kind of play? And I think it probably is both. And then we started looking into the first criteria and the first criteria is that for something to be play, criteria and the first criteria is that for something to be play, it needs to be fun and and it and that you don't want it to end because when something is fun and then we spoke about to see how that is I say well, show, showman is an entertainer and what circus arts and everything normally is is classed as a form of, even though there are forces amongst us that aim to push into the art, pure art kind of thing, much like pure music or whatever, where it's not folk music which hits you in the gut, but it is contemporary, classical, atonal music, difficult to understand and intellectual, and all this and people are doing that with circus too, and that is a valid, valid way to express circus, but at its heart, at its core, where it started and where it continues to probably arguably be most expressed is as entertainment, and entertainment is fun and enjoyable.
Speaker 1:We spoke about effortless attention, how, if we are entertaining somebody, the audience needs to be able to effortlessly pay attention. Then we spoke about a whole bunch of little things, of how we spoke about Kairos and Kronos time, how the Kronos is the word we get chronometer from, which is the clock ticking, and the clock ticking is different from the kairos time, and the kairos time is the time that we experience when we're caught in a moment, and a moment of duration just flows and you forget the beginning, middle and end, and at the end of it you just go. Oh, there you go. And it's in these moments of life when we say, oh, my God, this is it, I get it, this is it. Or we say, oh, this is as perfect as it gets, or it doesn't get any better than this. It's those moments that we think back at. So we spoke about that.
Speaker 1:And what else did we talk about? Well, we asked after saying that, well, of course, the show is then entertaining and enjoyable. Uh, for the audience. Is it so for us? From my own personal opinion, I said yes, it is. I managed to find great enjoyment in it. There are times when I find it less enjoyable, but I do really enjoy it, and I do think that we can find many levels of depth of enjoyment in what it is that we do. And if you aren't finding fun in it, then that is the question to go how can I have a more playful approach to my performance? And in doing so, in making your performance and how you think about it and feel about it more playful, maybe you'll find yourself in a new and better relationship to your work and can find something more out of it. Maybe that's looking at it like that. If showmanship is play and my showmanship is not making me feel like I am getting fun and enjoyment out of it, something needs to be rethought. With that in mind, let's move on to today's journey through the world of ideas. So today we bring up and look at criteria two that play is apparently purposeless and done for its own sake, not for anything beyond itself. So this second criteria could just as easily, I think, have been written about showmanship.
Speaker 1:We don't go to see a stand-up show, comedy show or a magic show or a circus show, or we go to a music festival because we want to learn something or to propagate the human species or to strengthen our muscles from the dancing at the concerts, although all those things might happen. We might find an unexpected lesson about scam artists and card cheats in the magic show. We might find a mate at a music festival. Or seeing a woman ripping a large paperback version of War and Peace in half at the circus might inspire someone in a way that they would never have imagined. There are all kinds of lessons to be learned at the Carnival of Life, but those lessons and inspirations aren't why we go. We go because we want to have a good time. A good time and be in the moment. Festivals, shows and great parties, with or without music and entertainment, are synonymous with good times. Arguably, it is in these kinds of situations that we will have the best times of our lives. We partake in such events because we want to live life to its fullest. They make us feel like we are alive.
Speaker 1:How many of us go on a holiday and three days into a week trip on the beach somewhere? Just go wow to ourselves that we are going to do this. Ah, we just make a vow on every year we're going to do this, and I did that on my last real sort of holiday on a beach in thailand and that was in 2007. So that's like 16, 17 years ago, and I haven't really gone again. Not quite like that.
Speaker 1:After just the right amount of beers on the dance floor, we remember an aspect of human existence that having so many responsibilities to work, family and whatever else just makes us forget. Who doesn't look back at their life in their 20s and marvel at how free you were, how fully we lived life? Probably only those who are in their 20s or younger don't marvel in such a way. We can't so easily see it when we are living through it, because we are caught in the chirotic experience of time. Only when we look back chronologically and go 16 years ago, I was here and I felt like this, at least in my experience. I'm sure there was aspects of that. That was stuff I don't particularly want to go through again.
Speaker 1:But again and again I find that those things that's done at festivals and this festival then in the expansion of that, like the experiences that we have in festival time, are all quick to be classed as not necessary, not serious and not important, since they don't have any purpose beyond themselves. It's just having a good time. We should be able to do without that. If we don't have money, then that's what we cut out. We don't make any money, we aren't upskilling and we aren't getting something done. In sum, it is not important. It's not serious thus important. We've talked about that but, as Alan White has pointed out, when we talked about it, there is no intrinsic link between something being serious and it being important.
Speaker 1:Showmanship experienced by audiences as shows are seemingly purposeless beyond itself and what it is, and it is purposeless if we don't count the way that it enriches us, our life, by just letting us enjoy the experience. You know we might. We expect something when you go to a stand-up comedian you expect to have a good time and you might want them to share some, you know, comedic and profound insight. In relation't count the way that it enriches us and our life by letting us enjoy the experience, then it is purposeless. But why on earth should we not count this? We should absolutely count this.
Speaker 1:We have already looked at some of the reasons for dismissing these offhandedly. That's not to be done, but I will look at it again at some detail, as I think it's one of these moves that society makes, which lies at the heart of why play, friendliness, entertainment and a host of other topics have such a hard time being taken seriously and manifesting as things like in the history of motion pictures and sciences or, as in the Oscars, the best picture. Oscar has never gone to a comedy. So there might be elements of stuff that we learn from comedy shows or from art shows or whatever, but we don't go there to learn those things. If we really wanted to learn about politics, if that really was what we were driven towards doing, then we wouldn't go to a comedy show, we'd go somewhere else. But before launching into this, let's just sketch out a map of where this is going.
Speaker 1:I believe that the reason for the apparent purposelessness in Criteria 2, that this comes from the move to dismiss enjoyment and fun as a valid purpose, which I believe to be as true for play as it is for showmanship. This dismissal means that deep and life-enhancing meaning cannot be found in such expressions. We could say that the purpose that's not easily found in criteria two is a part of what gives the impression for this purposelessness is the fun and enjoyment that we described in criteria one. So the motivation to play is that it's intensely fun. This is what criteria one states, and I am arguing that this is the first purpose of play to joyfully relate to and be in the world, so guiding us towards a specific way of being in the world and that is to find enjoyment from it. So these two are, of course, that's just a little thought on.
Speaker 1:It's very hard to separate these things out because they only are separate criteria or whatever when we tear it apart. But, as we know, if anything, any process or anything living has been cut asunder, and say this is this bit and this is the other bit, then usually the organism, the being, the whole is broken or dead, dies in that cutting off a process. So this is quite abstract, and this last bit here of how one of the purposes of it is to enjoy existence and we shouldn't dismiss that. So why shouldn't we dismiss pleasure? Because enjoying oneself has become suspicious. When exploring at the origin of the school system some episodes ago, we looked at the Protestant work ethic that equates hard work with a good thing. If it's easy and pleasurable, such as dancing and singing, it's probably sinful. We also looked at how what children does in the school playgrounds is being made to be diametrically opposed to learning, which is what happens inside the school building. All of this points to what Alan White called the social reproduction of seriousness how the social institutions and our social cultural connections are reproducing and deciding what is serious.
Speaker 1:Forces in society that have made and continues to designate what or that which in itself is pleasurable and enjoyable as less valuable than that which is dreary and repetitive. It's more important to do the dreary and repetitive stuff because, like mowing the lawn and all this sort of stuff, we are perniciously indoctrinated to think that enjoyment is without inherent value. Just the other day I saw a sign on a street food donut vendor van that said it's okay to enjoy yourself. It's okay to enjoy yourself. Norway has had a strong Protestant influence and the southern end of Norway, where I saw this donut van, is famous for its religiosity, which has a strict, conservative, pietistic flavor. And that sign was, of course, as the showman's cry that it's alive on the inside, quite pragmatically telling the passers-by to give into their desire for sweet, fat-fried deliciousness. But it was also quietly making the call for a revolution to overthrow the suspicion of follow your bliss.
Speaker 1:The first assumption we encounter looking at the criteria of play is that the first criteria, about fun and enjoyment, is precluded as a worthy purpose in itself. This means that the inherent motivation offered by something being fun and enjoyment is precluded as a worthy purpose in itself. This means that the inherent motivation offered by something being fun and enjoyable, which is nature's most powerful way of directing us towards things that are, or at least have been, vitally important to us as organisms. The first part of criteria two, which describes play as apparently purposeless, is at least in part purposeless because it does not take the fun and enjoyment of criteria two, which describes play as apparently purposeless, is at least in part purposeless because it does not take the fun and enjoyment of criteria one as serious or a real purpose in lord of the rings, which we have already touched upon. But then gandalf says tolkien has gandalf say all we have to decide is what to do with the time given us, and we are all given a certain length of time in the world, and that this time should be filled with something which makes this existence enjoyable seems to me to be a noble and important part of whatever we choose to do. We've got to do many things, but in the pursuit of those things we should be finding at least a modicum, if not an overload, of fun and enjoyment.
Speaker 1:In the sheer pleasure of playing I see a worthy purpose in itself. A life that has been a net positive experience is a life well lived. And can't there be, as Darwin put it, grandeur in this way of life? Be, as Darwin put it, grandeur in this way of life. Playing reveals to us the playful inexistence which is a pursuit of great importance in the ever-encroaching forces of solemnity and darkness. Seeing this value and pursuing it is like choosing to see humans by either their brutish cruel or their deep-down pretty decent assumptions. Choosing to see humans by either the brutish cruel or the deep down pretty decent assumptions. Choosing to see value in criteria one, and thus of fun and enjoyment, and thus as one important purpose of criteria two, that then takes away this fact that it is actually. It isn't purposeless at all. We've spoken about that at length. But so then, choosing to see value in criteria one is then a radical act of defiance against all of those who see us as nothing but meat machinery for the propagation of our selfish genes and the.
Speaker 1:Put your head down and and just grin and bear the boredom and the drudgery of everyday life. Showmanship is a vehicle that takes the experience of the audience into account in such a way as to aim to please them. In keeping the audience experience one of effortless attention, where what's presented in the show is structured and crafted in such a way that it is enjoyable, then showmanship then comes under scrutiny. We get the old, just or mere placed before any description of our craft. It's just mere entertainment. It's just entertainment. It's mere entertainment, a bit of light fun on the side, implying it's not art or that it is not culture and certainly not serious, thus not demanding careful consideration. Any artwork that's deemed too enjoyable, too playful, such that you can effortlessly pay attention to it, is suspicious in the world of high art, art that takes itself seriously very often thinks that art needs to be serious in meaning, solemn, difficult to understand and works that push the boundaries of what art is or that needs a lot of knowledge to appreciate.
Speaker 1:But I'll make a digression here to give more substance to my claim to depth being possible in the silly and enjoyable by referencing an essay by George Saunders from his 2007 book called the Braindead Megaphone. This he has an illuminating essay called Mr Vonnegut in Sumatra. So it's about Kurt Vonnegut and George Saunders reading it. And George Saunders, a great author, should absolutely look him up. He won the Booker Prize here not so long ago, but anyway, george Saunders says in this essay Mr Vonnegut in Sumatra. He says my understanding of literature at this time was great. Writing was hard reading. What made something great was that you could barely understand it. This is the essence. That's the end of the quote and this is the essence of the so-called high art that I was talking about, or the way I wanted that to be read. This essay, saunders' essay, explains how reading Kurt Vonnegut whilst he was in Sumatra changed his view on this.
Speaker 1:Because George Saunders' essay describes how, before becoming hailed as one of the greatest short story authors of our time and winning the man Booker Prize, saunders was working as an engineer on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, and whilst he read serious literature, he did that whilst being there, seeking out classic books written in language as far away from his own as possible, whilst still remaining within English. He assumed that if something a character in a book said was inscrutable, the writer must be very good to express his character's opinion so obtusely. Then, whilst reading one of these supposed classics, namely Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, then Mr Saunders had an epiphany. He was shocked and confused that this book about the Second World War, one of the greatest modern traumas, already in Chapter Two featured a space alien shaped like a plumber's tool, a toilet plunger with a hand on top of it and a single green eye. How could this be, saunders, wondered.
Speaker 1:Vonnegut was funny. How could a classic of literature be funny? It was modern literature, but still wasn't great art, supposed to be serious and hard to read. He says that before reading Vonnegut he thought quote before that I had this insecure idea that anything that came naturally had to be wrong. It had to be low. Well, when I'm trying to persuade somebody or get myself out of a jam or break social tension, I always joke around. I've always done it since I was a little kid. So why not? Why couldn't that be literary? End quote. That which comes naturally, that which is easy and enjoyable, has to be low. He says Low here, meaning both lowbrow but also of lower value. Says Low here, meaning both lowbrow but also of lower value, which I guess is implicit in lowbrow, since this term is usually used derogatorily.
Speaker 1:Reading Slaughterhouse-Five changed Saunders' idea of art away from needing to be expressed in any particular way, let alone being obtuse. So instead, he quote began to understand art as a kind of black box that the reader enters. He enters in one state of mind and exits in another. The writer gets no points just because what's inside the box bears some linear resemblance to real life. He can put whatever he wants in there. What's important is that that's something undeniably and non-trivial happens to the reader between entry and exit. What's important is that something undeniable and non-trivial happens to the reader between entry and exit, end quote. Wow, I love this articulation of art. Art is the black box which alters the spectator by an encounter with something undeniable and non-trivial happening to them.
Speaker 1:We do have the word non-trivial here, which we understandably could take to mean serious In the serious art we talked about before. But for the fact that Saunders already have told us that Vonnegut had planted a seed in him so that forever after reading Slaughterhouse-Five, if he, saunders, wrote or read something phony baloney, end quote. Then Vonnegut stood behind him, smirking knowingly and muttering Bullshit, bullshit under his breath. So Saunders finishes this essay by saying there is something sacred about reading a book like Slaughterhouse-Five, even if nothing changes but what's going on inside our minds. We leave such a book restored, if only briefly, to a proper relation with the truth, reminded of what is what temporarily undiluted, our better nature sat back on its feet, end quote. So it's clear that to Saunders. So it's clear that to Saunders. Non-trivial does not preclude funny, does not preclude getting at the truth about the absurdity of war through the lens of a toilet, plunger aliens of Tromfalmador kidnapping Billy Pilgrim to put him in the zoo.
Speaker 1:The way George Saunders describes the function of art seems to me to also describe play. A great game then would be one where something undeniable and non-trivial happens to the player. One of those undeniable and non-trivial changes that happens in a player is the deep enjoyment that comes from the actual playing itself, freed from needing to be hard to understand. An artwork or a show or a play or event is free to be fun and enjoyable, and possibly it could still be high art. Can we present something that is high art? Why not strive towards that? Don't hold back on it being fun and easy to understand, yet falling into the category of high art to become a modern classic, as Slaughterhouse-Five is.
Speaker 1:Saunders seems to me to be illuminating my point that the first purpose of play, and thus also for shows, is enjoyment and that this fact negates play and shows as purposeless. It negates the fact that plays and shows are purposeless. Yeah, there you go. The fact that they are enjoyable is an intrinsic part of their value and purpose. So, to repeat my point from above, in the little summary that I did, criteria one becomes the first immediate purpose of criteria two and this is we're not in here, going into all this other stuff of backing up why play is important, that it teaches us stuff, that it is learning, that it is all those things because they lie there and we make those connections and we've already explored that at great length. But it lies behind there and and when you delve into this and you want to explore it a bit further, you can take, grab onto any of those and see what you learn, see what you find. So let's um move over onto the kind of second aspect of this, because the criteria is that play is apparently purposeless, and then the second sort of part is that it's done for its own sake. So play is done for its own sake and not for a further goal.
Speaker 1:I find it so interesting that the seemingly trivial and purposeless actually does greatly benefit us. As we looked at in an earlier chapter, play does have a further and very real value that we discovered when we were looking at the many negative consequences for children that can't or aren't allowed to play. The benefits of play manifests in so many ways physically, mentally and socially Yet none of these are the motivation for the games we play. We can't say that the purpose of playing is to learn how to do stuff which will be important to us as adults. We play because it's fun and, as it turns out when we as Joseph Campbell put it follow our bliss. It has all kinds of valuable repercussions. We play because we want to play. Any further benefits are wonderful side effects.
Speaker 1:That there are many future advantages to be reaped from the one seemingly trivial activity of play reminds me of Dmitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trotz-Foxes. Play reminds me of Dmitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trotz foxes. They used one single, seemingly trivial factor friendliness to choose foxes for breeding in their experiment, and by selecting for friendliness which, to state the obvious, is a style of behavior, a mode of behavior, a mode of being in the world, friendly the foxes changed when they were breeding, just for friendliness. They changed not only behaviorally but also physiologically. So they began to look like puppies Floppy ears, less pointy snouts and short and curly tails All traits we recognize from dogs.
Speaker 1:A way the second criteria relates directly to shows is how difficult it is for shows that has a teaching point or like a lesson as their primary motivation. It's just so hard for them to stand on their own as favorites for, say, school show audiences. The educational system values learning above all, so in the and as like book learning, learning that can be categorized and hopefully you can put some numbers to it. So not because they think that the human being can be summed up by that number, but because then it's so easy to process these numbers later later. So in school show programs there is always a strong tendency for the show's chosen to actually be a kind of lesson. It's art, but the art has a very defined function. A show title in such a program might feasibly be having fun with recycling. This is not to say that to make a real kicking and thoroughly exciting circus show about recycling isn't possible, but in my experience this would be more like an exception that proved the rule.
Speaker 1:In my short stint as a supplementary teacher we did get a few shows through. When the show was having fun with recycling style was having fun with recycling style. Then, when these kinds of shows visits us, we teachers were busy throughout putting out fires of impatience and bickering and unwanted interaction or heckling. And I am aware that this is highly anecdotal and reality is always much more complex. But I believe that this gets the point across that you might easily grasp, even if you have examples from your own life that goes against it, for I do too. But when shows that had this having fun with recycling or the history of Norway told in tap dance, they loved the tap dancing, but the links with all the names of the kings in the history of Norway. I don't know how much that captured them, and by the amount of work that we needed to do to stop the kids from going bananas and start their own games, then I would say I was, yeah, anyway having fun with recycling.
Speaker 1:This is just a short term, shorthand kind of. It typifies for me a show which is not done for its own sake. It's a lesson masquerading as a show. It's not a metaphor but a thinly-veiled, if veiled at all, allegory. It is not authentic. It's like the old joke of an elephant trainer showing an agent his elephant who has a great repertoire of impressions, and after showing how their elephant can be all kinds of famous people, the agent says in confidence to the elephant Kid I like ya, but I got two words of advice Just be yourself.
Speaker 1:When a performance or story is about something else, the magic of the shared moment is wasted. When this means that and that means this, when we do a nat in a show, well, here I have this and this symbolizes that and this symbolizes this, then it is difficult to lose oneself in the moment. And since reading Animal Farm through the author's lens of Tsarist Russia. To me, this just gets in the way of the enjoyment of the story, and there is now a right or a wrong way for me to understand a story, if you are to believe the intent of the author, which I would argue the author might not be the best judge of what a book or artwork is or isn't about. To me, the best artworks transcends even their creator's intents and wishes for them.
Speaker 1:In shows like Fun with Recycling, another aspect of missing authenticity could be how sometimes not even the artists themselves are deeply passionate about the content of the show. How sometimes not even the artists themselves are deeply passionate about the content of the show. The real reason they're doing it might be because this is the kind of shows this market will employ. The artists are doing this particular show because they have bills to pay, or perhaps the money they make doing these bread-and-butter shows goes into a fund to pay for the shows that they really are passionate about, these kinds of shows which are not apparently purposeless, but which has a very strict and organized and carefully laid out plan for what it's going to do. You're going to teach the kid how to use the many bins that we have outside our house. And these shows are not apparently purposeless and they are done not for their own sake but for a purpose of learning something beyond a shared experience. They are like primary school teachers who tell their class that today we're going to play and the purpose of the game is to learn about voting. Everybody has to play along and pay attention, because there will be a test afterwards after this game. Tension, because there will be a test afterwards after this game. As I've already mentioned, after this kind of learning play we frequently hear the child ask the teacher can we play now?
Speaker 1:After about six months of being a teacher, I got a contract to do three weeks of school shows, and the show that I submitted was called Captain Frodo's Magic Circus. It's pretty much straight up magic clowning and some crazy circus skills. Though for the program's application process I had written which is not a lie, because it is true. I wrote about how the show is about imagination and creativity. It quite directly shows that if somebody really can picture something strongly enough in their mind, such as an invisible egg, they can make that thing real. It tells children to follow their dreams quite literally, I say that and to not let what others say dissuade them from believing in their own interests.
Speaker 1:The thing is, all these messages are mainly present metaphorically. Each act exists in the shape that it is first and foremost because it has been honed through hundreds of performances to elicit the maximum amount of fun and the strongest immediate reactions. It's an exercise in making the most out of the magic of the shared moment of being together with me. The acts and the show as a whole exist as a thing all unto itself, exactly like a game played by children. It is and becomes what it is because that's what the shared moment of experience dictates. That there is a strong and persistent subtext in the show is only present there if you step outside of the process, outside of the gravitational pull of Kairos, and you look for it. This means that if someone sees the show and only sees the surface level of what's happening in my show, it looks apparently purposeless, just like play here and there a little moment. When I say something which an adult goes oh, that was surprisingly moving. Oh, I didn't think that. Oh, that was deep. I was like oh, so um.
Speaker 1:As the cherry on top, to crown this example, I can mention that my show was not chosen to be part of this school performance program for a month of touring. I wasn't chosen by the committee of teachers and educators. After they were done choosing, when they had made their selections, the teachers and educators and politicians I don't know who sat on those committees then I wasn't invited. It was only when the committee of students which every year in this school district the committee of students is allowed to pick one show that they wanted to see, and it was me they chose. The educators could not see the value in my proposal, but the kids did as I did. The tour.
Speaker 1:The response from the children was, as I have come to expect, raucous and powerful. But the response from the teachers, and one principal in particular, moved me. They could not believe what they saw. They were moved by me, quite often blatant voicing, my sort of blatant voicing of positive messages and messaging, but which to the children are all just part of the fun. And the adults were all surprised at how meaningful the show felt, but they could not find the exact words to express it. They were astonished. It made me think of how, upon hearing fairy tales or myths of old, we can't help but feel like there is something deeper and powerful, going on beneath or beyond whatever is going on in the stories. It's like when the teachers and the principals were were watching my show, it's like they had encountered some alien artifact which in one way of looking at it was just a black monolith, smooth and polished, but in another way it was resonant, in such a way as to leave you unable to express what it was that you felt in its presence, that principle of a school in the furthest end of the county where I performed, about an hour's drive away out on this island, where the waves and the open sea splash against the rocky coasts, this man had been an educator his whole life and he said that never in his life had he seen someone who connected so deeply with the children.
Speaker 1:And I write this not so much because it has anything to do with the topic, only really because I'm proud of it and that the moment moved me. Deep meaning can be found within the seemingly frivolous and fun of just having a good time frivolous and fun of just having a good time. And when you've done that with the the depth of your heart and you've carefully placed the other things, the adult will see these uh, these uh messages, but the kids, they will all just be one part of it and they'll just, they will feel like it was playing. So now we've sort of we talked a little bit here, as we talk about fun with recycling that we're going to get into the topic to finish off today on authenticity and art. So when I talked here earlier about the teachers and principals watching the show and like they've encountered a black monolith, smooth and polished, this is of course from 2001. The beginning of 2001, Space Odyssey a black monolith appears and that's where I'm drawing that from. But I got obsessed with this thing from listening to Weird Studies. I've talked about Weird Studies before and JF Martell, one of the hosts of that show, has written a wonderful book called Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice, and in this one he makes an interesting and illuminating distinction between kinds of art.
Speaker 1:On one side we have art, art which is, upon being experienced, elicits astonishment, that through its unique composition, it presents an experience which allows you to see reality at a slant, as I've talked about it, revealing a strangeness and an inexplicability which our everyday life kind of hides. Something in the artwork speaks directly to you personally, in such a way as to leave you surprised at what you're seeing and with what the experience brings forth in you. I'm sure everyone has had experiences like this, and I pity those who hasn't. After a movie or listening to music, or in reading a book, have been set aback in overpowering wonder as to how the work of art is expressing something about reality, a pattern, a situation which is at once completely self-contained, only expressing itself as itself, yet simultaneously being about something so much more, like the fairy tales. Like all great art, this very particular quality of being highly idiosyncratic and self-contained yet being deeply metaphorical has, at its best, the power to completely overwhelm us altogether, transforming our understanding and making us see aspects of reality altered, as if we see it for the first time, which we talked about last time with the TS Eliot line there. It's not a coincidence that those times when my own meager presentation of art has left people astonished that in the process of putting their experience into words, I'm struck by how often they say something like oh, it made me feel like a child, or how it reminded me of something from their childhood. I think this is getting at something profoundly true, for could we not say that exactly this to see things for the first time is the child's experience of the world.
Speaker 1:The magician Paul Harris writes about this in the opening essay to his highly influential book of close-up magic tricks called the Art of Astonishment, and one of the examples that he gives of people trying to express what we are talking about is you made me feel like a kid at the circus End quote. He has the brilliant insight that what these adults are trying to say is, even though they're not consciously aware of it, is that for a brief moment they experience a clear primal state of mind that they associate with a child's state of mind. Somehow the adult experience of astonishment triggered some feeling of what it felt like to be a child End quote. Even though I'm going to read that one more time because I think it just shows the kinship of thinking in this great thinker, paul Harris. Even though they are not consciously aware of it, the adults who is coming up to us it is for a brief moment they experience a clear primal state of mind that they associate with a child's state of mind. Somehow the adult experience of astonishment trigger some feeling of what it felt like to be a child end quote. Children, in their necessary naivete, experiences astonishment at the world and its constant contents at a sort of daily, if not hourly, or permanent basis, as innocence turns into experience, as each encounter allows them to label it as belonging to a category, whatever experience it is those sounds which makes me feel all these things well, that's music, and so forth. Soon, soon, enough. It suddenly changes to. These sounds are just music. In the recognition and categorization we easily lose sight of the unique, individual expression of that exact piece of music hitting you at exactly this moment in your life.
Speaker 1:Jf Martell describes this process like the difference between how a scientific botanical drawing of a sunflower tends to capture what is common to all sunflowers, basically stripping away everything individual and unique about any specific flower, whilst art is always specific, it is exactly about that unique and individual thing. It's the exact renderings and details expressing the nature of a particular bunch of sunflowers in a vase that makes them a masterpiece of art. It is the effect of the sum of all these unique elements in Van Gogh's sunflowers, which I have talked about before, and that was just an off just enough the cuff remark when I did it before. But the reason why I said this is clearly now that it is directly from JF Martell's book. So that means that I have somehow assimilated Mr Martell's ideas so deeply that when I'm saying some stuff off the top of my head that I just think of it turns out it was his wording pretty much exactly. So it is all these unique elements in Van Gogh's painting, like the very specifics of each of these sunflowers that he's captured and put onto the canvas. That is what can catch the viewer unaware and knock them into this childlike state of astonishment which Paul Harris talks about, something which rarely happens from a scientific diagram of sunflowers, even if that can teach you a whole lot more. It's somehow there's something about the unique specificity and the authentic individual expression of those other ones that can somehow teach you even more individual expression of those other ones that can somehow teach you even more. I don't know when I first read Paul Harris's book, but I believe it was back in my first phase of magic as a kid, reading the introduction to magic books, where they were displayed on temporary fold-out tables in the magic dealer rooms of magic conventions. I have since sought this essay out many times. It is one of these things which has entered my general understanding of what I believe the craft of showmanship is about.
Speaker 1:I then had a moment of astonishment when reading Reclaiming Art and finding Mr JF Martel's understanding as art itself being something which astonishes and is born in astonishment. And Martel also says astonishment has an intellectual as well as an emotional component. In it the brain and heart come together. Far from distracting us from the strange and uncanny in life, the astonishment evoked by the great artistic works put them square in our sight. The work demands that we feel and think the mystery of our passage through this body, on this earth, in this universe. We realize afterward that the world is not what we thought. It was, something hidden, impossible to communicate. That, clearly expressed in the work, has risen into the light of awareness and the share of the real to which we are privy is proportionately expanded.
Speaker 1:In all this talk about art and astonishment, I believe to see all the way through it, from the childlike origins to the individual expression of sunflowers captured by a one-eared painter in 1889, and the experience of overwhelming wonder that we receive in encountering something truly authentic. Something truly authentic I see, painted large, something which is apparently purposeless and done for its own sake. I see criteria, too, screaming through all the ten thousand things I see in this understanding of what art is, a complete concordance would play and what constitutes a great act of showmanship. Going one step further, I mentioned in the start of this section that JF Martel made a distinction between kinds of art the art of astonishment which, as he says, is non-utilitarian and has no purpose beyond itself. This is the art which goes furthest in capturing what art alone can achieve.
Speaker 1:But there is also the arts which are utilitarian, the arts which seek to elicit a very specific feeling in you, artworks which aim for producing a particular opinion about a subject matter, and we find this most explicit in propaganda, where the aim is usually to make us dislike something like the Nazis' anti-Semitic propaganda, the Soviet propaganda decrying the degeneracy of the West, and the American anti-Soviet propaganda. This Martel calls didactic art, and it captures all the many varieties of works that are driven by ideology, as well as all works designed solely to convey a message or a moral. Although I personally believe there is great wisdom and value in reuse and recycling, a show like Funved Recycling is designed solely to convey a message or a moral. Fun with recycling is designed solely to convey a message or a moral. Now, neither Martel nor myself believe that this kind of art, which, together with pornographic art, forms what Martel calls artifice is necessarily a bad thing, or that it is not art or can't be art, though, in the process of wanting to influence the experiencer into a very specific emotion or opinion, the most unique features of art its open-endedness and leaving you astonished can't be reached. So just a quick note about the kind of art that he calls pornographic art, which obviously includes sexual pornography, but it's also any work that makes us want to or possess them.
Speaker 1:Beyond the obvious presentation of lust, I believe advertising to be a good example. The whole reason for an advertising's existence is to make you want something, often by hijacking our emotions, not even attempting to include reasoning or reason, just showing us how a child finally can get to play with their arthritic grandparents again because she has begun to take a brand new kind of pill. If you're like me, you have at times find yourself surprisingly moved, complete with a lump in the throat and a little tear in the corner of your eyes, upon seeing an ad for something or other, and for me this it was particularly strong in the months after having become a father For a while. There I could find myself weeping at the sheer beauty of a shampoo ad. At that time I was particularly susceptible, but these little advertising brain worms worked their way into us all the time. Advertising brain worms work their way into us all the time.
Speaker 1:So, in summary, the two ends of the artifice spectrum, for JF Martel is wanting the experience to trigger desire or repulsion, and in the example that we have been using about the Farnwood recycling show we probably find a little of both. That show would no doubt, like any real-world artwork, be painted with strokes that ventures into the different ends of the artifice spectrum. The important point is that, for as much as an entertaining show can be a work of art that leaves you astounded, purely for what Farnwood Recycling, with its primotive for existence, is to install a message or a lesson which aims to make the children adopt a certain point of view about something. In this I see artifice, with its didactic in its primary meaning as intended to teach, as a kind of violation of criteria too. It's now done for a purpose, thus it's not play. But that said, no shows in the real world are completely one thing. We talked about mentioned this earlier that no matter how we do this, when we create these criterias, we end up with edge cases all over the place, because part of that show any show or part of the recycling show, no doubt that was hugely fun and enjoyable and there might be moments where the kids really fully got into it and for moments it seemed to be apparently purposeless and done for its own sake. And in such cases there were moments of play within the framework of intending to teach. And all these levels of artifice will be read and understood by the audience, as whatever is going on here has an ulterior motive and this is not done for its own sake. It's got some other reason. Like its own sake. It's got some other reason Like.
Speaker 1:We human beings are a lot better adapted at reading the intentions of others than we are at successfully portraying ourselves as authentically other than what or who we are. To be able to appear as someone wholly different, with hugely different physical characteristics, different inclinations or intentions, that is a difficult undertaking. Portraying a caricature in the background or pretending to be cool or to impress the cashier at the supermarket when you're paying might be possible, but even that is hard. Anyone that's undertaken the effort to act a role in a play knows this. If, on top of this, the character they are to portray are at odds with their true nature, say, a real dork needs to portray a cool and popular heartthrob, they will find themselves up against a formidable challenge. That said, if they succeed, they might find their life transformed when they, after the play in a new setting, continue to use this heartthrob's characteristics in their presentation of themselves in everyday life.
Speaker 1:As Erwin Goffman called it in the book pretty much by that name, only the best actors can successfully portray themselves as believable characters in a wide spectrum. Most actors have a type. This is because we are both naturally endowed with a very well human beings are adapted with a very well developed ability to draw inferences about the intents of others, and because it is difficult to lie convincingly or, even more so, portray convincingly someone completely different and other than ourselves. When an audience smells that the person on stage before them have other motives than straightforward shared moments, they get suspicious and thus have a reluctance to give themselves over to the showman. This has been so, and it's a healthy way to be suspicious of this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:If you ever meet a person and you get the feeling like their intent is something else than what they're saying. Big red flag, big red flag, they might. You know, in the case of the performer they might look and dress as a clown, but if she's really there to talk about Jesus, the kids will know. And unless they are primarily hoping for some clown-themed stories of Jesus, then they will know it and need a whole lot of extra cajoling to enjoy the presentation. If they are lovers of Christ first and genuinely foremost and they hope that this face-painted weirdo will bring up their Lord and Saviour, then the reverse becomes the exact authenticity that they are after. They might be suspicious to the clown aspect, but when the clown's authentic love of the Lord becomes apparent, then the kids might accept that the Lord can be presented in mysterious ways and thus accept the clown as a fellow Christian and an authentic being.
Speaker 1:Anyway, perhaps this second round here now is a little bit not quite, but I hope that this is like I mentioned before, like I want this to be slightly more conversational. Let there are what JF Martel calls rifts in it. There's stuff that doesn't quite connect together, but hopefully this will show the many ways that play and thinking about play as showmanship or indeed as art, which is backed up by Homer Ludens and Heutschinger's books and all the stuff that we've talked about so far, that this will be a resonant soup of inspiration, and I hope today's soup of inspiration will find a spot in you that will be nourishing like some chicken soup for the soul and that these ideas exploring in more direct terms. At least that was the goal of it. Sometimes when I read this, I find this is so abstract, even though it always starts from somewhere, and I hope that it comes out here in this conversational kind of way. I guess the whole podcast here.
Speaker 1:It may be more conversational than I think, yet every now and then I hear someone like Jay O'Garnett. It's annoying with my podcast because you can't have it on when you're doing the dishes. But for the last couple of years, or last year or so when I've been doing conversations, I think that you can finally maybe have it on as something in the background of when you're doing your everyday life chores, which is often when I listen to podcasts. But I would again just urge you to go click, subscribe and get the Way of the Showman delivered for free to your podcast mailbox every second week and, if you haven't already, check out all the back catalogue, the first and second season. I put an astonishing amount of work into writing those as well. So if you like the thinking of this current episode, go back there and do it and follow us on Instagram and make your day better by seeing how can I make my life and my day more playful. Until next time, take care of yourself and those you love, and I hope to see you along the way.