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What's something you did once but won't do again?
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this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2024
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Fire breathing
For context I'm a professional fire & sideshow performer. I have almost a decade of experience and am fire safety lead for a large fire arts retreat. But the name of the game is risk mitigation and fire breathing is too risky for my taste despite its popularity.
If you go on Wikipedia and type in fire breather, the second result is Fire Breather's Pneumonia. I also personally know many people who have gotten large facial burns or have had to retire due to lung problems caused by excessive fire breathing.
The risks are technically still there with fire eating, which is one of my main skills, but I mitigate it by limiting my exposure and taking breaks. There's also significantly less liquid fuel involved.
I'm just a dude, one afternoon when I was 12 me and the boys were doing bbq because it was a major religious holiday here.
I found a neat stick and I decided it would be fun to do a fire breathing trick with the kerosene. I hadn't done it before but it worked and we had a blast.
I'm intact and in my 30s but I still cringe at the possibility of me getting a burned face that day.
I'm an entertainer as well and thought about fire breathing. I spoke with a couple friends who do it and them all casually talking about collapsing a lung a few times turned me off that idea.
Sword swallowing too. My friends do it but I've heard the term "perforated stomach" one too many times
That one never caught my interest. It makes me so nervous. I've gotten into stilts and jumping stilts over the past couple years and I've been doing face painting, balloons, glitter, etc. for half my life. I'd love to get back into juggling and unicycling but that will have to wait for a bit. I also really wanna try German wheel and aerial hoop!
Also editing to add: what made you wanna do fire and what's your favorite way to use fire? I have a friend who just got a sword, another who favors fans, and most men I know use staff or poi. I personally have never spun or played with fire, but it fascinates me. Many of my friends will eat but not breathe it.
I started with fire before I ever really knew I wanted to be a performer, it just seemed fun, and things moved from there. My first prop was staff.
But a lot of stuff happened over the years and I hardly spin any more, other than at said retreat. Ok the flip side, I've carved out a name for myself as a sideshow performer doing dangerous and grotesque things. Bed of nails, blockhead, mental floss, butterfly knives, stapling, etc. But my expertise is fire, so I tend to always do that when the venue allows.
Fun fact, I invented two fire eating moves :) One is a split tongue torch hold, the other I named a black hole sun
That's all so awesome. Have you always been doing it for work or did you get into it later? Sorry for all the questions and no need to answer obviously, just fascinated by everyone's story in the industry. I'm too much of a chicken for much of your skills, but I love admiring it from the other side of the field. Hopefully one day our paths will cross in the performance world!
It's not my full time gig, I have a day job that pays the bills since there's very little money in it unless you go private/corporate. But I do get side money from it in addition to artistic fulfillment.
Definitely hope to cross paths, circus is my lifeblood. Here's my permanently shadowbanned IG