The Jester's Tear

Marillion's Script for a Jester's Tear (Recorded Live)

That year after my Spring awakening in 1989 was filled with work-work-work. Winter Quarter, I remember realizing 1 reason I was so frustrated and bogged down was from schoolwork assignments. Between an African-American Literature class, Sociology, and whatever else I had that quarter, I read over 4,000 pages of text in 12 weeks. No wonder I was cranky then.

For Spring, I was smart enough NOT to take a heavy class-load that would require research and writing essays on nuclear war while the trees were exploding in fizzy pink color. Instead, I took 2 creative classes : Sculpture and Creative Writing. You still had to put the time in, but it was a refreshing way to learn and create other than rote learning and memorization. We studied and learned the forms (wood, clay, metal, paper mache ; sonnet, haiku, short story, etc.). Then we did our own stuff within those forms.



In the sculpture class with Doug Johnson, I made a Jester out of clay. No mouth which represented 8 weeks of being wired shut after my jaw surgery. The jester is supposed to make us laugh, supposed to be happy himself, but that's the irony--The jester hurts, too, and can't speak of his sorrows. I was also a big Marillion fan even back then, so this song was also on my mind.