Episode 26: Moshe

At 69, Moshe is taking it 'one breath at a time.' Meet this clown to learn where funny comes from.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

And so it's really about opening up your ability to express your your funny nonverbally. Which for most people is like is very zen because you take away the words and they're in their being, you know, and and all of a sudden the thinking mind disappears. And if you stay in that thinking mind, your funny doesn't appear. It's only when you let go of it that the funny, like all the intuitive creative energies, starts to flow. So in that way is very Buddhist. It's very mindful. That way is asking us to just be human. And and you know, not more.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Welcome back, everybody. My name is Tim Cunningham, host of the Niners podcast, where we interview folks living on the edge, on the cusp, people who are nine months pregnant, about to bring a new life onto this planet, people who have a nine in their age, nine, nineteen, twenty nine, thirty-nine, all the way up to folks in their 90s living on the edge of a decade or even a century, like this guy here. And and and listeners that have been following, you've probably heard some themes show up in the interviews about clowns. My goal with this podcast is to interview 99 people, because nine is a powerful mystical number. And a lot of these folks are my friends. And one of the reasons we've had a lot of clowns on this podcast are is because of this person right here in front of me, the great Moshe Cohen, found right right behind, I mean, in front. Moshe Cohen, the founder of Clowns Without Borders USA, who for years put up with my ridiculousness, mentored me as a clown, taught me so much, opened the world to me in many ways, and I'm honored, Moshe, to once again learn from you. Welcome to the Niners, my friend. Nice to be here. Moshe, can you tell us how old you are today? Today. 69. Can you tell us a little background about yourself, Moshe? Where are you from and where do you live now?

SPEAKER_03 1:57

Well, I'll I'll start with where I live right now. I'm in San Francisco in uh what's called Mission Creek District, which is actually now the AI district. Parking isn't possible, if you're curious.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

They don't have flying cars yet, flying everybody in, and no, definitely not that.

SPEAKER_03 2:15

They they definitely have the the Waymo's and the uh zooks up the wing-wangs. There's a lot of them out there. It was really funny the other day, they all got stuck. I forget what happened, but they all yeah, because we had a power outage across town, across a good part of town, and all the red lights were dead, and like about half the town almost. And the Waymo's got confused and got stuck in the intersections. They couldn't move because there was no lights. And then there was there were photos of like, you know, a six-lane or four-lane, and and all the lanes were blocked by amazing. So, yeah. So I live in San Francisco. When I moved here, it was a bohemian uh hippie uh kind of place, and it had the lowest rent uh of a big city around, and it is a great city. However, it has been overrun now by money. It always had a lot of money, but it uh it's now predominantly uh a wealthy town. So the the radical left-wing uh element is not totally disappeared at all. It's still very alive, but it's not what it was.

unknown 3:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

And I remember I've spent time in your in your home, which is an extraordinary studio and loft place. And how long have you lived there? You want me to show it? Sure. Yeah, for folks watching. And if you're just listening in, we're getting a slow zoom.

SPEAKER_03 3:32

I see a little bit of the kitchen, and that's uh goes up to the loft, sleeping loft. I'm in my big workspace, teaching space. And over here we come to the window and the living room and the office space. Yeah, that's that's that's it. And behind me, you see a few big flowers that I've used over the years.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

And used around the world. How many countries would you say you've brought those flowers and perform with those flowers?

SPEAKER_03 3:59

Oh idea. I once tried to count up the the, you know, because I had to do publicity, so I said, oh, 50 plus countries. And I I can't say that I took the flowers because I haven't been traveling with those flowers all those years. Uh but yeah, they've been around. I I now work with a smaller version, those are the big ones. Uh I won't I won't bug you with all the details.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Well, now you've got our interest. Well, I know what you do, but you've got the audience's interest peaked. You've got flowers, you live in a studio. How do you speak to the city? Well, okay.

SPEAKER_03 4:25

Well, this morning I was medical clowning at CPMC, the acute elderly care floor. Okay and and um with partner, of course, and Doyle today. And I I have a flower, it's a little smaller, not much smaller, whereas I'll disappear for a second. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Folks that are listening in, Moshe has disappeared from the spring string screen. Hello, flower.

SPEAKER_03 4:48

Hello, orange flower. So this is an orange flower, and it's the smaller version, and uh I balance it on my nose, you know, as kind of an opening gambit to say, hey, we're here sometime, not always, but and then I I often put like pieces of confetti on it, then I lift it up slowly, and if my partner plays music, they'll build it up, and then I'll I'll let the confetti sprinkle over the bed. You know, just like five or six pieces. It's kind of like bigger pieces of confetti, not that little small stuff. And it floats, you know, it just kind of it's really nice. It's really nice. And then I'll pick up all the all the pieces of confetti and we'll talk about, you know, making a mess of the room and what have you, and then I'll take the confetti and I'll take the confetti and I'll make it disappear. And uh then I'll ah sneeze it out of my nose. Anyway, so the flower, you know, and I did a piece, uh a performance piece with um with a paper balloon earth. So Japanese uh traditional uh toys are these paper balloons that are light and they float and they you hit them around, they never change shape. They somehow physics have a little hole and they keep their shape. And I paint them as the earth. I got big ones and I made them look like the earth, and I have this whole number with the flower, and then uh I think I'm in total control, and then things start going wild, and then I lose the earth and it falls off the flower, and then I I inhale the earth and I get high from the earth, and then I realize it's all crumpled up, and I'm like, oh no, and I blow it back up, and then it ends up back on the flower. Anyways, that's a very quick uh 10-second, 20-second description of a six and a half minute piece that I I've been doing. It's kind of like I call it Bhutto Clown because I'm slow and moving. Yeah, and then um I really love it because it's like you know, sucking up the earth is of course symbolic for what's going on right now. How long have you been doing the earth piece? I started doing the earth piece about 10 well, not this piece, but I started using the earth about 13, 14 years ago. I can show you. I have one right here.

SPEAKER_01 6:55

Yeah, folks, Moshe has disappeared once again, but every reappearance brings There's the Earth, it's crumpled. Let's see if I can blow it up. Maybe Moshe is blowing up the planet as we seem to be doing every day.

SPEAKER_03 7:08

It's it's very light.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

But just floats in the air, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:12

Floats, yeah. That's the beauty of it. It kind of floats, and I and I play with it, and then and then at one point I'm playing with it, but then I I lose control, and then it it ends up like all squished up, and then I'm like, oh no, and then I'm like, then I'm like, I blow it back up, and I'm like, I blow it back up. Now I'm like, oh okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

And so then you get high from the earth.

SPEAKER_03 7:37

Then I start floating around, you know. At some point I go, oh, I see the earth. And I I wake up, you know, from my dream. Anyways, yeah. So I I haven't I did this last year and the year before. I don't think I'm gonna be doing it. I'll see, but I have no plans of performing that because it's like a six-minute thing. Where do you put that? It's not like the variety theaters in Europe are gonna hire me to entertain their audiences with that piece, nor do I want to, but but you never know.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

I mean, and I imagine you have so many pieces, so many bits, so many. I mean, from your work with Clowns I would so many uh in your pocket and so many street performances that you've done.

SPEAKER_03 8:18

Well, you know, I toured a show for yeah, for 20 years, 25 years. Uh, you know, it was an hour and ten minutes, uh, the whole show. So yeah, there's a lot of and was that all solo with mostly, not all. I worked with a few partners here and there and created different things, but you know, I depended on my Yuho show for income. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Well, uh Yuho, you're 69. You're 69, or whatever that means. Whatever that means, yeah, really. Can you tell us a little bit about what excites you about moving into the next decade? Whatever that means.

SPEAKER_03 8:55

Well, I saw that question on the sheet and I dismissed it immediately. You know, it's not very Buddhist. You know, what am I gonna be doing in 10 years? I'm not Buddhist, but I was like, who knows? I mean, it's like you just don't know what's coming around the bend, especially these days. I do know what the next few years are gonna be like, because I'm writing a book and um I have it's due in 10 days. Uh I sent the manuscript to the publisher, it's Shambhala Publications, and they were like, it's 20,000 words too much, you know, it's like 70,000, we want 50. And I'm like, whoa. Yay! And and no, and no, I mean they know what they're talking about. You know, so it's a training manual. It's uh and uh training you're funny, basically. And um, he was like, Well, you know, that's just too much. People are gonna be kind of like, you know, it's not welcoming. If it's a shorter book, it's more welcoming. If there's fewer exercises in the book, it looks more approachable, you know, type thing. You know, it's like if you say, Here, learn this, and you got this big thick volume, they're just gonna go, uh that was that's the philosophy behind it. I I I honestly don't know, but so I've been working on on cutting it down and rearranging it. And and I have a good friend, uh who's a great writer, who's gonna be coming in in the next few days, and and she's gonna work with me on the text and uh and and hopefully weave her magic. Uh and so but that doesn't get published until um sometime in 2027. So I mean, but uh that's like what's next. And I don't know what that opens up, to be honest. If it opens up anything, to be honest. Who knows? Yeah. Uh you know, I've been teaching workshops these past 20 years or so, and uh, I've increasingly been teaching in spiritual and zen centers, and less in clown schools and theater schools.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

And are you still teaching clown in Zen centers?

SPEAKER_03 10:49

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

Would you call it clown? Okay.

SPEAKER_03 10:51

Well, I'm calling it, you know, it depends on where I'm teaching. I'm calling it, you know, clown and zen, or I'm calling it sacred mischief a lot. Yeah, I was looking for a proper well, that you know, you know about sacred clowns. I I don't know if your audience is familiar with Yeah, tell us a little bit about it. I mean, I can't really I'm no no expert at all, but you know, all the indigenous, not all, but many indigenous populations had their clowns, had their funny people who were part of the community who had uh had a responsibility, a spiritual responsibility for the for the balance, the well-being of the community, and whose job it was to bring things back in balance when they got out of balance using humor. In North America, we have quite a I I've talked to quite a few people, and I've talked to a few tribe members of certain nations who said, No, we don't have clowns. And I said, Did you? He said, I don't know. And then I talked to other people who said, Oh yeah, we still have our clowns and they're doing this and that. So it it depends on the community. But that, you know, in Mali, there's uh the Coredugas. I mean, there's like in Brazil, we actually met the Hochua at this big festival in Rio was amazing. And they have this story about the sacred potato. I don't know. And they live off in the Amazon. Uh yeah, yeah. It was great, a great experience. But the point being is that this idea of bringing things back into balance, of using humor to make things, you know, to uplift or however that could be. I mean, that's what I'm doing with Clowns Without Borders. That's what I'm doing with medical clowning. And I can't call myself a sacred clown. I mean, that's and so I was looking for, well, what what do you say about this? You know, because you're doing this work, but it's you I don't want to identify as this person. That's for me a little too, you know, high, high, I don't know what you want to call that, presumptuous.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Yeah, stuck up, snotty, snobby, high flugin.

SPEAKER_03 12:49

Anyway, so I'm looking for something. How do I describe this work? And and I first thing was okay, it's an action. Okay, just like clowning is an action. It's not I am a clown, I clown. You know, it's the act of being funny that's important. It's not the figure, you know, at least for me. And um, so I came up with mischief. Oh, yeah, sacred mischief. Was like, okay, that I don't have to call myself a sacred clown or to call it sacred clowning. I can just take a lighter approach to it. You know, and so yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

I have experienced it, and then I think many people, and as you've experienced too, can often be very high energy and and and in many ways all over the place. Uh, can you help us understand what that looks like in a Zen center? Where my experience in Zen centers are generally still quiet.

SPEAKER_03 13:35

Yeah, well, you know, yeah, you get frantic or you get excited or you get high energy. However, the base of your clown, I mean, you've studied, uh, is very, very calm as a base. So that you have something to land in when the excitement. I'm sure you've experienced that in show in shows. You know, you need to land, you need to land the audience too. It started with this Zen master Bernie Glassman, who came to study with me in 1998, I think, because he wanted tools of tricksterdom, because he felt that the teachers under him, the students under him, you know, he was like at the top. He said they're too uh, you know, they're too uh serious about themselves, you know, they take themselves too seriously, or sometimes they're even arrogant. You know, it was like, I need tools of tricksterdom. And, you know, that opened up a path because we started working together, we started teaching together. He came on a clowns without borders trip because he really wanted that experience. Um, and he's a funny guy. We chased him around and he That was pretty good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Anyway, I won't go into those stories. I remember being at a talk uh at a Buddhist center in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Bernie was speaking, and I remember you telling me stories about Bernie, and I'd seen pictures of him in a red nose smoking a cigar in Chiapas. Yeah, yeah. And um, but I never put two and two together until halfway through he was giving a Dharma talk. Halfway through the talk, I was like, You're that guy. Oh, and all my worlds collided. It was it was magical. Well, Moshe, this might be a slightly more Buddhist question. Um, as I've learned about Buddhism, it's all about noticing the change, paying attention to change, not all about aspects of it, paying attention to change. Can you tell us a little bit about how you feel you have changed, maybe in the last 10 years or or or longer over the course of your performance work of your being a human?

SPEAKER_02 15:27

Yes, I have become more human. I've definitely over the past 10 years become much more human. Gosh, what can I say?

SPEAKER_03 15:34

No, I do pay more attention to the human elements. Yes, for sure. And I do pay more attention to the relationships involved, to the people involved. I think I'm less school oriented. I couldn't say for sure. Yeah, well, you know, uh, I'm singing more. Yeah. A lot more. Well, you know, that was part of the, you know, so I started doing, I did, we had the funny bone doctors here in San Francisco, 95. I think it was 95 to 98. I could have my years rhombos in that zone. And then it was kids we were visiting, and now it's elders. And I've been doing this work now. This is like I think my ninth year with Medical Clown Project. And I we're visiting elders, and music is a big part of what you bring into a room, especially with elders, because sometimes they want to play, but sometimes they're not players. You know, their humor is they'll laugh at something, but the idea of engaging like a clown always wants to engage their audience, to interact, to bring the audience alive. When you talk about high energy, it's often because they're interacting with the audience and they're pushing the energy to because there's a lot of people and you're holding the space with a for a lot of people. So that takes a lot of energy. Anyway, it's kind of the opposite in the hospital. You know, you're going into the room and the person is really not doing well, and you kind of have to meet them where they're at. You can't, you can't so so I found that getting back to your question, that's about the sense of humor. It's not about the clown. And I found that because I was teaching with Bernie, and Bernie was bringing students to me who were not wanting to become clowns. They they that's not you know the why they're here. And so it's really about opening up your ability to express your your funny nonverbally, which for most people is like is very zen because you take away the words and they're in their being, you know, and all of a sudden the thinking mind disappears. And if you stay in that thinking mind, your funny doesn't appear. It's only when you let go of it that the funny, uh like all the intuitive creative energies, starts to flow. So in that way, it's very Buddhist. In that way, it's very mindful, and that way is asking uh us to just be to just be human, you know.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

And and you know, not more. Moshe, you got me thinking when you said sense of humor, the way you said it, it struck in and as you know, I I worked with clowns out borders, still sit on the board. Um, but I then became a nurse. I was inspired by work with clowns out borders that led me to nursing. And when I think about the word humor the way you just said it, like kind of old school Western medicine calls talks about the humors. And if you have bad humors, you're sick.

SPEAKER_03 18:22

And you're talking about for those humors. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

How does that connect with the sense of humor? Or does it?

SPEAKER_03 18:29

Not to my knowledge. Okay. But what's no, I what's interesting about sense of humor, because like I'm writing this book, right? And I'm going, okay, well, I have to describe humor as a well, it's a sense. Oh, it's a sense. Which sense is that? You know, and then I start going, oh, it's okay. And I say, okay, so it's like your sixth sense or your seventh sense or whatever. It's but it is a sense. It's not, you know, you don't think that's funny. You sense it's funny. And I discovered that, you know, researching that, that, you know, um, a sense has a bio, I forget what they call it, a biological marker. So there's something biological in your body that's telling you. So, you know, you hear it's because your eardrums are vibrating or whatever, your eyes, you know, you're so so humor doesn't have a biological marker. There's no connection to the body in that way. So I was like, what kind of sense is it? Well, it's an intuitive sense, is what I decided. I said, Well, it's definitely, you know, it's your intuition, it's a sense, you know, but it it's just an interesting uh sidebar on that thing.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Yeah. There is a, I don't know if I shared this story with you, but I was invited to give a talk about clowns of that borders at the World Bank 2015 or something. And I gave the talk, performed a little bit, gave the talk, and there was QA afterwards, and a woman came up to the microphone following that, and she said, I don't, I don't have a question, but I wanted to let you know that I grew up in a refugee camp near Croatia, and she talked about how one December Clowns of That Borders came and did a performance, and she said they only came once, and she said that was one of her happiest memories of her entire time living in this camp. And she said every Christmas time, every December time, she would get together with her girlfriends and they would reenact the show for other kids in the camp. And so even though there's not a biological marker for a sense of humor, the clowns at that time in that camp, and maybe that was you. I mean, I know that you were doing a lot of work at that time.

SPEAKER_03 20:23

Yeah. We went to Zagreb. I went to Zagreb in 94 with the French clowns without borders, and we did shows in a few places, but that was the only time I went to. But the French and the Spanish and the Swedish were all very active in Bosnia and Croatia and Serbia to some extent. Yeah. So it could have been, yeah, it could have been any number.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

So I think there are biological markers. We just haven't figured out a good way to measure that other sense. You've got a grand history behind you with the work you've done and and and the folks you know. Let's talk about looking forward again and less excitement of what's moving forward. But what concerns you as you move into this next decade?

SPEAKER_03 21:09

Well, nervous laughter. Oh my gosh. Let's see where what happened in Venezuela yesterday. No, it's pretty wacko, pretty wild and crazy. Yeah, you know, like the the the tech guy, uh Niv D Nivd guy. I was talking about.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

Oh, yeah, you're talking about before you started recording doing the the lecture on LA Times live stream. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:33

He said, Well, yeah, in 10 years, I expect uh fully that the you know ever all cars will be autonomous driven. You can drive them, but they will all have the capacity to be autonomous. So you know, it's so like uh you wonder, you don't know. Uh things are so crazy if they can calm down or if they keep spiraling upwards. We don't know. So I I don't make any predictions other Then as Wavy Gravy would say, one breath at a time. One breath at a time. I call him, I say, How's it going?

SPEAKER_01 22:06

One breath at a time. Is that advice you might be willing to share with us as well? Because my next question was as you think about your concerns, how do you manage them about the future?

SPEAKER_03 22:15

Well, yeah, well, you know, there is no doubt that there's a lot of positive love energy in the universe. And, you know, a friend of mine sent me yesterday some meme I could go looking for to quote it, but it was basically, you know, forget that stuff, you know, the materialistic stuff. You know, we're sent here to create an you know a planet of love and beauty, and we need to work on that. And period. I I'm I'm paraphrasing it liberally, but yeah. So I think that um that you know, the more that and you see it also, you see it around you, you see people looking to find more connection, to be more compassionate, to they're they're starting to to get it that that's what's important. So all I can do is encourage that, you know. Um there was um there was a a book called The End of Suffering, which is quite a book. Um but uh it's a kind of a Buddhist book. Um like one of the big things that this guy was was preaching or you know talking about was you know, you have to forget your story. If you if you feel like you know we're all interconnected and we're all part of this one big swirl, and you're just in this hugely vast universe, you're this microscopic speck, you know, uh you're meant to be here and you're meant to be swirling around. Yet the moment that you try to direct it and plan it and and and hold on to something, you get into trouble. I mean, that's that was his basic thing. He said, forget your story and just live in what's going on with you. So, like, what's going to be going on in the next 10 years? I certainly intend to be approaching it with love and humor and and encouraging joyous interaction wherever, wherever it makes sense, you know.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Moshe, I've got one last question for you. My my brain is spinning, but it always spins when I talk with you, because then I want to go write and journal and be like, whoa, what do I do with this? And my question at this point in your life, what would you say matters the most to you? Love, yeah. Full stop. Voila! Voila. And the funny, of course. You can't have love without the funny, right?

SPEAKER_03 24:35

You can't have the funny without love. Yeah, they go hand in hand. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

This has been lovely. Thank you. Um, before we wrap up, is there anything else you'd love to share with an a listening audience, folks curious to learn from folks with a nine in their age?

SPEAKER_02 25:00

Parfait.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

Merci beaucoup. One breath at a time, Moshe. Thanks for sharing the words of your friend Wavy Gravy and for sharing all sorts of thoughts and wisdom with us and about your thrilling work over your lifetime. You all thanks for joining the Niners podcast. I'm your host, Tim Cunningham. Join us for our next episode. You'll learn from my friend Jessica, who is 39, turning 40. And if you know someone who has a nine in their age, whether they're nine months pregnant, nine, nineteen, twenty-nine, thirty-nine, forty-nine, all the way up to folks in their 90s, people living on the edge of a decade, the edge of a century, or about to bring a new life on this planet. If you know someone, send them my way. I would love to interview them as I work to interview 99 people living on the edge. A special thanks to Jen Cornell for our intro and outro music. You can learn more about Jen at jencello.com. Thanks again for joining us and see y'all next time.