Preliminary thoughts on Clowning

(as of now this is a draft that is useful to me, but I don't think will help you at all, and I'd advise against reading it.)

This one is going to talk a little bit with the page about Politics, Wellness, and Sales and what it means to define not only through comparison and contrast, but through opposition. schismogenesis (Tiggers in the real world)

I've had some some encounters lately with folk interested in the practice of clowning. I hadn't even thought of it , but such seems very much a place I should be stealing from. My first thought was that, very much. My second thought, is interestingly, a rejection. My third thought, as I explore the idea more, is that there may be something there, when I think about the purpose of the clown.

The clown, the fool, the court jester is about violence, or a response to violence (not always I suppose, but I think the etymology of the idea as tied in with this. The antics of the fool functioning as a pressure relief valve for human rage. The fool does something to the anger of the sovereign. It does not quell that rage so much as make the sovereign forget, it does not so much proclaim innocence as distract the executioner. 

What of a connection between drag and clowning? Is there a similarity in their deployment of the grotesque? My purpose here is not to celebrate nor denigrate either form, but rather to explore ways of using some of its forms to create my physical games. I must admit though, there is something I find grotesque in clowning, and also in drag shows. I have seen some crazy and exciting drag shows, great and exhilirating and hilarious productions. But there was something strange in there as well, something grotesque. 

I wonder how much this relates to the violence de-escalation origin of the clown and the jester and the fool. Or perhaps it is the court itself that I find grotesque, with the fool merely a microscope on that groteqsuerie. If I want to really make sense of this and turn it into an honest piece of writing, I'll need to look into the aesthetics of the grotesque, and a bit into aesthetic and poetic theory. Which is an overwhelming field. Do I start with Aristotle? I've been looking for the right reason to read his poetics.