foregone conclusion...with Love.

Wellington, our nations capital if I allow myself the indulgence of mixing metaphors is a layer cake of brittle fiefdoms more than any other NZ city. It is *almost* cohesively culturally maladjusted only held in place by conflicting stalemates that approximate culture if culture were a frightened alibi . Deer were not native to NZ nor were headlights however Wellington provides an almost uncanny marriage of the two to the degree that it hasn't upgraded its water system since the Victorian era. It is in this environment of carefully cloying, semi-closeted conservative, constantly tense feigned casual authenticity that I set forth this week and subsequent weeks into the spring to add 'banned' to my lifes achievements of 'Two Books and a Beer' [I have a tribute beer for sale in Canada and two books published. ] Having been a wryly ungrateful sardonic provocative street clown globally over decades, in effect running as far as I could away from the complex cultural wasteland of my birth to concentrate on the human condition as related to clown on a more global scale. [returning to NZ six years ago to die only to be unsuccessful in that after an eight and a half hour operation which it seemed churlish at the time to turn down] I now find myself again prepared to express myself in public even though that public is Wellingtonian. I have got a busking licence from the city council and have scoped out an adequate pitch on the waterfront that serves my technical purposes. There is pedestrian flow, an audience catchment area that doesn't impede the flow and a corner or niche for me to 'Lurk'. I am silent so it won't be anything I say but some of my mimes might offend people. [I crucify myself among other things]....I'm guessing my dolls might also trigger people who ring the council to complain. I have two dolls attached to a battle vest chest plate along with other props. The larger has a large misshapen head and is grotesque and the smaller is a raggedy ann styled. The grotesque represents all that we know to be true that we hide from others yet secretly cherish and the smaller represents our boundless rage at this human predicament. The council as previously noted being one aspect of a finely tuned nonentity will be unbalanced by whatever venting phone call it receives from let's remember, one solitary cry for attention and will pull my licence to preserve their fiefdom's peace and I will have achieved my goal as an artist manifesting this forgone conclusion. To whit that after four decades of success as an international clown soloist, having references from Australian city councils expressing gratitude for my public work, passing a gruelling two day New York audition as a soloist for Cirque du Soleil, having worked at festivals throughout the planet and some private gigs involving James Brown and Aretha Franklin and choirs, despite being valid and viable across many cultures and continents it is the final social minuscule-ity of NZ with it's delicate balance of collective civic insecurity that will finally retire me as a 61 year old sardonic stilt pantomime. In some ways the next weeks will test the finely held contempt I hold for NZ and humanity. And in other ways it's a forgone conclusion. Wish me luck.