A reunion in Chile, forty years later, with Pacifier Clown. This clown, who used to play a baby, is now dressed as his mother.
As we crossed the street toward the artists’ entrance, Carrot Clown took me by the hand as if I were his child. Although we walked with dignity a group of children followed us, laughing. Once inside the ring, we mingled with the other clowns. Our task was to fill the time necessary for the workers to take down the trapezes and safety nets. The routines were simple, and with my experience as a puppeteer, I had no trouble in performing them. But the circular theater, full of people all around, made an impression on me. In a puppet show, one performs facing forward. Puppetry has a form like the human head, with the eyes facing forward and darkness behind. I realized that since childhood I had been accustomed to seeing the world from the outside: as I watched events happen I sometimes moved toward them, but most of the time they were directed toward me. Being surrounded by the audience immediately makes one into the center, rather than looking in from the outside. For an action to be seen by everyone, it is necessary to turn constantly. This gives us a bond with the planets. We are not outside humanity; we are its heart. We do not come as strangers to the world, the world produces us. We are not migratory birds, but the fruit offered by the tree. Thinking thus, I had an idea for a joke that I told to my friend Carrot Clown. He very kindly decided to premiere it that very evening.
“Hey, clown, tell me what you are.”
“I am a foreigner, sir!”
“And what country do you come from?”
“From Foreignia!”
This absurd dialogue caused no laughter. I felt very embarrassed. The clown Piripipí approached me, inviting me to his dressing room. He was different from the others. Outside of the ring, he spoke with a heavy German accent. When performing he answered everything that was said to him without speaking a word by playing various musical instruments. His wife and daughter joined him in the final part of his act, where after having fought to obtain a large sum of money and then being accused of avarice he began to throw his coins onto a rectangle of wood that was lying on the ground in order to show his disinterest in them. As they fell there, each coin emitted a musical note. Piripipí got excited, and threw the coins in such a way as to play a waltz. The two women accompanied him, playing accordions, then the whole circus orchestra joined in.
I went into the dressing room feeling very nervous. His wife served me maté tea in a gourd with a silver straw. She was Argentinean. Piripipí, wearing a well-cut suit, shirt, and tie, still had his makeup on.
“Do not be surprised,” he said. “A few years ago I lost my human face. I do not live in disguise. This clown mask is my real face. My old face remained behind in Germany: my family was Jewish, and they brought it with them to the concentration camp. I was a fairly well-known orchestra conductor. Thanks to a few loyal fans, I was able to hide in the hold of a cargo ship in Hamburg that brought me to Argentina. Another time I’ll tell you how I became the clown Piripipí. I liked your joke. It’s different. It allows for profound interpretations. It should not matter to us that sometimes the audience does not laugh. You’ve seen it already: when I drop my coins, some people look serious and some even cry. True comedy permits many levels of interpretation. It begins with laughter, and then arrives at the understanding of beauty, which is the brilliance of unthinkable truth. All sacred texts are comic at their first level. Then the priests, who completely lack any sense of humor, erase the laughter of God. In Genesis, when Adam believes he is guilty of disobedience and hides when he feels ‘the footsteps of the Lord,’ that’s something humorous. God doesn’t have feet; he is incommensurable energy. If he creates the sound of footsteps, we can’t imagine that he wears clown shoes. ‘Where are you?’ he asks, pretending to be searching. If God knows everything, how can he ask a little human being where he is? This joke turns into an initiatory lesson when the ‘Where are you?’ is interpreted as, Where are you within yourself? I, not being anywhere, having no homeland, do not exist as a human being. I’m a clown. An imaginary being who lives in a dream world: the circus. But dreams are real as symbols. The spectacle takes place in a circular ring, a mandala, a representation of the world, the universe. The same door is both the entrance and the exit. That’s to say that the goal is the origin. Interpret this as you like; you come from nowhere, you go nowhere.
“When we see beautiful horses, elephants, dogs, birds, and all kinds of animals working in the ring, we understand that consciousness can tame our animal nature, not by repressing it but by giving it the opportunity to perform sublime tasks. The animal jumping through a flaming hoop overcomes the fear of divine perfection and jumps into it. The strength of the elephant is put to constructive use. The cats learn to work together. The knife thrower teaches us that his metal blades, symbolizing words, can surround the woman tied to the target, a symbol for the soul, without wounding her. Words are mastered in order to eliminate their aggressiveness and put them in the service of the spirit: the purpose of language is to show the value of the soul, and that value is absolute surrender. The sword swallower shows us that divine will can be obeyed completely, without offering any resistance. The least resistance causes fatal injuries. Obedience and surrender are the basis of faith. The fire breather symbolizes poetry, illuminated language that sets the world ablaze. The contortionists teach us how to free ourselves from our ossified mental forms: one must not aspire to anything permanent. We must bravely build in impermanence, in continual change. The trapeze artists invite us to rise above our needs, desires, and emotions to the ecstasy of pure ideas. They evolve toward the celestial, which is to say the sublime mind. The magicians tell us that life is a marveclass="underline" we do not perform the miracles; we learn to see them. The acrobats show us how dangerous distraction is: achieving a balance means being completely in the present. Finally, the jugglers teach us to respect objects, to know them profoundly, to place our interest in them and not in ourselves. It is harmony in coexistence. Thanks to our affection and dedication that which appears inanimate can obey and enrich us.”
After twenty days, when I thought I was going to be a clown forever, the real Pacifier Clown appeared. His face was swollen. Chalupa Clown had tracked him down at the bar to cut off his drinking. The performers thanked me for my collaboration, and as a courtesy let me give a final performance during which I cried genuine tears while at the same time squirting out fake tears three meters out. That night, when the artists had gone to dinner at the theater restaurant, Piripipí led me to the center of the empty ring and handed me a pair of scissors.
“Clip your fingernails and toenails and a lock of your hair.” He lifted the rug and showed me a crack in the ground. “Leave these parts of yourself here. Then your soul will know that you have a root in the circus.”
I did as he said, while Piripipí hummed a song:
Among the ten commandments
there’s only one for me:
be as free as the wind
while keeping my roots.
“Now that your nails and hair are part of the ring, you’ll always be in the mandala.” He took the velvet box in which he kept his coins and placed it in my hands. “Throw them on the floor. If you follow the order they are in and the rhythm that I give you, you’ll play the waltz.” I did so. The melody did not sound out perfectly, but however ungainly it may have been, it had the power to move me. “My friend, hear this from someone who lost everything he had in one painful moment, then realized that thanks to that he had found himself: don’t let yourself be dragged down by a false conception of money. Always earn it with activities that give you pleasure. If you are an artist, live art. If you are not going to be a professor of philosophy, why do you want that diploma? Leave the university; don’t waste your time there. Life is composed of different pastimes for each individual. Play your own game. You’ll see, when you’re an old man and you take your grandchildren to the circus, some clown there will be saying, ‘I am a foreigner, I’m from Foreignia.’ See? You’ve left your mark here forever.”