The New Age of Play

 

Playfulness can help us to detach from the painful, ordinary and mundane situations aspects of life without denying they exist.   Through the eyes of the clown, life is full of alternative possibilities. Clowns, Fools & Jesters are adept at using ordinary situations as the fuel to create new possibilities and comic situations.

 

In 1999, I was despairing about the grip that materialism has on our lives. My critical awareness of this issue led to a cycle of frustration and despair. The belief that I am powerless to change my environment, my beliefs and feelings continued to reinforce a depressed outlook. This raised a really important question.   How could I maintain hope in a situation that appears to be getting worse without succumbing to despair and resignation?

 

My growing disillusionment was spurred on by the Brisbane City Council’s crack down on people using the City Mall space. The Mall had attracted street preachers, political activists, artists and other non conformists. Some individuals led by the Socialist and Christian activists had spear headed a free speech in the Mall campaign. However, Council and the City Business Association decided the Mall space should be restricted to activities that would not impede shopping. 

 

The Brisbane City Council Mall began to resemble a temple of consumerism rather than a public place where people can also exchange ideas and meet. Increasingly, this is part of a trend in the western world where freedom is redefined as the freedom to consume. The new citizen as consumer identity is going hand in glove with growing restrictions on political or social activity that would challenge the current way our society is organised. Consumption is not intrinsically wrong. However, we have managed to create a cult religion of consumption that very few people now question.

 

I remembered the story of Jesus clearing out the exploiters from the Temple.     What would it be like to turn the Mall into a play space that didn’t involve consuming and spending money? I hired a Gorilla suit and decided to go into the Mall and disrupt shopping activities by playing with people. My aim was to create spaces where I could invite people to come and play. I did not want to be unnecessarily provocative or annoying.  This was an invitation to play and to wake up from the consumer trance. Putting on a gorilla suit was a great way of waking myself up from the consumer trance and inviting other people to play.

 

A group of young Japanese tourists were amazed. One of them wanted to take a photo with me in the middle of his friends. He smiled and waved goodbye as I walked with my knuckles dragging on the ground looking to make eye contact with other people. Carefully avoiding the Mall police, I walked over into Adelaide St. A young couple gave me their toddler to hold while they took a photo of me. They waved goodbye while I walked off and made gorilla noises. Some people smiled and laughed. Many other people continued to walk through the Mall avoiding eye contact.

 

This experiment confirmed the value of Foolishness. Clowns, Fools and jesters   experiment with life and break social conventions and rules that inhibit life. Wise Fools know when to observe conventions and when to break them. I experienced an important truth. There is an existence beyond the known reality of the religion of consumerism. I began to understand what Jesus meant when he talked about the `Kingdom.’ He used various stories to describe a New Age that was breaking into the old order. The New Age as realm of existence with radically different values and perceptions of life. I had a taste of this possibility through play.

 

 

 

The Death of Play?

“The disappearance of childhood’ is being heralded by some critics in the United Kingdom. The critics contend that children are being seen through the lens of government as `future workers.’ As a result, their informal play spaces, are being co opted through ever increasing formal instruction – `learning through play’ – geared towards teaching skills and knowledge that will prepare them for the future. Are we seeing the transformation of play into play as work?

UK academic, Ruth Lister noted children’s wellbeing and right to have a childhood have become secondary to the needs of adults and the economy. The meaning of play, once valued for it’s own intrinsic pleasure, is being co opted or `taken over’ by the state to make children become better cogs in an economic machine. The increasingly marginalization of children’s informal play time is redefining play as work.

Play is usually voluntary, spontaneous and creative. Play is something that is undertaken for it’s own reward. Covert agendas that co opt play to teach skills, prepare young people for work or other extrinsic goals undermines playfulness. The growing institutionalization of children in full time formal care is robbing children of the time they need for self directed, spontaneous play.

True play has a radical, subversive quality. It allows us to imagine or dream of alternatives outside of conventional thinking. We will have fewer and fewer people with the ability to think and play creatively outside of state sanctioned tick boxes. What the future requires are people who can experiment and imagine creative and playful possibilities.

The Fool & His Money Are Soon Parted! Part 1.

The Fool invites us to over turn and suspend the normal rules of reality. One of area of my life where I am experimenting with stepping out and beyond my known and familiar world is in the realm of money. I was keen to discover what lay beyond beyond my judgements and attitudes towards money. I was recently challenged to give away a sum of money as part of a personal growth exercise to explore my personal beliefs, attitudes and feelings around money.  My initial thought was to give money to someone who was disadvantaged or fiscally challenged. Giving away money to someone who is in need was no challenge. I thought to myself: what would it be like to give away money to someone who is materially and financially better off than me? 

The philosopher, Alain De Botton, coined the term Status Anxiety to describe the unpleasant experience when human beings feel that someone else has a higher level of status. There is a level of satisfaction or enjoyment gained from helping people who are lower status. However, top help someone who may in fact be higher or even a potential rival is another matter.   I decided on a bigger challenge. I would give some money to someone who had more money than me. In my imagination, I wanted to give $5 to a guy dressed in a dark business suit as he was getting out of his BWM. Anyway, my imaginary opportunity did not present itself. Is there a person or group that has more money than me and that I dislike intensely? Immediately, I had some inspiration. I’ll walk into the next bank and give the teller $ 5.     

 I went inside the bank and approached the teller. She smiled at me and said: Hello, can I help you? I explained to the teller that I wanted to make a transaction. However, I did not have an account with this bank. I said to her: I would like to give you $ 5. She looked at me with an expression of surprise. No really I said. I smiled and said: Have a great day as walked out the door. This was an exhilarating experience. The words of Jesus Christ began to make more sense when he said: love your enemies… In one act of generosity, I experienced a real sense of freedom and life. There is freedom, pleasure and joy beyond the narrow realm of judgementalism. Next time, do something generous towards someone you dislike, despise, look down upon or hate. It’s a great way to learn more about yourself.           

The Clown’s Universe: An Unknown Story

Three years ago, I participated in a Clowning Summer School. The Clowning Summer School is a surreal experience. It’s like entering clown universe where all the normal laws of reality are suspended. In clown universe, some of the laws of reality work in reverse or are upside down to our normal way of thinking and seeing. Clown’s have an elastic reality. There is nothing fixed or rigid in the clown’s universe. Reality is elastic, changeable, flexible and full of possibilities.  The clown’s red nose is the world’s small mask.  The red nose is an alternative frame that celebrates freedom, play, elasticity and the ability to take ourselves lightly. In clown universe, we have the freedom and the permission to laugh at ourselves and celebrate our silliness. In clown universe, clowns fools, clowns and jesters take the mundane and the ordinary, pull it apart and raise it to a new and higher level.   

One of the Summer School workshops was based on a series of physical postures. The facilitator guided us through a series of postures that described an embodied emotional state. One of them was called the Office Worker. In this posture, the facilitator told us to thrust our heads and eyes forward, tightening our chests while we moved briskly about the room focused on an imaginary task. Office Worker is very uncomfortable position to maintain for a long period of time without feeling weary.  

After this session, I was walking through the Brisbane City Mall. In the past, I have walked through the Brisbane City Mall in a trance like state hundreds of times in the past as a member of the living dead. This time, I decided to opt out of the consumer trance and observe the Mall through the eyes of the clown.  I saw a line of men and women dressed in suits. Their physical expressions embodied the office worker. Like Robots, they walked along the Mall with emotionally blank expressions on their faces.   I felt a sudden surge of excitement as I watched the people walking through the Mall.  Office Worker I thought to myself. They’re in Office Worker. This was a transformative moment. I wasn’t sitting in judgement on the people walking through the Mall. I was simply an observer.  An ordinary moment yielded an amazing discovery as I watched this group of people living out a parable of our times.  I enjoyed every brief moment of this theatrical experience. This was one of a number of transformative moments I have experienced looking at life through the eyes of the clown or fool. 

Traditionally, fools and clowns have one thing in common. They refuse to play by conventional rules. Clowns and Fools are motivated by enjoyment and the desire to play. They live and play in a realm beyond critical judgement and rules. Paradoxically, clowns and fools are wise enough to value rules in the same way that artists need structure to support their creativity. This gives them an other worldly quality. In the Tarot, the Fool is called the Prince of the Other World.  Clowns use day to day ordinary experiences as the fuel to energise their lives and offer this as a gift others.  

This online journal is dedicated to my efforts to explore life, the universe and everything through the eyes of the clown, fool and jester. Foolish Times is the ongoing journal of my experiments in the wisdom of the Fool. My aim is to experience the gift of transformation in every area of my life. I also want to rediscover and re tell the stories of the Holy Fool tradition within Christianity and walk in the steps of Jesus Christ, St Francis of Assissi, and other fools [of all religions and none]  who understood that the comic potential of the ordinary is waiting to be revealed in every waking moment.