Going to the Circus

from "101 EXPERIENCES DE PHILOSOPHIE QUOTIDIENNE", a book by Roger-Pol Droit. Roger-Pol Droit, a french philosopher, suggest us to take a fresh look at life, at the beauty, the body-soul, identity, knowledge issues, by fresh concrete exploitative way of being "the see the entire world in one tiny grain of sand, to grasp infinity in a handful and eternity in an hour" among the 101 experiments - humorous and pensive, my preferred one is "Going to the Circus":

Dean Allen

.."Even if you are not very drawn by the idea, make this exercise and go to circus, find your self a sit as near to the arena as you can. better you choose a small circus, not a praised one, but rather forlorn. avoid Madison square garden and other big institute such a this. because there one finds it hard to distinguish what makes the circus so touching, the mixture of wretchedness and dreams."

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Lawrence Gipe Zirkus und Varieté" 2005 oil on polyflex

"For in places such as this there is something despising. In a fundamental and necessary way.The sawdust on the lane, the smell of animal droppings, the dust of the dome of the worn out tent, the mold of the sweat on its panel. It is important that it will be a closed space: the arena cycle, the clothed sky, the banisters. The Circus defines space to it self. A world that does not mixed into the rest of the universe. in a way the circus define it self AS the human world."

kerri jamison, Circus World Ticket Booth 2005

" It is about creating a bubble of dreams inside this limited space. In a very elementary way, even a very foolish way, or even vulgar: Sequins, glass, sparkling things. shiny as if to resemble...a faked splendor, a faked magnificence, a sort of affected easygoing feeling, a sort of artificial joy on a foundation of wretched sorrow. That's what makes the Circus touching, exemplary, a simple model but human: to build ridiculous dreams inside the filth and the mud, but with persistence...You have to find so your way to the tent, to make the queue. to pay expensively for the discomfort, the erosion, the stench. To be sited uncomfortably for a long time " "you will over come easily all those discomforts. you will be convinced to escape from the distress, to follow the acrobat's weightlessness, the jugglers competence . You will be able to dream of humanity full of crystal bubbles, amputated by floodlights, smiling with trumpet blasts, happy with the cotton candy. You will almost think that the people on stage are beautiful, brave, appropriate, saturated by good virtues, capable of heroic deeds, bigger then life, their body shines as if they were gods, and they are so flexible, quick, light, fluffy. you will float for a while in this sequin - bubble. And then, and that is most important, most touching, something get screwed up. a ball is falling, a hook is dropped, a swing is stuck. you remark that the beautiful acrobat got a hole in her outfit. you see all of sudden some thing pitiful. A pride that was humiliated till oppression. An earthy dream, that is to say stained, more or less wounded. embarrassing failure. an imagery of human obstinacy. you will have to get back to the circus again and again."