A letter from Chris Scroth, who has currently left Green Mountain to explore Mexico.
Been enjoying myself, cruising around, living as best as I can. Had some beauitiful times. Now my life is just weird.
Run off and joined the circus in San Cristobal. I didn’t really know how, but I ended up living in the hills for a few days with this group of people that are clowns and trapeze and jugglers, etc.
So beautiful away from all the rush of city life and the road. Good folks living in adobe houses and cooking over a communal fire, playing music all night. The owner of the place was nuts a little bit, and we all kind of got asked to leave. He kept talking of false poets, and how it was impossible to be a good person and like reggaeton.
We have started performing as well. We go into restaurants and play on the street dressed as clowns calling ourselves the Contorsio Gomez Orchestra. We always set out as a smaller group but perform with 5 or 6—really fun.
I’m Contorsio, by the way, and play guitar, and there’s Papaita Lopez and Ding Ding Montuna on drums and clave, among others. We play Cuban songs, like Chonchon by Buena Vista and others, and do some clownin’ as well.
It’s incredible fun, and we get paid for it. The other day we made a bunch of people start dancing, and they were dancing around their table and enjoying themselves. The band was unable to believe and couldn’t stop laughing. We also do comedy and clowning, and trapeze starting today. Clowning is incredible — the red nose is so liberating.
It’s good to relax and settle down for a minute, have a family, though it’s a seriously dysfunctional clown family.
