I was standing in front of my musician friend, our noses practically touching. "Scream like a cicada," he urged.
A cicada?
Taking his cue, and feeling like a complete fool, I belted out a high-pitched "eee" through my clenched teeth. I made the sound the way I remembered the insects doing it in Costa Rica.
"Now match my sound," he continued.
Ramping up my volume and matching his pitch, something odd and inner and inexplicable happened as the frequency of sound from my voice matched his.
Sound enveloped us. Coming from no discernable direction, I felt I was in the center of the Universe. I was a cicada though I couldn't have felt more human, more strong, more divine.
It reminded me about Philippe Gaulier, a professional French clown I had met in Tel Aviv who had come to give actors, directors, leaders and everyday people the confidence to access and release their inner idiot.
Many of us are all familiar with the concept of finding one's inner-child, a theory that got its legs in the late sixties with the publication of the pop psychology book by Thomas Anthony Harris, I'm OK, You're OK.
But how does one find their inner fool?
Philippe Gaulier, a world-famous professional clown, has found his own unique path. Through his international workshops and clown school based in London, Gaulier attracts high profile artists, entertainers, managers of companies and even regular folk who are eager to find and release their inner buffoon.
The idiot inside of us, as you might imagine, has no shame. He may drool, slur his speech, scream obscenities or sing like a cicada. Accessing that place, Gaulier explains in his seminars, is about timing, confidence, and honesty. Once there, we reach a place of feeling our humanity and connecting with the divine.
"Be less of an actor - be a little boy or little girl," shouts Gaulier in a characteristically rough way to his class of about 30 students. "Don't think character. Put all your fantasies outside. If you are looking for your own ridiculous way you will find your clown," he explains.
"But if you are looking for comfort and want to sit down, you will find no clown. When you stay clean and correct you will be boring. Don't hide yourself behind a character. Be open. Be stupid, eh. Don't cheat your stupidity and we will love you."
The idiot within, Gaulier persuades, is not your run-of-the-mill goofball character with a red nose. It is something more deep, which sits above the traditional rules society has created for us.
The motif of an idiot in modern culture is not a new one. In Tarot, the 'Fool' has a unique role, a master of sorts above the other cards; and related to the Joker or 'wild card,' it is the fool among the cards who exempts us from the normal rules of play.
In Shakespeare's prose, the fool is always bearing the most insightful truth: Better a foolish wit, than a witty fool!
"The Fool makes a profound statement - dropped in amongst the kings, queens, and powers of the cosmos," says Tom Tadfor Little, a Tarot expert. "In every hand he appears once, somewhere, unpredictably, never taking anything and never being taken. He just is. Total humility bestows invulnerability."
The Fool, according to Kabbalists, is considered to represent the face of God and is connected to the origins of the Universe.
How can our inner idiot help us find our true selves on our paths to fulfillment?
We can look to expert idiot, Gaulier for answers: A ruddy complexion, thick suspenders and pop bottle glasses, Gaulier paces around the room during one of his seminars and commands with a heavy French accent that his students should twist back each other's arms, administer pinching torture he calls "acupuncture" and that they should deliver a series of karate chops to each other's backs (well before the pain threshold of course.)
"This is punishment for not being funny," he says, now ordering the students to kiss each other. And then straightaway he adds, "Adios immediately!" and sends a bunch of students to face the corner of the room.
Gaulier bases the idiot on society's buffoons and outcasts who represent those aspects of our society that we hide and ignore. The sessions help people liberate themselves, as individuals and performers, from the restrictions of ego, personal taboos and self-image.
Gaulier born in Paris in 1943, founded L'École Philippe Gauliere, a school for theatre in Paris which later moved to London. He is recognized as the world's leading teacher in "Bouffon" a form of art that attempts to address the balance between grotesqueness and charm.
The idea of Bouffon in art originated in France during the Renaissance when 'ugly people' (those malformed and disfigured from leprosy or birth defects) had no choice but to perform for the 'beautiful people' on holidays.
Flash forward to our modern times with all its competitiveness and the pace of the working world, Philippe believes finding one's idiot has therapeutic effects.
"A long time ago as children," he explains, "people played games to discover the world. These games helped us to grow. Somewhere, somehow, something changed and we stopped having fun and instead started asking big questions about what is true, profound, and absolute."
Using techniques of movement, speech and group interaction, Gaulier creates a tension among participants giving their inner idiot no choice but to make itself known. We can go back to feeling like children.
In one session I asked Gaulier if encouraging people to be idiots, could be dangerous - after all, releasing your inner fool could lead to reckless, wild anti social behaviour.
"Oh, I don't know if it's dangerous," he says, "but I am sure if you meet people without fantasies, without strange ideas, without fun then they are boring. My work is just primitive stuff, to reconnect you to your essence."
In a Gaulier workshop, given at cities around the world, one can finally learn the pleasures of playing the fool, and perhaps along the way release your inner idiot, inner cicada and all in the aim of releasing your inner divinity.
For more information about Gaulier's work, visit www.ecolephilippegaulier.com