serious play : sincere artifice

Of all the attributes I desire to have, the one's I desire the most are inconveniently the most elusive. On the other hand it is also likely that I want most of all, that which is elusive and inconvenient. I would like very much to be able to forget myself on purpose, but I know that "forgetting" and "on "purpose" resist each other infinitely. Might I allow myself to be forgotten? How can I become more prone to the accidental forgetting of myself-the portal to my impressionable self and the collective forgotten selves of everyone and everything?

The simultaneous wanting and not wanting to be forgotten is so strange and powerful. Yet even stranger, is the human confinement to artifice as a primary means of expressing human urges. Sincerity... serenity... grace(fullness)... the harder I try to act these out, the more I become something other than these. The tension between compulsive desires to represent my self-substance without artifice, and the artless nature of sincerity that resists performance, is a real and daily human frustration. So the play begins-the art of trying to bend and waive my pride, my self's desire in an attempt to recover my most desired self, the one I wish to extend to other people.

I have begun to experiment performatively with materials and forms as a means of researching the idea and practice of serious play as a sincere mode of artifice. I have also begun to question my own confinement to modes of artifice by re-engaging in early childhood rituals such as: touching animals, talking to inanimate objects, making up languages, playing in the bathtub, swinging from trees, making forts... for example, accidental miracle (above) began as a response to my urge to hang upside down. The act provided me with a way to experience a new freedom of motion that was only possible by restricting myself in another motion-by binding my feet. The event demonstrates and celebrates the workings of the body and it's ability to use tension productively. The event climaxes with an unplanned accident, which stands out to me as the moment when I began to consider my history of exposure to representations of the sublime and realize that I am incapable of performing sincerely without also abandoning myself to something both uncertainly beautiful and terribly uncertain.

Most of all, I take pleasure in serious play because it reminds me how to wake up to the non-verbal word-the Logos. I value the development of sensitivity toward the Logos because I delight in experiencing and expressing strong feelings of empathy towards other human beings, particularly their private unannounced needs.