Absurd Shards #7 - The Trapeze Artists

Too big a fall, it is said, is how all careers on the trapeze are destined to end. Composure and self-confidence that has been sustained over so long, albeit with instances of wavering here and there, must eventually fray and culminate in failure.

It is cognisance of this that coaxes them into routines of ever more elaborate daring and precision, driving them to succeed where their peers would buckle and fall back on older and more assured displays. It is often an unedifying scramble for the rope ladders to the highest platforms from which they can maximise their exposure before an audience that is fickle and all-too-easily distracted by alternative amusements.

The hubris of the trapeze artist is what piques our interest and enflames our dismay; the agility and poise of these people who deem themselves worthy of the platforms and structures across which they swing and sway like a Newton's cradle.

In the trapeze artist we see the illusion of flight, there is promise in their reckless leaps and posturing in the air, and we take heart from this, even though we know that after the soaring apex point has been reached they must always complete the swing to a frustratingly fixed point. Try as they might, through all kinds of trickery, charisma and guile, they will still swing between intractable points that we are all complicit in believing can be transcended.

As a masquerade to alleviate this fundamental disappointment that permeates through the whole act many artists have resorted to the safety of shadows, or to clever manipulations of light and colour. For a time these can prove effective, though ultimately we see them for what they are and scorn them for their acts of duplicity and cunning.

Instead we insist on ever brighter lights so that we can see the very pearls of sweat and the look of adrenalised assurance as they continue their routines. Now increasingly blinded by the forensic glare, the artists, who had always struggled to see the audience clearly from their lofty heights, can only make out a spurious collective and the scent of mounting disapproval in their efforts.

But we still admire the show for its predictability, we secretly envy of them their heights, their ego and daring; together we will them ever higher, filling them with our hopeless dreams of unrestrained flight, because at the same time we long to see then fall..,