Danced on Joey’s grave today.
You really need to work to find a note.
And you really need to fight to play a tune.
I fought.
We had electromagnetic disturbance.
I don’t film my clown shows because it breaks the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth walls.
Today wasn’t a clown show though.
It was a rite of passage.
And dead clowns can’t touch screens.
But you can hear the gimbal I’m using as a tripod have the buttons toyed with in the footage (will upload to the archive later)
So after a minute and a half the video doesn’t die so much as it goes limp.
Which is funny because all my tests in San Francisco clearly demonstrate it can run for at least 15 minutes before “glitching out”
But in a clown’s graveyard in London, I danced in time and something happened in less than two minutes.
After I went back to Covent Garden.
Said “Hi” to Diego. And asked if he was about to go up as he shoved two slices of pizza down his throat before doing his Charlie Chaplin routine.
And I went up to his hat after and he said, “No.” And I was confused and he said, “save your money, buy props, and tell me you’ll do shows here.”
I told him days ago that I’d become a mime one day. That was the fourth version of his show I saw.
And I saw Dan after his show and he said it’d been rough today. The crowds look good, but nobody’s tipping.
That’s pretty rough when your finale is juggling knives on top of extended unicycle.
Same as Michal. Same bit, same pull. Less than usual, dramatically so.
After his third show today, that’s the lowest I’ve ever seen him. The show only goes on with patrons in the audience.
We’ve chatted every day the past week as my idea of a good time on vacation is hanging out on, in, and around the pitch with the street artists.
I got a lot of footage this week of circus artists doing high end street craft.
The only bad footage I got was with Juma today.
He did great.
However, there were “attention seekers” and he needed to ask some people to leave after they thought it was normal to walk through the pitch as he was ten feet above the ground, about to do a handstand on three tiers of cigar boxes.
That’s why I was filming, because I just told him that his finale absolutely surprised me and that I didn’t see it coming.
He said, “I never do either”
And after the show, the attention seeker of a man was all up in the face of a patron that was also pro “the drunk guy needs to go”
And silly little me with no need to make money on the pitch decided to intervene and that’s the closest I’ve even been to a fight.
And he said he could knock me out and I said, “I bet you could because I don’t fight”
And I guess that’s fighting words because his friend got in the middle to hold him back as I held up my little red clown nose and juggling balls and said “hey man, I’m just a street performer too”
And you could see in his friend’s eyes that he’s also tired of this shit and that his friend is too drunk and nobody got in a fight today but I really think if I hadn’t injected myself where I didn’t belong (well him and his wife did ruin an otherwise great show AND great footage but whenever) that he was seconds away from throwing a punch at the other guy and his friend was not there yet to hold him back like he was for me.
So I walked away and came back a minute later so he’d be gone and I could hang out with my friends again.
Michal did one more show and he was much happier after that fourth show because everything went right that time.
And the schedule was over but there was still 20 minutes left until nine, so the pitch was free for me.
I put on my nose and I juggled.
And two boys came to watch immediately.
And when I started juggling with kicks, they sat down.
And I pulled out the spoons.
And I started a rhythm.
And I handed one boy the spoons.
And then I juggled as he played.
And I tossed the other boy a ball and he tossed it back and we did that until his brother wanted to trade the spoons for passing juggling balls to the clown mime in the square.
And we played for a few brief minutes before I gave them a quick finale and a high five and as I walked away I heard them say to each other “that was so much fun”
And it doesn’t take a lot to be a positive influence in the world.
It’s mostly about showing up and not being so self absorbed that you want fight street performers.
You and Thiel both, my dude.
