The Elephant in the Room

Since I have a little time on this, my day off, thought I would address a recent update to the Feld Entertainment site that has a lot of former circus people shook:



I stopped checking the Feld site a long time ago, mostly because they never seemed to update the site.
But it looks like there's been a pretty recent update, which includes this link on the Careers --> Auditions page.

Was I shocked and excited to see this, yes. All sorts of things ran through my head, a barrage of memories, scents, sensations, moments. It all flowed through my head in an instant. Followed quickly by a rush of hope. Followed just as quickly by the logical part of my brain grabbing that hope, throttling it, and cramming it into a bottle.

Let me explain why I'm not very hopeful (or shouldn't be).
And then let me describe how this really feels. Which might be weird for you, but if it bothers you, I say don't read it.


Reasons not to get your hopes up:

• There will be no train. Freight rail travel costs went up 200% right before the circus closed. The cost of the train was a major reason why the circus closed. If this show opens again as a tour, it will be a truck tour.


• There will be few/no animals. Last I knew, Feld had sold most of its young elephants to zoos for breeding or sent them to a Florida animal sanctuary. The elephants remaining at the Center for Elephant Conservation owned by the Felds are the older ladies who were retired from showbiz even before the circus closed. And again, the elephants and the controversy surrounding them was a big reason for the circus's closure.


• There will likely not be a live band. It is fair to assume that a renewed Ringling show operating as a truck tour, without animals, would be a LOT smaller. The Gold Unit was the smallest Ringling show with one ring and a 6-piece band. Most one-ring circuses in the US only have a few musicians: 1-2 on keys, a drummer, a conductor who maybe also plays trumpet, and someone to run Ableton software and electronic cues if the musicians can't do it. I don't expect a trombone spot, it would be an unneeded expense.


• Many former circus folk will not come back. Most of us have worked very hard to move on with our lives. I know that the clowns have been discussing whether or not they'd return upon seeing this audition page, and it seems that a lot of them might not. People have families, and new jobs that offer a lot more stability than a Feld show that may-or-may-not survive. People have to look out for themselves. I think we've all had our hearts broken once, and many would rather not go through that again.

Which brings me to how this really feels. Which you may or may not want to hear, but I want to get off my chest.

On the phone with a friend last night, I tried to describe what this feels like.
The closest I could come to describing it was, "It feels like pulling a dead body out and parading it around, saying "Look, it's still alive! Aren't you happy?""

I mean, that's the PC version of what I'm feeling. But it goes deeper than that.
If it upsets you to think about dead relatives, you may want to stop reading now.


After my mother died, I had lots of dreams about her.
Some of them were nice, dreams of spending time with her when she was healthy.
Others were a horror. Nightmares of reliving her suffering over and over and being helpless to stop it.
And others were just messed up.

I remember one where my mother came out of the grave, dirty and stiff and her skin just wrong, her looking at me and saying she's here and OK now, maybe I could help her get cleaned up? Let's go back to the house. Maybe you can help me find a job, Meggie. I'm better now, see? And all I saw was the tag still tied to her toe, with her name and height and weight and date of her death.

In the dream, I was supposed to be glad. The person I loved was there in front of me. Everything was going to be ok. "Isn't this what you wanted?" whispered my brain.

But it wasn't ok. Because dead people don't come back. It was wrong, bad, sickening, and pitiful in the worst possible way. And it hurt almost more than when she died in the first place, to see her like that even in a stupid messed-up dream. Alive, but not. Desperate to fit back into a place where she no longer belonged.


That's what this feels like right now. It feels like watching a corpse desperately trying to stand up and rejoin the living.
"Look, I'm OK now."

Hmmm. I'm not convinced.

Now that said, putting my weirdo feelings aside, I know nothing about what's planned and any feelings I'm having about just seeing an audition announcement page are pretty inconsequential.

I've heard speculation, everything from "the old Ringling" to a Gold show version to a Hugh Jackman limited edition tour. Some people even suggested it might be some kind of movie production.
I don't know what this link means, or what it will lead to. I have no idea what's planned for the brand or any potential shows.
I DO know that anything called "Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey" is NOT going to be the same show that died in 2017.
Whatever it is, it cannot be the same. So what will it be?
Would it be something that I would want to participate in?
Would there even be any non-musical work that I could do for Feld? Would they even want me? (Especially if anyone at corporate reads this post? Yikes.)
What would have to happen for me to drop everything and go with Ringling again?

So many questions and no answers just yet.
A part of me would love to be "back" with Ringling, wishes for nothing more.
The realistic part of me knows that what once was can never be again, and therefore I shouldn't get my hopes up.
But I wanted to digest it, and get some of this out in the open. It was helpful.
So thanks for listening.

Whatever we think or feel about this, let's just all wait and see what happens.