"How's Your Health?"

One of the great learning experiences of my life was meeting the great Lou Jacobs when I was at Clown College.

He had a thick German accent, he was well in his 70s, he walked like a question mark and repeated himself "less spaghetti, less spaghetti" (his term for extraneous movements).

I was in his classes thinking, how does this guy take a fall? How does he run off when the ringmaster blow his whistle when the next act is starting? How does he travel across the country? Who would want to hire an ancient clown? Of course, I was pretty young and really into the falling over. Hey, everyone knows clowns fall over...

Now just to shut my mouth. Lou did a public performance in his little car. He had a mastery of the audience, the likes of which I can hardly describe.

His tiny police car races around the track, comes to a halt. (Long pause) A door flies open. (Long pause) A giant clown shoe appears. (Long pause) A leg seems to unfold from the car. (Long pause) followed by a hand. This goes on with the crowd going nuts laughing and loving it.

Here's the thing. He was funny. This "old man" had complete control of a room of hundreds and hundreds of observers.

Wasn't I the lucky one to have seen this? Yup, for many reasons.

I watched realizing, it's not how old you are. It's not that you can take a fall and pop back up. Clowning has nothing to do with any of those that, that's just a skill, clowning is not simply about skills, skills are icing on the cake. Clowning is an entire character from the inside to the outside. It's how you walk and talk, how you move, or don't move, what you think, who you voted for, why you choose to do this for a living!

I watched Mr. Lou Jacobs realizing you not only can be a clown your whole life; you get better and better the longer you do it. What you leave behind in physical ability you make up for in physical control.

In my own life, for spiritual health and physical health, I do Aikido. Aikido is a martial art with a mind body connection. it is very physical, a lot of fighting moves and a lot of rolling when you get thrown. I have learned to move purposely. The person that gave me my black belt test from Japan is in his mid 70s and is a solid piece of steal.

There might be a pattern here of teachers in their 70s. Hmmm. I'll have to think about it.

The point being, use what you have with purpose and control. You will have more control and be funnier.