Play Entry 24 Openness, Chaos, Replacement

Yesterday we were dealing with Design in org behavior class and moved to make a design vision board for our consulting offices - this is of course part of my former world and the vision board part of it wasn't the hard part - it was being an anthropologist in a room of social workers.

"What do you want your client to experience when they come to see you"

They need to be in very different spaces than I do with that - they are looking to help people achieve specific mindsets and goals and healing or achieving things.

Anthropologists go where people are not have people come to them.

Consultancy - which is the other thing I would be doing would be convincing people that I share their symbols and and values while actively working to change them.

I am working on the idea of Play as Viability - a survival impulse - I am looking for people who come in to my space to be open in replace some of the things they know with things the do not know- I'm pretty sure in my working definition of play one of the concepts will be play as transformational - you cannot be unmarked by "play"even if it feels unserious.

I contend the "unreality" of play as intrinsic to it's definition and find that is more of a linguistic instinctual backlash trying to maintain the hierarchy that is currently "rationality" -

Openess - all things may be possible for at least a nanosecond because you thought of it
Chaos- Chaos
Replacement - if you touch chaos for a moment it will take a piece of space where chaos wasn't.

If you're playing with me we're changing things together.

*****

Conversation at a bar with my brother-in-law -
"Who GAVE you matches!"

I was talking about an essay I handed in - my thesis proposal is due this week and it meant that my writing for my other classes was a little less filtered and my thought processes and sense of humor was more present because my brain was working so hard on meeting stringent structured requirements for the proposal.

I mentioned my birthday matches in that essay.

This exclamation engaged us in a playful conversation that literally became about play.

The thing that I take away from it several hours later is this - the exclamation became a moment of trust "Oh my god he DOES actually know something about 'real me'" rather than simply the kinship space I occupy for the family - the rest of the conversation ( which he agrees for adults counts in play) is play not because of the "joking relationship" that would be described by Radcliffe-Brown but because the recognition OUTSIDE the role meant that it was "safe to play" - at that point play is connection. Transformatively the relationship changed incrementally - I am known in a way I did not think I was known - interactions will be slightly different - trust will be slightly higher - if he gifts me matches it will be a reference to that moment.

I wrote about the way rationality and credibility force "positives" into transient moments instead of permanent objects because once a thing is proven it no longer becomes "proof positive" but an "objective fact" and thus neutral but in discussing the essay - the playful act of gifting me matches become referenced and semiotic in several spaces making a transient moment a returnable referent.

It is also generative - sharing the moment of play ( or in actuality playing with the moment of play) reproduces the moment and then leads to more moments of "good" and play.

If rationality makes "good" no-thing, a moment before it becomes an objective neutral then seems like play might take that moment and make it "a thing" and removes it from neutrality - so its not simply emotional reality but also moved into an objective positive existence.

If I were a novel, it would matter that it is the act of providing me with matches that is acting as a way for me to realize I am being seen. I don't think we actually exist that far outside of literary theory.

Also I still have matches. And I made Anarchy Chickens in my class at Grad school

******* A thing I observed on some-else's FB threat about not-getting Wesley Crusher Hate in Star Trek Next Generation.

Adrienne Reynolds Older men in SF hated that character the same way they hated Barney (the pre-school dinosaur) and for the same reasons - they didn't get that it wasn't about them - but there was also the problem of him being used for deaux-ex-machina. 

And that Barney reference isn't random - I was running and SF magazine and the sheer amount of time, investment and hot air older SF fans spent hating Barney at conventions was ridiculous. Now when I think about "disliked things" in the 80's and 90's it always looks like "hey this isn't catering to ME" kinds of things where before the space exclusively catered to them or they were power tripping - hating Barney in SF spaces was about some sort of something ....