A point of no return

A chilly December afternoon at the Rembrandtsquare in misty moody Amsterdam, The darkest time of year, the darkest of times in dark times. Sooty ice slush piling up around the skating rink. Wafts of weed and oliebollen compete with the freezing breath plumes of two decently and warmly hatted clowns waiting in front of a sliding fence closing off the entry to the place where we were supposed to meet each other and the Others : fellow countrymen, actresses, colleagues, cooks, stray dogs, cool cats, eaters, drinkers, floaters, clinkers, humanoids and other exiles from galaxies beyond our knowledge. But always ourselves, echoing through the ages.

Oh, no! The doors are closed, I venture, to break the ice, in my best Internationalian, the langue prefere in clowning circles.

The doors are always closed for clowns, pour nous, poor we..., mutters Sugar under his visible breath, thoughtfully, as always, but unusually talkative for a silent clown, whose act mainly consists of being present. Of being. Being here.

How can you reach the point of no return, or any point, for that matter, if you cannot even enter? I ask, falling with the door into the house, though there is no house, no door, no entry even. Just the falling. Just the grumbling. Just our breath trying to escape into thin air.

I do not like being interviewed. In fact, I do not like this interview at all, can we please stop? sighs Joey, satisfied after uttering his mantra for the day, smiling heartily, as he sees Buster approaching, somewhat older, sadder and surely whiter than the others, but equally decently and warmly hatted.

Zut alors! Nous ne pouvons pas entrer? Mais non! Merdre! Ce n est pas possible! Warum, Gott im Himmel?!? You gotta be fucking kidding me! You gotta get in to get out! Entrer c est partir un peu! Et on ne peut pas rester ou on ne peut pas entrer! Nit moeglich! Let us go! No one moves. Surplace. Silence. The proprietor we were waiting for comes and tells us that the people from the night shift are to blame. The assholes forgot to clean. The boss has to do it all by himself now.

Verzeihung, bitte, meine Dummen und Narren! Einige Minuuuuuten Verspaetung! Even though they found out during shows in Toulouse, France, that German never works, that somehow lightens the mood and tension a bit. This is a possible situation, as opposed to the previous impossible one. The decaying regulars come barging in over the square, one by one, drooling from the nose and mouth and bloodthirsty. They demand their table. It is time.

What the heck, mutters the proprietor, and opens the gate, letting everybody in. But do not mind the mess and the slippery ooziness, ladylikes and guntlemen! We promise we will not and enter, as if the polyinterpretable Gates of Eden were unlocked before our very eyes. We find a nice presentable table in a corner in the middle, take our seats and our winter garb off. Champagne and leverworst and oysters and lots of bitterballen are ordered, en attendant Coco, toujours in afwachting van de Coco, as the saying goes (or should have gone). After a hostile takeover the impressive and flourishing merchandise section of Pointless International Inc. is now in the cunning hands of Failures United, run by none other than the man himself, the Coco, who knows a wiwin situation when he sees one, to quote another one of his maxims, attesting to his business acumen: If you see what I see, I see it too.

Why not? I ask Joey, in an attempt to disarm his unwillingness a bit.

I cannot do it in the presence of them. It is just like rehearsing. Also impossible to do. We have to pretend. Oenmoeglich! It can only be done in front of an audience, but then it is not a rehearsal. And when there is nobody there, you do not have an audience. Why cannot we do it without doing it? Maybe I should go it alone. Then I can do it, he whispers, from under the table. We have been here before, as I recall, somewhere in the bygone days of futures past. At this crucial junction (the ball could roll either way, to interview or not to interview, to stay or not to return), Coco enters, in his handsome Failures United outfit, including his Make Pointless International Famous Again baseball hat. Nevertheless, he is crying profusely, wailing like a caterpillar in the process of being broken on a wheel.

Coco, what happened?!? He howls louder, even the flowers on the wallpaper in our cosy little corner at the Cafe Schiller start whimpering along with him, creating a steadily flowing fountain of tears

I lost my sock! He sobs even louder and blows his nose in it. And that’s the end of the matter. In the midst of this considerable confusion and meandering melancholy, I take the opportunity to release my trick question:

Are you different? Coco is immediately alert, and to the point, as if awoken from a bad dream.

From what? But no. We are exactly the same.

Only the world has changed. It has become more aggressive, says Buster.

Even more laughable, even more fun, sighs Sugar.

But yes, in our show the time we live in is referred to, continues Buster. One big problem: clowns have no memory. He is not allowed one: he will not survive otherwise. We are only in the moment, the act itself. So, we keep forgetting everything. That is our fate. It is also very helpful. It helps with rehearsing if you do not know that you are repeating something. Maybe repeating is the point of no return. The other side of forgetting.

Like: hey, what are you doing in here?

I really do not know.

Me too.

I have not got a clou.

What was the question again?

I see that they have painted me in a corner once more. And I have heard it before, Despite Grock’s famous dictum (‘theory and philosophy aside and practicalities and physicalities first’) I decide to throw it over a philosophical bow, with a punchline waiting in the wings:

What is the point of the point of no return in an otherwise pointless universe?

Can we start all over again, please? Go back to the beginning? When I was not here? Coco says, checking the latest from the Wall Street Journal on his smart phone.

You cannot repeat the past, I say.

You cannot? What do you mean, you cannot? Of course you can. We do it all the time. We always have a comeback, affirms Buster.

You can always come back, but you cannot come back all the way, says no one in particular.

I do not agree. I find rehearsal even less fun, much less agreeable than before, interrupts Joey.

Is that something new that you are saying? Buster asks.

No, it is new that you hear it, Joey retorts.

Must be the hearing aids. But you are right: it is all about how you are hiccupping against an act, Buster says, puffing at a bitterbal, in an attempt to cool it down.

It all depends on how you do it, true that all too true. But that is off the record! We will not give away our companys secrets, Joey emphasizes.

But that is what is so problematic. You are really interviewing us at the worst possible and thinkable of moments! The darkest hour of the in between time, opines Buster, expertly dipping the still very hot bitterbal in some Zaanse mustard. We are generally so totally depressed, that a look in the distorting mirror makes us happy. That is where we see ourselves in a positive light, he adds, with a sigh.

You know what we should do? Lock the doors of the theatre with everybody in it and swallow the key. Or burn the place to the ground. Wooooooosh! The theatre, the show as a prison. A situation you cannot escape. No exit, no entry, no return. No point. Bliss! exclaims Joey, rhetorically.

What will be in the show? I ask, reverting to practicalities.

Whatever will be, will be, but more of the same, basically, only backwards, according to Buster. The principles have not changed: no sex, no politics, membership of a political party is verboten, and never forget rule 8a: on that matter opinions are divided. Also, we bring you the last remainders, a couple of things we’ve done before, but no leftovers, no table scraps. Everything is durably recyclable in the time-space curve. Until now we have one act, with horses, some scenes, two Japanese skits, some mimical things and some songs. We will decide at the very last moment.

On stage, in fact, Sugar says. I am just curious, what is the name for an act with horses again? Sugar starts studying the Great Clownish Dictionary by monsieur le professeur Tristan Remy, from which he at intervals throws a word in the ring, like a skinned rabbit out of a magicians hat.

Hold your harses! Coco mumbles, in obscure bitterballish, with a burnt tongue.

In the end you will have about fifty acts we can perform anywhere in the world. On cruise ships, theatres, circuses, supermarkets, haywagons...

Antipodist! Petomaniac!

But we are really incapable of anything. That is the happy conclusion of it all. However good we are, we are not able to do a single thing right. We have no diction. No sense of direction. No sense of humor. And if things threaten to go well, we can always sabotage each other.

Yes, Coco agrees, we are very good at sewing an ear onto each other. Revenge is our main drive. But at least we are getting nowhere and it is all pretty considerably useless. We are experts in that! Simply the best!

Experts! Textperts! Equilibrists! Contortionists!

Maybe I should go it alone, daydreams Buster. A monologue with not so many words on a Sunday matinee. Anyway, I will just do what I have done all my life. I dream all day. That you do not have to a thing and that everything goes by itself. I will not give away the monologue, but it contains time...

Ten years of pointlessness, reminisces Coco. It started to go wrong as soon as we started with it, but then we were very young and bleu...

A relationship is like a railway track: two parallel lines that meet somewhere in the future, on a speck on the horizon, says Buster, overcome by emotion, having shot all his gunpowder.

Is that then what it is that it is, the point of no return?

That is when you have killed someone. Or when you leave church after the singing, argues Sugar, in silence.

I refer to rule 8a, says Coco, neutrally.

We have passed that a long time ago, says Joey, his old cheerful self again, sensing that the interview is nearly over, the next in line is already sitting at the bar, a journalist from the New York Times.

But is it the point after which you cannot go any further or from which you never can go back? Nothing to win or nothing to lose?

Laurel, our musical clown, could answer you that. But he is not here, at present.

Why not, by the way?

He is over there, with the past in.

Practising.

For the future.

Nervous? Just wait and see!