You Could Always Run Away With the Circus
THERE ARE A LOT OF THINGS you can do with an apocalyptic mood. One of them is to put on a circus. A circus is a prime distraction: a fantastic show to kill time as the clock ticks. Even if we’re not looking for it—distraction, that is—we’re immersed in it, like fish in the water. If we’re going to be distracted as things fall apart, perhaps our distractions can at least be fantastic, even somehow fulfilling, rather than a drain on our time and attention.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve somehow found myself at two different circuses. Two circuses have come to town, where I live (in Louisville, Kentucky). So, I’ve been stewing over how ripe the collective mood is for a circus. Whether it’s the violence of war, or a tense election season, things look (and feel) bleak. Sometimes devastatingly so. It’s easy to forget, or lose track of, what wonderful and wild things a little troupe of humans can still do, with very little in the way of actual resources.
Neither of the circuses I found myself part of were big top events. The size and scale isn’t what made them fantastic. On the contrary, both were rather small and intimate.
The first was a floating circus—the Flotsam River Circus—which has been traveling down the Ohio River, and performing on a raft with (as they put it) a live band of “invasive mutant fish”. This circus was acrobatic, and dramatic. The crowd sat along the shores of the algae coated, littered river—scolding children who got too close—with the more distant waters of the Ohio glittering in the sunset. We sang along as the performers made a celebratory spectacle out of fictional monstrosities that might emerge out of those, or any of our other, dirty waters.
The other was the Beginning After the End of Humanity Circus, put on by the Bread and Puppet Theater. The theater is one of the oldest performing puppet theaters in the US. So, of course, it was a puppet show. But they’re billing it as a circus, and it did feel like one—even if the trapeze artists were just faking it. Many of these circus performances have taken place outdoors. But here in Louisville, they parked their decommissioned school bus outside of the Chapel of St Philip Neri—a church in Old Louisville that’s been reinvented as a community arts space. We sat in the pews, in the dark, as we watched the show.
Both of the circuses were political, as they engaged our apocalyptic moods. Both seemed to acknowledge that our terms of engagement with the world itself are dramatically shifting, whether we see it happening or not. Both seemed to acknowledge that there are not only many lives, but also a form of life that’s ending around us. But they were pointing our apocalyptic attention in different directions.
The river circus made us look differently at our dirty water, while nevertheless casting our eyes toward the devastating erosion of our environment. This didn’t stop them from asking us to celebrate the beauty, and humanity, that not even our fear of monstrosity can hide from us. But it was certainly the source of an underlying sense of melancholy.
The Bread and Puppet theater, always a theater for political protest, had us thinking about the erosions of our humanity as borders close off and become more, and more, and more violently policed—to the point of all out war. Even then, however, the circus offered us what they called “calisthenic” exercises for standing on the edge of the abyss. We need more than just a recognition of what’s happening.
I will say that, for at least a little while, both of these circuses lifted my spirit. Part of it was the spectacle, of course: people being lifted up by their hair, or balancing broomsticks on their foreheads, or gigantic tiger puppets taking down a paper mache Donald Trump, or reapers stalking empire in effigy. But another part of it, I think, was the collective experience of being able to feel briefly united in a little bit of joy and wonder. It was feeling, if ever so brief, of being part of something you actually want to be a part of.
This feels so acutely different from the experience of many things today. We are so constantly and consistently being roped and tied to things that we feel like we want nothing to do with (broken systems, broken institutions, broken political parties, broken social media platforms). To want to be part of something, to feel almost carried away by it, feels different. I joked that they were bringing back the desire to run away with the circus. But I don’t think I was really saying it in jest.
Also, a couple of updates. I recently had a fun chat with Scott Jones about karaoke, JD Vance’s beard, and my thoughts on death and the afterlife:
I am also looking forward to being part of the upcoming Becoming Monster event that my friend and collaborator Krista Dragomer has been planning with the Emergence Network. Here’s a brief description of the offering that Krista and I have put together. You can register to participate in the whole event here.
