At first Peter hadn't understood the nuanced distinction between the Clown and the Fool. They were a matched pair in this ensemble, dressed in reversed opposing colors. Both were said to have, for a time, led the band their way. It seemed unimaginable as now this medieval, military style camp was laid now, set always for some show, a joust, a quick parade.
The Clown/Fool pair was just a silly patter. They were pure and simple jokesters pulling stitched thread endlessly from caps, undermining the state of things. It was first in their reaction to game that he began to notices those subtle differences. The Clown would take big mock steps toward his adversary, he would ham his face in big hyperbolic movements. Everything was visible, everything right on the surface. The act was gestural, pantomime. It was all a series of signs that were impossible to escape. They were precise and clear i their motion and notion. One was surrounded by his show, a part of it.
It seemed like it would be easy to punch holes in this facade. It seemed so much like an act that must give way to the archetype of the sad clown. Its brilliance was that it never did collapse of show any real signs of that percieved absence inside of the Clown. And yet we insist that there is an inner sad clown miserably hoping that humanity might have a last slim chance if only his act could pierce that divide between his act self and his sad self. But his own game keeps these two apart. He can't admit, ever, a moment on personal skepticism between the show and the self. Rightly there is no self at all, but only show. Its just a mirage of self that we're given.
The clown would topple your sense of being atop a masterful artifice. He takes artifice and makes it brash and clear, unavoidable. All artifice is rendered amazingly visible. And all is artifice. The clown says to you, you're an act as I. All we are right now are acts. Acts butting up against each other like over-blown balloons. Bouncing, glancing and cascading off of each other's over-blown balloons. And that's all the contact we get. Unreal contact between two unreal projections. And all the while our sad little clowns sit instead sobbing. And maybe at best we hope our acts render rightly might push against each other a little more forcefully. Draw a little closer to the center.
That is why the king/clown interaction is the most fruitful. The power structure and the puncture structure are antipathetic. The authority is destabilized in the interaction, but the clown's artifice too—the artifice he always wishes was unnecessary—is made most manifest as it strips the height of artifice. The interaction threatens the desired full collapse. At the same time, however, as each is masterfully artificial, they bespeak the true strength of such artifice, its resiliency to any other "truth." In truth, both bounce back unharmed from the interaction. Never a king has been brought down by a clown unless he was deceived by the root of his own power. No king is ever so lost in their own mirage that they so neglect the power of appearance. And as such the clown is naught. Only perhaps if the clown were able to lift the veil from so many masses. But such as never happened and is structurally unlikely.
The fool, as Peter comes to realize, is another creature entirely. There is no horizon of artifice versus truth in the fool. This may not at first be evident. The fool will caper just as the clown. The fool will mock and mimic. The fool isn't, however, simply a showman. Nor is the fool simply an idiot. What changes? What changes? Oh it is hard even to say. Where for the clown, the audience is forced into the scene, the fool crosses into the audience, digs deeply into the real world, infecting it with his compromising view. Nothing is hidden to the fool. There can be no inner self sheltered behind the scene. The scene itself is a jagged gash in midst of the day, the self. The fool collapses realms of distinction like a stumbling drunk tearing at the skein. He is in and out at once because such distinction has no meaning at all for him. He is simply a force of nature given a circus suit instead of a padded cell. The question with the fool, the true concern, is if he is a marionette. Is if someone else has control and is manipulating him to their will. And of course it is always possible. But the beauty of the fool is that their is no lever of control for a force of nature. Even if perhaps profit can be gained in one direction from the wild cavorting of the fool, there can be no guarantee that his next direction will totally undo whatever gain. Control is simple an impossibility. The fool is truth itself. Incarnated. Perhaps he will no be effective to any end, or effective at all. But his pure presence stands as a fly in the ointment. Always at the ready to topple any system.
