5 de julho de 2020

Free Play




“Beyond the drive to create is yet a deeper level of commitment, a state of union with a whole that is beyond us. When this element is injected in to our play-forms, we get something behind mere creativity, beyond mere purpose or dedication; we get a state of acting from love. Love has to do with perpetuation of life, and is therefore irrevocably linked to deeply held values.

I have never ceased to be astounded at the power of writing, music making, drawing, or dance to pull me out of sadness, disappointment, depression, bafflement. I’m not talking about entertainment or distraction, but of playing, dancing, writing my way thought and out. This process resembles the best in psychotherapy. We don’t go away and avoid the trouble thinking, but rather confront it in a new framework. The capacity to personify, mythologize, imagine, harmonize is one of the great mercies granted in human life. We are thus able to conceptualize the unknowns of the psyche, to work with forces in us which, if left unconscious, would overwhelm us. That is the magic of poetry. It uses words to communicate that witch words cannot communicate. When you run in to problems in our artwork, you may think that you are working out the creative problem, but indirectly you are working out other life problems as well. This healing power works in the other direction too. If you occupy yourself with working out the problem of how to express a world of feeling in blue paint, you are also working out something else. What is that something else?

Stephen Nachmanovitch

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