The Showman is like the moon; one side light and always in full view for the world to see, the other dark and forever hidden to all but the initiated few. The front attracts attention and is appreciated, but the dark side also draws the tide. – George Carl

My last two posts have been talking about two different aspects of our acts: the Exoteric and the Esoteric. So lets take a closer look into these concepts and whether they can be of use and inspiration for the development of our Craft.

First lets examine some words.

Showman is made from two words; Show – Man. The Show and the Man. The first one points to the Exoteric and the latter to the Esoteric.

EXOTERIC: Comes from exōterikos which means pertaining to the outside, the exterior, or external. Of a doctrine or mode of speech intended for or likely to be understood by the general public.

For us Illuminates the Exoteric is the banner line out the front of the tent, the shiny surfaces, and the gaudy facades of fun intended for the Crowds of townies and general public. Our Acts, stylish, well thought out, and rehearsed. It is the Art the Crowd experiences when they watch us perform. It is the frivolous and random-looking, (but well rehearsed) act of a clown. It is the show from the Crowd’s point of view.

ESOTERIC: Comes from Greek esōterikos, where esō means ‘within’ or ‘into.’ Esoteric pertains to the inner things, the secret, clandestine, and enigmatic.

It is the backstage, the secret world hidden behind the banner lines and facades of fun. It’s the mysterious techniques and tools of the trade. The inner world of the Showman. It is the life, the gathering of knowledge, the impressions on his soul from the environment. It is the meaning of what he does. Understanding, philosophy, and the admittance of ignorance through your work. It is the hundreds of hours of creative work that went into crafting the clown act, making it look chaotic and frivolous, whilst simultaneously connecting and communicating with the Crowd. The Esoteric is the heart of the Soul Spectacle.

(Whilst on the meaning of words I would also want to acknowledge my ambivalence with the term show-man. It is not meant to denote something specifically male. In the terminology of Illumination, the way to understand the ‘man’ part of the word is the same way as ‘man’ in hu-man. Which has its roots in the Latin homo – human being.)

CRAFT DUALITY

Show – Man

On stage – Offstage

Action – Interpretation

World – Individual

The concept of individual and world, inner and outer, or the fact that the world beyond the boundaries of myself is separate from me is so fundamental that mentioning it might seem inane. We learn the distinction as babies. Yet, in thinking circles, the fundamentals of human experience are of great importance, so let us not refrain from contemplating the seemingly simple.

We live in a time of alternative facts and distrust of expertise. The fact that practice and study would bring learning and greater understanding is something I didn’t think would be possible to doubt, but here we are. People doubt reality itself. Lost in the inability to wade through the muck of information overload and separate grit from gold.

The number of people who believe the world is flat is rising, at least according to their views on Youtube. Perhaps I am reading too much into it all, but with climate change and growing awareness of humanity’s role in the decline of the world, we are rapidly moving into a dark and meaningless future.

Speaking of Youtube, I saw this funny video where a hippy dude had an orgasmic epiphany as he discovered a double rainbow outside his house. The sight is spectacular but the rainbows are outshone by the dude’s priceless reaction. His rant is worth watching in full, but the bit that stood out to me was:

“Double rainbow, oh my god it’s full on, double rainbow all the way across the sky. {sobbing} Oh my God. What does it mean? What does it mean? {breaks down crying} It’s SO beautiful. {crying turns into laughter of joy} Oh my God what does it mean? Too much, I don’t know what it means.”

What does it mean? Cries modern man. I don’t understand. How can something so beautiful not mean something?

These days it seems we are having a peak in this kind of incomprehension. Seeing a world in disarray, living in the sixth mass extinction, raising children in a world that chops down forests to make toilet paper to wipe our asses with our own future.

What does it mean?

From one point of view, it all means nothing. The world out there just exists. Mankind means nothing to Gaia. To Earth, to life, we are of no more significance than the Siberian Trapps volcano that caused the Permian mass extinction, or the asteroid that obliterated the dinosaurs. We are just the latest destructive force unleashed.

Yet, we are different than volcanoes and asteroids. We are conscious, we think, we feel and we can do. That is my tiny spark of hope, we have the capacity to understand the devastation we are wrecking, and it is possible for us to mitigate it. We are astoundingly capable when we finally understand something and decide that we need to do something about it. When we join together we can do impossible things.

MAKING MEANING

After the Second World War, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus were working on becoming the voices of a new culture rising from the broken rubble of Europe. Together they formulated the thoughts of a major philosophical movement, Existentialism. They wrote off religion and staged important and challenging plays. Their novels and theatrical productions challenged their Crowds to live authentically.

Camus wrote about, what he called, the absurdity of the world. The absurdity stemming from the discord between the individual’s search for meaning and the meaningless world. Yet, even if the universe is meaningless we can’t help but search for meaning.

Camus contemplated this and what to do in the face of this fundamental absurdity. He contemplated suicide as a solution but came to the conclusion that this would not counter the absurd, it would only make things even more absurd.

He found the solution in an acceptance of the absurd. Acknowledge the sheer meaningless of everything and then, in spite of it, continue on living. This shall be our rebellion. We take on the responsibility and make meaning mankind’s domain. In this acceptance we can achieve absolute freedom, and having smashed down all that society has placed upon us, shaken off the chains, we can build our own foundation and meaning-bearing world. We are free, but this freedom is in a way also a burden, since the responsibility is upon us to live and act authentically and through it create our own meaning.

THE ILLUMINATED SHOWMAN’S RESPONSIBILITY

The outside influence my inside. My thoughts, feelings and desires stir in response to the stimulations from my senses. Inside my head, the brain is alone and is fed a strange stream of signals through touch, smell, sight, taste, sound, equilibriception and so forth. They all form sensory images in the brain. But each image is the result of separate information which then gets brought together by us in the mind.

I form the connections between the phenomena of the world. Not just from what I see and sense in the world, but the conversations I have, the poetry I hear, the books I read, the art I experience, the trees I sit in, the games I play with my daughter, the love I make with my wife, the music I enjoy or dislike, the emotions I feel and share with my fellow travellers. As a Showman, I use my Craft to Show the connections, conclusions, and insights to the world as my Art of Entertainment. Think, examine, reflect. Copy, transform, combine. This is the core of my vocation. I transform my impressions and the connections I’ve made between them. I then reflect my own reality through the lens of my Craft. My Art is my attempt at expressing my experience of the world, mankind and existence. I mirror the World, forming my input into Seeds of entertaining inspiration aimed for planting into the hearts of Crowds.

My responsibility is to make sure what I have to show isn’t bland, unexamined drivel. I need to grapple with what the world shows me. Then translate into Acts, Soul Spectacles.

I don’t claim to understand the world or have a theory of everything, admittance of ignorance or the posing of questions can also be truthful reflections, but I strive for understanding. I take on Camus’ challenge and aim for authentic expression of meaning. The more personal that you manage to be, the more universal you become, that’s the key.

Illuminated Showfolk must be meaning creators. That is our responsibility.

THE WAY TO ILLUMINATION

On the Way of the Showman, we arrive at certain stages before others. There is a natural order of things. One of these is that one does not become an Esoteric Showman first, since a Showman first and foremost must have something to show to be a Showman at all. First, we create our material, for only through creation and performance, actual on-stage time, can we begin to truly grasp the Craft and through it grasp what we are saying and what we want to be saying. First, we must gain control of the tools we will be using to build our Act.

Experience is key. Believing you are a Showman after having read a manual of magic or manipulations is like considering oneself an actor after having read Hamlet. Which is why I despair at the current distrust of expertise. As our knowledge of the Craft grows we can step beyond the mundane and predictable and start to introduce Esoteric aspects into our Acts and creations.

The Crowd sees the Exoteric,

And feels the Esoteric.

WHERE ARE YOU AT?

How do you recognize what kind of Showman you are? Which level are you operating on?

Ask yourself: How are my shows going? {Maybe write the answers down, and date it in your Craft Journal.} If your answers are given as descriptions of technical details in the execution of your Craft, some complication with a skill, a costume detail, a deadline for a show blurb, you are, at this moment, focused in the Show (exoteric) aspect.

If, on the other hand, you find your answers to be on how well you connected with your Crowd, or about whether you affected them enough to truly touch and perhaps change their hearts, you are, at least in that moment, an esoteric showman. This is, of course, a gross simplification but I believe it gets the point across.

The Esoteric Showman finds meaning by understanding the full potential of his role and what she can do for others. Without the Crowd the Showman is nothing. His skills useless. His Craft worthless. His purpose in life materializes when he truly considers the material he is presenting in the light of the positive impact it can have on his Crowd and in time how this process creates growth in himself.

Go out in the world and learn about yourself.

Then go into yourself and learn about the world.

Then Show the world.

See you all along the Way

 

Captain Frodo:

Master Showman, dad, husband.

Currently performing in Opium at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.

(And Carnival Cinema Co-Founder)

 

 

 

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