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On Tom Bland, ‘The Death of a Clown’ (2018) (NSFW, if you’re at work).

(Disclosure: I’m good friends with Tom Bland. We came to know each other after he published some of my work in his former online zine, Blue of Noon. I read parts of this collection in some of its earliest drafts. Whilst it might seem nepotistic (and a bit late in the day to talk about The Death of a Clown), I thought it would be good to kick off with a positive review about someone’s writing I really love. As for Bad Betty Press, it is ran by Amy Acre and Jake Wild Hall, both of whom I’ve met on a few occasions but don’t know them v well).

Tom told me in a text he sent me last summer: “I stole ‘the death of a clown’ from The Kinks, do love that song”. You can read the lyrics here. It also ought to be noted that Tom did actually practice as a clown for a while. As for the publishers, Bad Betty Press is small, new, and fantastic. I think they’re a breath of fresh air for contemporary literature in the UK, with a clear, unique identity and a really strong focus for what they’re looking for. They’ve published some amazing writers.

This is a book of moodswings and contradictions. It’s a glimpse of humanity in all its filth, and it deserves recognition for the unflinching honesty with which it is written.

The Death of a Clown oscillates between serious and unserious. It can be funny, and then perturbing, yet all the while in possession of a certain solemnity. To me, the book’s cover (designed by Amy Acre) is synonymous with the writing in that it embodies similar contradictions: there’s the comical illustration of a clown face with its clown-smile on a gravestone engraved ‘RIP’. Then there’s the title—this juxtaposition of death and clown—an explicit introduction to death of something born to be funny (supposedly). All of this is pegged by Bad Betty Press’s (current) statement livery: black background, white font(s). All these visual elements counteract each other, which is a cornerstone to this collection’s literary thematics. You wouldn’t think it when you pick up the book, but after you’ve read it, you find that contradiction is all part of the book’s nature; a performance which self-negates and wildy flagellates itself, over and over. The cover is a clue, a graphic segue for what you’ve not yet read, which is, (and I’m going to try and commit to the following description) a series of undulating, anecdotal thoughts as opposed to “poems”. And they waterfall as one great stream of consciousness.

Amy told me masturbating was not the same as meditating. But the cult of masturbation had already found its way into … no one can make you come like yourself … a manifesto of poetic intent. Millions of potential lives wiped away in a tissue down the toilet drain.

There’s no other titles within this work but the book title. Or so I think. Tom doesn’t entitle; he emboldens the first lines, or sometimes the first couple of words in an opening sentence. The book’s pagination is the only indication of a separation, apart from that, I can’t always tell if this is indicating the start of a new thought or the end of an old one. But I guess that’s the point, Tom’s writing is in essence, thinking, and thoughts resist titles, of course they do. So to embolden is an intriguing choice, because it gives the great effect of writing eating itself from page to page. The title becomes indiscernible from the actual first line of the thought itself.

Perhaps I’ve read into this too deeply but honestly, in any artistic practice, it is so difficult to articulate a body of work under a single header. Even ‘The Death of a Clown’ is both so vague and specific a title. Every thought in this collection considers and recalls so much, so Tom just doesn’t do the thing of entitling every piece. I found that refreshing; we live in a world where everything yearns after a name, and a lot of the time we’re compelled to entitle our work, ourselves, our things, as if that would somehow give us clarity or meaning. But as you’ll read, Tom intimates that a lot of the time, there is little clarity to our thoughts, our perceptions, to anything. It’s only when dragged to the most severe and deafening of human experiences do we then, occasionally, achieve the briefest moment of mental clarity.

my adrenaline induced out of body looking back at my pulsating limbs; that self-aware speck

jittering or jumping between the two, like being dead/born once again.

Ranting so fast all my words blurred into rapid hand gestures, the very shapes of my early tongue-tied jabbering.

Something I love about The Death of a Clown is the self-awareness of the writing, which I think is inherent in “writing which appears as stream of consciousness”. I think it’s further developed by the scrupulously researched references to things which have indelibly influenced or affected the ‘I’ here. It’s so telling of a person in what they choose to reference, it intimates what piques their interest, their attention. The thing I find interesting about Tom’s references however is the way they’re presented as odd dualisms. There’s Sufism and then The Satanic Bible. Then there’s Jesus and Ted Bundy. There’s Taylor Swift, Edward Erdinger and the disintegrating self, then there’s Fuz Sxx (a sex shop in London) and the act of public masturbation. You would think these figures, beliefs and concepts oppose each other, but when they collide within the same piece, it seems that they elicit the same emotional responses and memories. These things don’t really so much oppose each other, but rather they’re of each other.

Bob Rogers always began the Sufi circle with, ‘The goal here is to create and destroy the idols of the self,’ then he glared at me,  ‘but this is not an apocalyptic vision.’ At first, this unnerved me, but quickly, it started to annoy me, so much so, I had printed on pink badges, a feminine figure and the words, LIFE IS DEATH. I gave the badges out to the group to their discomfort and/or amusement. He asked me to leave. He said, ‘Sufism isn’t about death but a new beginning.’

I also think these references signal personal perceptions and therefore, options. The array of religions, religious figures, celebrities and serial killers, mentioned in The Death of a Clown, is demonstrative of the many lifestyle choices, beliefs, idols, values we have to choose from. As we investigate through this pile, we eventually come to identify with a select few, most of which resonate in our personal experiences. In one piece, Tom writes: ‘Michelle called pain (her pain) the sun god Ra. / Ra equalled pathos. [...] I remained still, outside on my steps, looking up at the moon. / Sometimes I call my pain Hekate.’ Lines like these underpin the core of this work, which is that everybody’s perception is their own perception. Their choice in what to experience, believe and feel is entirely their responsibility. It’s a bit of a tangent but I’m reminded of that scene in Rick and Morty, the ‘Pickle Rick’ episode from Season 3 where the therapist says to Rick, ‘You are the master of your own universe [...] Each of us gets to choose.’

Living is in essence a kind of performance. Our choreography is sculpted by what we read, believe, consider and feel. It can be a laugh, but ultimately, we’re all still fools. Hence the impetus for the clown’s presence in this collection, or the part of us which acts the clown. In The Death of a Clown, choreography comes through performing in drag, bending sexualities, bending observations, defining fetishisms, reading religion and murder, thinking about religion and murder. The fact that all these things are being mentioned in the work, suggests the profound impact and lasting effects they imprint upon the ‘I’ of this work, the clown’s psychology, who laughs more than ever, and less than ever.

[...] I

waxed my body, splattering body paints, wearing faux- leather corsets, see-through knickers, and PVC cowboy boots. It was and wasn’t fetishism; it was and wasn’t sexuality; it was and wasn’t perversion; first was the vision, the one in my head, the one I saw across my body, my body morphing into my androgynous Satanic self.

The collection is ravaged by sex, the frenzy of drug-stuffed London, the English sort of realism found in onion sauce, or ‘Hertfordshire surrounded by trees and red noses’ (not red roses), and more pertinently, the exhaustive performance of inhabiting these things, being these things. For me, I feel like these references function as both containers and artefacts to this ‘human-ness’ Tom is unpacking and reconstituting, and how they’re instrumental in self-alienation but also help with self-identity. It’s a bit, “the school of life” thing; whether it’s erotic asphyxiation, or racking up lines of ketamine before doing a live performance, it seems that these various extremities are an education in what it means to be truly vulnerable, and therefore in being able to call ourselves human.

And yet at the crux of each “poem” lies the ultimate therapy to all of this, which is the safe insecurity in knowing that we are all dying. And what is more human than our conscious attempt in knowing and embracing that?

[…] ‘Some  people think the clown is a performance I put on and take off, but no, I must be a clown  at all times. I can’t stand slipping back   into that thing...’

HUMAN.

I read a beautiful review from R J Dent on The Death of a Clown where he noted, ‘Tom Bland lists some of the stimulants and depressants that humans use to dull their awareness of their own mortality: acid, coke, speed, ketamine, cigs, Weston’s Old Rosie cider, and brandy.’ This was the only point I felt inclined to disagree. I don’t think this is 100% what Tom is doing, I don’t agree that it’s a form of listing per se, and I don’t think that we should necessarily believe that the mere function of these substances, in the collection’s case, is a human’s way of dulling the knowing surrounding the inevitability of death. Rather, they’re chunks of detail, which amplify and exaggerate that knowing, rendering the user as used… I mean this as in, it’s not that they’re taking drugs. Perhaps, it’s the drugs are taking them. And in these delicious, and often arduous experiences, a delightful indifference about life and death occurs, where user and substance are locked in mutual indulgence. Or at least, that’s my interpretation of it. I’m just not convinced the clown is resisting death here. I think the clown, or the part of us which acts the clown, has already died and sometimes I find the writing works not just as thought, but as a strange eulogy, sometimes even self-inflicted therapy. I’m still guessing.

About a year ago, I found myself snorting lines of coke, but I hated doing it with other people, only alone. Blue in the face. Breathing blue. Heart racing. Near heart attack. Was this orgasm? Was I even hard?

I loved the intensity of being on my own—

It is easier to attribute this writing, as I’ve already stated, as being a series of ‘thoughts’. Where The Death of a Clown may, in form, resemble poetry, ultimately this isn’t poetry. It defies category. Since I started this review, I’ve felt increasingly perplexed, in that the more I attempt to ascertain what kind of writing this is, the more indecipherable it becomes.

It’s for this reason that The Death of a Clown is unabashedly weird and it kind of leaves you feeling disoriented. To me, this work is like an endless cycle of waking up with a hangover/comedown and going to the next party. It sticks to the skin like a latex suit. It’s the endless fixing and wiping away of makeup. It ruminates on itself and begs not to enquire further, and then does it anyway. It has both sharp and curved edges. It is literal, it doesn’t sugarcoat or tease, it doesn’t fuck with unnecessary, flowery metaphor or imagery (unlike this review lol). It doesn’t cater to you or pander. It is a deeply cutting exchange with oneself—which makes it all the more deliciously complicated. And I’ll leave you with one of my fav bits:

[…] I stood perfectly still, announcing the words I imagined scribbling onto an A3 cardboard sheet,

‘Do they really see (in the white of the eye) the unveiling of the whole history of a life?’

If you’d like to buy The Death of a Clown, you can buy it here. In addition to this, you can find out more about Tom through his zine, Spontaneous Poetics.

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