Where do clowns come from? Pt.1

A short write up that in now way encompasses all the ingredients or the recipe that makes a clown. Photo journal entry originally posted on instagram and here I will go more in depth.

photo 1: Foot E. the Clown in my room in New Orleans. I let my friend Faith give me a trim and finally change the shape of my hair slightly. I got some face framing. Some clowns have hair and mine has gone through many evolutions. Long, locked up, cut off, buzz cut, repeated awkward grow outs and buzz cuts and fades until I committed to growing alll the way again. Here we are.

I grew up not knowing how to handle my hair, being raised by my step mom and my dad. It’s a piece of my identity that took a long time for me find.

photo 2: baby foot with my dad in skull make up

photo 3: GRIEF !!! in a cemetery in New Orleans. I think grief has been a big part of shaping me as a person, as a clown. Clowning is coping for me. It’s a jest, it’s a mask, it’s protective, it’s healing, it’s troublemaking and trickster, asking question, making heavy things light, being uncomfortable, clumsy, unpolished, shit show, broken. My first love died when I was 19, back in 2015, and it really pulled the strings from my fabric of reality. I’ve lost and watched friends lose so many people since then. This September my friend Pepper passed away. i returned to New Orleans to reclaim my room from a friend who dipped out early so I had to come pay rent and be apart of the apartment for my roommates and most of all to to grieve my friend. Her memorial was in October. My partner and I had to be with our friends who knew pepper. I hope to write more about how grief has shaped me in the future.

photo 4 & 5: baby Foot dressed up in black n white which feels very baby clown to me haha. These photo’s with my Alaska Grammy were in Texas back when I was a little pageant baby! Yeah if you know me now it’s both hilarious and kind of makes sense. They didn’t doll me up like the baby pageants you think of now. My Grammy was a big supporter of my “looks” and loved to help dress me. My mom and dad were still together then and they said I just smiled so big and then won big trophies. Maybe I’ll find more photos from those days and share about my 6ft trophy haha.

photo 6: is at my Texas Nanna’s current little apartment. run down but cheap rent. You can see her barely stepping out the door. I am one of the few people that can get her to come sit outside for a moment and take a break from her phone games. My Nanna helped raise me when I was little in Texas. I lived with her for a period of time. We would drink coffee in the morning and dip chocolate chips cookies in the coffee like biscotti. she always ended up drinking my coffee. i just ate my coffee soaked cookie most of the time.

photo 7: my dogs toe beans on my partner’s face while napping in Nanna’s guest room/ storage. My dog and my partner bring so much to my life. They don’t make me a clown, but I do give my dog eyebrows sometimes and I do make my partner laugh as often as possible. I guess that one is just extra (:

photo 8 & 9: FAMILY, BLOOD, GENES 🧬 this is Ma and Nanna. It feels so vulnerable sharing them like this. But all these various photos of family in this post are pieces of my genetic code and make up. I grieved a lot more than the living.

TATA for now! That’s all this clown has to say. I’m not proof reading because it took me almost a week to get this out of me so I’m hitting share. Tell me your thoughts in return if you have some.

xoxo Foot E. the Clown