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I know what you are thinking, at least the one or two people who might be familiar with my posts. It’s presidential primary season, and the title is “Send in the Clowns”.
But you are wrong!
I’ve listened to recordings of Judy Collins, Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, and others performing this Stephen Sondheim standard. I’ve even performed it myself on the alto sax in instrumental ensembles, yet the lyrics never made any more sense to me than ‘Stairway to Heaven”.
The title and/or audio rendition is often used as a disparaging joke, intended to belittle, discount, or roast a group of people.
My wife told me a story of a friend who had the music played during the processional at her wedding.
I’ve always intuitively known it is a very sad song, but what is it’s meaning?
On Christmas day, my father popped in a Sinatra DVD he received as a present, and Ol’ Blue Eyes shed some light on the meaning. I might never hear “Send in the Clowns” again without tearing up.
The circus is a metaphor for a long romantic relationship, the subtext being a male/female trapeze act (“Isn’t it rich? Are we a pair? Me here at last on the ground, you in mid-air.”). The lyrics tell the story of a man who, after many tumultuous and thrilling years paired with the same woman, unable to commit (“one who keeps tearing around, one who can’t move”), finally comes to the realization he wants to make it permanent, and wants nothing else (“Just when I’d stopped opening doors, finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours”).
The next day he travels to her place to propose, only to find that she, at precisely the same moment of his epiphany, came to the realization that she wasn’t getting any younger, and needed to end the relationship and leave for good.
So there he sat, in an empty room, reflecting on the irony of “losing my timing this late in my career”, knowing that it may be too late for him to find love again, disbelieving their circus act is finished, desperately pleading for the performance to not really be over..
“Where are the clowns?” “There ought to be clowns.” “Send in the clowns.”
(Now can someone explain “Stairway to Heaven” to me?)
