Ring · 6 April 2003
Neither as a spectacle of entertainment, nor as a thing to run away and join, I’ve never understood the circus. I think we went as a family to one when I was a kid, but in memory it was loud and scarily dark. And nothing in adulthood has led me to wonder why there wasn’t more circus in it: I spent the relevant passage of Wings of Desire wondering why Peter Falk was in the movie. What after all are a tent and some animals and men dressed as clowns compared to the rich reward of hours spent feasting on sweet, opiate television or clicking from one blogroll to the next, or dozing with a fat novel on your face. I ask you.
Having spent most every nonhorizontal moment of the last few months ensnared in the Project at Hand – scowling at a computer screen, blaspheming all the while – it barely registered when a few weeks ago Herself mentioned that an Italian circus was coming to Montpellier, and that she’d ordered tickets.
Okaygreatsoundsgood. Clicky clicky scowl scowl.
And boom came the day, yesterday. I was noisily extracted from the computer and, with the little redhaired kid and the formidable daughter nattering in the back seat, we rolled like hillbillies to the state fair, down through and past Montpellier, to the Parc des Expositions, out by the airport.
(You know that day when, for the first time since the previous autumn, you put your hand out the car window and feel no bite in the air? That was yesterday.)
Popcorn needs were met, into the big tent and we were seated. Trapeze artists, acrobats, gymnasts, a juggler; mercifully only one clown. People standing on galloping horses, small shetlands moving in unison, elephants. No tigers. A woman who swung five steel hoops at differing rates on her hips. Fire breathing, fire juggling, the throwing of knives on fire. Other than the occasional bit of synth fizzing out of the loudspeakers (and, I suppose, the loudspeakers), there were practically no concessions to modern entertainment: just physical skill and timing, and too much eye makeup.
I loved each and every minute of it. Except for the irritating woman who had some sort of problem with us taking their front row seats at intermission (you want impressive, you should see Herself curse someone out in French), it was a perfect day out.
Pictures? Surely.
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