The thing with the hat
Mat, who’s had, to say the least, an interesting career, recently posted a video recalling his appearance in the 1992 video for Annie Lennox’s “Walking on Broken Glass.” (Spoiler alert: he’s the juggler.) His video is delightful and you should watch it, and you can, just below. But what I want to talk about is the little introductory headpiece he put on it to encourage viewers to subscribe to his YouTube channel. He does a thing at 00:05, a thing that lasts all of one second, that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. It isn’t the point of the video; it isn’t even the point of the headpiece. It is, literally, a throwaway. But in its fleeting way, it’s a master class.
That little hat toss. It kills me with its elegance, and its apparent effortlessness, and its narrative nerve: there is absolutely no reason for it to exist in that spot except that he can do it, so he does. And we haven’t talked about this (Mat, weigh in if I’m off base), but I’d suspect it’s also there to arrest the viewer’s focus right off the bat, to fix it in amber: Eyes front, please. Professional entertainer here. I’d like your attention.
The skill to execute that move, and the wit to make it an unremarked-upon grace note, those are Mat’s. But the bit isn’t. Not entirely, anyway. A number of performers have shared its custody; it was done most famously by the great stage clown George Carl. I came to love Carl before I understood the place of reverence he holds for guys like Mat, when I saw him in Peter Chelsom’s indescribably great comic drama “Funny Bones.” (You can see in the film, among too many other amazing things to count, Carl doing the same move; and separately, if you don’t blink, a younger Mat in a tiny part, because time is a flat circle.) Carl is a hero of Mat’s, and he acknowledges his debt to him in this video about legacy and remix in the life of the artist.
What do we owe to the people who did what we do before we ever did it? Something like this, I think: A little humility, and some respect. An acknowledgement that even as we put our own spin on the thing, we stand in their shadows. When Mat bumbles heroically with his suit jacket, he’s stepping into a lineage that points straight back to Carl. And when he tosses that hat away, he’s tossing it into a timeline that includes not only Carl but every other performer who ever did the same. He’s standing on stage with ghosts.
/BB
