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
158 - Jesus, Bananas, And Baby Unicorns Walk Into A Church w Clay Hillman & Captain Frodo
Do yourself a favor before reading any more of this: Listen to the Road To Joy now! Also! Listen to Clay Hillman’s wonderful piano music
What if the spark that powers great rituals, great sermons, and great shows is the same playful force? Captain Frodo sits down with Clay Hillman to follow that thread—from the shaman’s circle to the market square—and ask how joy, surprise, and sacrifice can teach us to love without the cage of judgment. The claim is bold: ritual likely grew out of play, and when we honor that, truth arrives with fewer words and more presence.
We explore grief as the felt weight of love, the paradox at the heart of Good Friday, and why beauty includes the costly and the raw. Clay reframes the Good Samaritan so we stop imagining ourselves as the rescuer and recognize our place in the ditch; neighbor becomes the person we’d want to lift us, even an enemy. That shift replaces right-versus-wrong scorekeeping with a practice of attention, the same practice that makes a show land when a moment of surprise cracks the shell and breathes. Along the way, we talk mythic truth over literalism, how children signal play and still know what matters, and why wigs, robes, and ritual dances appear when stakes are highest.
We also swap creative maps. Clay’s Casey Bonkers universe offers constellations of play; Frodo sketches thinking, feeling, and willing as a triad for building fuller acts. Symbols do the heavy lifting: two sticks can hold a cosmos, a market square becomes a universe once the showman starts. Stories that aren’t “real” still become true every day, and the best work often feels discovered rather than made. If you’ve ever sensed that ministry and showmanship share a calling—curating time and attention so people glimpse the center—this conversation will feel like finding language for what you already knew.
Listen to K. C. Bonkers Road To Joy!
Find Clay Hillman here!
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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 before I forget, click subscribe. Wherever you get your podcast, click subscribe, and then uh enjoy every episode because they are coming out a little bit intermittently. The new pattern is that I uh divide the episodes up uh as per usual, uh so they come out and then there's usually a gap before we change the topic. Instead of it coming out bi-weekly as it used to, they're coming out a little more frequently now, and I bunch the episodes together uh uh depending on the whether they are on the same theme or not. That is why it's only one week since we listened to the last episode where we talk to Clay Hillman, and we will venture deep back into play, and we take on an aspect of play which will be the seed of the next uh big uh writing project that I um have scheduled. Once I'm finished with my book, I will start writing on a new perhaps there will also be a 30-part uh thing like the showmanship and play. Who knows? These parts are the deepest dives and the biggest uh development of my thinking that has happened to this date. And the next topic is the shaman and uh showman, and uh the shaman, as we all know, dives deep into the religious territories. Um and that is what uh Clay Hillman and I will do again today, talking about Casey Bonkers and also a little bit about Jesus.
SPEAKER_01:Also, I would love to explore a little bit, uh, like you're thinking about the sacred toys, and there is, you know, people like Robert Bella, who uh wrote this book, uh Religion and Human Um Evolution, or like and uh Joan Heutzinger about homo ludens, the playing human, they both take play very seriously. And Robert Bella in his book, who's specifically about religion, he plays uh put uh he puts play as the kind of axis or the the the whole the where what what uh religiosity pivots on as or so and you having been four years at the seminary and seven years as minister, what what uh because um what are your thoughts on the overlap between the serious play? And I mean that in with all the great disrespect of yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no, I you know, I didn't really put it together until much later. And I don't know who I was listening to. It was in some interview when somebody was talking about how uh religion, like the ritual, uh probably developed out of a sense of play, not the other way around. Uh I thought that was fascinating. Then I heard you talk about it on your podcast a few times. It's kind of bubbled up, but I haven't I haven't dived too deep. But I can tell you though that that really resonates. Uh I'm not sure how, but I think that it's kind of like, you know, at the center of the universe, not the physical universe, but the center of all things, I believe that there is just joy, right? And it's not so much a feeling that it's uh it's a will. It's like uh, it's hard to describe. There's um like a laughing, like a like a like a child, like a baby uh laughing or something. Like that's just at the center of the universe. And we see these glimpses of it now and again. Um, and so even saying that feels religious, you know, that there's there's this thing at the center of all things that at its heart of heart of hearts is really love. And not as this feeling, but as an act of will and and as a as the most freeing, playful place to be. And and in in like look with what you're doing, you're giving people a little door that shows them a glimpse of that center. You know, what I'm doing here is glimpsing that center. Um, and I think in a really good church, the the pastor is able to open that same door, and it's and it feels you know it's there because it's the same feeling you have when you're you're someone once told me uh what makes the best sermon is when there's a surprise. And I find that's the same with showmanship, right? Like when you get that turn, like, whoa, the banana's actually chopped. Like that's it's the same feeling. And there, I I I so I can sense it and it resonates there. You know, when I hear something that just resonates as being so true, and usually it has something to do with love and joy and goodness um and purity in a in a good sense of the word, um, that that really does feel like they're kind of coming from or are built into the same from the same fabric from the same place. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so much of it's lost in the distractions. There's so many knick-knacks in church. You know, the knick-knacks are all over the place. Um, and that's no fault of its own. You know, it just is, it's the same with when we're playing, sometimes we get distracted. There's a lot of there's a lot of distractions that can happen and pull us away from that. But I love hearing those people and like yourself that I'm like, well, here's a guy that that knows where that curtain is is being pulled back. I want to show you this thing back here that is the real essence of all things, you know. Um, and that's I I did find that to be the case. I did find that to be the case. Yeah. It's really as as a minister, as a minister, and I I had bad sermons that didn't make any sense. And I had other ones I felt like you could tell by the by the response from the the the the the congregation or the audience in your in your case that you know when you kind of nailed it, um, and you got them to to glimpse that. You could feel it when you're in it. You know, you're you're in that present moment, and it's just um it all kind of comes together. And it's usually was things that are very, very simple. Like I said, like a like a one-way straw. It doesn't have to be much. It's literally just a one-way straw. Um, it's just words from a microphone in a microphone, you know, those kind of things that give you that that glimpse that there's uh uh at the center of all these things, at the very center of all of it, there's uh there's just goodness and love, you know.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And I don't use that word lightly. I don't use it like I'm not obviously I'm not talking about romantic love or or even a good feeling, you know. Um coming from a Lutheran tradition, I mean, the the epitome of that story happens uh on Good Friday, and there's nothing nice about that. There's no good feelings in there, and yet that's that's the weirdest irony, is that that is love, you know. That's what that's what that story is saying. That that's the epitome of love, is this incredible will to suffer. Uh it it's and self-giving, and and um, and it's not pretty, it's not what you would expect at all. And yet that's kind of its definition. And if you've ever lost somebody, you feel that your grief is this that's what love actually feels like to me. You know, now I'm really feeling it, and it feels more like suffering than anything good.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's exactly right. It's um, I mean, it's the you how powerfully you have felt about someone is reflected in in the moment of grief. Or so it's when there is a hole in the universe that because you you have left. When you actually experience that, that's uh yeah, that's that's love. And it's to have this the sacrifice of the crucifixion that what like it also brings with it the uh the expanded understanding of what the beautiful is. We have the true the good and the beautiful, and the beautiful is uh a beautiful human being painted, yeah. But it but it can also be the beauty of somebody uh going through the passion and sacrificing themselves for the for the future good or for the ultimate good or whatever in this case.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, yeah, exactly, exactly. There's there's a lot of beauty in that. I've had many experiences with that where um, especially as a as a minister and being around a lot of people who are grieving, you know, because there's a lot of funerals involved with that life. And uh, and it's always a matter of kind of trying to show how to reframe their grief so that so it's not like you're trying to take it away. Um, and it's like faux fum's anchor in the story. It doesn't go anywhere, it just gets lighter if you can understand if you can kind of reframe it differently. And a lot of that has to do with just reframing their grief or my own grief to say that that what you're feeling isn't bad. What you're feeling is love. That is what love feels like, you know. Um like we've we've we we often get distracted with the the kind of Valentine's Day love or the just a general love for your family or you know, things like that. Um, and so you you might feel some goodwill toward people, but when they're gone is I think that's when you really feel what it actually feels like. Um and it was always there, but now it that that aching feeling is is what it feels like. And it and that's why I that's why the the passion story resonates with me so strongly, is because that's where I saw it really strip down to its bare essence that that story being like, yes, that's that is what love to me, that's what it that's what it looks like, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think that when you look at um showmanship there too, it comes about love, that you are imbuing your actions with love, you're imbuing it with yourself, uh with and you're putting it out there with the hope that it will be a return, but that you're putting it out there authentically, and that that that that is a a part of what makes something feel authentic. Because we have a radar for understanding when when someone is authentic or when when there is love involved, when it is your passion for what you're doing, whether it's the minister that has the passion for the story that he is telling, or whether it is me who has the passion for exploring philosophical ideas whilst doing kind of ridiculous things with a co-takker and um and a banana. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what I'm talking about is still the essence of what it means to be human. Yes, and uh and love I think is at the foundation of it. The memorial love for the children is uh is where I'm also talking about this in the in my uh when I talk about play of of play comes out of the adult uh creating a space, a free space where the child does not need to worry about food. You were talking about earlier that your daughter is playing the game until she's hungry. Yeah, she doesn't have to go out and plan where to do it, and we're creating this little space where you can be most human, most free, because you don't need to worry about the more animal things of making sure you have self shelter, make sure you are safe from predators, make sure that you're hungry, not hungry, and then where does water come from? You place them into the this space where they can just be human, and when you let children do that, they go into it's the Garden of Eden.
SPEAKER_02:That's that's this that's the Garden of Eden, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that that space. That's right. Yeah, and I I mean religion and everything are of course multidimensional, so it is many things at the same time, and that that that is not actually a paradox, it's not a problem that you need to deal with. It is all of those things. So the religion has the historical elements of it, but there too. I find when people, whether it is the Mormons who have their own special brand of archaeology or whoever it is, in trying to prove the the exact veracity of who did what where, or whether there actually was a census when um Joseph and Mary had to go to Bethlehem, whether that act like if you get confused uh into those things, it's like you are getting confused with a we can't see the forest for the trees. It's like the words are there to tell the story, and the story is working on a mythological level, and whether something happened or not does not take away with uh with the take away the power of the of the story.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. And I also find that like you were talking about adults who uh they they kind of hijack play, they think they they use the words, and then the child's sitting there thinking, but you're just a hollow person, you know. Um the same thing happens in religion, and it's every religion, uh to the point where the word itself sounds hollow, I think. And you're gonna find people that that, and actually that that word, uh, and not just Christian, you know, but religion in any religion, that religious nature that likes to sit there and evaluate this is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong, this is, you know, um, this is how you should live, this is how you shouldn't live, or whatever, that becomes really like the kiss of death to what is what is what we're actually talking about here, you know, with with being at the center being love and play and goodness and those things. Religion itself, no matter what it is, no matter what religion it is, um, can very quickly just become like that teacher who thinks they know what play is, but has no concept, you know. And I think a lot of people that's all they really see, and they don't dig much deeper. Yeah, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's interesting. It's like the you're talking about joy and and and love being the initial thing, and then it's like it in the beginning was the word, it also says in the scripture, and but it's also like but but before that there was God or the spirit was over the waters. Yeah, like so you have that love there before it starts, but then you also the word comes, and that made me think of the way that you were reading the the the listening to the record, so that you have the story and the truth of the story inside your heart, because you've learned it by heart, and then you are looking at the words on the page, and and although like going that love and the story and the truth of all of these things, yeah, you have that inside you, and then you recognize the words that they are like they're a portal, so the words come in, but although in the beginning was the word, like it was it's also like, but you have the love before that too, yeah, and the word comes in, and I guess that's what I keep using the word center, but you could say the underneath or the you know, it's like the thing that the their very foundation of all this.
SPEAKER_02:Um, and it is it is timeless, you know. There's no you can't say the beginning, like in the beginning is really just a way of saying, like, at one point, you know, when the story starts, because yeah, when the story speak. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:When it becomes play itself is timeless, like the chrononaut is is talking about or is the embodiment of it's timeless, it's everywhere, it's the future and the past. And in play, you can go anywhere in there. That there is no delineation between it's it's beyond good and evil. Yeah, it's it's beyond good and evil and before and after, and cause and effect can be we're playing towards a goal or we're playing because of a goal. It's like all of these things are mixed together. Yet when we try to express ourselves, uh as soon as you open your mouth and say something, a truth will come out. But it's also when I didn't try to describe uh you, then whatever I say will never amount to what you are, right? The tau that can be described uh is tau, which Augustine also talked about. This it's like if you if you think you understand God, you haven't actually understood him. I don't that's paraphrasing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, Bonhoffer says something about how the gospel must be spoken, but it it cannot be. You know, it's like it cannot be spoken. The thing itself is unspeakable, yeah, and yet it must be spoken. Like it's it's it's very true, and it's you have to hold both of those things at the same time. Yeah. Yeah.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And I think about the Garden of Eden, even and how that that's that space for play. But then you realize where it goes wrong is when they when they decide to become one with this knowledge of good and evil, which religious, I say religious is kind of a in a not a good way, the religious mindset, then the religious person relishes in that knowledge. And yet what that story is trying to say is that's the root of our problem. It's not the thing to get in, that's not the thing to like eat and and be proud of yourself for eating. The Pharisees were very proud of eating that fruit because they really loved relishing in good and evil. This is right, this is wrong, this is a sin, and this is righteous, you know. And they were always trying to peg Jesus with that stuff. And he was like, judge not, meaning, don't even make that distinction. We use judge in this in the way of like, don't judge me like don't call me a bad person or something, but it goes the other way too. Don't call me a good person. You know, it's the the whole idea of judgment is at the as at, I think, at the center of a religious mindset. This idea of this is good and evil. Whereas there's also there's also the Garden of Eden, which is that little place in the living room where there's a Fisher Price play set, you know, and there's there's no more of that. Those things do not matter right now. We're just playing, you know. We're just we're in love. We're being, we're living in this place called love. Uh and then as Augustine says, love, and then do whatever you want.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And that's kind of coming to that same conclusion, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. And it's like because if you use uh the religious uh mindset as that kind of it's the almost a confusion of the letters in the book from the story in your heart. And then it's easy to go, well, it claims that the bat is a bird. And that is an easy mistake to make, but that's not Exactly what they mean here. They're talking about something else, about how it moves through the air, and they're categorizing it as something and going, Yeah, that's true. So if you get hung up on the because when you get hung up on anything with the letter, then it just becomes uh it becomes so complicated. And uh to make things because now you've introduced logic, you've intro introduced right and wrong, and right and wrong ways to think, right and wrong ways to believe, which you know the pro the the the Catholic Church pursued that for quite a while of heretical thinking, and I mean it still goes on now in the proliferation of churches of what can or can't be. Yet I can't help but feel that Jesus stands there in all these stories as a playful human being that is that's taking in from all sides, and that keep doing keep um turning the other cheek to whether they're there are prostitutes or they're thieves or they're whatever it is that they are.
SPEAKER_02:Because it doesn't matter, or the rich or rich men or or poor men didn't it didn't none of those things made any difference, you know. And then in the end, in the end of the story, nobody stood up for him, you know. So it's like you're left, he's left on his own. So, and that's also a very powerful message that we're all convicted of the fact that we're all wrong, you know, and until we can get away from that mindset of deciding uh if we it's not like am I right or am I wrong? It's like the fact that you're even splitting that into two pieces, that's that whole mindset is the religious mindset. And that's I mean, that's what actually uh that's what attracts me to that story and him as a person the most is that what what I I just don't know how anybody can read through the gospels and not see that he was trying to do away with well, he was he was basically saying not just the Jewish religion and not trying to found a new religion, he's trying to say all of this religious mindset is not is the way to death and the way to life is over here. Um and that made everybody mad, and it still does. It made every yeah, it still does. Because you can't, yeah, yeah. That's part of the reason I maybe I retired only after seven years. I was like, eventually they're gonna start understanding what I'm actually saying here. Yeah, eventually they're gonna listen to what I'm actually saying, and I'll I I won't have a choice but to leave. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But you can take that sensibility with you, and I think you have, in treating stories seriously, yeah, and taking the implications of it. And of course, I think in something like the Genesis or whatever, these stories that have been told literally for thousands of years before they were even written down, but that you are left with these spares stories. Uh, in the beginning was uh and heaven and earth, and and the descriptions of these things are filled with so much wisdom because you're left with just the bare bones and like your story, it has all sorts of rich details that goes in every direction, all the while, like the 10,000 things that you can grab onto. What? Yeah, maybe unicorns at the at the sanctuary for unicorns, and it's like, but it's just being spoken as a as just as a it was gonna say as a matter of fact, but it's a matter of fact, just as a truth, but it also as the truth. It's like this is just a truth within his universe. Yeah, that's not what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_02:We're talking about this story, and um and there is a truth in that then. Like it's like the there is there is there is baby unicorns. We call it, we call it uh the pure, the the the holy, the you know, those things do exist. So I guess baby unicorns do too. You know, it's like they become kind of the same thing. We're talking about the same thing, so why not? Yeah, uh that's that, like you said, that's what analogy kind of is. You're just layering these things, you know. This is a map on top of another thing. Um, the characters being embodiments of like ways of playing. Um, and these are not ways that you have to be locked into either, you know. Um I moved through all of them really, and that's that's really kind of the character, I guess, of Casey Bonker himself. Is like in the cards, the way we've done the art, I had this art local artist do the cards and they're just exquisite. I wanted them to look mythical, you know. I wanted them to look kind of like uh a little bit like you'd images you'd see on like an like a Greek pottery, you know, ancient, those ancient uh like so it looks kind of ancient and mythical, but still modern and um because they are more like archetypes and like it's a pantheon, it's not just crew members. Um I forget where I was going with all of that now. I got sidetracked by the oh, the art, the stars, yes. The the Casey Bonker, the the in in the art, you'll see these little stars on the on the characters because they're constellations, which is also very Greek, you know. Um, and then on Casey Bonker's card, he's kind of walking down this rainbow road and looking up, and there's all those constellations in the sky. So they're like acting as his own guide, even though he's the captain, you know. So chicken and the egg, uh, who's leading who, you know, they're all they're all muses, but he to me represents the one who has been able to kind of pull all of them together into this into a wheel, like a pinwheel, you know, and and and that's what he puts in his hat.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Interesting is when you uh talk for 30 episodes like I did about play, the 30 episodes don't get to the heart of play. I say all those things, and I hope that you can see play through it. And every time when I make, oh well, this is so and so, and this person says that, but the way that you have told it is uh uh I say it with love, it's it's what's going on then in in the stories in the Bible as well. It's where the images are told through uh through uh characters in the story, and and that is in a sense then the most alive way that those truths can be told. Because the person in the story, uh Casey Bonkers or the Chronaut, they uh they are like people are, and we know what people are, and and uh and uh in a in a mythical kind of story, you don't have to say very much about them before you start to already imagine all the different things. And of course, we only say a little, but the things that we say are characteristics of it, and then you can imagine that of course in another story when something else happened there, that person would act something differently or so. Whilst when you're writing an essay, you kind of go, here's the truth, and then every time when I'm writing anything, well, especially if it's like I'm saying, Oh, when you perform, you should do X, Y, and Z. But every time I say anything about that, I'm already thinking of, Well, I say don't do this, but um, yeah, there's all these people that are just examples of they made a career and human beings by doing exactly that thing that I say you don't do, but yeah, somehow through constriction or through narrowing it down, for me to be able to say something, I'm saying something, and this is true, 100% true. And when you hear it, you will know it is true, but you will also maybe at the same time know that this is not true, because I know that it is, but that's also what's going on if you're holding a sermon when you you're saying one thing and you go like uh this is how this person acted in this story, and then you know that to be true, even if you fail to act like that yourself. But you can keep these characters in your mind as a great diversion of yourself or as well.
SPEAKER_02:I love I love the I love the fact that Jesus himself told these parables. Um, and it's always it's kind of what I always point to when people ask about taking the Bible literally and things like that, because like Jesus himself, do you really think there was a prodigal son? Was that a real person? Or do you think Jesus made that up as a story? If he made it up as a story, then why did he just say once there was a man, blah, blah, blah? Is he lying? Was there this man? What do you think, you know, or so even Jesus was allowed to like be in that realm that and he knew that that's probably the best way to get these things across. Whether or not those people actually existed didn't matter. What but the story is true, those two things can be the and those two things can both be true. Um, like was there a good Samaritan? I don't I don't think that story actually happened. Uh, but it doesn't matter. The story is true, you know.
SPEAKER_01:But in a sense, the story is true because that story happened again and again and again, and it is happening today, somewhere, just outside this window. That is happening. So it's a uh it's like a perennial truth. We we encounter it everywhere, and by telling the story about the Good Samaritan, you become aware of this pattern of behavior, yeah, and listen to it. And if you're listening the right way, you know this is yeah, this is an important thing to do.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and the other thing that those parables, like there's certain parables that that were not take example of the Good Samaritan. It's not so much a story that most of the time we hear it and we think, well, you should be nice to people that are in the ditch, um, that don't have any clothes and they're beat up, and you should just stop and help them out. But it but if you look at like I'm gonna I'm gonna take a little aside here because this is a very fascinating example of this uh of the truth of the story and how it unveils itself. In the uh you you probably know that back then the Samaritans were the enemies of the Jews. They they the Jews had a saying that the only good Samaritan is a dead one, you know.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So when they when the lawyer asks, Well, who's my neighbor? And he tells this is the story he tells in response to that question. And if he gets to the end and he says, Well, who was neighbor Lee? And then the guy can't even, the lawyer can't even bring himself to say Samaritan. He says, the one who helped him. But if you look at all of that, then the the the the original listeners would be hearing the priest walking by as a good thing. They shouldn't be touching dead people. He doesn't know if he's a Jew. He doesn't know who he is because he can't speak, he's got no clothes. We don't know who this is. The priest did the right thing in their minds. That's the right thing to do. The Levite would have seen the priest do this up ahead. I'm not gonna override my like the my superior, so I'm gonna do the same thing. I'm gonna walk around and not touch him. The people listening to Jesus tell this would have been like, finally, he's got something right. This is this is how you're supposed to act. And then this dummy comes along and like an idiot, pulls him out of the ditch, puts him on his mule, takes him to the inn, does all these nice things to him. So, what Jesus is doing is he's flipping that whole thing on them and saying, we often want to put ourselves in the story as the Samaritan. We're not allowed to. That's why he uses that character. The original listeners would never have allowed themselves to be equated with that person. That's not who you the and you're not the robbers, and you don't have the we don't have the audacity to think that we're a priest or a Levite. So who does that leave us? We are the person in the ditch. And so when he says, so when he says, Who is my neighbor? The question he throws back at him is he says, if you're in the ditch completely helpless and half dead, who do you want helping you? Anybody. Anybody. It doesn't matter if it's a Samaritan, it doesn't matter who it is. The person that stops and helps you, that's your neighbor. The person that you would want to pull you out of the ditch. Your worst enemy doesn't matter. Would you want him to pull? Sure, you would. So that's your neighbor.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And that makes the story way, way, way deeper. And also a much better reason for them to kill him. This is a guy that's gotta go. This is much too dangerous of a message. You know, we can if in a modern sermon, if I was giving that, you know, there's a lot of examples of who I could say as as the Samaritans are in our minds. But if we were naked in a ditch, half unconscious or unconscious, would we want them to pull us out and give us a ride home? Sure we would. And so that is exactly who our neighbor is that we're supposed to love, you know, and that really opens the question up in a very see, he's not going with right and wrong anymore. It's not about good and bad, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. He's just going like we talk to kids and we go, oh, you know, kids are so easy, they hardly know what's real and what's not. But within the game, they when kids are young and I come in and I butt into the game and I take on and oh I take on the role of this thing, and they're going, they might often go, oh, it's it's not real, it's just part of the game. Yeah, and then they go back into the game to just inform you of what and the kids know what's real and what's not. And even though in the game we might be angry with each other, you know what the real thing is when you when you strip away all the imagined stuff. Exactly. Is exactly what was the difference then in the story between the Jews and and the Samaritans. They're all uh uh cathedrals built of imagination, of thoughts, of feelings that they have towards history and everything, but in that moment you strip it back down just to the reality of biology and human beings.
SPEAKER_02:Pulling across pulling aside the veil in that story is really like here is also showing us this is the world of play and this is the world of love now. This is we don't have those same rules here anymore. This is the kingdom of heaven, this is what this looks like. The kingdom of the sky or the kingdom of the air is actually how that should be translated. Heaven being just sky. Um, that's all that means. We think of like angels on clouds, but that's all he's saying is like this is the kingdom of the air. This is what it looks like. There's not those things don't apply anymore, you know. Um, all that history and the reason why you don't like somebody and all that stuff. It doesn't, it's not there. And actually, it's funny, as a minister, as I had the I had the uh many times I would know somebody's I don't know, what they did that was terrible, they ripped somebody off, or they they they would vote differently than me, and I got strong opinions, and they got strong opinions, and then all of a sudden their kids in a car accident and he's at the hospital. All that stuff goes away. None of that matters anymore. None of it, and it never actually did. And that's what that's that's the truth of it. You know, my own son was in a really bad accident, and I remember looking at him in the hospital, and and uh I remember thinking like in the end, he could do nothing wrong. You know, we we've had struggles. He's a kid that likes to push the envelope and stuff, but when you're in that borderline situation, none of that matters. And I love the idea of thinking why, you know, the whole idea of the gospel or any true sense of spirituality is to live looking at people that way all the time, if you can, or practice that as much as you can. If this person was on the side of the road, would you help them? Of course you would. Then treat them that way now. Why don't you just treat them that way now? You know, um that to me that's that's play, and it's not hard, but it's very hard. And it is it is often suffering, it doesn't always come with good feelings, you know, but it's but you know it's you know it is uh the truest form of being it's the truest form of being.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. And it's them, I think what's also important when you are playing and when you're engaging in play, it's to it's this uh drifting in and out of it and being able to see, going like I love Lord of the Rings, I love the stories we tell, I love the circus and the showmanship and the things, but exactly that your daughter is sick, and yeah, everything just in an instant you just go, oh, hang on a second. Remember that that too is play, which is what the most interesting or the word the authors that I like that talk about play. It's that distinction of uh of this of where when we are most serious, there are elements of play, like Heutzinger talking about how the judges puts the wigs on, yeah, and then they put on these funny robes, yeah. And and in these moments, because now we're talking of matters of life and death, and there's going it's whether life and death happened, and whether this was the person and that person is now whether this life is taken away from them by being locked up, or like some places in some of the states.
SPEAKER_02:And in the church, you see this church, like bishops wearing the big robes and the huge hats and the carrying those big things, and you know that you're right, that it becomes more like uh um and there's also a dance to it almost with the ritualized, you know. So the whole thing, it's it is funny that that you yeah, it I think that's why I'm so engaged. I gotta read this person you're talking about because um that has been that has been so uh engage it's it's it just really resonates that at those moments, like you said, the borderline situations of life and death is when we are actually feel the most inclined to put on to play another realm, you know. Like you said, dress up, do a dance, sing some songs. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And these are when it's interesting too, of course, as as a minister or as a priest, you you are called upon in the moments that are because you mentioned grief, but it is also the joy, the celebration of a child born, or the wedding of a of a person becoming an adult, being marked with confirmation, or whatever elements of the and those rituals are in our secular world being so much pulled away. And as much as you have KC Bunkers and uh um Punky Steamer, I have the Showman's Guild. Yeah, there's only one example of it on in my feed of a story of the day we killed. It's called uh uh The Murder of Mystery, and it's a 10-minute story. But I have uh I have novels written and uh novellas written, and in fact, a lot of the things that I am expressing as what the way of the showman is comes from me having made this the uh like a hierarchical society uh on a kin with the with the Freemasons, which takes the imagery of masonry and uses it to look at a human being as a moral being in the world. And and I thought we could do it is easy to use that same thing uh of a craft, taking the imagery from a craft, and I think the craft of showmanship has all those elements too. And as I was writing those stories, inevitably, because I'm philosophically inclined. I would go on. Well, what do they actually say? What is that story like? Because you might mention the story without talking about it. And some of these things of that I'm writing a book now that was uh the about that I'm in the final stages of or so uh about like a philosophy or or of showmanship.
SPEAKER_02:I can't wait. Like yeah, facing the other way. Is that the name of it?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that has been the name of it, but just recently it's might it might be slipping back towards being called the way of the shaman. I kind of felt like I needed to take the way of the shaman and and save that for a more sort of because to me, the way has all these um the way of the samurai, the way of Christ, the way of well to me it sounds like the way of the shaman. Yeah, which is also a book that took uh shaman that brought a a version of what shaman yeah, shaman, that's exactly right. The next big topic, like the first uh big topic that I talked about in season two was what it means to be facing the other way and all this, which is the foundation for the book that I'm writing now. And then I wrote about play as the most foundational starting point of showmanship, which means it's the same when the priest faces the other way to his congregation, or when the teacher or professor faces the other way to his congregation, they have prepared something and they are there and they are curating the time and attention in such a way as to engage and enlighten the person somehow. And so so that and then play is the foundation of that. And the next step that I am writing about is the from shaman to shaman. I think that you find the the um you find all of the elements of what we do as a performer today, you find those elements in the shaman, but the shaman is so early that he keeps the full potential of the archetype in him. Whilst when I am here today and I'm doing a show at the circus in the casino, I am channeling one aspect of what the shaman had. But yeah, just beneath the surface of what I do, I can harness any of the things that the shaman had. So I then want to wanna I'm working on the on it in sketch form at the moment, but it'll be another multi-episode. I love that.
SPEAKER_02:Of course, my in my mind goes to like the fact that a showman really is one of those places where all six crew members are involved. You know, they they all they're all involved in that.
SPEAKER_01:Um, all of those and using that as a framework. I'm using in my in the book that I'm writing now, I'm almost trying to simplify it. And whenever you simplify something, it is it is not correct, it's not true. But this is the nature of maps. If you're making a map of something, it has to be simplified because the actual thing don't fit in your pocket, the actual thing is the world, it map is not the same as the territory. And I'm using you know, Plato and Aristotle and Freud and Jung and Rudolf Steiner all talks about these the faculties of the soul or or so, and they talk about elements of thinking and feeling and willing or desire and action, like those three. So I I try to boil it down to this kind of map, and then but it's the same with the six um archetypes of play that you've highlighted in your story, because then you can go through any act, circus act that I'm doing, any show that I'm doing, and I can then um try like when you want to make it better, you can see which dimension is it that's covered. Have I got enough of the feeling and what that means? Or like, have we got have we touched on the what the Chronaut is doing or the goggle jockey in this act? And by when you're trying to make something into not just being a uh one-dimensional or two-dimensional representation of something, but to be a fully three-dimensional archetypal living thing, yeah, then you it needs to have all of these elements in it. So using the six characters that you have, or the three faculties of soul that I'm focusing on, yeah, it's just to give you a map of a territory, which is the map of what it means to be a human being. And yeah, whenever I utter anything about a human being, it is always too little. I name it too small just by opening my mouth. But we have that's where it starts.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, exactly. And there's certain some some ways of simplifying are better than others. If you simplify uh, like you could look at like uh what we I mean, we've been talking about Christianity, but like you could look at the symbol of the cross as being very it's two sticks. But yeah, but like those shoes, like Van Gogh's shoes or like that wooden sword, it's pulling in this entire world. I love the last paragraph. Have you ever read The Grapes of Wrath by uh John Steinbeck?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, I have, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:It comes down to the very last paragraph. He paints this image of a very, very simple scene that explains the entire book on every level. It's just this really simple scene of this poor woman taking this man who's dying, and they're both poor. She's lost a baby, they're sitting in a barn, and she takes his head and she puts it in his lap and she puts it up to her nipple. She puts his head up to her nipple, and that's the end of the story. It's the simplest thing ever. And it's just mind-blowing how much he can suck into that that image. No pun intended. You know, so like some of those images, like I I do love symbology, like like like uh um when you simplify, like you say, you're already losing things. But also if it's done in that way, if it's done like like these are symbols, every time you use that symbol, you're not just saying that simple two sticks, you know, or those shoes. You're talking about this entire world. I mean, that's all languages. Yeah, every time you use a word, you're sucking in entire worlds into that, you know.
SPEAKER_01:It's where the vertical from earth to sky meets the the horizontal, the two planes meeting our world and the world that strives upwards and that has an up and the down. And yeah, I mean that's it though. And it's this is what play, I think, is the invitation to is to see the world as infinite potential, and and and that it's uh you know, to see in the very simple things, and that's why those six simple uh shapes that you talk about in the beginning from from such simple things, an entire universe can grow. And and Mike's book is based on my my poem Um The Manifesto Illuminated Showman's Manifesto, and in there he goes on when a showman performs on a market square, he creates a universe. Yeah, that's we are in a very limited place on the market square is the archetypal place of where you would see the showman and the people are gathered around him, and and he creates a universe, and in that universe, anything can happen, all the physics are different, physics are everything's different.
SPEAKER_02:The way you think, the way you talk, everything becomes yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like or the philosopher seeing it in a grain of sand or in a marble. Um yeah, I I listened I listened to your epic poem last night, uh Moved to Tears. It was just exquisite. Uh, the one um about the clown and his daughter, and uh I actually I actually had some ideas about that. We don't have to talk about that here, but um a way of I heard that as kind of almost like the first the first half of the story that I wrote.
unknown:Oh, great.
SPEAKER_02:And there was like four different ways, there's four places that you you'd blend them and then it becomes one big story. Uh and I yeah, I don't know, we don't have to talk about that here because that could be a whole other conversation. It'd be kind of fun.
SPEAKER_01:Uh we've we've we've gone for a long time and I'm I'm uh I'm thoroughly enjoying this, and I want uh would very much love this to be an ongoing uh conversation. There's so many topics that we can explore, and uh there are so many aspects of play that we are touching on that is helping me to understand better what it is that I am talking about and thinking about as well.
SPEAKER_02:And me too. Yeah, and me too. Yeah. Uh it's it is just such an honor. And like well, like I said, that that epic poem is just a thing of beauty. Um, I've already recommended it to some people. Um yeah, it's exquisite, but but I think there's uh it it made my story feel like like you and I were actually kind of telling the same story in a in a weird way. Um but yeah, well we'll have to we'll have to talk about it sometime. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, we will we will have to talk about that. Yeah, that's great. That's uh that's a good um that's a good way. Then we can give the uh give the fellow travelers on who have the showman the idea of uh needing to do their homework and listen to those two things and you and we can dive into that. Because exactly both have they are both uh about the most important things.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, they are. They are, and I just yeah, it was almost like they were they were two sides of the same coin or something. I I I I I've got some notes, so we'll I'll have to go over it sometime with you because uh uh just be curious to hear your thoughts on that. I was just so moved by it. Um and uh it's funny how I I'm sure you were too, that you even though you wrote it, like uh, but listening back to it for yourself, I mean, were you not moved by your own story?
SPEAKER_01:I am crying. I feel like it's it's when because it is it is it is that thing of redemption, and the person who strips away everything, and he strips away, he hangs up his call to God, and he he he strips it all the way back, and then somehow when everything is lost from there, it it's uh he finds redemption again. So it's yeah, it's a very big, very big story where he's tripping away and he buries the clown nose and he then finds himself in the back.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And I mean, even the devil at the crossroads and all that, like it was it's just so good. Uh it really it's kind of the same way too, where you're pulling in like like in the Road to Joy story, there's pulling in elements from other stories, they're just hinting at it. You know, it's you were doing the same thing. There was the the shipwreck and the and the uh the devil at the crossroads and the person in the pub that tells them how to get there. And um, and I just I just kept tasting all these different flavors of stories that I already knew. So I felt like I was hearing like uh a every story has been told. It almost seems like it always boils down to the same one. Um but yeah, I I I just I felt like there was uh there was there was so much, there was so much there. And I remember listening back to my story. I had a good friend of mine uh record that. That's he did the voice for it. He he's he did all of our radio commercials. He used to be a barista at the shop. Um, and he could transform his voice into almost anybody. But he uh he read that and I we discussed how to read it, and he he said, Well, I want to read it like this person on YouTube that he really likes that just sounds he's an old Englishman that loves talking about Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. I forget his name. So he ends up channeling that, but then he ends up kind of doing it himself. Um, but I remember listening to back on that, and almost every time I'd get to the end of the story where the the the Ode to Joy song plays, and I'm just weeping, you know, like I can't believe this. This I just it was almost like I didn't uh it didn't come out of me, like I had discovered it, you know, and those are the best feelings. Um, and it was the same way with your story. Like, I bet I bet Frodo was listening back on this, going, What have I done? Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, it's also it's like when you can when you manage to tell the story in a way that you that is authentic, then you get back to the truth, even though this is a story that you've heard before. But I also like that in when you're writing something which you hope to be kind of mythopoetic, that it's going to be be feel like it's it's real or whatever. Yeah, it's its own thing and it it speaks back to stories that you've heard, that you have the feeling like when something starts that you actually I know this. Yep. Whether it is so I maybe you haven't actually heard it quite like that or whatever, but you have these images also in the in the beginning where there's the the talk of of Noah's Ark, how that goes as this sort of story that you that you he is lying in the shipwreck and is yeah, is distraught. Like, send me an ark. Why don't you send an ark for me now? And then yeah, she's got the Noah's Ark around her neck, and then we sort of forget about that until right towards the very end. Yeah, no, that's when the ark comes back or or whatever that maybe uh he had sent an ark, like that story where I can't remember if that is uh is a rabbi.
SPEAKER_02:I sent you a helicopter and I sent you a boat, and I sent you exactly.
SPEAKER_01:I was waiting for you to save me. What is what what do you want me to do? I sent you helicopters with everything and you have to get yourself out. So anyway. No, that's uh pleasure.
SPEAKER_02:It's such a pleasure, such a pleasure. Yeah, I've I can't wait to hear those other ones. I know you made mention of some other uh I think you've got a couple others on your on your podcast that you've recorded.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, a couple other short stories. Another poem that's a little more abstract because it's kind of a creation story, it's called The Way in the Universe, uh, it which is kind of the uh the aons of going through the aons of time, using the language of of circus or performance uh to kind of make a kind of creation story or so. Uh and then there is the story that's called The Day We Killed Mist or uh The Murderer of Mystery. Yeah, both of those are stories. One is about 20 minutes or half an hour, and the other one is just a 10-minute story. But they both kind of show different aspects of dealing in story-wise, and and I have more stories uh written that I have wondered how I would bring them in. I have thought, because I made in the the the clown and the new world, the epic poem, that was episode 100. And then I did uh I did something like this also on the episode episode 21, uh where I talk about the showmanship. As as that's what Captain Frodo, he's the captain of the most famous ship of all time, the most influential ship of all time, the showmanship. Yeah, so I use that metaphor of the and so the whole that whole episode, and I think that is episode 21. Yeah uh the captain of the showmanship or something, and it uses the imagery of that both to talk about the funny how ships are so handy to use as imagery, right?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, totally, totally. The punky steamer is yeah, the the spirit of possibility and um yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_01:And Jesus was a sailor when he walks across the ocean, yes, as uh Glenn Cohen says. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, yeah. Wonderful. Hey, thank you so much for uh for your time and uh I hope we can do this again.
SPEAKER_02:I really yeah, I really hope we can do this again, Frodo. It's been just such a pleasure.
SPEAKER_00:And I am happy to say that uh uh our correspondence have continued. We are delving further into the connections, possible connections, between uh Casey Bunker's Road to Joy and uh The Clown and the New World, and it's all very exciting. So if you like what we're doing here on The Way of the Showman, then uh uh you can subscribe to the podcast. That's my number one thing that I would like you to do before this year finishes, or before any year finishes for that matter. And if not, then also sign up uh on uh Instagram. Just uh follow us on Instagram, on The Way of the Showman. You can send me an email anytime at thewayofthshowman at gmail.com, and I would love to hear from you. I am Captain Frodo, and uh on this little Christmas Eve, as we call it in Norway, I urge you to take care of yourself and those you love, and I hope to see you along the way.