A
Night at the Circus
How can the writer respond to
other lives, lives that are different in timing, in muscle action, money,
familial bonds and extremes? To understand other lives of course requires first
that we recognise them as such, and it is easy to rashly think that something
is different (or similar) to what one is used to. Take the circus. The circus- and circus
people- have often been to us (regular, boring people) a spectacle inside and
outside of the tent. They were, through Dickens’ creation of Mr Sleary in Hard Times, the voice of human sentiment
and camaraderie. In Carter’s Nights at
the Circus, the circus is a space of sinister wonder and in the recent film
Mirrormask, a gateway to a
nightmarishly Freudian underworld. In many of our accounts, the circus is a convenient
outside which one can escape to morally, psychologically or simply as a bit of
a holiday.
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| By Curtis Tappenden |
But circuses are real and their people are also. Recently, myself and my partner were taken by
a good friend to the circus. For me, this was the first time since childhood.
My friend is an epicure of the ring, an artist, a keen observer of the pulses
and rhythms of the routines. At the ringside, he scratches and slaps images
into his pads and parchments as the performance whorls and recedes. The
performers are used to this, for my friend comes often and considers himself a
kind of visual biographer of the fleeting scenes. He is known to many by name
and if not by name, then as ‘the one who draws’.
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| By Curtis Tappenden |
Being his guest puts me into effortless contact with
the people of the circus. They shake our hands; they crack one-liners, they are
happy to show themselves as courteous, rakish, proud, casual. I write ‘show’
here, because there is a constant risk- a happy risk- that a comment, a
movement, a question will be taken and spun in the air like a plate, and then
one realises this was a game, or if not a game, then a level of banter or
avidity beyond the routine (in both senses).
The show itself is a foison of difference. I’ve worked in
the theatre and instantly noted the speed of change in pace, energy and in the
more practical side of things. If you blink, the contortionist suddenly becomes
a popcorn seller, the strongman a sweeper. If you gawp at a rearing stallion,
you suddenly find yourself squinting at a somersaulting budgie.
After the performance, we were invited back to the
caravan of the circus owner for a talk and a few generously single-malted
drams. Constantly aware of being callow
or clichéd, yet also intensely interested in his long profession in the circus,
I try to make my questions range from the playfully polite to the playfully
ignorant. Our host was generous not simply in drams of whisky, but also in
drams of narrative, blasphemy, aphorism and exclamation, the kind that leaves
one sore-headed the next morning. Our conversations went on for several hours
and while subjects ranged widely, I was confirmed in my belief that a circus
show is not a mere variety act, but something which respires, reclines and has,
at least potentially, the ability to touch many corners of excellence, not to
mention excess.
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| By Curtis Tappenden |
As
Northrop Frye once claimed, ‘it is only when literary critics stand back far
enough to see the imagery as one pattern that they are in a position to solve
the problems of structure, of genre, and of archetype’. In approaching the
circus broadly, generally and even being allowed under its skin a little, I
came to appreciate its predictable variety, its bittersweetness and its grand
intricacy. I also became a little more aware of my own sense of timing, my own
muscle action and of the kinds of bonds that sustain me through the quotidian
grit and ether.
On the
other hand, it might just be that the intellectualisation of the circus is the
inevitable trajectory of the contemporary academic. I’m not sure.
Craig Jordan-Baker
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| By Curtis Tappenden |
Further Reading
Dickens, C. Hard Times.
Carter, A. Nights at the Circus.
Bacon, J. "Cirque
Du Soleil" the Spark: Igniting the Creative Fire That Lives Within Us.
Morgenstern, E. The
Night Circus.
Stroud, N. Josser: The secret life of a Circus Girl.
