Adam Blatner

I know, I extended the word divesting so that it’s bigger and that there’s no such word. I am fooling around and probably will until I die, maybe even after. The fooling around role, that part of me, speaks for the clown archetype which has been lively in my personality since childhood. I loved comedians on the radio and television in the ‘40s and ‘50s.

I now see them as the modern-day clowns, beyond the circus. Indeed, the circus as we know it happened in the 19th century, but clowns have been around since classical times and before. The form shifts, the context shifts. The court fool shifted into Commedia dell’Arte, and from thence to circuses and various kinds of clowning, and from there to the media and comedians. Anyway, I will be talking about them perhaps next summer.

For now I do my own silly-serious comedy: Under “confabulations” on the table of contents on my website I make up stuff that I kinda-sorta half-believe, but it’s laced with enough silliness that I’m able to play with ideas freely. In another corner of my extended psyche—which this blog is—I make up “The World of Almost-Real,” populated by elves and such—which again reflect my comedic phil-osophy and cosmology of life.

Meanwhile, back to divestitating, and making up words: Woo-eee! Allee and I are going through kitchen implements, records, decorations, clothes, books, etc., letting go of stuff. It is not easy! But it’s a good thing to do in one’s 70s.