What of the circus life is in the writer, if any? Maybe the metaphor is not apt. I found myself thinking about this at work, in a heatwave this summer, that made customers infrequent. What made me want to join the circus? Obviously, the reclusive life is closer to the writer than the nomadic, but the simultaneous act of wearing a mask (or playing a role), and revealing oneself as naked, felt close to the circus performer. Isn’t there something aberrant about our obsessions of draping ourselves and others in metaphor and narrative.
How do we tell the stories of our lives meaningfully when they are fictions, not unlike the circus barker applies to the performer. It’s not what’s in us, but what we want others to see in us, which we so often tell. At the end of the day, do we even know the difference? The only truths of memory and personality traits are what we have convinced ourselves of, based in part on what others have told us. The role of the performer is in us as narrators. Maybe, it was the control I sought in being a writer. The seeming control of my image and hence, my self, which I must admit in hindsight is somewhat illusory.
I decided to have fun with this life of the circus performer, and turn the poem into a spectacle. As I dig through jungles and circus rings to find myself, I encounter the performer and narrator, and maybe that’s all I’ve found. A television in a locked room, playing clips of my favourite films, that I’ve based my mannerisms and personality on. The scattered sentences in books in which I’ve recognized myself in. A stage, with a lone spotlight, on which I stand professing to be a “freak.” I have accepted the title. Here I stand.
Conal Smiley was born in London, ON. His childhood was spent combing the aisles of bookstores, video stores and record shops, which is where his passion for the arts began. He is mostly self-taught, and after some creative writing classes at UofT, he decided to pursue poetry. He currently lives in Toronto and works in bookstores.