Let's play

In a Zoom meeting this past Monday night with fellow Lichtenbergians Mike and Turff — the purpose of which was to kibbitz Mike’s structure for his Trickster class, which we had been advising on for a while — Mike threw out Stuart Brown’s definition of play: it is purposeless, all-consuming, and fun. (Mike happens to be a figure of some note in the world of Play Education.)

Is our art play?

It’s probably fun, if we don’t count all the curse words, and with any luck it’s all-consuming.

But is it purposeless?

I imagine all of us bridle at that suggestion, that our high fantasy novel or pop song about heartbreak or our handmade objet d’art is without purpose. Especially if we’re doing it to sell to an audience, of course it has purpose. It’s to inform, to entertain, to challenge our AUDIENCE. It’s to make us money.

Here’s the deal, though: play is action. Our art is a product. Yes, our product has a purpose, but while we’re making it — shouldn’t we be playing at least some of the time? If while we MAKE THE THING THAT IS NOT we are consumed by the process, then shouldn’t the purpose of the product disappear from our radar, at least part of the time?

As I say in the book, the Museum of Modern Art [MOMA] is not your AUDIENCE. The New York Times bestseller list is not your AUDIENCE. The Tony Awards committee is not your AUDIENCE. Inside our circle, our first AUDIENCE is ourselves, and the spirit of play frees us for that very first step of ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS. If you don’t take it seriously, it’s a lot easier to get those first ideas out of your head and into real space.

It’s also easier to use play to get unstuck: just messing around with your materials and your ideas, seeing what happens next, going with impulses, starting over, getting ridiculous, following your wildest ideas to see where in the void they will lead… Isn’t that the very definition of purposeless?

Above all, here, now, in Captivity, when AUDIENCE and purpose seem so out of reach, should we not play when we can? If we can’t create our art without a “purpose” driving it, then is it art that demands to exist?

Go play.