A regular Carnival Cinema column of showbiz life musings by Captain Frodo –

On the way of the Showman: ‘Oversaturation’

By Captain Frodo

In theatre less is more. In Vegas less is not enough. Its all you can eat and drink gluttony is not enough. Twenty four hour gambling, weddings, and machine gun shooting ranges with zombies. Its all beeping, all flashing, all neon. Massive LED screens six stories high with ads for girls that can come to your hotel room dressed as police officers. In the city of Fear & Loathing, of heroic doses of uppers, downers, laughers and screamers, and legalised recreational marihuana? Why would anyone want a police officer knocking on their door?
My wife and I have been around. We’ve lived in Paris, Sydney, and Halmstad. After two years of living in Soho London with its endless barrage of chaos, and advertising, we have learnt to block our senses to the overstimulation and give ourselves a little room to breath. Little children have no walls, no filters. Their wide open senses takes in what the world dishes out, without protection.

People often say I’m lucky to be doing what Im doing, but it wasn’t luck. Whilst every kid I knew were psyching up to go to Pluggen, our local under 15 youth club disco. I stood in my dads magic room – juggling. Practicing tirelessly in full certainty that could I only master the one handed propeller spin with my devil stick, I’d get lucky soon enough. Boy was my finger not on the pulse of Norwegian youth anno 1989.
Yet, I am a lucky guy. The lucky thing though, is that I found my Way at all, and that I found it early. Lately I have been contemplating this stroke of luck.
How do you find your Way? Because not everybody does. At first the Way is nothing but a tiny whisper. A faint ringing peal in your heart. So quiet even your heartbeats drown it out. To have any hope of discovering this tiny little song we need some peace and quiet, some room to breathe. A super saturated beeping and flashing Vegas environment might not be perfect for this.

At a party the other day I was drinking coconut water straight from the nut. I love that delicious sweet and subtle taste. Then someone passed around a chocolate and I took some, because I also very much enjoy chocolate. After the final chocolate fragment melted on my tongue I went back to the coconut. Shocked and disgusted I almost spat the sip back out. Had someone ashed their cigarette into my nut?. It turned out there was nothing wrong with the nutty water. It was my tastebuds. They had raised their sweetness baseline to the level of refined sugary chocolate. The delicious, healthy coconut water was now too faintly sublime for my tastebuds to recognise.

The endless beeping and flashing from the Las Vegas strip exists digitally in our pockets and homes. iPads, phones, tv, and anything else screaming for attention. Everything designed and tuned to draw us in and keep us there. Scrolling and liking. Pretty colours, music, moving images, exciting games, cliffhanger story episodes, with rewards in the form of sweet little animations for the pre-kinder crowd.
Kids stumble around, new and fresh to the earth, listening for that special sound in their hearts. The sweet sweet sound of themselves and the quiet call of the Way. All around them beeping and flashing promises and provides instant gratification and endless satisfaction. Drowning out the sound of themselves. Guiding them away from the Way of the Showman and towards the safety and easy entertainment of the Crowd. Because a Showman faces the other Way. He stands Before the Crowd looking them in the eye. The Showman is the entertainment not the entertained.

The word Enthusiasm, comes from greek, and means to have a God within. The God is the tiny spark in our heart after its been fanned into a fullblown fire. With the right attention and kindling it can grow into the nuclear fusion of a star. Fuelled by true enthusiasm the Showman becomes a Star lighting the Way for Others.

My daughter has started school. In Vegas there are schools where you have to go through metal detectors to enter the school grounds. To me, this isn’t an environment conducive to finding your Way. So for my little girl this is not an option.

I am a lucky guy. Since last time my Family and I lived here, which was in 2013, a new school has opened. The Mohave Desert Spring Waldorf school. It’s a beautiful little Steiner school. I think even the visionary Rudolf Steiner would have raised an eyebrow if someone told him that a hundred years after he gave his first lectures on his philosophy of education, a school in his spirit would open in Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada.
I most certainly was made aware of my Way by my father, the Great Santini, but it was fostered and nourished at school. I grew up in a Steiner school in Haugesund, Norway and for me school was an undivided pleasure. As it turns out a surprising amount of my friends, colleagues and peers are Steiner kids too. So it should come as no surprise that this is the kind of education I want for my daughter. I’m not lying when I say that hearing there now was a Steiner school in Vegas was one of the things securing us ending up here.
As I entered the little desert school the soft coloured walls and wooden play things, all toys open ended for maximum stimulation of fantasy and imagination felt calming and soothing. An environment where a little girl just might become aware of that tiny song guiding her towards her way.
So what, in my opinion, makes this kind of schooling work so well? Steiner believed that each child was on earth with their very own mission of utmost importance to themselves.
The teachers look at, and interacted, with the children in a very unique and interesting way. I recognised it from my own childhood. The teachers really look at the children and I don’t think they see unfinished adults to be hurried along to a useful existence. They’re looking for that thing inside the child, that little spark. They believe it is there and they believe it is their obligation, beyond teaching the curriculum, to help each child find their spark and over the years help fanning it into a fire. A fire of enthusiasm that can guide them on their Way through life.

It worked for me. Fingers crossed for my little girl as I send her off on her Way to school.