Far left: Bill Neithercoat and me. Our parents were friends and made us trek with them to the middle of nowhere for picnics. Thanks for the photo, Bill, and Robbie for my best toys, a box of colored fly-tying feathers and a book of stamps.
Playing with fire is one of the five dangerous things Gever Tulley, founder of The Tinkering School, deems critical for children to learn to play and retain the ability to play as adults. Another, handling sharp objects as extension of the self. One of the first gifts from dad was a pocket knife, upgrading to a hunting knife around second grade. I learned he trusted me. Yes, there are scars, yet I never hit an artery.
In Alaska, come break-up, every caregiver screams the same litany. “Summer is short. Get out and play.” Let’s be real. The truth is every other creature is mating and the parents are feeling spring frisky so existing progeny are relegated to the porch and whatever unsupervised mischief they can get up to.
The Earthquake destroyed our town and the family experienced a diaspora. Until then, a half-sister with her six children, another half-sister enjoying her beauty and serial monogamy, and a trio of boy cousins experienced an anchored family group. We included former brothers-in-law. By extension, every kid in the village was family.
During the weeks when my parents went hunting winter meals, I stayed with Sister. She taught me to ride a bike, play badminton and consistently discovered wherever I was hiding out to confiscate the inevitable book. You’d think she’d have bigger things to worry about. She commanded me to play when I had no concept of what “play” was with zero interest in enduring swarms of mosquitos to drag a bucket after a hoard of small people questing to find the most earthworms or frogs. How the early indoctrination of competition and the war of business found it’s way to children in the middle of nowhere mystifies me. Even then, as well as pointless, the occupation felt disruptive on ecological levels. The days the ships came in and we trooped to the docks were a notch up. The sailors threw candy down to the kids and the women rejoiced for vegetables and eggs, loosely termed fresh after weeks in a hold.
In the North, summer days last 24/7 and I felt far more drawn to sneak outside after the adults were in bed and run in solitary delight with the rabbits. See a moose or two. Find old bones or fabulous petrified wood. Feel the spring of footsteps on tundra and the delicious musky, spice scent of scraggy spruce along with impossibly fresh air. Snack on berries winking back in midnight sun. My play was different.
After the earthquake, we moved every year. In third grade, we were allowed to paint in the back of the class after we’d completed our lessons. I’d finished a painting and was pulling out another sheet of paper when a self-assigned monitor of propriety, with the indignation only 8 year olds in all of their mean girl glory can carry off, announced I was doing “it” wrong. IT being the audacity to make more than the allowed one painting a day. As an adult, I understand the need for rationing heavy and expensive as paper in a village where supplies were delivered by float plane or boat. As an embarrassed child, I didn’t paint again.
I’d ignominiously flunked childhood at a very early age and had no clue how to play. Didn’t fare much better as a fully growed artist. In representational art there are subtle exclusions and sanctions while the pack blindly follows the scent of abstraction. Abstract artists know how to competently play, right? Everywhere we turn in art making these days, play is the new buzzword. Let go and play. For decades, I avoided anything with overtones of play since inability to play correctly was obviously a deep flaw.
Long story for a short conclusion. Who knew all those years of making campfires and skinning fish fostered key requisites of play? So deeply grounded in the fundamental elements, I didn’t recognize what play really is and wasted a lot of time looking to Others who were Successful to show me the way. They are thriving their way. While people may share jewels along the way, the path to our own truth is ever inward.
We innately know how to make our art. We know what we love to do. We recognize our true work. We confuse the issue when we make the concept harder than it has to be. Why search for fun when we can have bliss? My inner child is fine, thank you very much! She’s contented with a good book curled up in the window seat of my heart while I explore in the studio.
Unfortunately, I’m not the only one who experiences stuckness around art when associated with the word play. When every day with art making holds magic why do we need to define the experience as play? Perpetually interested might be a loose synonym. If happiness, joy, new knowledge, expanded skill are the end result of a creative day, isn’t that the same effect?
So play comes down to definitions and healthy danger. Who knew? Play was in there all along. How many times in art making do we chase the latest when what we want patiently rides our shoulder waiting for us to notice? What is trying to get your creative attention today?
Check out the TED talks by Gever Tully and Stuart Brown for more. Spoiler alert: the best part is the play ballet between the polar bear and husky.