Cirque du Soleil

December 28, 2018

I didn’t take mushrooms before attending Cirque du Soleil. But my mind still got blown entirely. Partly because of the freakish, at times dreamlike acrobatics. Partly because this happened. Halfway through the show, the clown, who took us on a kind of underworld Christmas journey, picked me and one other random guy to come up on stage for some jump rope antics. I knew he would pick me as soon as he said he needed two hapless guinea pigs from the audience.

The sketch involved the clown claiming he could walk a rope held tight between us, which of course ended with him getting whacked real good in the bojangles. After that fail, which had the audience in stitches, he proceeded to test our hand-eye coordination, then my jump-eye coordination. It was really a huge test of my adaptation abilities, my readiness to suddenly, unexpectedly be on stage in front of hundreds of people, and of how well my muscles retained the memory of jumping rope as a kid.

As the rope circled in front of me, waiting for me to jump in at the right time, I swear I felt something akin to that “eternal moment” athletes describe taking place during the last few seconds of the fourth quarter, or musicians during peak performances, or mothers when their children are pinned beneath normally immovable vehicles. It might sound cliche, but I feel like I caught a little piece of that flow state that strikes people when they suddenly find themselves in the spotlight or faced with some event that is larger than themselves.

In the vast expanse of those five seconds, as I stood there, I swear I was staring at the reality of my healing, at how far I’ve come, that I was able to maintain some composure on that stage. I thought back to my days as a thespian, prior to becoming ill, when I wowed audiences as Mercutio. I remembered my Queen Mab speech, how I described that fairy with every cell of my body, how I grabbed the bull by the fucking horns all those years ago.

You better believe I hopped into that swinging rope and didn’t miss a beat. All I felt was the thunderous roar as the crowd went wild.

Limelight, how I missed you.