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b'DON COLLIVER was working as a non-fiction TV producer when he decided to make a highly unconventional career change and became a professional clown. This episode was recorded three days before Don flew to New York to join the award-winning performance art company Blue Man Group.\\xa0(44:36) EXPLICIT \\xa0 \\xa0 \\xa0 EPISODE NOTES: Several of my TV producer friends and colleagues have exited the business, but nobody\\u2019s exit strategy has been nearly as unconventional as the switch DON COLLIVER made by becoming a professional clown. Now, if you\\u2019re imagining Don wearing big floppy shoes and making balloon animals at children\\u2019s birthday parties, stop right there. As Don explains in his PIERSON TO PERSON episode DOWN TO CLOWN, his style of clowning is a theatrical art form that allows him to explore a wide-range of human emotions and express himself in a way that is cathartic for the audience: \\u201cWhen I feel an emotion I share it with the audience completely, right into their eyes. Not to be angry at the audience, but to show I\\u2019m angry and I know you\\u2019ve been angry, too.\\u201d The purpose of this expression, Don says, is to make people feel less alone in the world. \\u201cPeople are relating to it, so we\\u2019re kind of all in it together. We\\u2019re all lonely together, or we\\u2019re all sad together, or we\\u2019re all transcending together. It\\u2019s very personal up there, and the fact that it works is just a miracle.\\u201d But clown shows like the ones Don performs in don\\u2019t work for everybody: \\u201cSome people are really uncomfortable with someone sharing emotion because we spend a lot of time not acknowledging what we\\u2019re feeling.\\u201d Don remembers one friend who came to see him perform and told him afterwards it really wasn\\u2019t her thing: \\u201cShe was like, \\u2018I didn\\u2019t like your show. My family doesn\\u2019t like to feel emotions.\\u2019\\u201d This is not to say that feeling emotions comes easier or more naturally for Don than it does for anyone else. \\u201cIn this work, the things that block you are the things that block humans period. What am I not dealing with? What\\u2019s my childhood baggage that I\\u2019m lugging around? It just comes right into your face the moment you start doing this work, and you are forced to deal with it. Like uncomfortableness with fear. How do I handle fear? How do I handle intimacy? All these things that everybody wrestles with in their own way. And the goal with this is to be completely vulnerable." The vulnerability and intimate truths that Don conveys on stage aren\\u2019t limited to his performing self. He now makes a conscious effort to be as open and present as he can be in his everyday life: \\u201cI really can\\u2019t deal with sarcasm anymore. I don\\u2019t want to be sarcastic. I don\\u2019t want to be around people who are sarcastic. I just want to be in relationships where I can be honest, and they can be honest. And it\\u2019s painful a lot. But it\\u2019s more true. Just the ability to feel sad or feel joy and be in it, and ride it through to the other end of it, without making a snarky remark to kind of push it down. And it\\u2019s taken some work to develop a piece of myself that is okay no matter what\\u2019s going on.\\u201d BP \\xa0 Many thanks to the composers of the music featured in this episode royalty free through Creative Commons licensing: 1. "Saunter" by Poddington Bear\\xa0-\\xa0soundofpicture.com 2. "Curiosity" by Lee Rosevere -\\xa0leerosevere.bandcamp.com 3. "Second" by Paolo Pavan -'