The Last Hurrah That Left Me Sitting With a Mantra

Idiot Dome, Segregation, Letting Go of Judgements, and "Playing the Rest"

During my last month in Los Angeles, I attended my final Idiot Dome. Idiot Dome is a show unlike anything else. It is absurd and a mess, a contest between idiots and clowns and characters of all sorts. If you haven’t been and are in the area, I humbly demand that you try to go. At least once. It’ll wake up parts of you that you didn’t know were asleep. I do not promise it to be good, no, not at all. It isn’t. What it is, is so weird. I love weird.

Idiot Dome (recently renamed Joe Dome, but I’ll stick to what my generation called it) takes place circa 9:30 pm during a 5-hour alt-comedy block titled CATSBY that goes down every fourth Sunday of the month at the Clubhouse, which is a stealthy little underground comedy joint in Los Feliz behind the Barnsdall Art Park, next to the Jons grocer, in an abandoned-looking location labeled “Optometry.” Just knock on the glass door and try to catch someone’s eye; they’ll let you in.

I hadn’t been back since before the pandemic when I would perform regularly. The Clubhouse caboshed all non-vaccinated visitors, and I didn’t feel safe or welcome to join in on the fun.

Albeit, they certainly don’t check.

It’s the principle of the matter for me, though. They, along with every comedy joint in LA, were once very adamant about their segregation. Fully vaccinated, fall-into-line-without-questioning-it persons only! is the consistent post-2020 Lala-land vibe. Even if now it is only advertised and not upheld, it still signals an oppressive dogma that makes me cringe to the core. The sign on the door that reads “Proof of Vaccination Required for Entry” yells at me in its way, “YOU’RE NOT WELCOME AND DON’T DESERVE RESPECT OR COMMUNITY, SCUM!”

They could at least advertise that they would be willing to welcome negative tests in lieu of their jabs, but places, by and large, do not vocalize this even if they mean it. That workaround usually has to be discovered by calling ahead and then reminding the doorman, who often pushes back and then retrieves the ticket salesperson, who knows this but needs to speak to the manager or director first.

What to do for a place that has no staff? Just public declarations of an unwelcoming nature? Ayayayaye.

These declarations presume my religious and medical reasons aren’t good enough for the Los Angeles performance hubs.

Without an official exemption, society has decided folks don’t deserve one. Who would I submit a request for an exemption to? Who gets to be the judge of my beliefs and medical history? News flash to the wickedly woke: there is no option to be different in these places.

Going through that rigamarole for my teaching position at the West Hollywood Charter School I worked for in 2021 was degrading enough, but–unlike businesses/restaurants/clubs/friend groups/theaters–at least there was a straightforward way to submit for an exemption. An option for dialogue. To engage in this dialogue, I took a workshop on writing a request for an exemption and duly passed the tests to my sincerity. Overhearing other teachers condemn anyone with differing beliefs did add to the misery of LA exponentially, nonetheless. I was approved and promptly resigned.

I digress!

Come June 2022; I was thrilled to be finally leaving LA and saddened that I hadn’t had the opportunity to join in on any Clubhouse catastrophes. My last opportunity, my last Sunday in town, came round, and I saw a dear friend was leading the open clown workshop during the Clubhouse’s CATSBY block. During these clowny Sunday nights, The Clubhouse’s main stage hosts a free clown workshop before Idiot Dome. It is a ball. If you are new and curious about clowning or have clowned, miss clowning, and want a little clown hit, DM Chad Damiani to see if you can get in on the next free workshop. It worked for me! He knows my vax status as he had to rescind an ensemble invitation he’d offered me in the Summer of 2021 upon its discovery. A bummer, alas. He said they could look the other way for my last visit to the Clubhouse and would be glad to have me.

Knowing I wouldn’t be making a habit of fraternizing with this mess of logic, I let it go for the night. And boy, was I glad I did. It was a spectacular evening of fun and goofs and utter ridiculousness.

My partner, Alan, upon winning the last Idiot Dome before the city’s shutdown

June 2022’s Idiot Dome was fantastic, and I had a riveting time laughing until I cried. The new crop of idiot comedy meat in LA is aces. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, get there at least once if you’re in town and able. I miss this weirdo community, regardless of how subject to the mainstream media’s divisive tactics they’ve been. I can’t submit myself to play with them, but I do support their work and root for their existence. The work of the LA idiots is utterly bizarre, provocatively bold, and dangerously brash, and there just ain’t nothing else like it.

Among all this fun, amid drinks and rambunctious highs, I went goofing around the streets after the show. If only I could remember what bit I was doing when I was walking backward, to face my friends, and tripped over a Lime scooter.

Damn those things! Damn. Those. THINGS.

Due to that blunt force trauma, I sustained an injury to my foot, and ignoring it for a couple of months has caught up with me in an un-ignorable way.

As movement is critical to all of my favorite bits of existing, the need to rest my movements in order to heal is an egregious fact that I am struggling to swallow.

Performing for the Public Assembly alongside Emily Burton in 2019

“Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence and silence is full of music.” - Marcel Marceau

Gosh, isn’t that a tasty morsel of wisdom? This favorite quote of mine captures the importance of “playing the rest” wonderfully. Tis’ a theme that always tends to nuzzle its way from my peripheral to center stage. A few months ago this lesson came back in the way of feeling a pause in creative flow, and now it arrives with a much more literal demeanor. I want to play, and I feel bitter at the restrictions my injury is setting. So, how can I play this rest?

Playing the rest is a lesson that comes from the study of music and has the potential to infiltrate–and better–all things. Performance, life, all of it. I do appreciate this theme’s insistence at getting my attention over the years, albeit my anxiety seems to continually steepen with each moment of rest I accumulate these days. Perhaps because I don’t feel as though I am playing them properly.

Hm. How unhelpful judgment and shame are. As they say in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), judgment is a shortcut to emotions. Positive or negative judgments leap you into higher Subjective Units of Distress (SUDs), and higher SUDS make it harder to cope. Even with small, day-to-day stuff. If your SUDS are extremely high, your hippocampus surrenders and the amygdala no longer regulates emotions effectively.

Now, being sat down by the universe yet again and told to be still when all I want to do is dance and play and create with the whole of my body, is putting a good amount of strain on all of the tools in my mental health toolbox.

An immediate, actionable tool I see fitting to sharpen at this time is to let go of judgements. I don’t have space for that. Not towards myself or others. No judging in a positive or negative way. Somehow, seeing my self-judgement in writing three paragraphs back made its un-helpfulness abundantly clear. How do you find reflections of yourself that illuminate a path to improving your lived experience?

Now that I’ve seen it, it is especially my responsibility to re-adjust. How absurd, to judge the way in which I play the rest, when in fact I am doing my best and for whatever it is worth, that is good enough.

Play the rest.

Does this phrase resonate with you? How does it tingle? What curiosities or memories or challenges does it bring up?

I find it profound as all hell, and it suits just about every advisory need. Be it in healing, creating, performing, intimacy, interior decorating, plant-growing, administrative tasks ahh… dare I say it… everything?!

It’s a mantra worthy of living by, certainly. One I have a lot to learn from. Lately, rest to me feels like inadequacy. However, it is to note how suffocating it is when a performer never rests and lets the beauty of their gift breathe! In this case, ignoring my obvious need to rest in stillness will only cripple my abilities in a forever kind of way. *my foot is currently soaking in epsom salts, and glaring at me for all of this existential bitching*

My resistance to this lesson at this time means I need it the absolute most. The things that most annoy us tend to be the things we need to pay the most attention to. The reflections of the parts of ourselves we have been unwilling to appreciate and give compassion. The bits that need a loving integration into the whole of our functioning being.

I must needs fill this stillness with a stillness, to value it for all of its potency and honor its eternal love for its counterpart, movement. Through potent stillness, by playing this rest, I am sure I can crop up a kinetic energy that will bounce beautifully once I can move freely again. By ignoring it, everything will just be mush. One long and exhausted sentence. We need the breaks. We need the breaks.

Aloha hui ho, my loves.

Thank you so much for taking the time to be with me here today. I hope to hear about your thoughts in the comments.

Julia Fae