this is the Red Bastard. he was in charleston for a couple of nights.
seems like an obnoxious sort of fellow. some laughs.
what happened there blew me away
This clip does not reveal where the show goes, this is only his opening. It is hard to describe, but coming from a long history of buffon, based on the medieval traveling shows in which the lame, the grotesque, and disabled who had been shunned from their villages, came on wagons during the pagan holidays to perform. Those outside the norms of society could reflect back the absurdity within humanity. red bastard is the trickster – pushing buttons and boundaries of individuals in the audience, often without tact or care, yet showing us, in humor, we get to choose, in every moment who we are, closed or open, weak or strong. We actually got up as an audience and followed a woman to the bathroom. Crazy. He does what occurs to him to do in the moment based on what people do in response – An in-the-moment flow.
inside a black room, people can be pulled out of comfort, complacency, decency, respectability – the performer who asks this of his audience does not stand behind the shield of humor or sarcasm only; the nakedness and honesty he demands of his audience is returned in spades.
we were not allowed to stay in our seats. we were not allowed to not participate. we were not allowed to bullshit. we were not allowed to get angry for in the face of the whipper, our torturer was also charm, love, vulnerability, honesty. He demanded people interact with him with honesty.
Extreme nudity can be found ironically behind a mask and a costume 0 ooooooo which eventually strips away to bare naked – and what is beyond the naked – well, I won’t give away his secrets, but i never imagined one would reveal upon a stage in this way. comfort in the skin you are in, when does this come? how does this come? – for surely we are only a body, not only just this – but a created material thing here to occupy this atmosphere – bones sinew blood and skin – with lungs heart spleen parts pumping within- and gumby wired movable parts without, penis breasts elbows grins
we crave public stripping
we crave bullshit bombs going off in all our venues
we crave long languid silences with the roaming humans on the range
some words I scribbled the afternoon before i unexpectedly found myself at this clown show:
chloe and I are driving downtown under overcast skies.
melancholy has descended on my mood.
i long for something – and i want to be past longing. i desire. i ache. i know not how to be.
a drop of a melancholia inherited in a dreary rainy drip.
where is the balance between flowing as you feel and escape. where does copping out begin o…
Then the tickets and time are afforded to me and I find myself forcing myself out of the house at 9:45pm…sleepy; I go to the show by myself…
and I am transformed. Suddenly all the world is a stripping and standing naked alone job for all of us! every moment can be anything. I can meditate on my couch for 30 minutes, visit another planet, I can rise up to the ceiling and look down at all the clutter.
Why do dark grey moods settle in at all? When they do, why is it so hard to remember that they pass? I think I also want to say that melancholia is a delicious treat – it is – like a cloudy day full of dripping clouds or heavy down pours – this grey can be absorbed into the experiences just as beautifully as sun.
Why do we seek approval connection validation to be heard? what misery! i read Jane Eyre every so often, I don’t know why, but in part to remember how so many people in human bodies have experienced isolation hour by hour and weeks upon weeks looking out windows walking across moors putting up with making do surviving the only way they can eating boring food only speaking expected words dying young without experiences. I am wondering to myself if my brother died a virgin at 17. dear soul, what pleasure did he know by that age? matters not. he may be walking the clouds, he may be back in another body and fairly old by now. i know nothing – and feel nothing but a fuzzy memory like a movie I once saw – i wouldn’t know him in his own old body let alone another. not a story clung to…now I must go do chores and duties – perhaps without clothes on – because all are gone from this house until late – I am alone and I am the master of this house and my bones!
Life as Improv 
Sounds amazing! I love how you contemplate showing our nakedness while clothed. So powerful. It is the utmost in vulnerability and truth to stop hiding.
I love that, great thoughts inspired! 🙂
~Andrea<3
To stop hiding – I like that reflection back to me. Thank you, Andrea!
I love this. I especially liked your musing about longing and the desire to be beyond longings. I can relate to this.
And yet, I see the longings themselves are an energetic message and creative force. Sometimes I think to be beyond longing is not exactly where the trajectory leads, though I imagine it so. I can relate to you relating to this 🙂
Wow.
Hey you 🙂
We put on the uniform of our story and head out into the world to tell it and sometimes to be told. I have this idea of who I am and who I am not and at the end of the day it is just ideas… and oh the longing at times to be free of the ideas and just to be.
Currently I find my skin is changing. And I really mean my skin. It is softening and these little brown spots are bubbling up on the back of my hands. It is as if with the passage of time some inner secret world is coming to the surface just waiting to be lived out in the light of day. This softness seems to be taking the edge off firm ideas about myself as well. This type of skin and these spots are things I remember seeing on the hands of older people who I loved in my childhood. I now am becoming that older person too.
I wonder if my nieces will ever see my spots as I stand as naked as I can in the living and aging process before them and one day also remember them with love? These were the little beings who in their childhood (during my many many alone years) were one of the only places I received consistent hugs from the heart. In profound thanks for helping me during those years filled with a plethora of longings, I want to give them exquisite hands currently birthing constellations of joy in return.
You are so loved for your courage and naked shares here on this blog. POWERFUL juju maker woman you.
xo.M
Annie Dillard Sprung to my mind with your beautiful connections – especially a moment in An American Childhood when she makes an exploratory pinch of her mothers’ skin and sees how older people’s “hands are loose inside their skins like bones in bags.” As my skin loosens – or your more lovely description – softens – I think of Annie and her childlike view of the woman she loves so.
Also another nice image of skin from the same book…“Skin was earth; it was soil. I could see, even on my own skin, the joined trapezoids of dust specks God had wetted and stuck with his spit the morning he made Adam from dirt. Now, all these generations later, we people could still see on our skin the inherited prints of the dust specks of Eden.” The image in this myth makes me smile for though we soften and allow the brown pigment spots their day in the sun – the dust specks in our skin still glisten of Eden 🙂
I see those heart hugging girls with exquisite young hands joyfully birthing such joyful creations – sacred unfoldings.
bowing to you, juju sister! X!