NOT DETERMINED BY EXTERNAL MEASURE
Play resists coercion, for its meaning is intrinsic to it or emerging through it, where worth or value is not determined by external measure or pressure. Play is a risky business too, for it is necessarily uncertain, never sure of how things will turn out. Balanced precariously at the precipice between boredom and enchantment, play hovers between what is known and the unknown. Indeed, beginning something without fully knowing what is being begun requires heightened concentration and conviction, for it can be tempting to (re)turn to the ease of familiarity and habit, or else lose one’s way, fall prey to doubt. Actively do nothing before doing something, forestalling the passive paralysis of a doing nothing born only of restless procrastination and distraction. Play provides a space of radical and restorative openness if it is allowed. To restore — to give back or renew something lost, from re- meaning back, again, or back to the original place, and -staurare, as in instaurare, to set up or establish. To go back or give back, in order that one might set up or establish (one’s relation) anew. Find ways of attending to the workings of this stage of practice with care and caution, for too much self-consciousness can unduly subdue or spoil, dampen energies or invite unwanted diversions. Attend to the moments of decision-making, of minor revelation and deviation, of epiphany and failure. Yet take care, for in privileging one decision or observation, a myriad of options fall away inescapably, forever forgotten or forgone. Even the act of notation or reflection risks pulling the player out of play, rupturing her field of absorption or immersion. Playing a field of possibilities not yet fully actualised, it is hard to know what to record when the focus of enquiry is not yet clear or named, when a direction has still to be defined. Patience then, since transformation will not be hurried, does not often come with haste.
From Emma Cocker, How Do You Do? (Nottingham: Beam Editions, 2023)