Journey

Doors open, doors close, dogs avoid escalators.

Well I had my last pre-op meeting with both the surgeon and the head anesthetist yesterday. They have opted for the 'all you can cut' menu where they go in via the stomach area and also take a chunk out of a rib so they don't have to break it and go in that way too after deflating a lung to give them extra wiggle room.
My list of demands were fentynal as I've heard good things about it. The catheter put in after the general anesthetic cos I'm detail orientated that way and I'd like to wake up on a bear skin rug in front of an open fire in the intensive care ward please.

I then slyly inferred there would be chocolate in it for them if they made an effort.
Personally I am astonished by my bravery and sophistication in overcoming my fight or flight impulses to the degree that I will voluntarily be entering a building in a few days knowing I'll be led into a room where people will attack me with knives.

poss book cover, option one,

Afterword

Afterword

Well I’m about to be operated on medically in a big way and what’s often asked of or required for general and health purposes at this stage is something to live for.
Damn good question!
What have I been living for up to now I ask myself.
Damn good question!
Essentially I’ve been trying to externalise my existential angst for drinking money.
Like my parents said, I could achieve anything I ever set my heart on.
I traveled the world and performed for unsuspected publics in towns and cities of every letter of the alphabet. Ta-Da!
But I don’t drink anymore, I’ve worn out that fuzzy veneer of wellbeing.
I lack lacquer. I’ve burnished myself down to a self conscious nub.
Still, questions remain.
I’d like to be part of a team which is difficult when you’re a street level self styled iconoclast...with no stomach.
I would like to capture before it perhaps disappears from the ever shrinking public commons the works of various rare alchemists, mechanics of moments, aberrant pure creatives.
Because I think the world at large is ignorant of their existence and it may be hubris on my part but I think they are the most important individuals simply because in an inauthentic world they are purely authentic.
So that could be a reason to live, to produce some street theatre safari content generating program.
Alternatively or in conjunction I could create a clown school that invited masters of the trade to teach as guests. New Zealand is a nice place to visit and probably very tax deductible. I’m not sure how successful I’d be as an administrator. I do know my international clowns though and them me.
Sigh, all I know is I’m going to wake up in intensive care with lots of tubes sticking out of me and where those tubes come out will determine my recovery time. Ribcage is 9 months, stomach is 6.
And it would be best if I had something to aim for.
Clown fest jan/feb 2020?
Still fishing, 10 days to go as old Martin.

Obituary Robb Torres.

There's a nondescript carry-case in transit being transported ownerless back to it's point of departure.
There to be picked up and deposited at whatever home it's given.
It's a sad case as it's owners heart exploded on a plane carrying it and him and he died.

However deep in that case, jostling amongst makeup pads, a tawny wig, a red tie, rope and other bits and bobs there is a small plain wooden box with a hinged lid.

Not many people know this and I'm sharing it with you because more people should but that box is among the rarest, most powerful, venerable and profound objects in this world.
Because one man made it so.
He was a master Clown and they themselves are very rare. I know this because I'm 55 and have spent my adult life searching the world for them.
His name was Rob Torres.

This box contains hundreds of thousands of individual ingots invisible to the human eye of love and glee and relief from the everyday and childish delight and rekindled playfulness and wonder and celebration of what it is to be in the presence of a master Clown who takes that collective weight of all that it is to be human and makes pure light from it and radiates it back so it bounces about the gathered gaining power as it's collectively confirmed.

Rob Torres would collect his audiences applause in this small wooden box. He would sweep his arm and his scooped hand through the air and into the box as his audience thunderously applauded, then he would slowly close the box and his audience would in delight, play along, their applause would lessen and stop as he closed the box.
All he had to do after that was open the box and his audience would gleefully erupt again.

It was a small conceit that once shared became an immensely powerful thing.
It dissolved the barrier between audience and performer because the playfulness and delight of both the audience and performer became one and the same.
It took people to a place of incandescence.

As I say it now lies with other props in a case somewhere and will never be opened or closed in the same way again, which is sad.

But I hope it's recognised and I'm writing this in that hope.
That that box is one of mankinds greatest achievements and was bought into being by a humble, striving, extraordinarily talented singular individual who traveled to over 60 countries and performed at the largest Circuses and the smallest street corners and everywhere in between to illustrate, because that was his vocation, in profoundly simple shared moments honed by his craft to perfection, that shared laughter is one of the higher forms of Love...
and all we need.

Farewell Friend. RIP Rob Torres.

Honest moneylines not designed to maximize income #1

Thank you Ladies and Gentlemen, Glad you enjoyed the show.

As you've noted I don't speak in my show, I work as a character.

This is me talking.

I do this for a living and because I love doing it.

I kinda aim for 60% of you thinking it's clever and funny and 40% on the fence thinking it's a bit much, a little aggressive, just abusive basically.

That's fine by me. I'm not some 80's corporate throwback dedicated to “maximizing my revenue sources” I'm a street performer, I'll take what I'm given to do what I want.

I do have standards. If you liked my show feel free to come forward and drop some amount that equates to the fun you had watching the show.

If you filmed my show on your phone I'd prefer you didn't come forward because I pity you not being able to celebrate in the moment. The Clown pities you, you'll get over it.

Also I'm not going to explain to you how using your phone you can effortlessly make your bank friendly with my bank and donate electronically. I don't care about your technology. Not interested.

I'm interested in that small number of you who recognise whats just happened was worth something to come forward and leave something in my hat.

This job is centuries old and it's always been the same. People come forward and leave the performer a reward for the fun they've had...or just say thanks if they have no money. Maybe take out your phones and google egalitarian.

Enjoy the rest of your day.

riffs on performance collectives, guilds.

The personal sovereignty represented by a good street show is inarguably self evident.
Man/woman/team construct attention and focus to produce some self fueling whimsical collective celebration. Then pack up and do it again, and again.
Thats powerful, so powerful it's survived for centuries.
It predates capitalism and will probably exist in whatever system evolves from our present systematic convulsion.

I'd argue it's the primary power that fuels the festivals dedicated to celebrating and commercially exploiting it in variant ratios.
Indoor shows with tickets, sponsorship arrangements with signage, affiliated commercial gigs tacked onto the contracts, unpaid parades, a host of bright ideas abound that feed off the primary recognition that what a street performer produces is valuable and unique and powerful and cannot be easily reproduced.

Cirque du soleil admits that their initial ambition was an attempt to reproduce a street theatre energy and spontaneity onto the stage. At least that's what they told me and 57 others at my New York audition before over two days they had whittled us down to a final eight.
Blue man group was a cheaper and similar business plan.

The street will continue to incubate quirky and original and talented acts that survive and even prosper by the response and generosity of the public they impress.

Culture used to incubate in the town square in front of the church and circled by market stalls. That's where Ballet was born, that's where every basic theatrical convention crawled from the sea of our collective psyche and started gasping for air. Those that breathed best were often nabbed by noblemen and refined in halls for select entertainment just as now
that talent will often be noticed and offered entry into a new world of festivals where airfares and hotel rooms and fees are provided. All good.

However it's a competitive market and festival casting is now increasingly swamped by thousands of emails scrambling for the forty available slots.
Here's my solution, which is a sidestep of sorts and incorporates the fraternal element that has always been at the base of those of us who wander the globe and share pitches.
I picture a self selective herd of cats who trust each other enough to be self herding.
Forming a Guild, a group of between five or ten or twenty. Recognising what you have as street performers and moreover what your guild has that others don't.

The 90's originals
The Quirky Family Friendlies
Edge-lords

It might also be noted that at the advent of capitalism Guilds were seen to be unproductive, a burden, existing only for their own benefit and a drain on society as a whole. Parasitical. However guilds were the inventors of the concept of formal apprenticeship. That's an interesting wrinkle. Each guild could teach it's own authentic style and further define and market itself. Any guild with senior members having survived 10 000 street shows who taught would negate the parasitical argument by any definition.

I'm not doing your marketing for you but we each know a handful of fellow performers that make our hearts soar when we know they are on the same bill as we are. Just good company and there's history and harmony of purpose.
I think this is natural and the power of it has never been fully recognised or utilized.
You could perhaps belong to more than one guild, the tighter ones would be more powerful is all.
So you and say seven others are your own ideal block, you get together and write some sidesplitting promo, select a spokesperson, agree on your collective and individual worth and then what? Well you'd likely have to poach some admin wiz and sponsorship wrangler from your fest travels and chip in with a %

You could market in our present status quo paddling pool of festivals or you could take it one step further and actually be a festival unto yourselves.
You could put yourselves out to tender and get bids from municipalities and various commercial interests and simply be the festival or more interestingly if your guild was together enough to seek and receive sponsorship you could create what appeared to be one or two day spontaneous festivals at whim.

Given the nature of street theatre, the more original, less templated variety, the visual and audiovisual content production and the authenticity of that is as yet a completely untapped resource. [Although shoutout to Shep Huntly and his digital team for his pioneering work in this regard]
In terms of impact, both in the creation of spontaneous audiences and the authentic and novel entertainment provided by those performers capable of it at any public venue. In it's live form and also it's digital content potential is presently sorely underestimated.Simply put the production of 'moments' which lies at the base of all marketing and all art and is the power that drives festivals as they presently exist and in my mind could be recognised more by the performers concerned to the degree that they start bending and twisting the formats by which they are presently commercially exploited.

However the argument against this is quite simply that this 'moment' created by Hilby only has 360 odd views.
https://youtu.be/NjBAMixt3qs
So maybe it's not so important. Never mind.
Or maybe no-ones gone all out to curate those 'moments' and package them in a way that discards the rash of middlemen yet.
Who knows, just putting long held ideas out there cos I'm capable. Also the writing's a bit loose, wrote it in two sessions.