Process is Play

I feel like in writing this I run the risk of repeating myself. Clearly my learning of late has been centred around the idea of play and now it’s in everything I’m talking and writing about!

I’ve thought a lot about process, specifically my process over the last 18 months. Particularly as I developed the application for the Arts Council grant. I won’t take you through all of the journey, but I will bring you to my discovery; that process is play.

Play feels childish to me. I have shirked the idea as it seems the opposite of being a successful adult (which we all want to be, right? Or is it just me??!). A successful adult is economical and efficient with their time and emotions, the house runs smoothly, they live conformably, they know things and have the right words to explain anything at the right time to their children. Play feels like giving up rather than gaining anything. Play feels frivolous, selfish, silly, nonsense, the pursuit of the rich and foolish, excessive…everything that I have desired not to be as an adult.

But then someone said that play isn’t the same as childishness, play can be quite serious too. Play can be child-like. And I started to play around with the idea of play.

When I create something, utterly for itself and myself in the act of participating in that creation, there is nothing else I can do but to define that act as play. When I create a design and only need to think of this one flower in my hand, where to place it, how to place it, how it moves once it’s placed and whether it looks happy there, I don’t know the design before it is created. It is simply one flower placed and then the next. And then the next. I don’t know what the design will look like in the end. I don’t often know when the end is! It is pure, simple PLAY. And it is joy. Joy in creation. In shape, form, colour, texture, a dust of pollen and the way you can only see the crinkles in that petal if you turn the flower towards the light.

Play is an action of remembering, reconfiguring, and rejoicing in myself as an individual. It reminds me I am complicated and undefined. It brings me back to behaving like an artist. And it reminds me that there are no other me’s. I am my only chance. You are yours. Your life is an epic. My life is an epic. Now go and play!

I’d love to hear from you!