Tuesday, 8 October 2013

Press Play

We need to play. The artists have it right. They let ideas dance around their heads, they give space and flow and air to their thoughts. They give them love, opportunity and consideration. They give their ideas oxygen. And they approach their brushes to their canvas with eyes that transmit as much as they see.

Play is the way that children learn.

Adults need to copy their homework.

But so many feel they are not allowed to learn way.

That's the problem with our teachers. That's my objection to them. Of all the things they didn't try to do, in the vast majority of cases, they never taught us how to learn.

But children is what we are, deep down. That's when our circuitry was done. When we were being hardwired as children, we were not being hardwired into adults, not really. We were being hardwired into being successful children. Of course. It's obvious.

The fact that some others may have "dressed up" their (inner)child up later to make them appear adult is just that… dressing.

The fact is that they may have exploited their inevitable, poorly-won adulthood as an excuse to grow needless quirks or idiosyncrasies or unpleasantries. Or coated it in humourlessness disguised as sincerity and seniority. Or covered their child in pinstripe suits, too much tweed or solar keratoses.


Why can't I collect stamps,tell a policeman he wears a silly hat, trample in the leaves, climb a tree or push someone in the pond?

And more to the point, why can't they?

Press play.

I say.

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