circus

the wandering people, drifters, tramps, rogues, hobos, vagabonds.
thanks to my two wonderful friends, today i saw the best and most touching circus of my life. it was a small family with four great and so witty children, three boys and one little 2 year old girl who were running the circus all by themselves.
usually i´m not too fond of circuses because this whole display of attraction and sensation is something i´m not so much after. but today in this particular circus consisting of one little circle of a few kids with their parents in the audience, what you could see were the tricks and banal little sensations of a family. a father playing with his little girl, a mother doing balancing acts with her little boy, a couple of fat, lazy animals running around in circles.
it was precisely the anti-sensation, the anti-stunts and anti-stuntmen that made everything so holy. all the little mistakes and the long waiting for the punchline in the gags that sometimes never came, the pride in the kids´eyes, their costumes and excited dancing when they were waiting for their acts and watching their siblings perform, their mom rushing outside from her balancing act in the pause to sell candy and fairy floss.
these are probably the last examples of true vagrant lives. all the children born in different cities. constantly on the road. noone but themselves and these strange, displaced animals.
it kind of made me think of jonas mekas´film lost lost lost. forever disrooted, constantly on transit, always homeless and strangers. their lives seemed so tough and relentless and all the effort they put into their show so dramatically existential that you could sense the candid sincerity of the strong emotional way the audience was moved, laughed and celebrated this little family that had even set up the tents by themselves.
their show was tinkered so strikingly human and mythical it almost made me sad.
maybe the same way clowns are always the saddest people in the world. because they recognize the falsity and absurdity of almost all customs, costumes, identities and lives, playfully display their vanity and try to trigger your laugh when you could just as much cry about it all.
what the family had achieved was so wonderful and romantic and archaic, but at the same time, so out of time, so unavailing and tough, you didn´t know if you´d wish for them to go on forever and ever or maybe just stop to offer the kids a little easier lives. it was really a tragically beautiful little show.