Play

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I’ve written twice before about Lynda Barry, the inspired writer / artist whom I was privileged to hear speak at the Rhode Island School of Design last spring.

She talked about so much that I could hardly take it all in. I made notes when I got home, and tried to remember everything, because it was all interesting and funny and new.

She talked about the way children play. She described a game her brother used to play: he’d draw random dots on a sheet of paper, very methodically; then he’d eat a bowl of cereal, staring at the sheet of paper; then he’d take a pen and play dive-bomber on the sheet of paper, crossing out dots. The last dot won.

Now that’s play.

But play is not something you can just do. How many times did your parents say: “Why don’t you just go play?” And did you wonder: “What does that mean?”

Play is a state of mind. Go think about Lynda Barry’s brother staring at that sheet of paper, eating his cereal, and consider what’s going on in his mind.

Best story of all: Lynda was in a restaurant, watching a mother and son at a nearby table. Mother was talking on her cellphone. Son, about six years old, was talking to his bacon. “I’m gonna eat you!” he said to his bacon. Then he made the bacon talk: “No no no! Don’t eat me!” This went on for some time. Lynda was spellbound. This was real play.

Until the mother suddenly saw her son playing with his food. “What are you doing?” she snapped at him.

The little boy dropped the bacon as if awakened from a dream. “Nothing,” he said.

Playing. Just playing.

People don’t play enough. Adults don’t play enough.

Partner and I play with our stuffed animals: we make them talk, and argue, and fight, and even make out.

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

Believe it or not, it’s quite the reverse. I think it helps keep us both sane.

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Lynda Barry, in person

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I wrote a while back about Lynda Barry, the illustrator / writer. Well, she came to the Rhode Island School of Design on January 14 – my friend Sylvia, who works there, was good enough to let me know – and I went to her presentation.

 

 

Kids, Lynda Barry is amazing.

 

 

She talked about “images.” What’s an image? It’s the thing that children create when they play. It’s an imaginary friend. It’s a binkie. It’s a stuffed animal that you can’t live without. It’s your first crush (come on, you can remember his / her name without even thinking, can’t you?). It’s your first telephone number, which you can still probably remember, and which gives you a little thrill of warmth when you remember it.

 

 

Why?

 

 

Lynda has been partnering with scientists at the University of Wisconsin about these questions. They have found that adults in a state of “creative concentration” and children in a state of “deep play” have similar fMRIs.

 

 

She is very funny, and much of her presentation was in anecdote form. Here’s one of the core anecdotes:

 

 

She and her husband live in rural Wisconsin. Most of their friends are serious and humorless. But, if one brings a small child into the group, they begin to play with the child. They draw, and sing, and dance for the child. (“I wish,” Lynda said, “I could remove the child. I just want to see the adults dancing and singing, sometimes.”) If you ask them why they’re so carefree with children, sometimes they say: “Children aren’t judgmental.” To which Lynda says: “Nope. Children are incredibly judgmental.”

 

 

This is Lynda Barry’s assessment of the situation (I paraphrase, because I can’t quite remember her actual words): “The adults are speaking to the children in the language of play. It’s the basic language. It’s the language that comes before language.”

 

 

Amen.

 

 

And then she recited a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, and then she told us a joke about balls.

 

 

This is what higher education is really all about.

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Imaginary friends

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Lynda Barry, the great graphic artist whom I was privileged to see at RISD in early January, talked a great deal about childhood. She talked about first crushes (you remember yours, don’t you?). She talked about remembering your first telephone number, and how most people smile (and sometimes even laugh) when they recite it.

 

 

She talked about children playing, and how they go into something almost like a trance when they do it. She described a little boy playing with his bacon and eggs in a restaurant, and when his mother suddenly noticed what he was doing and challenged him, he dropped the bacon as if he’d been awakened from a dream.

 

 

And she talked about imaginary friends.

 

 

I had lots of them. Mine were mostly based on cartoons: Bugs Bunny was my best friend (I had a stuffed Bugs Bunny that talked, so he was very important to me), and also Top Cat (I imagined that he was my husband – go figure that one out), and Superman, and Porky Pig, and lots of others.

 

 

We were all very happy together. I especially enjoyed imagining them all together; it was very exciting. You never knew what was going to happen.

 

 

Lately I’ve been polling my friends on the subject. One said that she’d had a hundred imaginary friends, but they all had the same name. Another immediately told me the name of her imaginary friend, and said she was sort of like an American Girl doll, but not really.

 

 

I knew exactly what they were talking about.

 

 

This is a paraphrase of Lynda Barry:

 

 

“I didn’t really have an imaginary friend when I was a kid, so I made one up. I had an imaginary imaginary friend. He wasn’t very convincing. I’d say: ‘My imaginary friend says you have to give me your Popsicle,’ and nobody believed me.

 

 

“The daughter of a friend of mine has a real imaginary friend. His name is Sprinkles, and you can only talk to him through an electric fan.” Lynda paused, and looked at us, and shook her head. “You cannot make this shit up.”

 

 

Indeed you cannot.

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Lynda Barry

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I just picked up a book by Lynda Barry, one of my favorite graphic novelists / illustrators / authors. She has published lots of books in which she narrates and illustrates her childhood. They are brilliantly funny, sometimes sad, and always memorable.

 

 

 

Nowadays Ms. Barry tours the country doing a creativity seminar called “Writing the Unthinkable.” She gets people writing and drawing by coaxing them, and urging them, to remember what it was like to be a kid with a pencil or a crayon. Just color. Just write. Just scribble. Don’t worry too much about the result.

 

 

The book I picked up, “Picture This,” is a collaboration between Ms. Barry and her husband Kevin Kawula. It’s about creativity, and writing, and drawing. It features strange characters like “the nearsighted monkey” and “the dear chicken,” as well as some of her older creations like Cousin Marlys. It’s full of collage and watercolor. It’s a feast. I was reading it on the University shuttle the other night, turning page after page, and I realized that the student sitting next to me was reading it along with me. That should tell you something.

 

 

Anyway: one of the points she makes in this book is that you just need to keep the pen (or brush, or the cursor, or whatever) moving, in contact with the paper. You need to feel that contact. Make spirals. Draw ballerinas. Write nonsense.

 

 

Keep moving forward.

 

 

Some of it might be terrible.

 

 

Some of it might be wonderful.

 

 

Keep filling those notebook pages, kids.

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Chapter books and picture books

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Last summer, my assistant Ezra said: “Are you going to the bookstore at lunch today? Because I want to go with you.”

 

 

“Why?” I said. “You want a book? I can pick it up for you.”

 

 

“No,” he said with certainty. “It’s the new Game of Thrones book. It’s the first one in six years. I want to buy it myself.”

 

 

So we went to the (now defunct) Borders Bookstore, and I turned him loose.

 

 

He was immensely happy, and I left him alone with his prize. I wandered off to the “graphic novel” section, and browsed for a few minutes, and rejoined him shortly with a big black-and-white Superman anthology. “What’s that?” he said suspiciously.

 

 

“It’s an anthology of some comic books from my childhood,” I said happily.

 

 

He looked down on me (seriously: he was at least five inches taller than me) with disdain.

 

 

He was buying a chapter book and I was buying a picture book.

 

 

Well, so what? I love my picture books. Some of them remind me of my childhood, which is reason enough. Some are artistic / beautiful, which is reason enough again. Some are profound and moving (like “Maus”). Some are just for fun, like my comic anthologies, or my volumes of Lynda Barry and George Herriman and Edward Gorey.

 

 

To quote Charles Dodgson (from - surprise! - a chapter book!):

 

 

 “Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, `and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice `without pictures or conversation?'”

 

 

Amen, sister.

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