Emma la clown et Gérard Morel, le nu te va si bien



Gérard Morel sings a love song „le nu te va si bien“. Emma la clown sits next to him, listens, and reacts with the expression on her face, sometimes by making some sounds and one time by going away when the text is a bit less positive... Then he says, „Hey come on, it isn’t finished yet“. What I like is that at the end she is totally satisfied with the exact same text because now she sees it from another perspective.
I wanted to share this video already for a while but I’m not sure what to say about it. I can share something about listening. For example that it’s not my strength. Like Emma I would also walk away before it’s finished and never find out how to see ‚the critical note’ from a positive perspective when the other person doesn’t invite me to wait in a very gentle and very confident way. Gérard Morel obviously totally trusts that she will like it at the end, if he would have doubted she would have left.
In the workshop about clown ways of connecting, Jan Dillen and Bart Walter told the group that listening, real listening, is being very active and attentive with the heart, brains, eyes and ears and that it is without thinking at the same time about a smart ass answer to give, without anticipating where it could possibly lead. Lately I was talking with my parents about this topic and how difficult it can be, because being ‘smart’ got to be a kind of survival technique. And then I realized that I was doing it again since my father was actually telling something… Then I shut my mouth and just breathed for I while and I discovered that my heart was beating like an idiot, for how exiting it was to let go of control while listening. I am actually a bit shocked by it, even such a basic thing. But I have to keep reminding myself that it’s okay to find simple things difficult, as long as you don’t have a problem with that. During this workshop there was often someone reacting on the advice he or she got with: “but that’s so difficult”. In reaction whereof Jan Dillen recommended us to make “that’s easy!” the mantra we repeat to ourselves. And he is right, a clown always thinks it’s easy and get’s in trouble, but he will never ever ‘learn’ to draw the conclusion “that everything is always so difficult and he is failing all the time”. For the clown there is only play.

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