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14 September 2003
The first time I ever went to Bakersfield, California I saw a girlfight at the Centennial Garden Arena there -- a title
bout between Layla McCarter and Kelsey Jeffries. It was a good, action-packed fight and a hell of a show. The next time I
went to Bakersfield -- last night -- I saw a circus in the same arena. It was the Greatest Show On Earth.
I went with my sister and her husband and their two kids, Harry and Nora, 10 and 6, and our friend Mitch Levine. We got
there early, an hour and a half before showtime, so we could visit the menagerie set up in the adjacent convention hall, and
visit the floor of the big top -- no longer canvas, alas -- where people can see tumblers and clowns and an elephant up close,
mingle with the performers and get autographs. It's a great idea, which demystifies and deterrorizes the circus for small
kids, and lets you feel like you're part of the show.
When we entered the convention hall, the first thing you could see was a line of eight gigantic elephants eating hay behind
a low metal fence and a flimsy enclosure of twine. Nothing ever prepares you for the sight of an elephant up close, either
in the wild or in a California convention hall. Only in zoos can they look mundane.
The first words out of Nora's mouth were, "Oh, dear" in a tone which suggested it meant, "This is going
to be hard to process conceptually". As we got closer to the elephants, Harry gave me a desperate look and said, "Lloyd,
do we have good seats?" The elephants had done their job -- kindling anticipation of the show.
The elephants looked peaceful and content -- maybe a little smug. A good thing, since there was absolutely nothing of
a physical nature which would have prevented any one of them from going berserk and killing hundreds of us in seconds.
In other pens were horses, both gigantic and miniature, all looking healthy and at ease. There were two camels and two
dromedaries and a llama, who seemed out of place and bewildered. It turns out they had no work to do that night except to
walk around and be admired.
There were some small zebras in a far pen -- and then there were the Bengal tigers, about eight of them in dark cages.
Seeing live Bengal tigers up close is one of the most astonishing experiences on earth.
We then moved in to the arena, and descended onto the floor, where each ring had acts in progress. You could sit on the
ring curbs and watch, and the performers circulated among the spectators before and after their displays.
Harry took one look at all the things going on and said, "Lloyd, I've got to see the clowns first". We headed
straight in amongst them.
The physical ballet of a clown, a trick dog, an elephant, a juggler is not diminished by such intimacy. In some ways it
is enhanced -- the transition from the merely human, or merely (!) elephantine, to nearly supernatural physical capacity is
rendered more mysterious and enchanting. The generosity of their proximity fosters a kind of love.
In the case of the adorable young lady contortionists, it fosters something else in adult males -- and reminds one that
sex has always been a big part of the circus's appeal. It remains so, even in the modern world, with its barrage of virtual
sex images.
At the Centennial Garden you have to go out back to a concrete terrace to smoke. The terrace looks down onto the loading
docks for the arena. When I dashed out for a smoke, I saw a number of the circus containers parked there -- the metal sheds
with rubber tires which are rolled on and off the circus train. A couple of clowns and ballet girls, the chorus dancers of
the circus who sometimes double as elephant handlers and riders, were out there taking their breaks.
There were also two of the motorcycle riders from the Globe Of Death act testing their machines -- and then the elephant
from the pre-show act was backed out and down a ramp. Its trainer shouted a command that sounded like gibberish to these human
ears and the elephant went down on its back knees. The same command again and it went down on its front knees and then lay
on its belly as a big cape was fitted around it for the opening promenade.
I rushed back in to take my seat.
I would like to tell about all the things I saw then -- because almost every bit of it was amazing in some way, beautiful
in some way, sublime in some way, sad in some way -- but it would take almost as long to recount and describe it as it took
to watch it.
And I didn't see all of it -- because I had a hard time throughout deciding if it was more exciting to look at the acts
going on or to look at the faces of Harry and Nora as they looked at the acts going on. Nora took everything at face value
-- exasperated by Bello, the star clown, when he tried to insert himself into one of the acts ("He's not supposed to
do that!") or utterly breathless when Bello, who does high-wire and flying stunts, carried a chair out to the middle
of the wire ("Mom, I have a very bad feeling about this . . .")
Harry watched more thoughtfully, reacted mostly to the clowns. He seemed to be trying to convince himself that what he
was seeing was real -- to be wrestling with existential questions of perception.
I found myself doing the same much of the time. I saw the trapeze troupe execute two simultaneous triple somersaults into
the arms of a catcher, one over each side ring. The fliers are still whirling through the air in my mind. When you do a triple
somersault -- done for the first time in history only in the 1930s -- you are rotating so fast that you can see nothing. You
have only your last glimpse of the catcher and your own intuition about where you are in space to use in timing your reach
for the catcher's arms.
There is a man now who can do a quadruple, but he has given up performing it, because no one can actually register the
spins in the time it takes to do them. It doesn't get much bigger applause than a triple.
Bello, who comes from a family of fliers, has taken clowning to a new place, with his expert work on bungee cords and
trampoline and his hair-raising feats on the high wire. Chaplin did a comedy routine on a high wire in "The Circus",
but he had movie tricks at his disposal. Bello is really up there.
I won't even try to describe the Globe Of Death, in which six motorcyclists ride around in patterns at sixty miles an
hour inside a globe made of reinforced steel mesh. It's indescribable and impossible to believe even while you're watching
it.
A team of astonishing Chinese acrobats did a number involving six stylized lion creatures, each operated by two people
inside the lion suit. It was subtle and poetic in a way only great circus acts are, and did not get much of a response from
the crowd -- but I doubt if anyone who saw it will ever forget it.
There was a big act with scores of horses doing improbable things in all three rings.
Ten Bengal tigers did unreal things inside a steel net enclosure in the center ring. The act was structured to proceed
from the spectacular but easy tricks (startling leaps in unison) to the impossible (a single tiger hopping like a bunny across
the cage towards the trainer.) This was perhaps not the best strategy in terms of theatrical spectacle -- you had to think
about it, about why this unimaginable tiger behavior was exhibited last -- but the more you thought about it, the more you
marveled.
The whole tiger act was like a dream.
The elephant act -- with ten Asian elephants executing elaborate choreography in all three rings -- was the dream of dreams.
The radical shift of scale in the space of the arena, making it look suddenly small, and between humans and pachyderms, with
the tiny humans suddenly seeming to inhabit an elephant-sized world, resonated with surreal emotion. It was pure circus, where
the world turns triple somersaults into your arms, and you catch it, and toss it back intact.
In the 19th century, going to see the elephant was slang for going to the circus. It came to mean experiencing anything
extraordinary or extreme. Soldiers in the Civil War, after their first experience of combat, would say, "I guess I saw
the elephant."
Well, I went to Bakersfield. I saw the elephant.
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