About..... "Face of the Clown"
One of the songs I believe to be amongst the best I`ve written. And was written with no knowledge of what I was going to do when I "Grew up."
Being a children’s entertainer never entered my head. For I was a child of thirteen when I wrote it. And I knew at the time it was a deep song.
For at the time I was going through my first ever real bout of depression. I had lived all my life within the close community spirit of small RAF bases, moving every 3 years, Suddenly I found myself in a seaside town, at a school with kids who had grown up with each other, with broad Yorkshire accents. I had no real accent, having moved frequently and lived abroad in Germany, then North Wales beforehand. But the RAF schools were good and I found myself a year ahead in my learning at my new school.
I soon got the reputation for being a smart-arse with a posh accent, and who wouldn`t fight. I chose to sit back and wait for everyone to catch up and just tried to be friendly, which in fact made it worse. Soon I was being seriously bullied and frozen out because of it. "Queer" was a popular nickname thrown at me, until everyone was convinced I was secretly gay. In fact I was just trying to make friends, but was alienated.
To know you are gay, while at school, must be a horrible secret to hold in, for fear of the re-action and reprisals of your peers, never mind your family and friends. No matter what educating literature is thrown at adolescents.
To know you are not gay, but convinced that everyone believes you are, is, believe me, a horrible position to be in as well. Having a strong Christian conviction at the time as well didn`t help. That, many quoted, was my "excuse" for being gay. No, I just strongly believed in the morality of Christianity, that sex was part of marriage.
So why they slowly sexually matured and experimented, and the girls in class started getting pregnant, I belonged to the church choir, the church youth group, the church drama club and prayer groups. And at home practised my guitar and wrote love songs.
At one point I had permission from the Head Master to arrive five minutes and leave five minutes late, because the threats of "We`re gonna get you outside the school gates" had twice become a reality.
My male role model, my father, the one I was meant to kick against at that age, was 3,000 miles away in Saudi Arabia. His fatherly advice on my current affairs took eight weeks to reach me. By then a different problem had ensued.
Whatever side of me I tried to show, all I seemed to get rejection. Until I found that by humouring them, allowing them to laugh at me, helped keep the fear away.
But at home the face of the clown dropped, from the sheer weight of keeping it up for my sheer survival at school. I suffered a lot of loneliness and sleepless nights trying to summon to put the mask back and keep it there the following day. Knowing one day the cracks would show of the terror and insecurity going on underneath.
One of the beauties of becoming an adult is realising we all wear masks in order to survive. Sometimes it`s a case of which masks did you grab onto in your childhood. How we defend ourselves against fear, what we do to try and impress one another, the cars we drive, the houses and areas we live. We then looking back at the children now and watch their survival masks developing, sometimes failing. And realising how refined our own mask now is. Or isn’t.
I wrote the song and titled it with no knowledge at the time of Smoky Robinson and his hit of a similar name and ilk. Possibly the same subject matter, but certainly a different angle.
In fact, while his is a wonderful song in it`s own right, I prefer mine. It goes deeper to the root of the tears. The fact that behind the jolly mask we put on, we all know there many hidden fears and sadness behind them. The more we try and act happy, the sadder we are and look.
To find happiness is to find the root of the problems and solve them. Or so we sometimes think. Pure happiness forever is maybe not available to us in this life. Maybe only heaven can provide our soul with that. But life gives us glimpses of it, and we should celebrate it when we receive it.
Part of having a relationship of God, I was taught and believe in, is not only to pray for things we need, but also to thank for what is freely given. That`s the one most people actually forget in reality. What we do actually get totally free of charge. The freedoms that are available to us now. That weren`t for so many of our ancestors. The myriad of opportunities that actually do exist now. If only we reached for them.
But instead we find ourselves focusing on the negative and complaining how bad it`s all getting. Wearing masks that we blame society for putting on us.
There is the rhetoric of stiff upper lip in England. But now the males have stopped fighting bloody wars for a good few years, the females are teaching them love and sensitivity again.
Or at least we hope that`s what’s happening. Eventually to leave the guns as things on computer shoot-um-up games, where no real harm can be done. Except possibly to the mental psyche of the people addicted to such games. Who possibly might have the button of the worlds largest and deadliest bomb at his fingertips, unaware of what it really does.
The problem with putting on an act though, is that at the very best, you genuinely do fool everyone. To the point that they believe you. It`s then you realise the person you`ve actually fooled most is yourself. Because now you`ve got to live up to that act.
As you do it, the realisation slips in that everyone saw through you all the time. You`d only believed you`d fooled them. They were simply playing along to see what you`d do next to try and carry it off. How long you can keep it there without the cracks showing.
To actually be a clown, or a Children’s Entertainer for a living, when you are being paid to "Make people happy", can sometimes be extremely difficult. Especially when you are suffering from financial hardship, lack of support from family, broken hearted over a relationship and arrived late because your car has overheated once again. If nothing else I`ve proved myself as an actor time and time over again. I`ve driven away thinking, if only they knew the devastation inside. Who was making the effort to make me happy? No-one it seemed.
But I was, and am a very good entertainer. Good at making people laugh and smile, which allows me to laugh as well. My life is not full of misery. However, there are times I wish I had enough money to afford my own services.
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