wake up to zoe!

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...and once again... born again

Born on a piece of land, a piece of this earth where nothing is truly mine. Raised by parents whose denial won the war over their brains and left them dressing me in every color they could find until I turned into a clown.

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FORKY’s insignificance

On a planet similar to ours, the gods roam lonely. All they did was eat and they had a wide choice of food.

In the beginning, KNIFY existed out of the need to cut, a very basic need. The Gods created him and everyday he would spend his time cutting food for the gods to eat. KNIFY had a full day scheduled for him to work, he used to wake up in the morning before any of the gods were awake and start cutting their breakfast, and while they had their breakfast, KNIFY would be preparing their shares for lunch, an after lunch snack followed, and by the time dinner had to be served KNIFY was exhausted from the long day and went to sleep, relaxing for another day to start with the same procedure.

The Gods used to take the food KNIFY already cut, grab with their bare hands and put it in their mouth. But one day, the Gods realized that after satisfying that need, they should move forward to satisfy another.

They created SPOONY.

SPOONY was in charge of picking up the food and delivering it to their giant hungry mouth. SPOONY was also an essential creation of the gods, and they were very happy to have come up with a way that entitles them to eat liquid forms of food when their hands weren’t the effective tools to eat such a thing. 

SPOONY satisfied their hunger for a while, but she was not yet enough.

As time passed, the Gods evolved and they couldn’t bear the fact that SPOONY and KNIFY served 2 different purposes but couldn’t keep their hands clean.

Since the Gods were greedy and nothing satisfied them, they decided to create someone new, someone that would reflect their refinement, someone that can spare them getting their hands dirty, someone that can deliver the food to their mouth even though they can do it without his help.

They wanted to satisfy a higher need, one related to their self actualization, one that can help their image.

…and FORKY was created.

FORKY, SPOONY and KNIFY started to serve different parts in the day of a god.

However, one day, as one God was eating an apple, his after lunch snack, FORKY was helping him carry it. The god found that part of the apple has gone bad and he wanted to cut it out but KNIFY was not in sight as he was fooling around with SPOONY, so the god thought that maybe FORKY can do that job.

FORKY, knowing his own insignificance, being easily replaceable, was very happy to be able to satisfy one of the basic needs of the gods, and he thought of himself as a great tool since his sharpness allowed him to pierce the food and sometimes cut them being a substitute for KNIFY. However, having the parallel lines that entitled FORKY to carry the food has made it quite impossible for FORKY to do SPOONY’s job. FORKY got sad, but thought that if he can’t be everything at least he is superior to KNIFY.

Thoughts like these made FORKY vulnerable. So he started to try to prove his importance and superiority, but whenever liquids and hard food were involved FORKY couldn’t do anything.

Today, FORKY, SPOONY and KNIFY still function around the clock. However, zillions of them are created. They serve as spare parts of the machine, that same machine the Gods created and called life while FORKIES still try everyday to do SPOONY and KNIFY’s job in the Gods identity charade system.

A Socio Cultural Behavioral Pattern

In a world where we do not dare to show our realities to ourselves, our weaknesses and fears become too strong and they devour our individuality. Our weaknesses and fears are important traits that form our identity. When those aspects are hidden, the individual starts looking for his identity at other places such as materialism, duplicity and other shallow phases where one will only find his voracity therefore deception will only be waiting around the corner of every step he takes.

We became clowns ever since we started asserting roles to our being, while it simply is “being”. No effort is required to just “be”. If we take a moment to analyze our use of verbs like “acting”, we will realize that we have used this word regularly with statements; however, we never stopped to think about the meaning of the verb used. Acting was not meant to be a synonym of being, but it has become one of relevance in our human being behavior.

Many aspects played a role in this evolution, and some would argue the advantages of such behavioral pattern, however the disadvantages are of major damage to the quality of the human life.

Two definitions of a clown were found in The Oxford Advanced Learner’s dictionary. One is: “an entertainer who wears funny clothes and a large red nose and does silly things to make people laugh” and another describes the clown as “a person that you disapprove of because they act in a stupid way”.1
A clown is an entertainer who pokes the viewers to laugh not at his jokes but at his mistakes and failures as a human being. While watching a clown perform, we tend to laugh at how he trips with his big boots along with other silly things that show his floppy attitude.

This paper investigates the human behavioral patterns in society and its similarity to the performance of a circus clown. It also explores the self-loss in an illusory sense of identity created by the separate selves built by altered roles.

CHAPTER 1
A Society Clown

As cultures developed, people started asserting functions, a major dysfunction was created. The system developed into determining our identities, determining who we actually are based on who we are in the eyes of others. Functions became roles however they weren’t recognized as such. Today, “more and more people are confused as to where they fit in, what their purpose is, and even who they are.”11 We are but “a pair of actors trapped in a recondite play with no hint of plot or narrative. Stumbling through parts, nursing someone else’s sorrow. Grieving someone else’s grief.”12
A society clown is not an actor, even though he is acting a role that is far from who he actually is. On this matter of the clown versus the actor, this study is entitled “Clowns” and not simply “Actors” though we are pretenders acting our way into the society for the different meanings each title condemns. In Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things, she states:“This man tonight is dangerous. His despair complete. This story is the safety net above which he swoops and dives like a brilliant clown in a bankrupt circus. It’s all he has to keep him from crashing through the world like falling stone. It is his color and his light. It is the vessel into which he pours himself. It gives him shape. Structure. It harnesses him. It contains him. His Love. His Madness. His Hope. His Infinite Joy. Ironically, his struggle is the reverse of an actor’s struggle – He strives not to enter a part but to escape it.”13 He is escaping. We are escaping! We think that by putting a new face our sufferings and weaknesses will go away. Therefore, the most obvious reason behind becoming clowns is our running away from reality. Acting is the mean a clown uses to escape. We will progress to investigate the advantages and disadvantages of being the clowns we are, going deeper into the reasons that make us clowns.

CHAPTER 2
Advantages of Being Clowns

Starting with the advantages, Jimmy Buffett said once “If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane.”14 Clowns are comedians who make people laugh at their mistakes, they make the world look silly while making fun of themselves, and they make our problems appear to be much smaller than they actually seem.
Two attributes of clowns are used as therapy as stated below: Laughing is used as a therapy especially with cancer patients, people attend laughter yoga classes nowadays which according to Chaplain Stephen Findley who is a Laughter Yoga Instructor at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center is suitable for cancer patients since it allows them to release the tension by doing a very basic human technique “Laughter”.

It is an exercise that uses rhythmic clapping, simulated laughter and yoga like breathing in order to enhance the person’s well being. 15
Role Playing is a technique used in the Gestalt therapy. It seeks to integrate the client’s behaviors, feelings, and thinking, so that their intentions and actions may be aligned for optimal mental health. The therapist will help the client become more self aware, to live more in the present and to assume more responsibility for taking care of themself. 16

CHAPTER 3
Reasons That Lead to This Behavioral Pattern

On the other hand, the psychological effect of role-playing may cause the loss of true nature while getting to roles, which may lead to identity disorders.
A range of accustomed patterns of behavior is influencing the interactions between human beings and determining the nature of the contact. As Eckhart Tolle explains it,“When you are completely identified with a role, you confuse a pattern of behavior with who you are, and you take yourself very seriously. You automatically assign roles to others that correspond to yours.”17 A very common role is that of an adult, it is universal. This role usually makes the clown take himself very seriously, taking into consideration that spontaneity, lightheartedness and joy are not part of that role. And the problem remains when people become identified with their respective role the relationships are becoming inauthentic.
The Hippie movement that originated in the United States in the 1960s and spread throughout the world, had as its core the rejection of social archetypes, of roles, of pre-established patterns of behavior along to socially based economic structures. “They refused to play roles their parents and society wanted to impose on them.” The movement came to an end however, it generated Eastern wisdom and spirituality to move west and play an essential role in the awakening of the global consciousness.18
Starting with the reasons behind the human nature’s disguise as clowns, gives rise to the common interest of the population to hide and stay clowns. Adorno shares these thoughts in his book “Betise Planetaire” or “Wishful Thinking”19 which raises a very essential question, who is the beneficiary of such a common interest, and what actually makes us share such a behavior?
Reason One is to entertain and gain acceptance. In the musical A Little Night Music, Judi Dench sings in Send in the Clowns: “Don’t you love farce? My fault, I fear, I thought that you’d want what I want... Sorry, My dear! And where are the clowns? Send in the clowns, don’t bother, they’re here.”20 As if whenever the crowd is not quite amused, the clowns should be sent in, but who are the clowns? We are. If the crowd doesn’t like us, we have to do something about it, and in the musical, the best thing to do is put on our make up and start a show where we hide who we really are and proceed to gain the crowd’s acceptance.
Lene Marlin sang in Disguise, Have you ever seen your face, in a mirror there’s a smile but inside you’re just a mess, you feel far from good, you need to hide, because they’d never understand, have you ever had this wish, of being somewhere else, to let go of your disguise, all your worries too, and from that moment, then you see things clear.21
Our daily lives are faced with make up that covers our faces, we play roles whether by choice or pressured into one, and we do it in school, at work, and with our families. This is often called “putting on a good face”, whenever “the show must go on”.22
Reason Two is to hide shame and run away. Bruce Springsteen sings it in ‘Brilliant Disguise’: “So tell me what I see when I look in your eyes, Is that you baby or just a brilliant disguise”, and he even highlights the reason behind the disguise “I saw something tucked in shame underneath your pillow”, since shame is one of the major reasons for us hiding, as mentioned previously, it is often associated with the unacceptance of reality. And then he goes to doubting himself and his truthfulness “I want to know if it’s you I don’t trust cause I damn sure don’t trust myself... So when you look at me you better look hard and look twice, is that me baby or just a brilliant disguise”. He refers to their life of roles singing, “Now you play the loving woman I’ll play the faithful man, but just don’t look too close into the palm of my hand”.23
While Bruce Springsteen handles his song in a very realistic -as confusing as life is- manner, James Greenspun, in his song ‘Your Disguise’24, shows the courageous side of it, “Lay down your guard, show them who you are, behind your disguise” though his previous verses handle the reason behind the disguise “Don’t hide your face, you cannot erase, the pain that stays in your eyes”. And Greenspun adds up to explain the feeling that is added to the disguise, since it always comes with a package of loss and confusion, he sings “You run far from home, think you’ll make it on your own, you run fast and slow, but never seem to know where you’ll go, to break free from the words that hold you down, to escape from the feeling you are lost and can’t be found”.
Rousseau explains the running away related to running away from living alone, as we do not dare to live alone, we close ourselves into the spirit of imitation, which makes us clowns.25
Reason Three is a defense or coping mechanism. A research by Scott Barry Kaufman published in Psychology Today in 2008, suggests that humor in professional comedians serves as a defense or coping mechanism in dealing with his or her early family experiences, and the burden of having to take care of oneself. This may motivate the comic to make people laugh in order to gain their acceptance, as well as drive the comic to reveal the absurdity of life to make sense of their own lives.26
When professional comedians use it as a defense mechanism, what about us? Why do we do it? Could the answer be far from “a defense mechanism” just like the comedians’ case?
The mask is a protection and not to run around as an open book. It provides security, being anonymous, adapted and swimming with the current, the fear of being rejected because of our weaknesses, the fear of losing face, so the answer would be fooling one’s self into being someone he is not. But how can one fool himself?
In many cases, happiness is a role clowns play, and behind the smiling pretense, pain, depression and breakdowns are clandestine. According to Eckhart Tolle, “behind a smiling exterior and brilliant white teeth, when there is denial, sometimes even to one’s self, there is much unhappiness.”27
In the series “Ally Mcbeal”, when a man asked his colleague how she stays so cheerful knowing that she is lonely, her answer was an approval on being lonely saying “I’ve never had an unlonely day”, however regarding happiness, she answered that happy is easy, by acting happy, people see you as happy and you see yourself through their eyes, and it makes you happy.28
In this answer of hers, she has admitted that she is fooling herself into being happy, by fooling the world pretending to be happy she gets to fool herself that she is and end up believing it. This is the very root of the clowns we are, we tend to look at ourselves through the observers eyes, and not ours, though it would be way easier to close our eyes, get to know ourselves, our true selves, and stop using the very deceiving, limited sense of sight we have. As the little prince said: “It is only with the heart that one sees rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”29

CHAPTER 4
The Disadvantages

Role-playing kills the identity and the nature of the human being. In Clowns & Bunnies & Other Scary Things, by Steven D. Lidster, in the episode “Of Love eternal and undying” he mentions “... They gazed into each others eyes unblinking and tranced, they saw the scars the others bore and understood the pains of each others past from wounds both visible and unseen, there love was pure... they shared a hunger for the flesh of the living ... Whoever said that zombies can’t fall in love...”30 When their wounds both visible and unseen brought them to death, to becoming zombies, they couldn’t feel. Jim Morrison arguments that being a clown is a killer to the soul therefore it kills the senses not allowing the clown to love by saying that “the most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask.”31 Hiding the true feelings is the way to bury them. A lifeless role-playing life is but a protecting fallacy. Here comes the expression: it stares like a dead mask.
Gibran Khalil Gibran tells in his short story on the Gravedigger in The Madman book:“Once, as I was burying one of my dead selves, the grave-digger came by and said to me, Of all those who come here to bury, you alone I like. Said I, You please me exceedingly, but why do you like me? Because, said he, they come weeping and go weeping- you only come laughing and go laughing.”32 Loosing a dead self and burying it is appealing, especially when the dead self is a played role that is gone and a fear overcome. Khalil Gibran’s story, though containing many levels of interpretation, discusses how he became a madman in this book by loosing his masks.
Frederic Nietzsche, in his book “Beyond Good and Evil”, assures the importance of cynicism in order to get rid of the clown in us where he wrote: “Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach what is called honesty, and the higher man must open his ears to all the coarser or finer cynicism, and congratulate himself when the clown becomes shameless right before him, or the scientific satyr speaks out.”33
In the movie V for Vendetta, in a sentence, “We are both fugitives in our own way. The truth is after so many years; you begin to lose more than just your appetite. You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it.”34 It explains how dangerous it gets that roleplaying can reach a total collapse of the true identity. It becomes a burden and even dangerous since the unawareness it covers and the deep level of hiding it shelters provokes the risk of never waking up.

Pertaining that humanity is being involved in such a behavior, what is happening to interactions, leave alone relations? Relationships and interactions have become simply inauthentic, dehumanized and alienating. Though according to Eckhart Tolle, “those pre-established roles may give a comforting sense of identity, but ultimately, you lose yourself in them.” He follows to assure that the functions given in hierarchical organizations, such as military..., are easily confused to become role identities. He confirms “Authentic human interactions become impossible when you lose yourself in a role.”35
“Live, but don’t make your life a demonstration. All such demonstrations are lies. Live, but don’t become a showman. What others say is useless, irrelevant; What you are is the only relevant thing.”36
Gibran Khalil Gibran wrote in his book “The Madman” stating that he became a madman after waking up one day and finding that all his masks were stolen, he ran maskless through the streets and shouted “thieves”. Men and women laughed at him and some ran to their houses in fear. However, when the sun kissed his naked face for the first time his soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and he wanted his masks no more. He ends his story by saying he has found “freedom and Safety” in his madness.37 In a country where someone without a mask is considered a madman, society has its way in making every child grow old while fashioning his own 7 masks. Gibran Khalil Gibran mentions the number 7 for its religious significance, however, religion though being one of the major drillings that society practices on us, will not be investigated in this paper.

CHAPTER 5
The Parents Role

The masks become ready and fashioned from the very first moments we awaken to life, according to Osho in his book “When the shoe fits” at the age of 4. He states that when a child is feeling active and alive, he wants to run and dance; however, the mother forces him to go to sleep, which is asking the impossible and will only lead the child to pretend. He will close his eyes and pretend, only to open them as soon as the mother leaves the room. This is training him for pretending, making him a hypocrite.38
In fact, it is the parents, with all the ignorance of the world, who make their children clowns without them knowing what they are actually doing. “One small child was crying. Standing outside his house. An old lady passing asked him: What is the matter? Why are you crying? The child said: My mother lost the guidebook on how to raise a child, and now she is using her own mind.”39
Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, singers of “be a Clown”40, state in the song how mama has got her child’s future sewn up saying: “I’ll remember forever, When I was but three, Mama, who was clever, Remarking to me; If, son, when you’re grown up, You want everything nice, I’ve got your future sewn up If you take this advice: Be a clown, be a clown, All the world loves a clown.” And Jim Morrison discusses the role of parents in making us clowns in his quote:
“The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.”41
We grow up observing how the system works and we tend to behave according to that system. When we grow up seeing our parents acting different roles whenever surrounded in the society, we, being creatures who learn to behave in the society from our parents, are only going to imitate what is happening in front of our eyes.

As again in Gibran Khalil Gibran, The Madman, in his story of the Sleep-Walkers, “And the mother spoke, and she said: At last, my enemy! You by whom my youth was destroyed- who have built up your life upon the ruins of mine! Would I could kill you!
And the daughter spoke, and she said: O hateful woman, selfish and old! Who stand between my freer self and me! Who would have my life an echo of your own faded life! Would you were dead!”... the story continues to the revealing part, where while waking up from the sleep-waking, both women revealed not their true selves, but they revealed the clown. “At that moment a cock crew, and both women awoke. The mother said gently, Is that you darling? And the daughter answered gently, Yes, dear.”42

CHAPTER 6
The Cultural Context

In a country like Lebanon, where it is all about appearances, images and reputation, being clowns and raising clowns have become our specialty, along with the hospitality we are known to have.
In an Interview done with Sabine Choucair, Co-founder of “Clown me in”, she mentioned that their experience in Lebanon was the most difficult and intriguing of all due to many reasons among which she cited that Lebanese people are not used to say the truth and they find it very intimidating to be honest and transparent, they are oppressed and they find it hard to express their true self. They fear the judgment in addition to her belief that Lebanese people are born with this great self-defense. She also stated that the Lebanese people have a common belief and they follow it “I have to be intelligent and in total charge of everything. I have to know what I am doing all the time and why I am doing that!” 43

During their workshops in Lebanon, lots of sexual, anger and war themes come up. 44 When our generation is raised by a generation that went through many traumas during the civil war in Lebanon; our parents are exhausted and depressed. They wouldn’t be able to raise a healthy generation without the flaws of a post war generation.

CHAPTER 7
The Society’s Drillings

Based on the series of Ally McBeal, and in a conversation between Ally and her friend Renee: “Society drills into us that women be married, Society drills into us that smart people have careers, Society drills into us that women have babies and mothers stay at home. And society condemns working mothers that don’t stay at home – So what chance do we have when society keeps on drilling us?”45

What is the consequence of all this? That the fight ought to be given up? Surely not. But that instead of relying on the psychological conditions, on fear, on merely improvements and on clever reasoning to overcome our failures and traumas. The reform must come from within, it must be one of education and morality, it must be controlled ethically. The strength will come from the reverence for the ideal values of humanity and nature.




“For what is a man what has he got If not himself then he has not” 46 Life is a choice one has to make, and along the way one may choose to loose himself while unaware of the consequences, thus the choice remains ours to walk the extra mile and turn it all around. It is only a matter of priorities. Let yourself be the priority.

‘This Pomp, Onegin, these excesses, The trumpery of hateful days, My high society successes, My fashionable house, soirees, What do they mean? Oh I‘d surrender At once this masquerade, this splendour, With all its glitter, noise and smoke
For one wild garden and a book, For our poor home, to me the dearest, For all those places I recall, Where I beheld you first of all, And for the humble churchyard near us, Where now a cross and branches shade The grave where my poor heart is laid... 47

References
Websites
www.psychologytoday.com/node/2752, August 3, 2010 www.margaritaville.com/discography.html?dd_id=45. November 2010 www.therapists.psychologytoday.com/rms/content/therapy_met. 12/10/10 www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/alittlenightmusic/sendintheclowns.htm, August 3, 2010. www.azlyricscom/lyrics/lenemarlin/disguise, November 20, 2010. www.elyrics.net/read/b/bruce-springteen-lyrics/brilliant-disguise-lyrics.html, August 10, 2010. www.elyrics.net/read/j/james-greenspun-lyrics/your-disguise.html, September 20, 2010. www.articleswave.com/quotes/jim-morrison-quotes.html . October 2010 www.azlyrics.com/be a clown. December 2, 2010. www.clownschool.net/history/hbeginings.html October 3, 2010. www.davidclaudon.com/arte/commedia.html October 3, 2010. www.clown-ministry.com/history/robert-armin.html October 3, 2010. www.clown-forum.com/clown-forum/12-register-clown-faces.html, October 3, 2010. www.news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Sky-News-Archive/Article/20080641300836, October 8, 2010. www.answers.com/topic/clown December 2010 www.elyrics.net/read/f/frank-sinatra-lyrics/my-way-lyrics.html. December 2010 www.gestalttheory.com. January 2011.
www.sondheim.com/works/a_little_night_music, October 2010

Books and eBooks
Eckart Tolle. A New Earth. Published by Penguin Group. 2006 Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. New York: Penguin Books, 1973. Gibran Khalil Gibran. The Madman. Digireads.com Publishing. 2008. John Kissick. ART. Context and Criticism. Second Edition. by Rosemary Bradley Publication. 1996. ROY ARUNDHATI. The God of Small Things. Harper Collins Publishers. 2009 Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia. Reflexions sur la vie mutilee, Paris, Payot, 1983, p. 184-185 (trad. E. Kaufholz et J.-R. Ladmiral). Avital Ronell. Stupidity. Board of trustees of The University of Illinois. 2001. Antoine De Saint Exupery. Le Petit Prince. Edition Gallimard. 1999. OSHO. When the shoe fits. Stories of The Taoist mystic Chuang Tzu. Watkins Publishing. London. 2004. Alexander Pushkin. Eugene Onegin. Penguin Classics. 2008. translated by Stanley Mitchell.

TV series
Madmen.TV Series. written by Andrew Colville and Matthew Weiner. 2007 Ally McBeal.

Podcasts
Stephen Findley. CancerWise Podcast. www.cancerwise.org. The university of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center. Release Date 3/12/09. Clowns & Bunnies & Other Scary Things, Episode 6 by Steven D. Lidster, Title: Of Love eternal and Undying. 10/25/10

Movies
Alan Moore and David Lloyd. V for Vendetta. directed by James McTeigue. 2006

Interviews
Interview with Sabine Choucair, Co-founder of “Clown Me In”, done by the author on January 26, 2011.

Questionnaire
dipstick survey done by the author on the Lebanses people. 37 people answered the survey posted on www. freeonlinesurveys.com



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