Class Dirt Clown School
What's the magic word?
I want you to see me here as your stand-up comic, clown incarnate.
Some of you look upset. Did you think this would be serious?
It is serious. More so (now).
Do you know what can resist attack, go on the defensive and offensive at once: comedy.
Unproductive specialists, like me, play dumb to go undetected.
Tragedy is harder to control, comes hard and fast and, when plotted or narrativized, is never real.
Interpreters of history are less clear than its clowns, because they care.
This moment is one in which everything is miniaturized, everywhere all at once.
I am not novelist, critic, model or musician, but one of the last living artist-magicians. Also, a kind of ass, like the one Apuleius talks about.
Hiding in new form, so I can try it all out undetected. Clown-ass. Pirate-prince. Pasolini-crow.
My own crow!
Biography is either stolen, shared or passed down. I am your orphan clown Klute.
Do you struggle for rank and position when anonymity is what’s getting harder and harder to come by?
I decided to show up.
Do you know of anyone but a clown who thinks of herself as unworthy?
I am Klute, a clown-person, an organism that doesn’t seek safety. Most seek safety—
every
single
time.
I’m into humiliation and degradation, mostly in the way of figuring out how it works.
I have another question for you:
What’s the magic word?
In American English, this is presented as a test of a child’s politeness.
What’s the magic word? a parent asks
What’s the magic word?
It’s not
Please.
How could that be magic? It’s manners, the opposite of magic. I didn’t figure this out on my own. I’m a clown.
It was my son who told me. I asked him: What’s the magic word?
Abracadabra, he said.
No civility, that one.
This excerpt comes from a text that was first read on February 10, 2024 at night on a rooftop across from the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City. The performance was created with Martha Taddei and Mallika Vora of local punk band Cruda Moral. Its composition was part of the genesis of the forthcoming novel, Nymph.
Gabe Rubin later performed it at Artist’s Space in New York on February 24, 2024 as part of Segue Reading Series curated by Stella Cilman & Jay Sanders.
A final performance will take place this October in Houston, Texas, on the occasion of the release of the full text as Class Dirt Clown School, published and distributed by F, Houston, October 2024. Pre-order here.
Thank you to Adam Marnie, Cian Mc Court, Jay Sanders, Stella Cilman, Carla Fernández, Aguirre and The Performance Agency.
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