Littleses kidses rulesesmakings

Method: just decree something, and the rest of the players have to follow, and there is no rule about when you can and can't do this, nor is there a rule about what you can decree. 

Implication: any player can decree anything at any time. 

Theory

Young kids play rule creation games naturally and without prompting. In many ways it is the most essential children's game there is- take anything you encounter and make it become anything else you encounter. A little child will simply walk up, inform that you are a penguin and their mom is an elephant, and dad is a gorilla, and you are expected to act as such, and about every twenty minutes this little legislator returns to ensure compliance with his imperatives. The littlest kid's game. The first and truest expression of play: "I decree that this thing is this other thing. I made a rule."

A teacher friend recently told me a story about having to teach yoga when she didn't really know how to teach yoga. She told the young ones this, then informed them that they could all just be witches. The young ones loved this idea, and that was a new game. The rest of the time became a fantastic game about witches, which bounced into new games, and new games, and new games. 

People say that we lose this when we become adults, that the natural playfulness disperses, that we stop living in a world where you can make anything into anything.  This isn't true. It does remain. We still are ready to bounce into new games all the time. We still encounter something open and bright and lovely, and jump into it, jump over it, jump through it, brightly and openly and lovely. Even the oldest and most hard hearted of us are still ready to play. 

Tt does change though. Though the playfulness doesn't disappear, it does change. The things that inspire our playfulness become so much deeper and stranger and richer and more complicated. An adult's mind is a blessed thing, full of subtlety and judgment and networks of knowledge. We get sophisticated. We still want to do that very essential act inherent to the littlest kid's game; it's just that we now have to navigate a much more sophisticated landscape in ourselves. Though the rules don't change, the game must become more sophisticated. You need more pieces and sets in your games, deeper theories, more intricate methods.  

Some thoughts on children and methods for integrating them as players into Calvinball Variations. 

I've had kids show up a few times, and they're so fun, but also, interestingly, so difficult. It's interesting understanding why little kids are hard to play with. They play instinctually. A big element of this project is to tap into those instincts. What I've learned from having kids show up is about the difficulty of managing oneself through play instincts. Little kids play. But their encounters with games are different. Rough. Unfocused.

It reveals something interesting about the project, and about art, and about creation. 

Unfocused creation. Distraction. Focus.

I think I know what it reveals about what I'm trying to do. Focused creation. Kids know how to create, but not focus. Adults know how to focus. They do know how to play if given the right reminder.

With kids it's about teaching. With adults its about reminding. Bringing someone back to some knowledge they've forgotten is actually quite easy. Taking someone forward from what they do naturally into a space where they can do it better, basically teaching, is, strangely, harder. You can have the perfect reason for taking them forward, the most just and heavenly truth, the most elegant song of justice and transcendence. But bringing them forward into it, into something they've never actually encountered before, is harder. Pointing is easy. Holding the hand of someone little and guiding them forward takes much more. Adults have learned how to encounter a priori concepts. Little children haven't, and require empirical demonstrations of these self-evident truths. 

Still, I really like the world that little kids live in. And, even though they're a pain in the ass (and I know their parents agree), I'm super happy when they've come (again, their parents agree.)  

Today, a little girl almost stabbed her brother with a bar dart she found, and that her dad, openly but very very carefully allowed her to play with for a bit. I like dangerous things. Children like dangerous things. The difference is that I know which direction to point dangerous things. Kids haven't quite figured that out yet. If a dangerous thing is coming towards a child, my instinct is, and hopefully will always be, to jump in front of it. The more important work is to teach them which direction to point dangerous things. It's harder, and a process.

Teaching adults to play and teaching children to play are inverse processes. It's hard, but fun, to try to do both at the same time.