From the Top by Michael Perry Page A

himself.
    â€œOh, no, you gotta be a lot louder than that,” he said again. “Just yell your name right out so people can hear you!” And right when I yelled “Mike!” he jammed the microphone into my face and I was shocked to hear my little voice reverberating throughout the gigantic tent.
    The clown then proceeded to conduct a number of humiliating bits that culminated in him tipping me over his knee with my butt pointed toward the bleachers. He dusted my little hinder with a gigantic pink feather duster, then reached into the waist-band of my pants and through some sleight of hand pulled out a huge pair of baggy women’s underwear. The audience roared.
    Finally he carried me back and released me to Mom. “You’re a good little sport,” he said. “I want to give you something to remember this day by.” (As if I would have problems remembering this day, I’m thinking, still freaking out forty years later.) He pulled out a balloon and blew it up until it was longer than I was tall. With the spotlight still on us, he handed it to me.” Here y’go, little feller,” he said, and as I reached for it he let go and it went farting off into the air, corkscrewing into flaccidity and nothingness while once again the audience roared.
    So you’ll understand that among the many reasons I enjoy coming up to Big Top Chautauqua is because it’s always a world away, and with each visit I’m pretty much guaranteed a few new canvas-scented memories.
    But best of all? Zero sociopathic clowns.
FLYING ABOVE THE CANVAS
    The guest for this show was Paul LaRoche, performing with Brulé and AIRO. LaRoche honors his heritage by singing of the people, land, and history of the Lower Brule Sioux Reservation of South Dakota, and the performance I refer to here included dancers in traditional regalia. That said, LaRoche will be the first to tell you that his music draws on more than one world and in fact draws on the seven directions.
    Earlier tonight during the show, when the drums were pounding and the dancers were spinning and the flute was swirling, I took myself out of the tent and imagined myself high in the sky above Mount Ashwabay—perhaps on manmade wings of silver, perhaps on feathers alone—and as the final few minutes of sunlight hit the sloped face of the earth, there far below I saw the still, blue dot of this tent, surrounded by thousands of acres of quiet twilit forest, and thinking of the power and color and life pulsing at the center of that blue dot I marveled again at the idea of what transpires as a result of the simple act of creating a space. A space aside: aside from the hustle, aside from the grind, aside from the things we have grown used to. Aside from the well-worn grooves. A place where, even if the music is thunderous, we are allowed the gift—so rare in our pandemonious world—of reflection. The gift of time and place aplenty to turn yourself over to the sound and spirit and seewhere you are flown. Tonight, after only a few heartbeats of music, I felt thunder storms approaching across a broad plain, I felt a western river valley open before me, I felt the call of a people through time. I heard ghosts marching.
    Day-to-day, I’m pretty much boots and blue jeans. Pork chops and pickup trucks. Can’t dance a lick, and don’t care to. Not inclined to carry on. But I learned a long time ago there is value now and then in turning yourself over to the moment. To letting your soul wander out there unprotected. Oddly enough—or not oddly at all, if you give it proper consideration—much of my openness to this idea comes as a result of my being raised in a fundamentalist faith. I learned at an early age what it is to turn yourself over to a greater mysterious power and sign off on the idea that things are bigger than you and that there is more to life than just puttin’ on a big pair of boots and stompin’ around. I