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A few months ago, I drove from Boston to New York City to be in a room full of idiots.
Absolute fools.
At least, they were trying to be.
I joined these people, watching them as they made weird faces, as they got down on the floor, as they made wild noises.
We're down here.
We're swamp creatures.
You're going down all the way to the very bottom of your vocal range.
You're making the lowest note that you can with your voice and you're dragging your fingers around and all the algae and the sound is coming up through your asshole.
You go... Ew, you're so gross.
Then we're coming up to this level here.
This was a clown class taught by Tally Medell, a performer you might know from the Oscar-winning movie Everything Everywhere, All at Once.
They play Becky, the partner of Stephanie Hsu's daughter character in the movie.
Hi, honey!
Hi, Mr. Wong!
Hi, Becky!
Thank you for coming!
Please call me when you need me.
When not on screen, Tally happens to be a professional clown.
A clown teacher, a humble student, and philosopher of clown.
Tally believes that clown is an important kind of performance art because it's about silliness, which is not an easy thing to be these days.
I do not think I'm someone who gives good clown, at least not instinctively.
But for many reasons I'll get to, I can see the appeal of trying.
From the Boston Globe, this is Love Letters.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Welcome to Season 10.
I'm thrilled to be here, emotional to be here, grateful that you've returned or that you're joining for the first time.
Long-time listeners might remember that when we started the Love Letters podcast, we spent an entire season trying to answer one question.
During Season 1, we asked, how do you get over a breakup?
And over eight episodes, I think we got some answers.
In Season 2, we asked... how do you meet someone?
And again, I was pretty satisfied that we came up with somewhat of a guide.
In this season we're going to answer a question that's been on my mind, especially over the last few years.
That question is, can people really change?
Can I change?
Can you change?
Or are we all just spinning our wheels trying to be different and better and optimized, when really we're just humans who will repeat the same behavior over and over until we're done, for better or worse?
I've always been an optimist when it comes to positive change.
I believe change is possible and have had faith in people's ability to grow and improve.
In the context of relationships, I have never believed that cheaters always cheat.
I do not assume we're stuck in our ways.
But sometimes I do have doubts because I know I pulled some of the same shit in 2024 that I did in 2014, even though I've tried to change.
And when letter writers come to the Love Letters advice column and ask can I get better at relationships?
Or can the person I love become someone new?
I don't always know what to say.
So let's figure it out together.
Over the course of this season we'll have people telling stories about change, how it happened for them or didn't.
As you listen, please call in.
You can tell us your stories of change, how you define change and what you think about the stories you hear.
Our fancy new phone number is 401-484-0590.
Our first story of the season is about someone who changed not by choice and then figured out how to change again.
Her story is what brought me to that clown class in the first place.
It's complicated, but she can explain.
Let's start with an introduction.
And I promise we'll get back to the clown of it all.
Hi, my name is Fumi Adejabi.
My pronouns are she, her.
I'm a writer, a copywriter, and a filmmaker.
I'm in my office right now, which is in Lower Manhattan.
But I normally am in Brooklyn.
Fumi, who is 30, is a lifetime New Yorker.
My parents are Nigerian Americans.
And they immigrated here when they were in their teens by themselves.
And my sister and I, I have just one sister, grew up in New York, in Queens.
My family's like really, really close.
So it was always just my parents and then my younger sister, who's only two years younger than me.
And my grandma, who lives with us, she's in her mid-80s.
I always thought that I was going to be a doctor or a scientist of some sort because...
That's what Nigerian children are.
They're doctors or lawyers or engineers, and it's very upsetting when you're not.
Tell me when you were a kid what you thought your adult romantic life would be like.
When I got to middle and high school and the boys' schools and the girls' schools started mingling, I
So my school is predominantly white and really, really small.
And there was a clear beauty standard that I just wasn't.
So I would have crushes on people and they would never have crushes on me back.
And then I was like, I guess I'm just an ugly duckling who will never be in a relationship.
And it wasn't sad because I was like, I guess that's just what life is like for some people.
And then...
I graduated and went to college.
And it was still a very white college, but things were different.
Going to college changes a lot of things for Fumi.
She starts to realize maybe she's not meant to be a science person.
When I went to college I took, like in my first semester, like an Africana studies class, slash a 200-level English class.
And it was so good and so fun, and I was really good at it.
And I remember I came home for Thanksgiving break, and my mom was like, so what are you majoring in?
And I was like, English.
I think I'm going to be an English major.
And her next words were, and?
The more Fumi pursues what she likes, the more she thrives.
And she realizes that some of this is about the privilege to do what she wants.
As immigrants, Her parents were in a position where they had to do whatever was best to support the family, even if that meant sacrifice.
My dad worked really, he was like a cab driver when I was growing up.
He's not anymore, but he was.
And he worked really long hours.
So he was like always working.
And I remember once on like a bring your parents to work day, he came with me.
He was not that happy to be there because he was like, I should be working.
But we were taking, like we were in like my art class.
And we got a little assignment.
You know we're sitting next to each other doing whatever we were doing.
And at the end of the 40-minute period, I looked over and he had drawn a photorealistic sloth.
Whoa.
Yeah, it was so crazy.
I was like, what is going on?
Like, have you been able to do this this whole time?
But I think he, if he wasn't, he's an exterminator right now.
Queen's pest control, if you're in New York City.
Queens post-control exterminators.
But he's an exterminator and I think, if he wasn't, that he would be a history teacher or he would be some manner of artist.
Fumi graduates.
She goes into her early 20s, living a life her parents made it possible for her to have.
She's a copywriter, doing creative work.
She has fun.
She has friends.
She dates around a little.
It's around this time, though, that she suffers a huge family trauma.
Fumi isn't going to share too many details here for privacy reasons.
But when Fumi is in her mid-20s, her mother has a medical event.
After what was supposed to be a simple procedure, when her mom's supposed to be healing, it's clear that something is off.
Fumi's mother is not getting better.
My sister and I were like taking care of her and things started sort of didn't seem right.
But they didn't seem so wrong, but they felt not right.
And everything that we were looking up online, like nothing that was happening to my mom, was really indicated for the type of procedure that she had.
One of my big regrets is that we didn't like take her temperature and also that we didn't immediately override her.
She's kind of the boss of the family.
And so we were like, you don't seem like that well, maybe we should take you back to the hospital.
And she was like, I don't want to go to the hospital.
I'm fine.
I'll be fine.
And yeah, that's like one of like my life's biggest regrets.
And then long story short, she fell into a coma for months.
I'm sorry.
And it was one of those things where like, you know how like on Grey's Anatomy, the families are like, The loved ones will ask the doctors, like, is she going to be okay?
Is she going to be okay?
And then they're like we're doing everything we can because they can't really say they can't give you the odds, because the odds are not good.
It was like that every day for months.
Fumi moves home to help her mom.
It's all hands on deck.
When this is going on, it's like, I'm sure that's the only thing you can think about.
Yeah, it was pretty terrible.
So that period where it was like kind of a life and death emergency situation every day, that was kind of a long time, like months.
Not only is Fumi caring for her mom and, to some extent, her 80-year-old grandma, there's also someone else at home, someone new.
At the end of 2019.
During the Christmas season my mom she works for the Department of Children's Services in New York She brought home a four-month-old one day.
She brought home a four-month-old one day.
She's not a caseworker anymore, so we were all a little bit surprised because she's not interacting with families daily.
But this little four-month-old, they were like, it's two days after Christmas.
We're going to put him in an orphanage because they're not doing foster care placement.
So that's what we're going to do.
My mom felt bad.
No one should be alone at the holidays, especially not a sweet little four-month-old.
So she brought him home for the weekend and he's been with us ever since.
He's about to turn five in August.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, he's a sweet boy.
But during my mom's big emergency he was one and I was the backup caregiver, like the backup foster parent.
And it was really only on paper that I was supposed to be that.
But then this happened.
She was incapacitated for such a long time that I became the primary caregiver.
Like my whole family was like, working together to take care of him.
But I was doing a lot of it, and it was really, really, really hard.
It was really, really, really hard.
I think for people who have not been primary caregivers, can you sort of talk through what a day might have looked like during that time with all these responsibilities?
She was quite far away because that was the team that was best able to like take care of her specific situation.
But it was like 50 minutes from my house, maybe an hour and a half in traffic if you didn't leave at the right time.
And it was still COVID times.
So only two people were allowed to be in there with her at the same time.
So my dad was going every day and my sister and I would go every other day.
Like I would drive over there and sit and like rub her feet and hold her hands.
My sister would take care of the baby and I'd be there all day.
And I'd like work.
I didn't stop working this whole time.
I could have.
I had the support from agency, but it was good to be focusing on something that wasn't the emergency.
So I'd go and I'd hold her hand.
I'd talk to her and I'd read her things.
And I, oh my God, this time was so crazy.
Like I knew everything that was going on.
I knew what medication she was on and I knew the dosages.
I knew the settings of the various different machines that were keeping her alive.
I knew the scale shift schedules of the nurses.
I knew when to call in order to, because if you called like right when they've they're doing a shift change, then you don't get a nurse who's been with her all night and so they don't have any like great information.
But if you call too close to the end, then they're getting ready to leave and they're not really interested in talking.
So you have to like time it perfectly.
Anyone who's been a caregiver like this knows how this goes.
It's your whole life.
Your brain is totally focused on a loved one so much that everything else falls away.
Fumi, her sister and their dad are all over this taking turns with Fumi's mom, a baby and a grandma in the house.
And eventually, there's positive change.
Fumi's mom starts to respond to a new way of treating her problem.
And after being in a coma, For so long, she wakes up and she starts to get better.
Suddenly, things are hopeful.
Fumi is 26 when her mom regained some independence.
And my God, it is so nice to tell you that this story with her mother has a happy ending.
But here's the complicated thing.
Even though Fumi's life is starting to calm down and the emergency of it is all over, Fumi herself has changed, and not for the better.
Fumi is now wired to expect bad things to happen, to be anxious to be on edge, like she was for so many months.
During the time her mom was sick, everything in Fumi's life had shifted.
She wasn't finding joy or escape in anything.
She couldn't sit still, be present, and enjoy.
Thank God for the baby.
I actually don't know what would have happened to us if we didn't have a sweet little baby we needed to keep alive.
My friends would check on me occasionally, or they would check on me with a frequency that I was comfortable with, but I wasn't really going anywhere.
I was definitely not dating.
I was never really an anxious or socially anxious person, but I developed this very intense social anxiety where I couldn't really be out.
This inability to feel okay and safe doesn't get better when the stresses of life get better.
Fumi is trapped in this bad feeling.
I had a hard time leaving the house, or like leaving my mom's side or leaving where the information was, because I would be scared that every call I'd get was another disaster, because for so long it was that.
Yeah, for so long it actually was, every call was another disaster.
That when it stopped being that, my body Like, hadn't really caught up to that yet.
I want to talk about that because we talked about that and it I Having had a sick parent there's that feeling of like the fight or flight that doesn't stop.
And in your case, I can't even imagine.
I'm not a mental health professional, so I don't know what to call it.
But like it took me a long time after losing my mom that I realized that when the phone rang I was like what?
What?
And I... You don't... I don't... Like...
For you, you know, you have this wonderful thing that your parent gets better.
And yet, like it's not like, your body and brain just like shifts into everything's okay land, right?
Like, did you feel stuck in that?
Or did you feel just generally scared of like, can you talk about sort of how it's difficult to shift out of that fight or flight mode of like what's happening?
Yeah, it was really hard.
I didn't know how to be present among people anymore.
Cause I was like really, really in my head.
Cause that's where I had to be for so long.
And like, that's just it.
I mean, I'm happy that I was there for my family and I would do it again.
But it was like coming out of it.
Like my, my body really had a hard time catching up to.
The emergency is over, or the emergency is much smaller than it was.
Fumi says she was lucky.
Around this time, she finds a really good therapist.
This mental health professional validates Fumi's experience and gives her some tools to get better.
Yeah, I was working with an excellent therapist.
She was so patient with me.
She gave me mantras or, like, encouraged me to practice some.
Like before, I'd like.
I would like leave a social gathering, quickly run to the bathroom, talk to myself in the mirror.
Like you can do this.
You're going to have a good time.
You're having so much fun already.
It's happening right now.
You're great.
You're funny.
You're charismatic.
People like you.
Go get them.
Yeah, I don't know where I'd be without her.
All of this therapy mantra work is great.
But Fumi wants another kind of fix, too.
She doesn't want to be a person who's always expecting the worst.
She wants to be present to have fun, maybe even date again.
That's when she listens to a podcast.
No, not this one.
Sorry.
It's okay.
I was listening to This American Life.
We allow people to listen to This American Life.
Okay.
But only that one.
I'll allow it.
Just this one time.
The episode featured an interview with someone who had a show at the Brooklyn Comedy Collective.
Secretly, Fumi has dreamed of performing, and she's like, you know what?
I'm going to check what's going on with improv at this place.
I started looking at the classes, and I scrolled, I got to the bottom, and I saw a clown.
And I was like, now what's that?
And I had a friend who years before had told me she did this crazy exercise in a clown class and that really stuck with me because
It sticks with you when someone tells you they've taken a clown class.
So I saw a clown and I was like, maybe this could be something.
It truly can't get worse than what's happening right now.
So Fumi signs up for clown class.
And this is when change happens all over again.
She'll explain after a short break.
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We're all out of the ordinary.
There's a battle playing out right now over who should control American universities.
We're going to bankrupt these universities.
In season one, we were guessing what was to come.
Now, we know.
We want nothing less than $500 million from Harvard.
From the Boston Globe and on the media, it's season two of The Harvard Plan.
This time, it really is personal.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
So back to the story of Fumi, whose mother is doing so much better after an emergency medical event.
Fumi's life should be going great at this point.
But she's still very anxious all the time.
And she has signed up to take a class in clown.
Tell me about the first class you go to.
I walk into clown level one, which was taught by Tali Medell, who's excellent.
So I go to clown level one.
We get this curriculum.
And...
I don't remember exactly what was on it, but I do remember that I immediately took a picture and I sent it to someone because I was like, isn't this nuts?
And they were like, yeah, what are you doing?
I said, clown class.
So it was a small class, I think maybe like 10 people or so.
And it was once a week on Tuesday nights.
And it was like the best part of my week for two months.
Without revealing too much of What you learned, because people should have to take this for themselves.
What might be an activity you did in entry level clown?
So you're lined up with like five other people and you're standing with your back at the very like back, touching the back of the stage.
Then the other half of the class is in the audience and you go down the line, starting at the very end, and you take a step forward and you try to make them laugh, but you can't really do anything.
Tali says, you can't put on too much mustard.
So I say that.
You're not, you're not supposed to like do that much.
Just like try and make them laugh.
And then if they don't laugh, you take a step back.
And then it was the next person's turn.
And it's like a race to the front of the stage.
And it was, and like, I've taken so many more clown classes since then.
And that's like such like a like I learned.
It was like my first time learning something so important about clown, which was like you can do so little and it can be to such great impact.
I remember it was me or maybe it was someone else.
You, they like took a step forward.
They tried to do something.
There was no laugh.
And then they got sad.
They got, I got like visibly sad.
And then that got a laugh.
Yeah.
The pathetic response to their attempt.
Exactly.
It was so funny.
And then I had stepped back.
I got a laugh.
I stepped forward again.
And then if you get a laugh, you can do it again.
So I'd step forward again.
And then I was still milking that laugh.
And then I'd step forward again.
But the rhythm had changed.
Clown's all about your relationship to the audience.
And it's about your present moment as it relates to you and what you're feeling, and you're trying to externalize what's happening internally.
And you're also encouraging the audience to do that.
So they're taking you in at face value and you're taking them in at face value.
And sometimes the vibe shifts.
So something that worked one second ago won't work again.
Gumi says that being called stupid or foolish in clown class is actually a great compliment.
A word like dumb can be ableist elsewhere is high praise when you're a clown.
I also have a practical question, which is about like it is you clown.
You are a clown.
Do you behave like you're not clowning around, like to clown, like this is how we we say it like does clown.
How do you like?
Yeah, i do clown, i am a clown, but i usually say like i clown, i clown.
That's what the clowns say.
Okay, if someone's like, do you do clown, you know that there may be like, not like in the they're not in the community.
But if they, if they say like do you clown, then maybe they know a little something.
I want to rewind again for a second and ask you what was your relationship to clowns in general growing up?
Are you like a?
Oh no, it's a scary clown.
Are you a?
I love clowns.
Like what?
What had been your clown relationship?
I was indifferent but, if anything, bigoted in that like, in that like.
I was like oh, a clown like Ronald McDonald, red hair, striped pants, face paint.
And I've come to understand that that's a stereotype of a clown.
However, I've kind of like circled back around in my like greater understanding of clowns that all clowns live on a spectrum.
So even though that's not my variety of clown, I actually would love to do a children's show.
The whole point of clown is to get back in touch with your four-year-old, the you who you were at your most present, at your most playful, at your most willing to find a game in anything.
Anyone who's ever been around a toddler for any length of time will just watch them go from game to game, to game to game.
If it stops being interesting, they drop it.
They'll find games out of nothing.
It's like such a, it's such a beautiful thing to watch.
Fumi realizes as she takes the class that she is the perfect model for Clown.
There's a child in the house being a little weirdo in the best ways.
He just sits around like the baby he is, having fun.
The baby was such a blessing for so many reasons.
Like, First and foremost, when my mom was in a coma.
After she came out she said I knew I had to take care of him.
So I had to come back.
And then as I began my clown journey, he is the most brilliant clown I know.
He is.
He is so freaking smart.
It's unbelievable.
He is my muse.
He's my muse.
And getting to be around him as he plays is just, it's the best thing in the world.
The more Fumi does clown or clowns, the more she realizes that clown as a verb seems to be changing her.
What was reset in her mind during a terrible, scary year is shifting again, because she's starting to become more present.
You can't clown without being present.
It's not possible.
So it's really, it is really difficult to like tap into clowns.
But once you start to get it, it gets easier and easier to live there rather than visit there.
I didn't know that this is what Clown was going to be when I started.
I was just hoping to do something fun.
The big problem I was having was that I felt completely dissociated from my life.
And I've since learned that I was going through PTSD and et cetera, et cetera.
But I was feeling extremely separate from myself.
And then Clown... brought me back to myself in a way that I wasn't sure I ever would be able to.
The family trauma had changed Fumi, turning her into someone who couldn't just be.
But as a clown, she's better with friends, work, and on dates.
Fumi tells me that if a clown isn't enjoying what they're doing, they pick up and do something else.
Imagine dating that way, with the purpose of enjoying the process.
I was stopping to smell the flowers.
Like, everywhere and with everyone.
I was asking more questions.
I was genuinely curious or more genuinely curious about the people around me.
I was approaching everything with curiosity because that's what a child does.
I was sometimes intentionally naive.
I think that's a good thing.
I was doing a lot less assuming of anything and a lot more taking a thing at face value.
I'd find myself more and more getting into these conversations with people that ended up being so much longer than maybe I would have anticipated.
Fumi moves out of her family's house again, which makes it easier to date more.
Clown helps her move from one person to the next, knowing when to cut ties, because clowns are very honest.
So, like, I'm deep in my clown era, and I'm well into my, like, healing journey with my therapist.
And then... And I'd had a couple hot girl summers under my belt.
I was feeling really whole.
And like something my therapist had really helped me do like a lot of, was figuring out the kinds of things that make me happy and doing them and like filling my cup.
I was doing a really a much better job than I ever had of filling my cup and feeling like complete on my own.
And I wasn't like I was I wasn't like healing like a like a romantic wound.
I was healing like kind of a different and perhaps worse wound where I felt like I had unknown myself.
And then one night, Fumi is on hinge.
Swiping like usual, no big deal.
I do this thing on Hinge where I forget it exists.
It's just so exhausting to use, so I don't use it, except for twice a month for two days.
Once a month.
For two days I will furiously swipe talk, swipe talk, swipe talk, and then I'm like this was a lot, no more.
And in one of those phases of swipe talk, swipe talk, I match with this guy.
The guy asks a nice question.
What's bringing you joy lately?
And I go, clown.
And I start telling him about clown.
And he's like, wow, that's so interesting.
I'd love to be introduced to that world.
I know a little bit about clown because I went to acting school.
I was like, yeah, for sure.
Then the man tells Fumi something else about himself.
And he goes, I'm a mime.
And I go, what?
I went, do you want to get a drink tonight?
A clown and a mime walk into a bar and it's nice.
So we went to this place called The Little Pig in Fort Greene.
And I almost, so I asked him that day, do you want to get a drink?
He's like, sure.
It was so rainy.
It was terrible.
It was so much that I was like, I wasn't going to go.
I was like going to cancel.
But then I was like, also in the mindset of, Get out there.
Why not say yes?"
So I suck it up, I go, and then I open the door, I walk in, and he sits up.
He's back straight in a little bit.
We make eye contact.
He was so cute.
He was so, so cute.
Then we immediately have excellent chemistry.
I love the sound of his voice.
He studied musical theater.
He has a really beautiful voice. even when he's not singing.
And then the conversation was just so easy.
It was very different.
It was really, really different.
It was really special.
We went outside towards the end of the date to call my Uber, wait for my Uber home.
And it's a two-way street.
The Uber comes on the other side of the street.
And we're not trying to do a U-turn to my side.
And it is still... torrential downpour.
And it was just so much.
It was like Noah's Ark level of water.
And we both just walked out into the rain.
And then we kissed.
It was like a really good first kiss.
And it was a really, really good first date.
Is he a good conversationalist?
Because I don't think of mimes saying a whole lot.
They're just like, he's an excellent conversationalist.
He's really funny.
He's really smart.
So I checked in with Fumi before releasing this episode.
She told me that after months of dating, she and the mime had parted as friends.
But here's a cool thing.
She said that her clown training had made her better at breakups, too.
She said she was able to recognize that it wasn't going to be forever.
She gave herself time to grieve and then she got right back up, like clowns do when there's a small flop.
She told me this while smiling so big.
Maybe clowning can save all of us.
For the record, this effect of clown on Fumi's appreciation of the moment and her learning to feel good again, it is a real thing.
Dr Stuart Brown, the founder of the National Institute for Play, was in his late 80s when he was interviewed for the Hechinger Report which follows education.
He told them that play is not frivolous, and not just for kids, but something that is an inherent part of human nature.
This is how the National Institute for Play explains it.
Research shows that when mammals play, their brains are activated in a way that can change neuron connections in the prefrontal cortex which impact emotional regulation and problem solving.
Play can also release chemicals in the brain, including oxytocin, which helps regulate emotions and support social skills, and dopamine, a neurotransmitter that impacts memory motivation, attention and mood.
That means Clown could have literally been rewiring Fumi's brain.
I'm a totally different person.
Like, I never thought I would be this way again.
Meaning, like, someone who can hang around people and have fun.
I never kind of, like, Like I was saying earlier, I had all these dreams that felt so far away.
Even when I was younger, it kind of felt like a thing that could happen to somebody, but probably not me.
They might stay dreams.
But they feel so real now.
They feel so within reach.
I'm so much more confident than I was before in myself.
I love myself in a way that I didn't during the emergency.
And like immediately after.
Yeah.
This is going to sound so dramatic, but I think clown literally saved my life.
So after talking to Fumi, obviously I was curious about clown and what it could do for me and others.
It should surprise no listener here to know that I suffer from bad anxiety.
Sometimes I'm worried about being a bad friend while I am out with that friend.
Therefore, being a bad friend during the moment, I should be paying attention to them.
Anxiety gets in the way of being present just when you want to be.
I'm medicated for it, but I want more change.
So on a Sunday, I drove to New York and went to the Brooklyn Comedy Collective.
I met with Tali Medell, whom I adored in Everything Everywhere All at Once.
They were Fumi's teacher for her first class.
Here...
Tally was getting ready to teach a clown drop-in class as part of a weekend called the Fun and Dumb Improv Festival.
Before they got started, Tally and I sat outside of the comedy studio and talked about why clown is so transformative for people.
Ego death, Tally says.
The beautiful thing is that if you really are just providing yourself as like a method, like a vessel for communication, then it is actually a selfless thing to do.
And I think clown is the fun part of that where it's ego death.
So you are unfolding all of yourself to the room, and then everybody is able to see themselves, because you're revealing yourself for the fool that you are.
And then when you do that, you set everybody else free.
Tali says clown is about being in a space where there's no feeling of cringe.
To be alive is to be cringe, Telly says, so it's brave to just be earnest, without shame.
That is clown.
After more very philosophical thoughts about clowndom, I follow them into the building for the class.
Basically, about a dozen of us are in a room.
There's a range of ages people in their 20s 30s, 50s.
Most other people there had some improv experience, unlike me.
Tali got us loosened up with our bodies, our mouths.
They gave us advice about not trying too hard.
There's the inclination to be clever, and we're going for anti-clowder.
We're trying to get stupid.
We've already done the cleverness part.
We did the activity Fumi told me about, the one where people step forward and backward based on how their clown behavior amuses the audience.
Turn around, we're all facing forward and it doesn't matter what border you go in.
You're going to take one step forward.
Ideally it's one person hitting us at a time, but the opposite is also always funny, so we'll see what happens.
If everybody laughs, you can stay.
Then, after everyone has taken one step, then you can start again.
Like, if they're not laughing at what you're doing and our job as a clown is to be funny, then uh that's, that's on you.
It is like a okay well, that's my fault, because You haven't figured out how to invite them to play with you yet.
Then do you go internal?
Do you sit with your flop by yourself, which isn't real because we can already see you flopping?
Or do you find a new game?
I'll admit, I didn't jump up to participate in this activity and hid behind my microphone.
I did participate in some other activities but to be honest, I spent a lot of the class confused by the rules or feeling like I was trying too hard.
Ego death is difficult.
But there was this moment at the end of the two-hour session where Tally asked us to leave the building and walk around the block as our clown selves.
We followed Tally, and I was at the back of the group watching.
The clowns in training were walking like idiots and saying stupid things about graffiti they saw in apartments or the outdoor dining tables they saw, or about trash on the sidewalk.
They all did remind me of babies, with their eyes wide, their mouths hanging open.
I noticed that other people on the street, random New Yorkers, weren't eye-rolling our pack.
One guy collecting garbage actually seemed really amused.
He was entertained.
He looked at us.
I looked at him, back and forth.
It was this exact process present-moment interaction Tali and Fumi had talked about.
That's when I lifted my butt a little and did a weird walk, imagining myself as a caboose to the clown car.
The other students didn't see me because I was trailing them, but my butt was up and I was walking on my toes.
For those few minutes, a very few short minutes, I wasn't worried about anything.
One could say, It was a nice change.
Tali Medell teaches all kinds of clown.
You can find out more at Tali Medell on Instagram.
Fumi has been creating her own clown show.
She has plans to debut it soon.
Check out Brooklyn Comedy Collective's website for more details.
Join us this season as we answer this question about change.
We'll take on topics like new therapies that can change you, games that can change you, hormones that are changing me right now and next episode, a change of scenery.
Sometimes picking up and moving changes everything, or nothing at all.
We'll explore next time.
Love Letters is a production of the Boston Globe.
Our producer is Christine Ahanatu.
Our executive producer is Kristen Nelson.
Uzair Ahmed does our audio mixing and mastering.
Sound design by Christine Ahanatu.
Maddie Mortel is our audience engagement manager.
Special thanks to Nancy Barnes and Linda Henry.
Our music is from APM.
Remember, Love Letters is also an advice column.
We love getting questions about dating, divorce, marriage, singlehood, whatever you're experiencing, to lovelettersatboston.com.
When you send a letter, generally it helps someone else.
And if you like this show, please leave us a review.
Learn more at loveletters.show.
I really want you to write a version of Challengers where it's clowns.
Where they're just, it's like two guys and they're just like clowning hard against each other.
Okay.
There were moments of clown in that movie.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Thanks for listening.
