First of May

(Okay, I know it's the fourth of May, but I tend to run about three days behind the rest of the world.)

First of May is one of my favorite circus/carnival terms, perhaps because it sounds so pleasant when, in fact, it's more of an affectionate insult. I guess it's like newbie/noob/n00b or green, as it refers to someone in their first season with the circus.

I can't find much about the term other than its definition, so I'm not sure of the origins or applications. I have an impression that it is used for workers and performers alike, though I'm basing that only on Feiler's Under the Big Top, in which he explains that he, working as a clown (which seems to fall somewhere in the hierarchy between worker and performer), was called a First of May. I was surprised to find no listing for it in James Taylor's "Carny Lingo," which leads me to believe this is more of a circus term than a carnival term. (I'm guessing, but Taylor's list is otherwise so thorough that I am relatively comfortable with this guess.)

Vacation

This summer, my mom (bless her heart) and I are going to Milwaukee for the Great Circus Parade Festival, and, of course, a few days in Baraboo to visit the Circus World Museum. The geek is me is most excited about the Library and Research Center, where I hope to get my hands on some visuals as well as some accounts of circus train wrecks (as my novel will feature one!). I am thrilled about the festival and parade itself, as I feel like I kind of need to learn more about contemporary circus culture as well as history.

Still, the more I read about and experience the modern circus, the more I'm faced with the fact that the freak show, for all of its modernization and reappropriation, is still highly marginal. It's in a different margin now, yes, functioning less as a side show and more as an independent, main attraction, but detached from the tradition of the circus (voluntarily?). While the fact that it can stand alone speaks to the empowerment afforded by the contemporary freak show, it means that it is excluded from "circus" events, festivals, etc., and stuck into its own category. I'm sure that circuses still bearing the names, and the stigmas, of old shows feel some sense of guilt or shame for the way freaks were treated, much as descendents of slave-owners feel guilt for the sins of their forefathers, but what better way to assuage the guilt than to include, and thereby acknowledge the validity of, the wronged and marginalized group?

Perhaps I'm talking out of my ass here? I won't really know until I get to the festival and the museum and see for myself if/how the freak show is addresssed.

On a lighter note, we're also headed to Chicago for a few days, where I'm hoping to get a souvenir in the form of a tattoo, a circus ticket, most likely on the inside of my right forearm, from an artist who specializes in traditional American design (read: sailor tattoos).

To illustrate or not to illustrate? (Because who couldn't use a Shakespearean cliche?)

I've written a passable short story about a tattooed man who joins a sideshow and has all kinds of crazy fun.* I love graphic novels, and I think this would make an amazing one, but I can barely draw a recognizable stick figure. This means finding someone who can draw, who is willing to collaborate, and who I can get a long with (I'm a total pain in the ass).

It wouldn't hurt to find someone who knows a thing or two about graphic novels and comic books. I've only just started studying them, and the design elements are overwhelming. (I recommend Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art and Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga, and Graphic Novels, as well as Will Eisner's Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative.)

This also has me wondering whether the novel I'm working on would be better as a comic series. It's very episodic. Hmm.

*Self-hatred, sex, pain... the usual fun.

Serious Weekend: Part II

I met my mom and my brother in Concord, NC, today to go the the National Tattoo Association's 2009 convention. I felt under-inked for the first time in a while, which of course made me want to get more work done (the sun coming up makes me want to get more tattoos, so this is not a novel experience). I got a few ideas and solidified my plan to get something nautical/traditional (Sailor Jerry style) on my feet, which will hopefully involve some reference to my grandfather or the ships he was on (he was at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese came for a visit).

Seeing so many tattoos on so many different parts of the body got my brain going overtime, so I have a few more plans in the works, including a vacation* tattoo for this summer (a small circus/freak-related image that I'll get in Milwaukee or Chicago) and one big piece which I won't let myself get until my novel is finished.

So, fun times, and more to come.

*More about vacation in a future post.

Serious Weekend: Part I

Saturday night, I went to the Cole Bros. Circus in Wilson, NC. It was charmingly low-tech, and I enjoyed watching the setup as much as I enjoyed watching the acts. I'm almost finished reading Under the Big Top, Bruce Feiler's chronicle of his season with the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus, and I'm amazed at how much has changed in 14 years: no more band (perhaps the only high-tech accoutrement was the sound system), fewer acts (no trapeze!), no more Clyde Beatty (I've yet to research the split, though Feiler explains the merger quite well).

The hair suspension act and the human cannonball were impressive. The former reminds me of the pain endured when perfecting the tight, tight ponytail that I had to sport at some point in middle school, though I do not pretend that this self-inflicted hair-pulling is anything compared to the strain of holding the weight of an, albeit waifish, human body-- and spinning like a little human helicopter. The latter was exciting perhaps more because I've read so much about it (Feiler, who had a friendship with the human cannonball of hi season, describes the cannon and the background of the act in great detail); still, the cannon (the World's Largest Cannon) was a phallic wonder, and were positioned right next to it.


I was also amazed, if not a little disturbed, by the youngest member of the Colombian family of tight-rope walkers, a fearless 10-year old who did a handstand atop a seven-man pyramid (itself, of course, atop the tight-rope). I was relieved that he wore a harness, and it detracted not at all from his feat. I'm also thrilled to see that there are still family acts (if the Ringmaster's hype is to be believed), and that these talents are being taught to younger generations. Perhaps when his old enough to have his own act, he can play Wii 100 feet in the air instead of jumping rope or sitting on a chair?

(The friend who bravely accompanied me to the middle of nowhere for the show asked of the women who suspend and twirled around ceiling-to-floor lengths of billowy white fabric, "How do you figure out that you can do things like this?" I replied, "Because your grandmother and your mother could, and they start teaching you as soon as you can walk.")

I must also mention the Big Top: BEAUTIFUL, even under the visible grime that coated it. I've never seen a big top before, so I was mesmerized. The outside was almost stereotypical: wide red and yellow stripes, points punctuated with flags.


I figured it was the same inside, but I was surprised to discover that inside the tent was a story-book night sky: dark blue (well, kind of a dust-coated dark blue) background with fat white stars, and bigger bursts of white where each "pole" (it was really more like narrow scaffolding) pierced the top.


I was disappointed that the crowd wasn't bigger, but most of the people there seemed geniunely awed and amazed, so the show accomplished what it is meant to accomplish. The only person who didn't seem smitten was the creepy old man in front of me who laughed at my gasps and sighs of relief during some of the more tense performances. When he asked me what I would have done if he had grabbed my knee, I replied, "I probably would have kicked you." He shut up and let me enjoy the rest of the show.

Oops

So, I moved, as promised. Then some jackass hacked into my gmail account, which resulted in that account being suspended, which meant I could not get back into my original blog.

Then life kept happening and I let this slide.

I've copied the posts from the old blog into this one so everything is in one place, and I'll work on keeping this regularly updated from now own. I promise!

Geek Love

[Originally posted 19 October 2008, 7:07 pm.]

I'm only a few pages in and I'm smitten. No surprises there. I haven't picked up an academic text or my own manuscript in about a week now, and it's killing me. If I could quit my job and quit my life to get this done, I would, though I'll never really be "done."

Perhaps I should join the circus...

Moving

[Originally posted 14 October 2008, 12:03 am.]

My research is on very temporary hold while I move this week. I did find a reasonbly priced and conditioned copy of Geek Love today, which I eagerly started over coffee this afternoon, as well as an even more reasonably priced copy of Nightwood and a first edition of Hermaphrodiety. Perhaps the lit. crit. will have to wait while I dig into some fiction.

Library of Congress

[Originally posted 11 October 2008, 12:30 am.]

Quickly, because I'm completey exhausted after a hot and sweaty Jonathan Richman show...

The Library of Congress has an extensive collection of interviews and narratives created by writers working for the Federal Writer's Project (1936-1940), part of the Works Progress Administration. There are many documents (roughly 100, based on a cursory search) related to circuses and carnivals, including extensive interviews with trapezes artists, kootch girls, rousties, medicine showmen, and most of the seem to be part of a series titled "American Life Histories."

You can search just that collection (click the link above) or you can search a broader catalog of 35 collections that come under the heading "Culture, Folklife." This catalog also includes photographs, posters, region-specific narratives, etc.

Wow.

"Little Oddity"

[Originally posted 8 October 2008, 7:19pm.]

Yahoo ran a story today about Gemma Arterton, actress in the forthcoming James Bond film, who was born with six fingers on each hand.

In the article, Arterton claims, "It's my little oddity that I'm really proud of." Perhaps it is simply a language issue, but she appears to use the present tense when referring to her hands: "it's" does not mean "it was," but "it is." Having had her extra digits removed, and thereby removing all trace of her polydactyly (except her pride and some ambiguous scars), is it reasonable for her to imply that it still exists? Furthermore, does the use of "little" seem a little condescending? Perhaps she would not find her oddity so dimunitive if she had ever lived with the frustrations of having a visible physical difference.

I'm sure I'm being particularly hard on the woman, but it seems unjust that she should claim her oddity as a source of pride having never really known it. I'm pleased that she is secure enough to share her woes with Esquire (Esquire, seriously?), for she could simply hide the fact and we would be no wiser, but her simultaneous pride and condescension make her seem opportunistic (Esquire?).

Still insisting on present tense, Arterton claims that her former polydactyly "makes [her] different," but using that logic, I'm "different" because I was born with a slightly pointy head. (If my head is still pointy, no one is going to know, because my hair is much too huge to reveal the shape of my skull.) While "different" certainly applied at the time of her birth, Arterton cannot use a past circumstance to define who she is now. Her extra fingers don't exist now, so her difference was, not is.

Again, I'm sure I'm being much too hard on the young woman, and I'm tearing apart language about which most people would not think twice. But language is ridiculously powerful, no matter how little the words. Arterton's message that oddities are trivial and her implication that they are acceptable as long as they no longer exist betrays a frighteningly narrow and unrealistic view of "oddities" of any size.

Slightly Irrelevant....

[Originally posted 7 October 2008, 1:50 pm].

This article bears only a tenuous link to last night's post in that it deals with etymology. Plus, the Mavericks are certain freaks: Communists in Texas? Different, indeed.

On the Congress of Freaks

[Originally posted 6 October 2008, 10:04 pm.]

I have come across the phrase "congress of freaks" several times now, most recently in Fiedler, but also in a Donald Platt poem whose title is taken from a photograph: "Congress of Freaks with Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey (Combined) Circus, Season-1929." The poem is [going to be here as soon as I can figure out how to attach it] and the photo is below.
As a writer and occasional poet, I am obsessed with words, and the word congress strikes me as rather specific, rather purposeful.

I have yet to discover the origin of the term, though a 1914 New York Times review of a Madison Square Garden Barnum and Bailey's Circus performance does mention the "International Freak Congress," which included a "tribe of savages... a very lean and bony man described as 'the human hairpin'... families of pigmies [sic], fat people and tall people... the familar faces of 'Zip'... and 'Princess Wee Wee.'"

So, congress seems to have a long-established pairing with the freak show, and it is a word with several interesting implications, not the least of which is that it carries the connotation of something very official, a formal and important gathering. While its most general usage simply denotes a meeting, the more familiar application of the word to government gatherings lends it that formal connotation. In the context of this image, so, too, does the rather elaborate title of the photograph, and such formality seems relevant. I can't imagine that a posed and designed gathering was a frequent occurrence, and the date in the title suggests that it was, perhaps, annual.

In addition to the tone of the word is the implication that those at the formal meeting are representatives, and herein lies my most acute fascination with the word, for I see in this image a thorough array of performers-- fat ladies, giants, dwarfs, the hairy, the strong, the limbless-- indeed, a representation of all, or at least most, that the sideshow had to offer. But the notion of representation goes deeper, in that there is a more general representation of society in this image-- men and women, skinny and fat, short and tall, black and white-- these freaks reflect the variety and complete lack of normalcy or standard that any of us who have ever felt different can understand. Put simply, they represent differences that are so vast and so complex that they are indefinable, but still can, however, be represented.

Meetings, representations, and, lastly, the definition of congress loosely related to its coital application, but one less graphic and physical: simply, "familiar relations" (dictionary.com). This speaks to me not of sexual familiarity, but of familial familiarity (pardon the redundancy), a notion that most anyone who has studied freaks and freak shows can understand, for among all of those differences lies the bond of family, the bond of common experience and common context that these performers shared.

In a last etymological note, I am further fascinated to discover that congress is derived from the Latin congressus, "a hostile encounter" (Online Etymology Dictionary). While a reference to hostility seems to contradict the claim of the previous paragraph, that congress denotes some familial bond, there can be, of course, a certain hostility between audience and performer, between the perceived "normal" observer and the "abnormal" freak. While that hostility has certainly existed and has been documented and expressed in various ways, I turn to an observation of Jeanie Tomaini's in an effort to quell that historic and etymological hostility: "You'd be surprised how many weird people you can find in an audience who think they're perfectly normal."

And perhaps that is the real difference between the freak on the stage and the member of the audience: awareness of one's own differences, acceptance of one's own differences, and, dare I invoke it so soon, the "frame of mind" which allows or prevents that awareness and acceptance.

Freakery

[Originally posted 5 October 2008, 6:35 pm.]

A reflection on freakery after beginning Fielder's Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self

Reading Fiedler's work, I am obsessing over finding meaning in freakery, meaning that I know will always elude me, as I am not, myself, a freak in the sense in which the term is currently used, though even such usage eludes me, too, making this all feel rather overwhelming.

My understanding, primarily from Fiedler's discussion of language, is that freak, now thirty years after Fiedler's text, no longer refers to a deformity (such an emotive word itself), a condition, an appearance, or even a talent (in the tradition of performers or made freaks), but to the individual who willingly displays those properties in the name or performance or art, or, indeed, performance art. This represents a distinct change in the term, which, in 1978, was beginning to bother certain doctors (see the opening of Chapter 10 of Fiedler's work), do-gooders (more on them later), and non-performing individuals with physiological differences. Hence, I make the distinction, one who displays or performs.

The meaning that I so hope to find is that of the role or position of the freak (or Freak, if you're so inclined, but I would neither capitalize painter or woman) in society and culture. If freak had merely evolved to mean artist, we might have just adopted the term artist, or even performance artist, but we have not. Like a musician, storyteller, actor, etc., the freak is a particular type, or category of artist, and such particularity necessarily denotes not just a specific act, but a specific role or purpose for that act. So it is not just the word, but the complex systems and relationships that word represents.

Part of my difficulty in finding meaning lies in the changes that have taken place in terms of how freak shows/sideshows are made manifest and how they are perceived, for their role now is certainly, in many but not all respects, different from their role one hundred or even fifty years ago. Compare this to the musician, whose role is relatively unchanged for hundreds of years.

The other source of difficulty, and one of those certain differences mentioned above, is the relative obscurity of the contemporary freak show/sideshow. Once a relatively common experience, it is now one which is most often met with absolute ignorance and inexperience. While the purpose, and perhaps motivation, of the show has changed, few people are aware of those changes. They are not able to accept that performers choose to perform, for they insist on seeing freaks as they were years ago, as they are preserved in history, and not as they are now. Onlookers are locked into a sympathy that is held over from the "do-gooders" of the 1950s and 1960s and the political correctness of the 1990s and 2000s. As freaks, and their roles, have changed, so has society, but asynchronously.

While I seem to have settled on a contemporary meaning of the art, the life, even the performers themselves, a meaning which I have no right to assign, it is the larger, social meaning which which I struggle, but which will, perhaps, come with time, education, and experience, for as an outsider but one with growing knowledge and experience, I find it increasingly difficult to know what the sideshow can and should mean to the masses, and I am, again and again, drawn to Bogdan's definition, one that correlates quite well with the notions of intention and willingness, that freak is, indeed, an attitude or emotional state of being, "a frame of mind."

I am inclined, by gut or by instinct, to hypothesize: for example, when watching an armless man shave himself, the two-armed person-- man or woman, fat or thin, rich or poor-- may consciously observe because he or she is curious, but can and will observe how one who is different succeeds (here, success is a clean shave), neither in spite of nor because of his differences, but simply succeeds, and that any of the rest of us succeed by also using what we have, be that extreme height, scaly skin, or 200 extra pounds.

Finally, I am, in an attempt to find meaning, further inclined to involve myself. While the comparison of a 300 pound woman writing a book to an no-armed man shaving his face seems ludicrous, I see in that comparison a certain truth-- the book nor the clean shave are no more marvelous for the physiology of their perpetrators, but are necessarily different, differently shaped (in the creative, not physical, sense) and executed, and it is that difference at which we marvel, which we respect, applaud, commend, and which we realize has no other meaning that to be marvelled at, for, when we compare the shaved face of a two-armed man with that of a no-armed man, we are just looking at two hairless faces.