Playfulness

I hoped the theme of playfulness would provide ample scope for members of the Dead Good Blogging collective to have some fun with words this week... Not so, apparently. No one could come out to play. Hey ho, so it goes.

Just me then, and I'm going to suggest that all play is creative. When we play, we invent, we imagine, we explore new possibilities and we riff on the joy of the thing - we do it for fun. If it wasn't fun, it wouldn't be play, it would be work!

The converse is not necessarily true, of course. A lot of creativity lacks playfulness, often of necessity. What I mean is that the majority of creations have a functional purpose to fulfil; they are designed to do a job - from the seed drill through the Bessemer converter to the telephone exchange and the commuter train - and they need to work reliably first and foremost. Playfulness doesn't really come into it except peripherally perhaps at the top and tail ends of the process, in concept and elements of styling.

Maybe Vilfredo Pareto's principle can be applied here - the 80/20 rule: utilitarian creations as 80% functionality/ practicality and 20% styling/playfulness? I'm just speculating, thinking out loud. And what about artistic creations then? Are they approximately the opposite way round: 20% functionality and 80% playfulness? Or isn't that a meaningful analysis? What do you reckon?

Here below is exhibit A from a (not so) recent show of works at Blackpool's Grundy Art Gallery, a rusty old cement mixer given a sort of M&S make-over through clever use of neon lighting - literally brilliant, evidently playful and probably no use for mixing cement anymore, though I'd happily install it in my living-room if I had the space and could afford the electricity bill!

Does the 80% playfulness theory work for all plastic arts? And what about music and literature? I'm not sure. However, as this is a blog and not a polemic, let's not get too bogged down. I think what I'm trying to suggest is simply that playfulness (that lively, unrestrained, let's see where it goes mode) is merely a minor contributor to all great (and practical) inventions, but surely a major component in the creation of all great (and impractical?) works of art. Still confused? Time to move on to this week's latest poetic creation (80% play, 20% hard labour).

A couple of years ago I crafted quite a reasonable poem out of the collection of stray lines and phrases that I keep jotted down at the back of my notebooks. With some appropriate sequencing and a bit of additional invention, they took on a workable life of their own. I've since built up another list of odds and ends looking for a home, so this week I've repeated the exercise for the fun of it, which I think is a fittingly ironic title for what transpired:

For The Fun Of It
Every carriage ought to state on the side:
'Warning - may contain nuts.'
For here they all ride, as we slowly roll
past the panoramic misery of soggy sheep,
villages deep in mud and county-line crime,
through one ramshackle station after another,
winding across the breaking back
of sodden northern England,
powerhouse/poorhouse/outhouse
(delete to suit) of a once-mighty nation,
like some thread-worm of the apocalypse.

It's murder on the TransPennine express
these days - never on time, never a seat
and every face you happen to meet
between Scarborough and Lime Street
could have come straight from the files
of Alphonse Bertillon's archives,
biometric causes celebres, degenerate offspring
of a race which shaped the modern world
and won the war but lost the peace.

Do you ever have days like this,
when everyone just looks weird?

Beery stag boys with colourful socks
crowd the aisles, cans in hand,
with leery smiles for the salty girls
who they'll mistake to their cost
for easy street meat. The fools.
Hairdressers and make-up artists by day,
break-up artists by night,
they're willing to be pounced
for an ounce of herbal high but
they're tough little madams the lot,
all trying to slip the domestic knot
for a few more carefree years.

Have you ever known rides like this,
where everyone just sounds wired?

We crawl on a viaduct into the city,
nearing journey's end, crammed in so cosy
that we couldn't fall if we tried. I spy
through every TV tenement window
a different real-life drama flicker,
for we live in uncurtained times,
our poverty on show to all the world;
while in the thoroughfare below
seethes an angry throng fuelled by the narcotic
of fanatical devotion, spitting misbegotten hate
upon their neighbours, flanked by ranks
of tooled-up insecurity men. The pity is
we've been here before and it doesn't bode well.

Did you ever hear the proverb that says
'Better to travel in hope than to arrive'?

Thanks for reading. We have an interesting week ahead,  S ;-)