the Way of the Showman – Details, episodes & analysis

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Now you can get t-shirts and hoodies with our wonderful logo. This is the best new way to suport the podcast project. Become a proud parader of your passion for Showmanship and our glorious Craft whilst simultanously helping to gather more followers for the Way.
You'll find the store here: https://thewayoftheshowman.printdrop.com.au

If you want to help support this podcast it would be tremendous if you wrote a glowing review on iTunes or Spotify.
If you want to contact me about anything, including wanting me to collaborate on one of your projects you can reach me on thewayoftheshowman@gmail.com
or find out more on the Way of the Showman website.
you can follow the Way of Instagram where it is, not surprisingly thewayoftheshowman.
If you find it in you and you have the means to do so, you can suport the podcast financially at:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/captainfrodo

Support the show

...

Now you can get t-shirts and hoodies with our wonderful logo. This is the best new way to suport the podcast project. Become a proud parader of your passion for Showmanship and our glorious Craft whilst simultanously helping to gather more followers for the Way.
You'll find the store here: https://thewayoftheshowman.printdrop.com.au

If you want to help support this podcast it would be tremendous if you wrote a glowing review on iTunes or Spotify.
If you want to contact me about anything, including wanting me to collaborate on one of your projects you can reach me on thewayoftheshowman@gmail.com
or find out more on the Way of the Showman website.
you can follow the Way of Instagram where it is, not surprisingly thewayoftheshowman.
If you find it in you and you have the means to do so, you can suport the podcast financially at:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/captainfrodo

In this episode I catch up with an old friend, a unique and philosophically inclined comedian and clown Mr Trent Birdmann. We talk about our shows together, our thoughts on our past, present and the uncertainties about the future. We share stories and insights about our lives as Showmen trying to make it in the modern world.

You can find Trent Baumann on Instagramm and Facebook by searching for his name.
You can find out more about him on his website.

Support the show

...

Now you can get t-shirts and hoodies with our wonderful logo. This is the best new way to suport the podcast project. Become a proud parader of your passion for Showmanship and our glorious Craft whilst simultanously helping to gather more followers for the Way.
You'll find the store here: https://thewayoftheshowman.printdrop.com.au

If you want to help support this podcast it would be tremendous if you wrote a glowing review on iTunes or Spotify.
If you want to contact me about anything, including wanting me to collaborate on one of your projects you can reach me on thewayoftheshowman@gmail.com
or find out more on the Way of the Showman website.
you can follow the Way of Instagram where it is, not surprisingly thewayoftheshowman.
If you find it in you and you have the means to do so, you can suport the podcast financially at:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/captainfrodo

After I began releasing the episodes about the Mythopoetic Carnival I discovered a concept within the field of sociology which maps uncannily well onto our own project. I explore these similarities. The concept is the Collective Imaginary or social imaginary as its also called. One of the interesting things we learn from this is that it can change which excites me as I see us Showfolk as potential agents of change.
We then have a look at how circus has changed in the popular imagination in the barely three hundred years it's been around. We take a quick glance as to how this reflects, in a funhouse-mirror kind of way, the Way of the freemasons. 
To wrap up the episode we look at how Sherlock Holmes became realised, made more real, when a bank hired the imaginary detective a secretary to answer his mail for 70 years.

Support the show

...

Now you can get t-shirts and hoodies with our wonderful logo. This is the best new way to suport the podcast project. Become a proud parader of your passion for Showmanship and our glorious Craft whilst simultanously helping to gather more followers for the Way.
You'll find the store here: https://thewayoftheshowman.printdrop.com.au

If you want to help support this podcast it would be tremendous if you wrote a glowing review on iTunes or Spotify.
If you want to contact me about anything, including wanting me to collaborate on one of your projects you can reach me on thewayoftheshowman@gmail.com
or find out more on the Way of the Showman website.
you can follow the Way of Instagram where it is, not surprisingly thewayoftheshowman.
If you find it in you and you have the means to do so, you can suport the podcast financially at:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/captainfrodo

This time we take a short break from the Mythopoetic Explorations and instead take a look into the strange and beautiful Kingdom of Childhood. We try to understand the denizens with their peculiar vocation of play. Kids, as the inhabitants of the Kingdom are called, play for a living. Their weird, but also wonderful. I used to be one you know. I don't know when I left, but I know that I can't return.
We have to sneak a peak over the walls and through the keyhole of the gates since us adults have lost the ability to re-enter. Come join me on this trip to the exotic geography of Childhood.

Show notes:
Mitch Jones' excellent article.

Support the show

...

Now you can get t-shirts and hoodies with our wonderful logo. This is the best new way to suport the podcast project. Become a proud parader of your passion for Showmanship and our glorious Craft whilst simultanously helping to gather more followers for the Way.
You'll find the store here: https://thewayoftheshowman.printdrop.com.au

If you want to help support this podcast it would be tremendous if you wrote a glowing review on iTunes or Spotify.
If you want to contact me about anything, including wanting me to collaborate on one of your projects you can reach me on thewayoftheshowman@gmail.com
or find out more on the Way of the Showman website.
you can follow the Way of Instagram where it is, not surprisingly thewayoftheshowman.
If you find it in you and you have the means to do so, you can suport the podcast financially at:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/captainfrodo

The concept of the carnival of dreams seems so abstract. This is the opposite of a real world carnival. Today we explore the tarot as a possible tool for creating a mental midway, a carnival that comes to your town as you lay them out on the table, and thus by looking at them we can take a more concrete walk down a manifestation of the Mythopoetic Midway.

I want there to be some more practical aspects to this project. This is one such attempt.


Show notes:
Jung and Tarot
Jung's lecture on tarot
Alejandro Jodorowski on tarot
Jung's collective unconscious
T S Eliot Four quartets 

Support the show

...

Now you can get t-shirts and hoodies with our wonderful logo. This is the best new way to suport the podcast project. Become a proud parader of your passion for Showmanship and our glorious Craft whilst simultanously helping to gather more followers for the Way.
You'll find the store here: https://thewayoftheshowman.printdrop.com.au

If you want to help support this podcast it would be tremendous if you wrote a glowing review on iTunes or Spotify.
If you want to contact me about anything, including wanting me to collaborate on one of your projects you can reach me on thewayoftheshowman@gmail.com
or find out more on the Way of the Showman website.
you can follow the Way of Instagram where it is, not surprisingly thewayoftheshowman.
If you find it in you and you have the means to do so, you can suport the podcast financially at:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/captainfrodo

The path we walk in todays episode goes from the gutters and all the way into sacred, religious territory. We start with the lowbrow, in the trash stratum, we explore the gutter, dreaming of the stars. We then explore dreams and the night, and its transformative powers, before morphing from the dream landscapes into transcendent experiences and how they have the power to change your life and your view of the world.
Before we start our main walk we try to understand what a metaphor is, and what kind of metaphors are the most fertile. We also get another poem by The Australian Master Showman turned poet, Shep Huntly, called the Reprobates Lament.

Show notes:
Scott Nery's blog - A daily source of ideas, and inspiration.
Shep Huntly - poet and Showman. This is his website, but if you want to find his poems look him up on Facebook.
Art inspired by dreams
Freud - the Interpretation of Dreams
Mircea Eliade Interesting dude, philosopher and historian of Religion
a chapter from Eliade's book the Sacred and the Profane, on homogeneity of space and hierophany.
Johns Hopkins study - on trancendental experiences drug induced and non drug induced.
 
 

Support the show

...

Now you can get t-shirts and hoodies with our wonderful logo. This is the best new way to suport the podcast project. Become a proud parader of your passion for Showmanship and our glorious Craft whilst simultanously helping to gather more followers for the Way.
You'll find the store here: https://thewayoftheshowman.printdrop.com.au

If you want to help support this podcast it would be tremendous if you wrote a glowing review on iTunes or Spotify.
If you want to contact me about anything, including wanting me to collaborate on one of your projects you can reach me on thewayoftheshowman@gmail.com
or find out more on the Way of the Showman website.
you can follow the Way of Instagram where it is, not surprisingly thewayoftheshowman.
If you find it in you and you have the means to do so, you can suport the podcast financially at:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/captainfrodo

Strange days are upon us. Some are calling for the abolishment of 2020, others are asking for their money back and are refusing to add this year to their sequence of birthdays. But I am asking for a radical rethinking of the time given to us by the Pandemic. Get cracking with the creating!
Revolution, evolution, sexual and other selection as how the female of the species shapes the males to their liking.
The Carnival is an organism subjected to the same laws of nature the rest of biology struggles under. Like the constrictions placed on us Showfolk by the current pandemic there are various selection processes working on the carnival, both the Outer and the Inner. We learn one of the great secrets of Illuminated Showmanship, how it came to mirror the human soul.

Show Notes:
Alan Watts - What if money was no object.
Austin Kleon - Steal Like an Artist
Before and after shots of clean air in India.
Tolkien quote "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
Little Egypt article with links to clips.
Little Egypts filmed by Edison
Darwin's letter to Asa Gray where he says: "The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!"
Evolution of Whales - 2nd episode of an excellent PBS documentary.
Pakicetus - Dog-like whale ancestor

Support the show

...

Now you can get t-shirts and hoodies with our wonderful logo. This is the best new way to suport the podcast project. Become a proud parader of your passion for Showmanship and our glorious Craft whilst simultanously helping to gather more followers for the Way.
You'll find the store here: https://thewayoftheshowman.printdrop.com.au

If you want to help support this podcast it would be tremendous if you wrote a glowing review on iTunes or Spotify.
If you want to contact me about anything, including wanting me to collaborate on one of your projects you can reach me on thewayoftheshowman@gmail.com
or find out more on the Way of the Showman website.
you can follow the Way of Instagram where it is, not surprisingly thewayoftheshowman.
If you find it in you and you have the means to do so, you can suport the podcast financially at:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/captainfrodo

We try to understand what this special carnival is, what's its nature? It is not your regular down and out collection of rides and crooked, rigged carnival games. One way of looking at it is by comparing it to Plato's Theory of Ideas. We also take a look at the real world inspiration that lead me towards the idea that the carnival would be a fertile place for our mythopoetic seeds to grow. This place was a homegrown carnival Showgrounds in Adelaide, South Australia called the Garden of Unearthly Delights. So come with me on a journey to better grasp the nature of the Mythopoetic Carnival.

 Show notes:

The Space Cowboy
Plato's Theory of Ideas or Forms
Nancy Rommelmann's article: Lives of the Carnies
Garden of Unearthly Delights - The nature of this garden has changed now from the pioneer days, but its still amazing.
The Happy Sideshow
the Tiny Top
Trent "Birdmann" Baumann
Captain Frodo's Can Balance - Follow Your dreams
Circus Princess - The concept is well known throughout Scandinavia and as this link shows has made it into the danish dictionary.

Support the show

...

Now you can get t-shirts and hoodies with our wonderful logo. This is the best new way to suport the podcast project. Become a proud parader of your passion for Showmanship and our glorious Craft whilst simultanously helping to gather more followers for the Way.
You'll find the store here: https://thewayoftheshowman.printdrop.com.au

If you want to help support this podcast it would be tremendous if you wrote a glowing review on iTunes or Spotify.
If you want to contact me about anything, including wanting me to collaborate on one of your projects you can reach me on thewayoftheshowman@gmail.com
or find out more on the Way of the Showman website.
you can follow the Way of Instagram where it is, not surprisingly thewayoftheshowman.
If you find it in you and you have the means to do so, you can suport the podcast financially at:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/captainfrodo

Mythopoetic means myth making. A grand voyage is undertaken, a quest is begun, we set sails on the Showmanship and seek a mythic continent, a land of tales, and characters, manifestations of the Showman's Craft. We seek a firm foundation in the lowest of the low. Arguments are made that this low ground is the Carnival. In all unearthing of meaning there is some digging needed, things will get a little dirty, but when the discoveries are resonant and fertile enough to plant a mythopoetic seed then perhaps we can grow an entire mythology of Showmanship. A mythological underground for the Circus and the Carnival.
This theme of myth creation is so expansive it will follow us for the next few episodes.

A few Show notes:

Joseph Campbell - Hero with a thousand Faces. Influence on Star Wars (& others).
Imposter Syndrome.
Owen Barfield - Evolution of Consciousness and words as fossilised reflections of consciousness.
Mythopoeia - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Inklings.
Freemasonry's two histories
Midway
Chicago World Fair
Bikini Kill - Carnival
Ferris wheel 

Support the show

...

Now you can get t-shirts and hoodies with our wonderful logo. This is the best new way to suport the podcast project. Become a proud parader of your passion for Showmanship and our glorious Craft whilst simultanously helping to gather more followers for the Way.
You'll find the store here: https://thewayoftheshowman.printdrop.com.au

If you want to help support this podcast it would be tremendous if you wrote a glowing review on iTunes or Spotify.
If you want to contact me about anything, including wanting me to collaborate on one of your projects you can reach me on thewayoftheshowman@gmail.com
or find out more on the Way of the Showman website.
you can follow the Way of Instagram where it is, not surprisingly thewayoftheshowman.
If you find it in you and you have the means to do so, you can suport the podcast financially at:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/captainfrodo