Play Lots
Play. Is. Important.
I’ll slow clap playtime, every time.
One of the most common things I say to my students is “I’m just playing right now”, and what I mean when I’m saying that succinct little sentence is actually flooded with some pretty great learning.
But first, what is ‘play’?
There’s usually no set outcome.
It could be an experiment.
A putting together of different things.
A process, an activity.
Your body is moving.
It’s ‘giving it a go’.
There is lightness.
An active seeing.
A question seeking an answer, but it doesn’t really matter what the answer is.
When I walk up to my students who have requested a moment of my time I walk to their canvas and assess what’s going on, I critique what needs to change and then I hypothesise the methods that could make that change happen. Together we decide which one we want to try out and then I remind them what’s actually happening, “...I’m just playing right now”.
Then, I play!
I release all of my expectations and go for it. I’ve thought enough, now it’s time to let go and see how it all fits together.
Play hasn’t come easily for me, and apart from dealing with my mental illness, and eating disorder through various forms of therapy, the number one contributing factor to my current levels of playfulness has been to ‘give it a go’ more often.
It is not quality drawing and painting that has gotten me to feel confident, calm and playful in my current role, but rather, the quantity at which I am performing all those acts.
With increasing the amount of time I dedicate to playing in my studio (making for the sake of it, to see what happens), I have gotten to a quality which far exceeds what I ever knew possible.
And trust me, it hasn’t felt rigorous or hard or like work at all.
Because I’m not focused on the product, I’m focusing on the playing!
My students, young and old, get all tight, strung out on the idea that what we are making needs to be ‘something’. I assure you it doesn’t.
The only thing that needs to be anything is you, us, we need to ‘be’, and I mean that in a real spiritual sense. It is the being of our humanity that gets our focus here, not the becoming.
We need to get the heck out of our own way. We’re not here to prove our worth through our masterful art making, we’re here to play! Divine bits of carbon, giving it a go, having a dang good time doing it!
The moral? If you’re feeling stuck, it might be time to go make some mud pies, marvel at some glitter, and let go of all your expectations…
You’re an adult after all.
You get to choose what you do.
XXXX ALi
