Herman van Veen, Andere Namen

As we were introducing ourselves at the beginning of the workshop, I said that I’m from Holland and then Verena said how much she liked the Dutch clown Herman van Veen. That was the next comforting thing for me, because I love Herman van Veen very much and I thought: “well if he is a clown it must be nice.” However, I remember that I was also surprised because he does not look so much like a clown, no make up, no big shoes, no clowns nose, etc. But she said a clown does not need that, the clown is merely a state of being that should come from the inside.

In this video Herman van Veen sings about a person who does everything the other way around and who names everything differently. This person is a child, a very old child, he sings. So, I would say, this song is a perfect description of a clown.  But even if you don’t understand the lyrics, I think you can feel the pleasure Herman van Veen has in standing there and doing what he does. There is probably nothing more important for a clown to have than pleasure. Although the clown has nothing to laugh about, because he is in trouble all the time, still he always stays in touch with pleasure, with a playful attitude toward it. He has no reason to laugh ‘objectively’ but with his special strength ‘his naivety’ he finds something in every situation that is interesting or joyful to him and therewith he starts playing. He does not accept things passively, he plays and playing transforms until the play disappears and changes in something else.

Everything flows; nothing stands still.

I consider clowning to be one possible, and for me amazingly beautiful and rich, way to learn how to get movement in to feelings, actions, situations. In my opinion, learning this is more about unlearning than it is about learning. As a child you still had this playful attitude toward things and with growing up and learning things you lost it more and more. When you want to play clown you have to unlearn a lot of the things you learned while growing up. And the good news is: this process takes forever! You don’t really get any further, you only unlearn on a deeper level, and after that again on a deeper, and so on. It’s all the other way around, as Herman van Veen sings.