Fun and responsibility – Wonderfool

“You are a court jarror,” says D., “You are the fool.” He had surprisingly invited me to his studio and initiated our Taroto session with the words: “I will never read the cards for someone when I was asked about it. But now and then I choose someone for whom I read the cards and today I chose you. «

I feel flattered and am a little nervous that pleasant or uncomfortable message the cards have. D. Looks for me how someone who is a medium who is in possession of a truth that I do not know. He is neither dressed unusually nor does he use his voice in a special way. It is more the case that his actually profane appearance is surrounded by a kind of aura.

Since he was ten years old, D. has been practicing this activity professionally, i.e. against a remuneration. He first read other children, then adults. He learned it from his grandmother. A verbally handed over technology that has tradition and is passed on within the family.

The first card I open is “The Fool”. It is also the very first in the deck. D. says: »A cayenbar is there to entertain the farm. Sometimes he speaks the critical truth about the people at the farm – that is particularly entertaining, for the people at the farm. «

But: A crew shouldn’t want to be king himself. Only under the guise of apparent harmlessness is the court fool desired, and his criticism is not only ridiculed, but also captured by the authorities. In archaic societies, the figure of the village clown was a kind of oracle and spoke the opposite of what she meant. The “truth” has been conveyed.

If, for example, a villager was sick, the clown was asked if it would survive. He was asked to the bedside and led a conversation with the sick, presumably one that was crossed by jokes. At the end of the session it was clear whether the patient would survive. Because the opposite of the news that the (sad) clown brought up became true.

Fun and responsibility

Bahar Kaygusuz

Olga Hohmann does not understand what work is and tries to find out every day. Sitting in her Ortlos Office, she explores her biography and enjoys her own neuroses. All texts on Dasnd.de/hohmann.

The clown said the truth by log. He put his clothes around the wrong way and sat backwards on the horse. An outlaw. Perfectly, such small deviations from the standard often have a confirming effect, just as a public protest is often acquired by the government and used as a figurehead for freedom of expression. Maybe it is what the clown is melancholic.

It is no secret that all clowns are sad. Is it because you wear the burden of truth on your shoulders or the burden that it means to just express it justified? Or that when you speak the truth you know that it often has no consequences?

In fact, clowns have to be sad, because it is the misfortunes that lead to laughing at them. The clown has to slip on the banana, he has to injure himself and limp a little (but not too much). Because its misery is our ability to empathize. We identify with his literal vulnerability. It reminds us of ourselves. This lies the cathartic moment. The clown redeems us from our feeling of being the only ones that fail because of the challenges of everyday life. Even more: Clowns give us the feeling that our failure, in contrast to their failure, is a relatively beautiful one.

In archaic societies, the fool was the one who blown into the ashes of the campfire so that it never went out. At the same time, the fool was not allowed to blow too much, because the fire should not become too high, not get autonomy, but burn moderately. An allegory on the social role of the fool? Or on the function of humor at all? After all, the clown nose is the smallest cladding in the world and at the same time universally readable.

There is a school in the Swiss Ticino in which clowns are trained: the Accademia Teatro Dimitri. It is the school of the clown Dimitri, one of the last places where you can learn the ancient craft. This craft, like that of the Tarot card reading, is also handed down orally. It is said that the oral tradition is actually the safest form of passing on information to subsequent generations. It is said that it is best to sing.

In some ways, it is not only charming, but even necessary to behave a little fool-ish, that is, to slip, lose control, to make yourself vulnerable and vulnerable. For example in love – or in art. Love is the Wisdom of the fool and the dolly, you say. And I think: isn’t every fool Wonderfool?

DS Tarot reading has been working for a few weeks now, along with the question of whether the fools can be free from his capture through authorities. Are there autonomous fools? Advocates of the beautiful failure? I think of the man who run the entire Berlin marathon with an pineapple on my head, for me the actual Winner of the competition.

Now one of my has mostly worshiped since childhood Fools suddenly died: Eva, one of the two fantastic halves of the artist Eva and Adele. For me, the two always represented the concept of “10 Points for Passion”: the most deadly silliness in the radically non-institutional sense. Like the traditional court fools, they stood for a kind of lifelong performance, which can only be interrupted by death itself. However, there was no court that could have acquired. They prevail in their non-paralyzability. Do these figures die out the everyday, autonomous fools in our generation? I believe in the opposite. Because: Isn’t Every Fool Wonderfool?