An excerpt from Joel Brauer’s 26 February 2021 journal entry:
The stunts they pull at Cirque du Soleil are unremarkable to me. It’s all spectacle really, the overzealous costumes, the live orchestra. It’s all there to support these supposedly impossible feats of human propulsion. But that’s all it is in the end: simple physics as a suited-up gimp flips three times through the air, and basic anatomy as a human hair tie folds itself into a box, and what could be more straightforward than time? Timing is the only skill a juggler has or needs.
In my youth I was a gymnast and trapeze artist and cheerleader. And I—unlike your standard circus audience member—comprehend how these stunts are executed, the setup and motions and forces required to land say, a double-double: lean, lift, tap, pull, open, land, and style for (often undeserved) audience applause. Only on the climatic stunt will I deign to clap; everything prior is trivial, something I could do.
The most memorable Cirque I have witnessed is the Hoop Diving act of Dralion. Memorable not because it was exquisite or exciting, but because it was exceedingly lacklustre. These charlatans in their showy display dive through a stack of hoops… and that’s it. They do dive rolls, which, if you’re unaware, comprise a dive, followed by a roll. At Superstar Sports Centre (the peak of elite gymnastics education) I was The Dive Roll King. Dive rolls were my domain. I would sprint like half the floor, do this excessively long and low lead-up step where I dragged my toenails to draw streaks of keratin in the springy blue carpet, then bound and swan dive like Jesus on a crucifix, back arched, head up and I would hold this arch as I plummeted so it appeared as if I would land on my face and have my head and knees snap together like barbeque tongs bent backwards, and only then upon audience gasping would I put my hands out, break some momentum and roll. These Cirque people, these professionals, were no better than me in this act. Sure I’ve never tried the full twist they put into all their dives, but what’s a single twist, anyway? I gave three lazy claps when I saw this show and thought, I could be in Cirque one day.
The introductory excerpt I wrote whilst on a retreat in Hartley Vale. I stayed alone for three nights in an old, scouts-kitchen–studio-cottage convert. The cottage had a long wooden kitchen top and two metallic spider sculptures high on the wall. It had a 50 L Westinghouse fridge; a bookshelf containing Essays on Crystallographic Healing, Florapedia, Organic Gardening for Beginners, A Reference Guide for All Things that Sting, and the obligatory Twilight; a microwave; an empty fruit bowl which I filled with plums and nectarines; and a t.v.-less outhouse with a satellite dish. In this journal entry I found that my teenage cockiness for acrobatics had hung around into adulthood. I watch Simone Biles stick triple layouts and think, I could do that if I tried. If I put in the effort, that could be me. I understand the theory of the tricks, what’s involved in their execution, so it’s easy to imagine myself flipping as such. But I couldn’t be bothered right now.
I wrote this entry, then ate Vietnamese spring rolls for dinner, then brushed my teeth. I leaned against the foot of my bed and, whilst brushing, my mind wandered. My eyes scanned the room: the ornamental spiders (Who thinks that’s a good idea for an Airbnb?), Essays on Crystallographic Healing (Who writes all this spiritual shit?), and then the green LED of the microwave clock whose numbers shifted up and down in smooth, hydraulic motions (Hold up, huh?). They hadn’t danced like this before, or at least I hadn’t noticed them swaying, performing this Mexican wave across the 9 and the colon and the 3 and the 2. I got in close, nose 8 cm from the display, squinted, focused—and the numbers stilled. It was unsettling. By this point in my life I understood the laws of digital clocks and had no explanation for this motion. I must’ve imagined it. I must’ve. I returned to the bed-end and brushing and sent my eyes elsewhere until I felt the microwave tugging at my vision, calling, ‘Come on, I’m not strange or unusual, as clocks go. C’mon Joel, check to see if you’re going mad.’ It was like trying to avoid looking at gore, e.g., protruding bone: you know it’ll be bad, but that’s half the reason you try. I looked, and the digits waved, and my whole grip on reality felt threatened, unstable. I unplugged the microwave, switched off the lights, and fled to sleep.
It’s easy for me to ignore things I don’t understand. My mind has a way of covering up incongruent facts to reassure my perception of the world. It assumes and skips like a stone across the surface of a concept so I can say, Yes I know this lake, when all I really know is the surface tension at the skipping points, the stone’s direction of travel, and where it ends up in the end.
I ate porridge the next morning, cooked on the stove. I ate cold pizza for lunch and had raw green beans on the side of my dinner. And all the while the microwave sneered and smirked a knowing smirk and tempted me to switch it on with the promise of its usefulness, tempted me with its should-be inherent immobility. I didn’t want to accept my lack of an explanation for this moving clockface phenomenon, because if I couldn't comprehend the basic physical laws of something as simple as a clock, how could I claim to understand a triple layout, a double-double, a full-twisting dive roll?
There’s a video I forgot existed. A video of me attempting one of these rotating dive rolls. I do the long leap and the toe-drag and my body pitches only slightly forward, on this angle: / (the same angle as the acrobat in the photo above). And I twist and fall and land in upward-dog, a seal omitting the essential roll part of the stunt. There’s something awkward and difficult about achieving the correct list and yaw whilst propelled on a hard horizontal vector. Who would’ve thought? I recall now my practice for this stunt. How I worked on it for two training sessions, two hours total, and then abandoned the trick because my assumption of its difficulty was incorrect. And I wanted to continue believing that I could’ve been in Cirque if desired, if I tried. But potential is not impressive, stunts are impressive, and the investment of effort that these stunts represent.
After dinner, I reenacted the scene. I plugged the microwave back in, put on the same pajamas, reconfigured the clock to the same time, used the same electric toothbrush and adopted the same casual lean against the bed end. The numbers oscillated. I panned in and panned out, and they continued to wobble in their should-be-rigid sockets. The numbers shifted between longitudinal and compression waves and I was on the verge of forsaking the endeavour because it was too hard and too scary, until my toothbrush got to the two-minute mark. It buzzed a few times, on and off. And the digits on the clock quivered and rested, vibrated and stilled as my toothbrush shook and stopped the eyes in my skull.
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