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Yesterday I Went to the Circus and Here is What I Learned

Yesterday I Went to the Circus and Here is What I Learned

Last updated on: March 27, 2017 at 7:42 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

Yesterday I Went to the Circus and Here is What I Learned 2017-03-27T07:42:59-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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I am not a circus person.

Fewer and fewer Americans are circus people, but I am in the last generation to think this odd. Any linguistic phrase containing “circus” no longer means much to my students. . . they have not been and so don’t get it. “It’s a regular circus.” used to mean “busy, interesting, and a bit chaotic,” and now would mean “mostly empty and dying”. “Like the circus came to town” meant everyone noticed and now means nobody will notice.

Last night I went to the Carson and Barnes Circus and they deserve a good word. These families worked hard to entertain us and they (mostly) succeeded. The “The Solis Brothers ~ Strength, Trust and Balance at its Best” were amazing strongmen . . . getting gasps from everyone in my party with feats of strength that make any LA Fitness survivor shudder in terror that we would ever try such things. I liked the people in the “Juggling Juggernauts ~ The Rosales Family representing 5 generations of family tradition.” They were super talented and seemed like folks with whom one would share a meal if one was very lucky.

The elephants were the stars of the show.* Seeing them ringside reminded me of why my ancestors thought them gods of the wild. A small circus allows for an intimacy that the larger circuses I have visited never had. In short, the real “acts” were fun. . . though the less said about the dinosaur sequence, the more charitable I will be able to be. Rule: never do anything that Disney has done better.

What did I learn?

First, the circus was a rare place where Houston is integrated. Too often we are at places where the “boss” is white and the workers are Anglo . . . and the people in the seats are whatever race is the target audience. I have been there and hate that. This circus had people from everywhere, stars from everyplace, and the audience was diverse. This is a good thing and I am hard pressed to think of too many other times in a place like Houston where everybody is there to have a good time.

Second, this “tent” circus was a great way to see what Dickens and hundreds of years of Americans have loved. I was close and could see the people . . . this could be disturbing as when one could see the sorrow in a dancer’s eyes. Why was it there? I don’t know, but the day had been hard. In fact, one problem is that everyone seemed sad, while working very, very hard to give me Big Fun. It was as if really bad news had happened, but then the “show had to go on.”

On the other hand, there was the absolute confidence in the man-god who was lifted above the adoring “pre-historic women” on his ribbons into the air. He believed the hype. I bet he did.

I don’t know. Maybe I was seeing things, but if there was ever a time to understand these words, last night was it:

Thquire, thake handth, firtht and latht! Don’t be croth with uth poor vagabondth. People mutht be amuthed. They can’t be alwayth a learning, nor yet they can’t be alwayth a working, they an’t made for it. You mutht have uth, Thquire. Do the withe thing and the kind thing too, and make the betht of uth; not the wurtht!’

Try putting a “s” sound for the “th” sound in the paragraph above and you will see what circus maestro Mr. Sleary was saying: “People must be amused. They can always be learning, nor yet they can’t always be working, they aren’t made for it. You must have us, Squire. Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us; not the worst!”

These were hard working and very talented people, don’t blink during the Death Defying Wheel of Destiny with Armando Bautista, and they are there to give us amusement. This is not the muses . . . serious art. This was fun from people to people and unlike a screen was in three dimensions.

These people were there (including the woman with smeared mascara and the other that could not connect to her rope) and not Computer Generated Effects. We were there and they were there and as we clapped, they got better. The small circus, the traditional circus, can be an amusement where the audience directly impacts the show. We know (Packer fans really know) that the fans can impact a game . . . in a traditional, smaller circus we are part of the show. If we clap, they soar.

Third, the circus is an odd mix of grownup and childlike entertainment. A circus is oddly racy and innocent, like the older aunts in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. There was sex appeal, but it overshot the kiddies. Is there any other show where a woman my age is allowed to be alluring . . . and was? The traditional circus dared and this one followed suit.

Finally, I had fun. Old tricks work and I don’t care. There is nothing exotic about a woman who can make many hula hoops spin at once and I am sure Barnum had people who could walk a ball up an incline, but it was still amazing, because I saw it. It really happened.

Sadly, however, decay was also there. The band was reduced to a set of drums and prerecorded music. If the case for the circus is seeing live acts, then canned music is a contradiction in the sales pitch. The sound system was set to loud and half of what the ring master said was neither in English nor in Ancient Greek (where I might have been fine) or Spanish (where at least I know many words), but Burger King Drive through: loud, muffled, and incomprehensible. People serving the food should not assume the Anglo knows no Spanish and so discuss the problems of the day.

Mostly, I saw people who work very hard, at some cost to themselves, to entertain us. They were real and now I see that without such things we might . . . just might . . . be smaller. We don’t have to enjoy the particular amusements of this circus or any circus, but perhaps we should consider if holing up in our houses with Netflix is really better. I get (I really get) choosing to go out and do something different, but I don’t understand not going out at all for amusements.

I shake hands with you performers of Carson and Barnes, first and last. Thank you.

—————————-

*I know the controversy. I do not think keeping animals in captivity, training them, and having them perform is unethical. It is a better life that they would get in the wild.

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