“Hi everyone, Clown is on the line.”

VOICE: Hello.

JOE: Hi. Is that Clown?

CLOWN: It is.

Not how most interviews start, admittedly.

This one is different.

In truth, I always wanted to interview a clown. It's a fascinating vocation, with the potential for strange, poignant duality always in play.

Who would willingly be a clown? What draws a human being to this domain? Can you ever leave it behind?

In the case of a theatrical troupe from Des Moines, Iowa with a proclivity for beautiful cacophony, what does it mean to devote your days to masks, make-up, and a relentless, brutal brand of mayhem?

Maybe it isn't your choice at all.

"Let me give you a scenario, okay?" the voice announces. "You may not like this..."

There's a brief chuckle in the middle, sardonic yet oddly warm, the kind of noise you can likely produce easily enough after two-and-a-half decades of punishing body and mind in the name of art, now facing up to a burning world that feels explicitly familiar.

That's the reality for M. Shawn Crahan, also known as #6, best regarded as Clown, resident macabre court jester percussion machine and hype man for one of the biggest, most enduring, and perhaps most necessary bands on the planet right now.

But reality itself comes with its own tricks and traps, even for the souls that resolutely don fright veils in order to fully inhabit Slipknot.

"Have you ever gotten up and had that sort of cliché subject matter that’s been brought into all our heads about life being your own movie?" the Clown continues, expanding on his vision.

He's mulling over a simple yet troublingly pertinent query. Are we doomed?

"Like you get up and you swear to God that it’s some sort of weird programmed movie that just revolves around you? You’ve had that, right?

"So, wouldn’t it just be obvious that you get to see the end? And what would you do if you saw the end? Would you invite it, openly, with open eyes, so you could move forward through it?

"Or would you cover your eyes and bend over and not want to take it and then possibly lose the chance? But these are all just thoughts. We don’t know what’s real and what’s not."

Crahan believes that the space he occupies is especially irritated. It bothers him. He tells of passing through airports, spying the agitation of others. In his opinion, we're generally not great at being calm, maybe even at the best of times.

"The world is in a very strange place in my eyes," he says.

"And it’s scary. Definitely scary. You don’t want to wake up and hear that major decision that other people who aren’t even in your family have made for all of us. It’s just getting to be a little much.

"Are we doomed? Hey, life always finds a way. I know that’s probably the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard but I know that when we’re all gone, some flower will bloom eventually. It’s proven to do so. Even if this world does go up, supposedly there are other worlds growing.

"I don’t know, really, what’s most important in life. I think it’s just to live it. Just live life, because it is a bizarre experience."