What was the last live performance you saw?
Belly dancers doing a series of experimental pieces fusing modern dance with multiple forms of traditional belly dance.
PROMPT: Live Performance
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Category Archives: Movement
BOOKS: “Play” by Stuart Brown
Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul by Stuart M. Brown Jr.My rating: 4 of 5 stars
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Why does biology encourage play? Why does it stop encouraging play at some point? Should play end, or should one maintain a dedication to play throughout life? These are principal questions addressed by this book.
Brown explores the advantages of leading a playful life, and he doesn’t restrict himself to childhood play. In fact, the book doesn’t restrict itself entirely to human play, but also presents insights derived from the study of other playful species. One of the most profound lessons from the book comes from a story about a sled dog that has repeated playful interactions with a polar bear — a hungry polar bear, at that.
The book is presented more like an essay or a collection of essays than the usual popular science or pop psychology book. That is to say, it is not annotated and lacks a bibliography. The author sites the occasional book or study in the text, but it’s in the manner one would see in journalism or essays. This approach has its advantages, but the flipside of those advantages are the disadvantages. On the positive side, the author is able to communicate more freely, including the ability to discuss more speculative possibilities than one would expect from scientific reporting (with its usual “just the facts” approach.) Of course, the extensive speculation will be frustrating to readers who want to know what evidence has been produced for the proposed benefits. Furthermore, it often feels like the speculation in question is of the “when you’re a hammer every problem is a nail” nature — i.e. when one is a play researcher, one may be inclined to see play as a panacea for all the ills facing humanity (it surely is for some, but probably not all.) [To be fair, the book is almost fifteen years old, and I suspect it was / is probably harder than pulling teeth to get academic funding for play research outside of early childhood development, and so part of what the book was probably trying to do was build enthusiasm for supporting this kind of research, which necessitated talking about possibilities that were outside the known.]
The book does have a chapter on “the dark side of play.” It deals with compulsive behaviors like gambling and video game playing addiction (i.e. not people who like playing video games once in a while, but those who go 48 hours without sleep and who live in cave-like darkness to limit screen glare.) Much of the chapter argues that, while those problems are real and of concern, the activities aren’t play, not as per the definition presented early in the book.
This book does make a sound case for a number of benefits of play and for not abandoning play in one’s youth. If you’re interested in how play can help one to cope in a world of uncertainty, to keep one’s mind and body healthy, and to maintain or grow one’s capacity for imagination, this book is well worth reading.
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The Circle of Play [Lyric Poem]
Sometime not too distant,
There will come a day
When you will return to
A frequent state of play.
When that day comes around,
You'll have lost all concern
For the adults' belief that
Frivolity must be spurned.
You'll take to tossing balls
And climbing up the walls,
Just like you used to do
When you were one or two --
Before that human zoo
Got its hooks in you.
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Moving Flower Mystery [Haiku]
trailside chicory
waves on a windless day:
a long-gone cyclist?
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PROMPT: Every Day
Move playfully.
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A Feather in Flow [Free Verse]
How do I roll like a
feather in flow?
The one that can't be
pulled from the pool.
It slips around the
lifted hand,
Retreating back into
the water that it never
really left.
It's like sleight of hand
one plays upon oneself:
at once magician & mark.
The faster one snatches at it,
the greater the miss.
The slower one moves,
the more frustratingly
one sees one's failure.
How to roll like a feather in flow?
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Yielding to the Flow [Free Verse]
A slender leaf
floats downstream.
Its tip touches
a stouter leaf,
sending the
slender leaf
spinning.
The leaf continues to
twist as it drifts,
Making it seem spastic,
but it neither rushes
nor dawdles.
It matches the flow,
letting gravity &
currents do all the work.
It races only when it
plunges through
a narrow channel,
But it downshifts just as
effortlessly as the
stream widens.
The leaf's action is
unforced, yielding to
energy imparted upon it.
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Fluid Stillness [Haiku]
the flower bobs
on its long, stiff stem.
the sage is unmoved.
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PROMPT: Fun
List five things you do for fun.
1.) Read; 2.) Move; 3.) Juggle; 4.) Hike; 5.) Breathe
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PROMPT: Playtime
Do you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you?
All the time. Free movement & free writing.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 