Last week, I stood back up. Sort of like a calf, learning to walk.
I asked someone to play with me.
I was really bad–uncoordinated even. And then, I got better—day by day—maybe even good?
It wasn’t easy.
It took me creating my very own uchronia, an existence outside of the regimented pace of contemporary life, to ease myself back in.
Somewhere in my stacked self, play—which I wrongfully equated to games—became cringe. I was too serious to play, and too busy to play meaningfully. I built walls around play. So, I had a hard time writing, making, flowing.
The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. — Ursula K. Le Guin
I shied away from my natural state and deemed it childish instead of childlike. I closed off the truest part of myself.
I made no time for deep work, let alone deep exploration or experimentation.
This week, I exhaled reading William Deresiewicz’s book Death of the Artist:
““[New York’s] identity right now is money,” [Lizzy Goodman] has said. And “money has a bleaching effect, eventually, on culture … New York feels to me burnt out, whited out.” Great art happens, even plain old interesting art happens, not in trendy cities, not in “vibrant” Richard Florida cities, not in cities that have money flying through the air, but in cheap ones.
Artists need space, but most of all they need time. Time, not to be productive, but to be unproductive: unstructured, open-ended time. Time to play; time to take as much time as you need.””
I inhaled, remembering that what I excelled at as an only child, was unmitigated, no rule, no winner, no loser, expansive play.
Play makes room for observation. Observation makes room for play.
My days consist of everything from foosball to smashball to drawing to dreaming up the lives of the characters in my film.
Even my dreams have become playful. I woke up laughing yesterday.
Through play, I’ve found a groove, I’ve found a flow. The words come flying out. The marks do too.
While developing my film this week, my collaborator and I spoke of the character’s fear of the unknown (climate, war, futures). “But,” she said, “without uncertainty there’s no room for imagination”, which is to say to imagine a different future we must make space for play.
"Play is our adaptive wild card. In order to adapt successfully to a changing world, we need to play. Play is not frivolous, it’s essential.” — Isabel Behncke, Evolution's Gift of Play, From Bonobo Apes to Humans
When was the last time you asked someone to play?
Things I’m reveling in this week—
watching: The magic of Alice Rohrwacher continues to astound me. If you need a weekend watch, Happy as Lazarro is it.
enjoying: getting back to drawing.
visiting: If you couldn’t tell from the last post – I kind of have a thing for Porcinis. This week we traveled two+ hours by train to the Fiera del Fungo di Borgotaro – translation: A PORCINI FESTIVAL.
they looked like cartoons
listening: the absolutely wild range of Samara Joy:
eating: you guessed it -porcinis! And chanterelles, for good measure :) –
chanterelles from liguria
porcini soup
enjoying: storms. Oli caught this on his phone—and I caught it on super 8! I can’t wait to see what it looks like.
PS. It was a lovely surprise to be highlighted by Coleen Baik of The Line Between in last week’s Substack Reads. Hello to everyone who has come to flatten!