“I have heard it said that a complicated childhood prepares you for a career in the arts. I tell you this story to let you know that I am well qualified to be a comedian.” —Steve Martin


In the mid-90s, while people my age were busy with grunge and mourning the death of Kurt Cobain and preparing themselves for careers in website design or that new thing called the Internet, which held a lot of promise, and could easily lead to careers that might actually pay off down the line, I managed to gorge myself on a smorgasbord of arts-related endeavors that fed my soul. In other words, I was making about $700 a month, had no health insurance, living in a big city, suffering from untreated depression, feeling postmodern and contrarian, and barely scraping by. All around, things felt pretty good to me.

I was certain I was stretching the boundaries of myself, not buying into the dominant paradigm, not trying to climb any ladders, following my heart, and hanging out with dancers, performance artists, histrionic painters and screenwriters with impressive aspirations and various addictions, and writers who had big fellowships at famous universities who were going to become big people and write big books. (And some of them did.)

I wasn’t concerned with getting famous or trying to write the next the cutting-edge novel. I was involved with a little thing called poetry and I liked the way it fit onto the page, sometimes just one page. I literally preferred the smallness of it, that it didn’t aspire to change the world or be the next best thing. It was just poetry and it felt good next to me.

But don’t let me fool you with that half-truth. Poets, too, have aspirations and, I used to say, are some of the most unpleasant people I’ve ever encountered, often afflicted with the Little Guy complex, the Nobody Will Ever Read This Stuff Except for Other Poets complex. This really meant I enjoyed the comfort zone in which the stakes were low but worthwhile. And I chose to sit in a room full of poets on a regular basis. I loved language and all it had to offer, so I chose to stay close to the words, rather than pursue something more practical.

That is until my boyfriend suggested that I pursue Clown School. I think one day I’d made another insignificant comment or reference to Lucille Ball or Carol Burnett, two of my favorite clowns, who served as role models for me while I was growing up. I honestly don’t remember what I had said that drove him to this, but for my birthday he gave me a certificate that was good for one semester at The Clown School in San Francisco.

It was really unintimidating. It would require no taming of animals, no twisting balloons or wearing big red shoes, no learning how to stuff 27 people into a car or being shot out of a canon. I didn't have to wear a bulby red nose, I just had to show up to the classes and get in touch with my inner clown, whoever she or he was going to be once I let her out. We learned how to improvise, how to exaggerate our own oddities, the existential awkwardnesses that we all live with—well, some of us more than others—and how to find that person inside of us who might be a social idiot, perhaps even a person who feels safer with words than with people.

I loved it. It took me out of my head and into my body. I’d taken acting classes, modern dance classes, improv classes, did Gestalt therapy and art therapy, but nothing really suited me or soothed me like Clown School did. I had a fantastic teacher who inspired us all with the history of clowning, which bears little resemblance to the media-maligned image of the guy (you don't often think of a woman when you think clown, do you?) in the goofy multi-colored suit with the painted white face, turned down smile, and hair made out of red yarn, the guy that both children and adults fear, the modern version that everyone thinks is a psychopath in bright clothing.

Yes, everyone hates clowns. Please know that you are not unique if you fall into this mega-category. Clown-hating is an extremely average popular opinion, and it’s not even funny or ironic anymore. I can’t tell you how tired I am of hearing about how much people hate and fear clowns. It brings out the mean side of me. I want to say, “Just let it go. Come up with something more interesting. Try hating bunny rabbits or cute little kittens with big wide eyes, or those women who run over your toes with their double-wide strollers and barely notice that you have started to cry.” But I’m digressing.

So where did my career in clowning go? I bet you can figure that out pretty quickly. It went nowhere. Even though I loved it, I dropped out. But I never dropped the impulse. That is to say, I am still a clown inside. I still have the urge to fall onto the floor in a department store and pop out from under the clothes when people are least expecting, to pull ridiculous ordinary physical pranks, to improvise more than is necessary during the workday, to say things that don’t make sense—which of course brings me back to poetry, the real reason I dropped out of clown school.

But wait, there were a few other factors that led to my noncareer in clowning. I do seem to recall a phone conversation with my mom, the one who discouraged me from going to graduate poetry school (what was I going to do with that degree?), and more specifically the rise in her voice when she said, “You know, as a clown, you could make a lot of money doing children’s parties.” My heart dropped a few more inches into my chest. I may have even stopped breathing for a few seconds. She was picturing me as the balloon twister, and she was even getting excited about it. (Why are mothers always responsible for saying the most crushing things we’d ever want to hear? As a mother, I guess I will try to be more aware of this truth.) To save myself from further depression, I always had to remind myself that she was one of the head teachers at the Things Probably Aren’t Going To Work Out In General school of thought.

 

I also remember the confusion I felt at having to decide what I would actually do once I was a clown, though I am reminded often that Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, Steve Martin, Andy Kaufman and probably even Laurel and Hardy, all the clowns I admired, most likely didn’t bother themselves with such questions. They just did it, that is, what they were meant to do: physical comedy, helping people to reflect on the absurdity of our lives and egos, healing their own traumatic childhoods though laughter.

Today I was in a book store and I picked up a copy of Why Good People Do Bad Things: How To Stop Being Your Own Worst Enemy by Debbie Ford. (I didn't buy it, I just looked at the cover.) I suppose this is what ignited my thoughts about Clown School, about dropping out, and having the teacher write me letters asking me to come back, then going back to poetry school, which didn’t really do any serious damage to me, other than setting me up for the grand disappointment that the world wasn’t interested in postmodern poetics or the silences that words create. Gosh, there’s not even a reality show about it.

And my life is not over. Not by any means. I could suddenly decide to make a career change. Isn’t that what this recession is all about? Aren’t people, especially the laid-off and underemployed, redefining their values, looking deeply into their souls and asking “Who Am I? What do I really want from my life?”

The truth is, I want to be a writer. I really like that too. It has come to my attention, through a head-spinning mixture of spiritual inquiry, over thinking, and impulsive tendencies, that doing things that benefit other people is more gratifying than doing things that benefit only the self. As the non-clown Deepak Chopra would ask, “Are you living an ego-driven or a soul-centered life?” Now you go ahead and guess which one is the right answer.

I’d like to think that writing is not just an ego-driven endeavor. Certainly many people go into it for that, but you can't stay in for that. And I’d like to think, in choosing writing and choosing to be a clown school drop-out, that I was making the right choice, for me, at that time. Besides, LIFE isn’t an either/or situation anyway, despite what that Kierkegaard guy said. Really, what did he know anyway?

 

There’s always room to change your mind, try something new, pursue the thing that, to this day, when I mention it in public, still engenders the same response from most people, “OH, I HATE CLOWNS!”

Really what I had meant to write about here is: clowns are somewhat misunderstood. But would anyone even want to read about that? So I dropped out of Clown School so that I could have an office and a door that reads Colette DeDonato Writer Ordinaire. Oops, wait, I'm Palindrome. OK, I'm really either/or.