Man In White Dress

During this month me and Marissa took a break from performing. This was a good thing, my knee’s were hurting me and Marissa had a lot of school work to get done. (I ended up performing anyway as the chicken man) This also gave me time to think about what I was doing and why. Two weeks back I was heavily inspired by something Marissa wrote:

Dear Matt,

We strive relentlessly to:

“Recognize our own absurdities and laugh at ourselves.  Entertain and engage others by our exposition.”

“To expose the absurdities of the world I feel I expose some truth of humanity.”

If you want to read the rest of her notes: 

marissa’s-notes-bedford-january-20-2008.doc

This created a clear sense of what I was doing. So I was motivated. This whole month I did tons of research. Answering questions like, “What is a fool?” “What does it’s existence mean?” And I found tons of information about clowns, jesters, the Feast of Fools, Commedia Dell’Arte , clown civilizations, thanks to Wikipedia I was able to create the first rough draft of my Manifesto. I finally knew why I was doing what I was doing.

My purpose was to unleash the inner child in us all, just by being a fool, learning to laugh at myself and teach people to do the same. So I’ve decided to focus my energies specifically on Bedford Ave.

It is now my goal:

To re-awaken the spontaneous creative spirit on public streets. By inspiring a world of community, interactivity, adventure, and lightheartedness through the powers of the fool.

I’m committed to triggering a Love Laugh Energy Ripple on Bedford Ave., that will spread in waves around this big city.

My Manifesto heavily copies the text of enlighten being Eckhart Tolle, (I’m a fool not a writer) from his book the New Earth, but this is only a first draft and I needed inspiration. The next one will be all in my own words.

Manifesto:

bedford-circus-of-fools-manefesto.doc

That’s not it, I created performance rules:

bedford-circus-of-fools-performance-rules.doc

more-performance-rules.doc

And a performance rehearsal outline so the meetings go by faster:

 basic-bedford-ave-outline.doc

I ended performing anyway as the chicken man, I would wear a costume and buck like a chicken. During these performances, people took pictures, some put them up on Flikr. This is when I gathered a crowd and started doing Karate chicken with the locals. These performances were very inspiring and helped me write my manifesto. I was surprised by how people have come accustom to my presence. He’s a fool, just a fool.