EPIC FAIL - A Performance That Still Haunts Me Today…

    

WRIST PAIN

    As I write these blogs, I have to pick and choose which events to share and which ones not to. I believe that some add to the overall story (that'll eventually mold into a book) while others could be left out. I spent about 9 months of time in the Netherlands. All of my time was spent either looking at the ground training hand balancing, working as a massage therapist, or smoking joints. These three things were my holy trinity. The last event that I'd like to share from my period of time in the Netherlands (at least for now) is a story about my most cringy, most embarrassing, most shameful performance that I've ever done. It's very important to share this because in reality, as one develops as a circus artist (or is working towards anything difficult) - there are lots of trials and tribulations along the way. Failure is a part of the path! How cliché, but how true. This story is one of my most proud failures (I have many that I will share). Why proud? Because as humiliating as it was, I continued onwards.This epic ego-destroying failure still makes my guts wrench today when I think about it. Perhaps even today, the fear of it ever happening again still pushes me to train relentlessly to prevent it from ever happening again.

    It was my first presentation at ACAPA (The Academy for Circus and Performance Arts). We had been training for many months, and now it was time to make a solo performance and share our work with our classmates, the rest of the students at the academy, and all of the teachers. I was still at the beginning stages of my hand balancing training and in all honesty, I couldn't do almost anything besides the basic three positions: pike, straddle, and tuck. All two arm positions. I had the awkward challenge of needing to present something as part of the program for the school, yet in reality, I wasn't ready to show absolutely anything. Like a bird being pushed to fly a bit too soon. Instead of flying, I just smashed brutally into the ground. This was my bright (terrible) idea: Instead of doing an impossible number of elegant one-arm shapes and transitions (which I couldn't do), I would instead hold an endurance handstand (2-3 minutes) while being wrapped in duct tape...while also reciting some poetry that I had written - all at the same time. I was overtly ambitious. Apart from this already being incredibly hard, the nature of this performance left me zero room for failure. If I were to fall while being wrapped in the duct tape, it was impossible to go back up into a handstand since I was already limited by the duct tape. The performance was about being trapped by the monotony of life and how most of the time we don't actively choose to be in the situations that are draining our soul. No, normally it's a passive slide, it's a slow fade that leads to our oblivion. We only realize our demise once it's too late, once we are completely trapped by our own actions (or the actions of others). Anyways, I was attempting to show this through my performance. I didn't consciously realize this at the time, but I had my girlfriend (whom I sometimes felt trapped with because of our complicated rollercoaster ride of a relationship) as the person who was wrapping me with the duct tape. Maybe it was some type of symbology or foreshadowing that I was unconsciously communicating to myself and others? Anyways. Sometimes mindless actions and choices end up being significant signs to our future selves...

    Fast forward, it was presentation day. As it came closer and closer for my time to present my act, I could feel the adrenaline and nerves starting to activate within me. Adrenaline = a great friend to most other artists. Adrenaline = a handbalancers worst enemy. As I did my warm-up handstands, everything felt 10 times harder than usual. I couldn't focus. What was normally easy was incredibly hard. I could feel each beat of my heart thumping through my whole body. Each thump made my balance waiver. What had I gotten myself into? It came my time to enter the stage. I said to myself: "Well, here goes nothing..." I entered the stage and began to recite my poetry. So far so good. I've always had a fancy for public speaking, so this was no problem for me. However, as it came time to jump up on my handstand canes, I thought, "Ohhhhhhhh shiiiiiiiit." When I went on the canes, I instantly knew that I wasn't going to be able to do my act. One second of balance was taking everything I had not to fall over. My mind had gone haywire. How was I going to do this for 2-3 minutes while being wrapped in duct tape? "Damn it, Corey. You messed up."...and as this internal monologue ensued, as I felt the immensely heavy pressure of the situation, as I felt the gaze of the audience like laser beams shooting into my body, I fell after only being up for just about 30 seconds. Only a bit of my body was wrapped in the duct tape and there was no retries. I had never considered failure as an option (another rookie mistake - always have a plan B on stage). I didn't know what to do. The audience was staring at me. I was staring back. I looked at my girlfriend who had begun to wrap me in the duct tape. She stared back. Everyone was waiting to see how I would crawl out of the hole that I had just dug for myself. We all knew that I was completely humiliated and I had completely failed. After a pause, I just dramatically walked off stage while repeating my poem. There was a loooooooong awkward moment, then some members of the audience gave me some half hearted sympathetic claps that only added to my burn. In that moment I realized I was a handbalancer who couldn't hand balance on stage...fuck.

    Maybe as a reader, this story doesn't stab you like it stabbed me, probably not. But when you are training all day every day for many months to achieve something and then you can't even show the fruits of your efforts, it's very demoralizing. I questioned everything about myself. I wanted to quit the school. I wanted to leave. I had decided that I wasn't meant for performing. Maybe I was just a person who was meant to train on my own for my own hobby, but never was I meant to do handbalancing on stage. It was almost impossible to show my face in the school after that. I felt like a fraud. In reality, nobody cared. Yeah, I failed... but life kept on going and nobody focused on the failure besides me. Well, I did have one handbalance teacher who expressed her disappointment in me. In her broken English (she was a French woman) she said, "Very bad performance. Not good..." This broke me. Her words and demeanor are still fresh in my mind to this day. As a student, I had a very strong desire to at least appease my teachers. Nope, they too were disappointed and they didn't hide it. There was no getting around it. I failed, and I had failed miserably. People felt bad for me, which only added salt to my open wound. For whatever reason, I don't like the sympathy of others towards me, not then and not now.

    As time passed and I let this epic fail sit within me, I had a decision to make. Should I keep pursuing the path of a performer? If yes, I had to accept that these moments would be a part of the process and that this probably wouldn't be the last failure I would experience (it wasn't). Can I accept this? I've always had to take moments of introspection and have continued to ask myself these questions along the way. Every performer who does something on stage is opening themselves up to failure. They are giving themselves the opportunity to be publicly embarrassed, to fail, and even injured in front of others. Yet they forge onwards anyway. The very real possibility of failure is exactly what makes something powerful. What is fragile is beautiful. Be it a flower that endures the elements, or the hand balancer who is searching for their point of equanimity despite the adrenaline, fear, monkey mind, and immense wrist pain (that never fully goes away). Perhaps what is most powerful can simply be blown over with one strong intentional breath...
P.S. I had/have the ability to watch this performance after all of this time, but I've never dared to watch it. Maybe now I could laugh about it, but I'd probably still watch myself with complete shame. Some feelings never die.