The Circus

I met a man in a pub last week and introduced myself as a critic. He was so excited to talk about all the artists he loved but I had to break it to him that I wasn’t excited about this stuff anymore. I actually said that I’d been feeling heartbroken lately — that this thing I’ve been writing about for ten years is feeling further away than it used to. The wild fires artists make are getting harder to find with less money for experiments, less space to do things with no expectations. The only art I really see these days has been packaged and sanctioned and straightened up by the museum. But I know I’m looking for fire in all the wrong places. So I go to the circus. I’m sitting in a sold-out, humid tent in the middle of Aintree Racecourse with a thousand kids and their parents. It’s a cold day but under the big top, I have to roll a water bottle across my cheeks. Smoke machine, wires, crossing lights. I haven’t been to one of these since I was a kid. Whatever happened back then, it left…