I have received greatly appreciated emails of gratitude, I have been thanked on the dance floor of a late night venue, I have received thoughtful questions about issues from my writing and I have managed to get down a whole lot of ideas about my own art that I never before have voiced and for this I am thankful.
I only joined the social online networks last year about this time. Firstly to try and connect with potential audience members for the first showing of my new and still under development, show; The Way of the Showman. After using fb as a blog I realized how inadequate that was for my needs. I was interested in actual content than pictures of cats. Thoughts and ideas and crazy stuff from the furthest and most remote corners of the cyber circus underground was my passion and I soon understood that a blog was the Way for me - and here we are a year later.
The Illuminated Showman's Manifesto; Who are we and What the hell are we doing?
I have published 199 posts. That is about one post every two days for one year. It didn't seem that much as I was doing it, but now that I look back that is a very substantial amount of writing and curation. Many of the posts, particulartly the articles took a long time to write. In these I developed my thoughts and philosophy of Showmanship. Delving into the Art, Craft, Origins and Powerful Potential of what we Circus and Carnival Artists do. In the description of this blog I say it is a "personal journey of investigation and exploration of a worldview tentatively described as the Way of the Showman." In these articles that the embryonic foundations of the Way is to be found.
Some of the key ones are as follows:The One Who Faces the Other Way
Over several posts I looked at the Shaman as a Proto Showman and their interconnectedness.
I believe there is great power in the tricks of the Showman's Craft
If the Craft of the Showman has such power does that come with a certain obligation?
Can we create meaningful entertainment?
I thought a lot about reality and deception and dreams coming true in relation to what Showmen does.
The Exoteric and Esoteric Showman the inner and outer aspects of our Craft.
The Illuminated Showman has had over 21.000 individual page views which I find quite astounding taken into consideration that my subject matter is, I believe, highly idiosyncratic and narrow in scope.
The posts span such subjects as
my own fiction writing,
Originality... Stealing... Transformation,
What is Charisma, can we learn it?
Other writer's stories,
My epic poem - The Clown and the New World,
General Carnival poetry
the Showman's roots as a shaman 1, + many more
66 Lessons from the Way of the Showman,
The carnytube - circus and carnival videos,
Circus Films,
Circus and Carnival Inspired visual Art
articles by me
Thanks to all who read my posts.Thanks to those of you who commented, it is very good to hear from you.
Thanks especially to those who have helped spread the Illuminated words on facebook or any portal of your choice.
AND
For those of you that think you might know a fellow performer from the circus, carnival or theatre world who, like yourself don't mind spending some time in wild philosophical pursuit of our Craft, please point them in direction of this blog.
I am surprised at how many people have found it and appreciated it, but I don't know much about how to reach more who are. SO, please direct your friends and fellow Carnival enthusiasts to the Illuminated Showman.
Thank You.
PS
I think there might be some changes coming in the future posts, so keep your eyes out,
and
Be Illuminated.
The unexamined life is not worth living.
Socrates.
