Amy Lu's View

Sometimes I don’t really know what I think I know.

This was illustrated for me recently when a friend asked what the Sondheim song “Send in the Clowns” is about. He had just performed it for our church’s virtual coffee house.

I confidently started replying about how I loved the song and we had recently seen an astounding performance of it from Twin Cities theatre star Sally Wingert and…it was about…

I ended up mumbling something about disillusionment and an aging actress. Which probably was simplistic but not totally inaccurate. And gave Chad the opening to introduce me (I was next up on the bill with a monologue) with “speaking of aging actresses…”

Which led to groans and my protestations of “but I AM an aging actress which is better than the alternative.” (And really, we’re all an aging something. I’m also an aging librarian, runner, drummer, wife, pet owner, friend, blogger–you get the idea).

Days later, I’m still struck by how confident I was in what I knew until I tried to actually articulate it. As a child of the 70’s I have a powerful memory of watching Bernadette Peters sing the song and feeling like I got it. I’ve always understood this song, haven’t I?

I think that’s the power of a great song–it feels meaningful, even if that meaning is beyond words, or the meaning isn’t what the song is literally about. (Although assuming “Send in the Clowns” is actually about disillusionment, I do think I had an understanding of that, even in the 70’s, even as a kid, although probably a different understanding than I do today).

I also think it’s a great illustration of how we assume we know something until we really stop to think about it. For me, there’s nothing that encapsulates this better than trying to explain something to someone.

I think this also illustrates that I really suck at explaining things. Maybe that’s one of the reasons that I’m a librarian rather than a teacher–as a librarian I can give you the resources and let you draw your own conclusions. In that spirit, I don’t intend for this post to really unlock the mystery of “Send in the Clowns”–there is the interweb for that. (Wikipedia even does a serviceable job).

But after thinking about it a little bit more, I think it means (at least on some level) that if things aren’t going well, make a spectacle out of it. Don’t shy away from the failure, embrace it.

Maybe this is how having the point of view of the song from an actress (aging or not) is relevant–it’s all about telling and crafting your own story, even if the story isn’t going as you hoped. You can still find meaning (or at least entertainment/blog inspiration) in it.

*NOT in the creepy “Poltergeist” way (which I’ve never seen and don’t intend to)–although clowns can be creepy.