A Circus, Some Fish Heads, Guitars

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When The Circus Comes To Town

It began with posters. They were slapped on poles and put in shop windows. A big smiling face of a clown, and the words “Circo Brazil.” Brazilian circus. And then at the bottom, a separate piece of white paper saying the dates and location.

It got my attention.

A few days later, as the dates approached, a small white truck cruised through the streets announcing over a loud speaker something like “The Circus is coming, the Circus is coming!” I didn’t understand the Portuguese clearly.

Finally the day or rather weekend approached. The circus would be on Friday, Saturday and Sunday in a vacant lot on the edge of town. EC and I went on Sunday afternoon, the last scheduled performance.

It was a one-tent circus, and a very small one tent at that. The domed canopy itself was bright and cheery, and about the size of a large but not huge house. From the inside, it was decidedly small. There was a circular stage in the middle, a few seats on one side, and a concession stand. If the bleacher seats were full, which they were not, I suspect it would have held less than 100 people.

K came about 15 minutes late and couldn’t get in. There was no more ticket-taker. It illustrated something about the circus, which was that personnel was at a bare minimum. The ticket taker and ticket seller outside the tent, when EC and I came up, was also the master of ceremonies. The concession stand sales clerk was also the acrobat. The other acrobat took her place at the concession stand when she was on stage.

In all, the entire circus was six people. The juggler, who was quite good, came out later as the clown. The master of ceremony came out later as the fire eater. (He was also the man I saw driving the truck announcing the circus.) Only the straight man, who played foil for the clown and the juggler, did just one thing. I later concluded he might be more important than I had initially thought, since he was the one who stood at the center of the stage at the end, surrounded by the other five, and thanked everyone for coming.

As a tiny circus, it was pretty good. The two lithe female acrobats in scanty costumes did feats above the stage, performing individually, that were dangerous and thrilling. I wondered, given how minimalist the circus was overall, how it could afford two acrobats. But later I saw one of the women talking closely with the juggler/clown, and I thought: maybe they are a couple. Maybe each of the women is the partner of one of the men in the circus.

My only criticism was that the circus finished with a group number more about talking. Even if my Portuguese were better, I think “finish big” would have been a better maxim.

After the circus was ended and as we left, I saw outside two or three small trailers behind the tent. They were the older kind with rounded edges pulled by a car. The performers must live in them. These must be their homes. And this must be their life. Going to towns, living in trailers. There may be two or three couples. Perhaps they have children. There was one pudgy adolescent girl wandering around.

Watching the circus, it was hard not to ponder their lives. Were they terrible or great, or both? Going town to town, living out of trailers, making a bit of money. I assume they were from Brazil. Was this an adventure? Or a career? If the latter, it seemed like a very hard life.

There is a reason so many novels and films, from Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, to Carnivale on HBO, are set as traveling circuses.You are prodded to wonder, what sort of lives do they live off stage? What does the sword swallower eat when not swallowing swords? Does the clown smile when his painted one is removed?

There is also a reason so many of these novels and films, like the aforementioned, are dark in tone. The tricks and smiles, the illusions, prod one to imagine what lies behind. And anything that travels, which visits and leaves, is potentially dangerous.

But EC was all smiles. Neither of us could follow fully the banter in Portuguese, but that didn’t matter. Later, at her request, I took one of the posters off the street and taped it up on the wall in her room. She was thrilled. It’s still there now.

Later I saw that the circus had extended its stay in town for a few more shows.

Reading, and Listening

Thanks to the magic of the Internet, I am listening on Spotify to a groovy song called “The Madman Running Through the Fields” that is included on Let’s Go Down and Blow Our Minds: The British Psychedelic Sounds of 1967, a compilation album featuring largely groups I’ve never heard of.

Such as Dantalian’s Chariot, which featured Andy Summers, who more than a decade later, in 1978-79, would achieve fame as guitarist for The Police.

Summers co-wrote the groovy song Madman, and talked about it in his really good memoir, One Train Later, that I just today finished reading.

When he co-wrote Madman, he and is co-writer Zoot Money were completing their transition to psychedelic music and drugs, after quite a few years as a successful rhythm and blues band, Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band.

Dantalian’s Chariot would eventually halt, and Summers would join Eric Burden and the Animals. Summers knew Burden from their days together in London, along with folks like Eric Clapton, who Summers shared guitars and women with.

The Animals too would eventually halt, this time in Los Angeles. Summers would then endure a five-year drought in the sunshine of southern California, where he gave guitar lessons to make ends meet and almost dropped out of music entirely.

Eventually around 1975, he mustered the resolve to return to London, with his new American wife. Through much work, he managed to find a toe-hold in the music scene as a guitarist for Neil Sedaka, a big pop star.

A year or two later, he would meet Stewart Copeland and Sting. After various machinations, they would end up as the band we know as The Police.

I’m telling you all this because it shows something about Summers I had not been aware of: he had lived a whole life before joining The Police and making it big in 1979.

Not for the first time, I am struck by how shallow my knowledge actually can be about things I think I know something about.

I loved The Police. And based on hearing their songs, I assumed that Sting was the big, creative force, and that the drummer Stewart Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers were pretty good but basically being carried along by Sting, who after all did sing and write virtually all the songs. And he had that cool name!

But I have now read Sting’s memoir Broken Music , Copeland memoir (one of them), and now Summers’ book One Train Later.

It’s clear that all three are extraordinarily talented individuals. Which had a lot to do with them making great music together.

Copeland, while still in the Police, started writing soundtracks for movies. He started at the top with Francis Ford Coppola and his film Rumble Fish. Copeland went on to do many soundtracks for many movies.

Summers was a contemporary of The Beatles. He was born a year before George Harrison. So Summers didn’t grow up listening to The Beatles, or even to rock and roll, which didn’t clearly exist yet. Summers grew up listening to American jazz, about the hardest form of popular music there is. Before he had hit 16, he was on his way to mastering this very, very difficult form of guitar playing.

Because he was so good, he was playing in bands at 16 and in a few years hanging out with other up and comers in London, like Clapton and John Mayall. Musically, Summers had both breadth and depth. He said he came up with the iconic guitar part on “Every Breath You Take” because he had been listening to all of Bartok’s violin concertos to help him play with Robert Fripp, who he had known since they were teenagers in the same town in England.

I should mention I had the good luck to see Summers perform with another guitarist in Paris. I think it was in Paris. I can’t say the year or even the decade. Probably the 1990s. It was one of those out of time moments. I remember the concert pretty well, but not exactly exactly where it was or when it was.

It was in a small room, and attended by just a few people. Summers and another guitar player did duets together. No singing. They did a particularly wonderful instrumental version of “Message in A Bottle”, one of my favorite songs. Summers, during his five-year stint in the wilderness in Los Angeles, learned to play classical guitar, one of the hardest instruments of any kind to learn, so I hear. It probably helped with this duet.

When a group is famous, or has recently been famous, the individual members can sometimes for a while not attract much attention. I think that’s why Summers was playing in such a small venue. As I remember it, it was a very small, with just a handful of people there. Akin to my Brazilian Circus in size!

Tummy Time: Eat Them Heads.

My journey with carapau began when I saw them in a market in Sao Luis, as I told about in a past newsletter. Later I ate big ones in a riverside restaurant. I vowed to dance again with this fish, even if the dance were difficult.

This week, K and I were in a small restaurant near our home. On the “plates of the day” was “carapauzinhos,” or little carapau. These were what I had seen in the market in Sao Luis. I ordered them.

Small indeed they were. Each fish was about the size of one of my fingers. I asked the waitress, should I eat the whole fish? Yes, she said with a laugh. Even the head? Yes, she said again. I bit the head off of one in front of her. She laughed again.

The head was spicy and crunchy. Not hard to like at all. I proceeded to eat 10 or 12 of the little fish, though not all of them. After a while, I tired of the little fish.

These fish had been fried, although without batter. So I could see their skin pretty well. I would say these little fish had not been gutted. This meant I was eating not only the fish heads, but the fish guts. That gave me pause. But apparently that was what was done. And perhaps this is what occurs with sardines in the can.

I enjoyed my plate of carapauzinhos, heads and possibly guts and all. Along with some vegetable soup and various sides. K, as I expected, refused to eat even one fish. She had some sort of chicken dish, which was pretty good she said.

The cost for my meal of fish was 10 euros, I think. Various tasty sides were included.

Carapauzinhos

P.S. In more personal news, our son Max just finished visiting. He is on a break from his first year at college at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he is studying engineering. The school has an unusual week-long October break. Nice to have had him here.