What Visiting Robert Lax on Patmos Was Like

Robert Lax with Michael N. McGregor — Photo: Sylvia McGregor

Note: This remembrance was first published in an issue of The Merton Seasonal in 2001, a year after Robert Lax died.

After the Circus Goes By

© Michael McGregor, 2001

I don’t know how many evenings I spent with Bob Lax during the years I knew him. Dozens. Maybe a hundred. I returned to Patmos each year, staying sometimes for just a few days, other times for weeks. In approach, the visits were all the same – the climb up the hill, the cats at the door, the knock on the frosted glass and that gentle “hello” – the “o” round and full, drawn-out and rising until it was both question (“Who’s there?”) and statement (“Whoever you are, you’re welcome”).

The first moments inside were similar, too. Bob would offer a cup of water or tea. If he was alone, he would hand me something to read while he shuffled out to his tiny kitchen – a new publication, a poem, a letter from someone I knew by name or from a previous visit. If it was summer, someone would always be there already, and I would have the feeling I had just missed the funniest joke ever told, or a life-changing moment, or the absolution that follows confession. More often than not, all I had missed was the latest exchange in Bob’s conversation with life. The magic of visiting Bob was that once the water or tea had been served and a sweet had been offered, nothing was ever the same. The conversation was endless but it was always going somewhere new, directed not by anyone’s will but by the personalities of those present and by the spirit Bob fostered – a spirit of playfulness and a deep desire to love and know. There were themes that came and went with the years and themes that never changed, Bob’s preoccupations, which deepened and strengthened with time, like channels rubbed into bedrock. (One of the many things he taught me was to look for the themes that defined my own life. When he was younger, he said, he once wrote for as long as he could, pages each day, with the single intention of finding out what he most cared about.) Anyone who knew Bob knew his concerns: peace, common ground, knowing God, meditation, being love…and the inexplicable joy of the circus.

In summer it could be a circus at Bob’s. (In the later years, along his entryway wall, the first thing a visitor saw was a sign advertising Circus Roberto.) His bedroom was the center ring – stuffed full of painters, writers, dancers and mystics, many pursuing their arts because Bob had encourage them. On the wall were photos of acrobats, drawings of animals, and an advertisement for the Marx Brothers’ At the Circus. Bob himself was the circus high priest – both ringmaster and clown. He sat on his bed with his legs propped up, his clothes mismatched, his face a panoply of glee. Wand in hand, he directed the magic. He was sage and child, clever and simple, alight with a joy that understands sorrow – all a master or clown should be.

But while I loved to see the circus at Bob’s, the times I miss most are those nights in winter or early spring when no one but me would be there. When he would be wearing long johns and two or three shirts, a cap on his head. When we would sit by ourselves drinking tea, sipping soup, the lights mostly off, the town beyond the window dark. We might hear a mouse scurry along the wall then or a cockroach dance across the kitchen. Bob would look up at me and smile, and I would see the love alive in his eyes, not for me alone but for the whole world – the mice and the cockroaches, the cats and the flies. We talked on those nights, of course, about his life and mine, our concerns and preoccupations. But often we just sat like that, musing in silence, two kids on a sidewalk late at night, after the circus goes by.

Michael McGregor, an essayist and fiction writer, first encountered Bob Lax in Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain while living on Patmos in 1985. Impressed by Lax’s youthful wisdom, he made a note to look for him in Merton’s later books, not realizing Lax was living half a mile away. The two met three weeks later and remained friends the rest of Lax’s life. His article “Turning the Jungle Into a Garden: A Visit with Robert Lax'” appeared in Poets & Writers magazine (March/April 1997).

Cristiani Videos to Whet Your Appetite for the Upcoming Philip Glass-Robert Lax Circus Opera

Poking around on YouTube today, I found these two old blurry videos of the Cristiani circus family, the second of which I’ve posted before.

The Cristianis, of course, are the stars of Robert Lax’s poetry cycles The Circus of the Sun and Mogador’s Book, the basis for the Philip Glass opera “Circus Days and Nights,” which will premiere in a live-streamed show from the Malmö Opera building on May 29.

I’ll be posting more about the opera in the coming days and weeks. In the meantime, here’s a link to more information about it, including how to get tickets for one of the live-streamed shows. Stay tuned.

It’s Official! Philip Glass Circus Opera Based On Robert Lax’s Poems to Premiere May 29, 2021!

Click on the image above to watch a five-minute video introduction to the show.

I announced this several months ago but now it’s official: “Circus Days and Nights,” the new circus opera by Philip Glass, based on poems by Robert Lax (with libretto by David Henry Hwang and Tilde Björfors), will have its world premiere at Sweden’s Malmö Opera on May 29, 2021.

Cirkus Days and Nights is a co-production between Cirkus Cirkör and Malmö Opera. After its premiere at Malmö Opera, Cirkus Cirkör, Scandinavia’s leading contemporary circus company, will take it on tour.

Here’s a description from the press release sent out this week:

“An entirely new work meets an entirely new form: Circus Days and Nights is a circus opera in three acts, written by legendary composer Philip Glass. Its inspiration is Robert Lax’s masterwork Circus Days and Nights, a collection of poems that draws us into the poet’s fascination with acrobats and the circus lifestyle and takes us on the road with him when he “runs away” and joins a circus in 1940s America. For Lax, the circus becomes a metaphor for life itself – the cycle of life and death –and for human yearning and striving. Circus Days and Nights will be a boundary-crossing performance that brings the circus ring into the opera house.”

You can read the full press release here and see photographs of Cirkus Cirkör shows here.

Philip Glass and Tilde Björfors. Photo: Mats Bäcker

Some quotes from those who created the opera:

”I have had the rights to the poem for about ten years, but I couldn’t write the piece because I hadn’t found my circus. When I saw Tilde’s staging of ‘Satyagraha’ it struck me: Here’s my circus.”
–Philip Glass

“In Robert Lax’s poem and vision of the circus as a metaphor for life, I discovered a soulmate and ever since, Circus Days and Nights has had a permanent place on my nightstand. In Philip Glass’s music, I heard the ultimate circus music, music that commingles with the circus disciplines. Having the opportunity to bring together these two sources of inspiration is dizzying and fills me with a sense of humility in the face of life’s breathtaking leaps of faith.”
–Tilde Björfors

“I read the poems and I was really touched by their beauty, their simplicity in a sense, and yet their profundity. The way Lax envisions Circus as an act of creation and the cycle of putting up a show and taking it down is the cycle of life itself.”
–David Henry Hwang

Philip Glass Composes “Circus Opera” Based on Robert Lax Poems

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is e07c6758-66fb-44ee-98e1-2008227160c1.jpg — *(Photos from Cirkus Cirkör website: top by Mats Bäcker; bottom by Einar Kling Odencrants)*

Iconic American composer Philip Glass, known for his minimalist approach, is working on a “circus opera” based on Lax’s Circus Days and Nights. Since Lax has often been called a minimalist himself, this seems like a perfect match.

And playwright David Henry Hwang, author of the Tony-winning opera-based play “M. Butterfly” is writing the libretto!

A cooperative venture between Cirkus Cirkör, a well-known circus group in Sweden, and the Malmö Opera, the new Glass/Lax work will have its world premiere in Malmö, Sweden, in May 2021. After that, Cirkus Cirkör plans to take it on a world tour.

Here’s a description from Cirkus Cirkör‘s announcement of the project:

A circus opera in two acts, based on the American poet Robert Lax’s book by the same title. Circus Days and Nights is a collection of existential poems where the Circus acts as a metaphor for life and the human condition.

This brand new opera, commissioned by Cirkus Cirkör and Malmö Opera is composed by the legendary Philip Glass with a libretto written by Tony Award winner David Henry Hwang. The piece is co-conceived and directed by the Swedish circus director Tilde Björfors, recipient of the Premio Europa/New Theatrical Realities.

The story follows a travelling circus company from day into night, and investigates the circularity of time, the constant travelling and seeks the joy in the repetition of the daily chores of everybody involved in this extended circus family. The circus tent acts as an image of the world, and of a greater spiritual side to the world’s perpetual journey through space, here interpreted as a circus act.

For more information, go to Cirkus Cirkör and download the “info sheet” PDF.

“I have had the rights to the poem for about ten years, but forgot to write the piece. But when I saw Tilde’s staging of ‘Satyagraha’ it struck me: They could do it!”
–Philip Glass
(from “Circus Days and Nights” info sheet.)

Here are a few more details from the Cirkus Cirkör website and a recent press release (with thanks to Tomas Einarsson for translations):

Since the 1970’s, Philip Glass has been one of Americas most successful composers. His music is sometimes labeled as minimalism but it is powerful and suggestive, and often has a hypnotic force. He has a large fan base all over the world through his rich production of film music, operas, world tours with his own ensemble, and cooperations with artist such as David Bowie and Laurie Anderson.

Cirkus Cirkör began when Tilde Björfors (artistic leader and co-founder, who will direct the new Glass/Lax work) and several other artists traveled to Paris and fell in love with the possibilities the contemporary circus offered. They decided to stop dreaming big and living small and instead give their all to make a reality of their dreams. Twenty years later, more that 2 million people have seen a Cirkus Cirkör show on stage and in festivals around the world. In addition, 400,000 children and youth have been trained in contemporary circus techniques. Contemporary circus is now an established art form in Sweden. You will find it in all sorts of places, from preschools to universities and homes for the elderly.

Cirkus Cirkör and Philip Glass:

In 2016, Cirkus Cirkör, together with Folkoperan, performed the Philip Glass opera “Satyagraha” in Stockholm, which began a relationship between the circus and the composer. “Satyagraha” played almost 70 sold-out shows. It also made guest appearances in Göteborg, Copenhagen, and BAM in New York. All of the New York shows were sold out and Philip Glass attended the premiere.

Video: Lax’s Friends, the Cristiani Circus Acrobats, in Action

“I knew right away that a big thing had happened. I’ve never gotten over it.”

–Robert Lax on first meeting the Cristiani family of circus acrobats, who became his friends and inspired his thinking about life as pure act. He later traveled with them through Western Canada, performing sometimes as a clown called Chesko.

Note from M. McGregor: Last week I stopped at the Ringling Brothers circus museum in Sarasota, Florida, where the Cristianis used to winter, and found this video of the Cristiani brothers performing back when Lax knew them in the 1940s:

The Presentness and Mindfulness of Robert Lax’s Pure Act (part one)

When Robert Lax was a student at Columbia University in the late ‘30s, he and Thomas Merton liked to go to jazz clubs late at night to watch jazz musicians jam. These jam sessions were more spontaneous than a regular performance, but they weren’t entirely freewheeling and they certainly weren’t chaotic. What gave them form and flow was a combination of the musicians’ training, whatever tune they were using as a base, and their presentness and mindfulness. The musicians were fully in the moment, listening and responding to each other.

When the time came for one of them to solo, he knew it, not because a leader gave a nod but because the music shifted his direction, an opening invited him to shine. In that moment, as he blew his horn or strummed his bass, he did it more intensely and more soulfully than he had before, playing, as George Clinton once said, like his mamma just died. He didn’t do it to outplay the others but because playing his best, expressing what he could best express, was the best way of both respecting and encouraging his fellow musicians. Each one playing his best brought out the best in the others.

A worrier by nature, Lax longed to be as present and as mindful, as disciplined and yet insouciant and spontaneous as those musicians were. His relationship with Merton and their other college friends gave him a taste of how a constant jam might feel: the free exchange of new ideas and views, the playing off of one another, the applauding of creative accomplishments. But college ended and his friends scattered. Merton entered a monastery. Jazz musicians were still playing, of course, but the world offered few other models of the concept Lax would come to call pure act, and his understanding of it remained more theoretical than actual.

Until, that is, he met the Crisitani family. Performers since they were young, the family’s eleven brothers and sisters were the world’s leading equestrian acrobats. Catholics all, they shared a faith and an understanding of each other built from countless hours of practicing and performing together. Each had his individual talents and personality but all were serious and sober, happy and playful, graceful and skillful, as Lax would describe them in his poem cycle Mogador’s Book.

About the skill of Mogador, the brother Lax felt closest to, he wrote:

Like the highest art,
it is a kind of play
which involves
responsibility
and control;
An activity which involves
awareness and appreciation;
Its own symbolic value.
Like the prayers
of the old in wisdom,
it has the joy
and the solemnity of love.

Lax’s first book, The Circus of the Sun, was an attempt to show the relationship in spirit between the performers in the Cristianis circus and the Creation story:

“We have seen all the days of creation in one day: this is
the day of the waking dawn and all over the field the
people are moving, they are coming to praise the Lord:
and it is now the first day of creation…

He succeeded wonderfully in portraying the grace and beauty of both circus and creation, but the writing of the book did not come easily. And after writing it, he still felt far more anxious than he wanted to. To live and make his art as freely as the Cristianis did, he’d need a deeper understanding of himself and what he meant by pure act, a phrase he’d borrowed from St. Thomas Aquinas. He’d need to make a move, too: from overly commercial and distracted America to a tiny room beside the waterfront in dangerous Marseilles, and then an island far from anyone or anything he knew, in the middle of the vast Aegean.

(part two to come…)