Inverted Garden

Another Smigly animation that Mingus would've dug

Last summer, the animator and saxophonist Allen Mezquida sent me an installment of his "Smigly" web series that featured the titular hero literally playing his heart out for a hostile audience. I wrote then that the Smigly video reminded me of Mingus's "The Clown," the story of an entertainer who becomes popular only after an accidental turn to slapstick, and who achieves fame only when his act kills him. It's a parable about the dangers of the need to please, how it can corrupt and destroy.

Mezquida's latest Smigly episode, "Kind of Black and Blue," channels Mingus's "The Clown" even more directly: Smigly gets a hundred-thousand YouTube hits and scores a record contract only when he uploads a video of a truck crashing into him. (His regular jazz videos have been drawing in the single digits.) In the end, this one isn't so bleak. Like "The Clown," it's a paean to making it one's own way.

 

Death by audience: Smigly plays his heart out

Charles Mingus's "The Clown" tells the story of a hapless entertainer who "just wanted to make people laugh" but finds himself bombing night after night at fourth-tier venues. An accidental turn into physical comedy vaults him to stardom, and he's quickly slaying big-time audiences, playing to their basest instincts. On a fateful night, the clown's need for the audience's approval collapses on him and he meets his demise. "William Morris sends regrets," intones the narrator, Jean Shepherd.

Mingus's parable of death-by-need-to-please feels both timeless and historical. Timeless, because the archetype of the artist dying (figuratively and, occasionally, literally) for the crowd's love goes back to the Roman Coliseum and before. Historical, because Mingus's generation was the first in jazz to cop a self-conscious position toward art above entertainment. Miles was aloof (although the stories of him turning his back to the audience are likely apocryphal); Monk was detached; and Mingus was a volcano, spewing lava every night. These musicians' personal, and not always audience-friendly, approaches had a lot to do with the artistic maturation of the music and a lot to do with fighting the history of white audiences objectifying black entertainers, but I wonder if it wasn't also a universal defense mechanism—a retreat from the crowd's most savage gaze.

Mingus's "Clown" has been on my mind ever since the animator and saxophonist Allen Mezquida sent me the latest installment in his Smigly web series. Smigly's stance toward his audience is more Mingus than Clown, but the crowd still plays a role in his end. Mezquida told me that the video is "an homage to the cats in the trenches," and it features a supple sax solo from the man himself.