Dear Ludic Liberators,
đ§youâre receiving this letter because you either signed up for the Ludic Liberation Lab updates or have attended a Lab and hopefully want to keep in touch. If you donât want to get any more of these emails, you can now easily unsubscribe at the bottom of this message. OR, you can unsubscribe, wait a few seconds, and then re-subscribe, as a kind of torturous tease to play with me, yourself, and the universe. do you actually know what you want, even when it comes to emails? đ§
Iâm still feeling eerie after yesterdayâs Lab, led by the magical Master of Ceremonies Sir Lyra Hill. I had so many moments of something right now I can only describe as surfacing. Raw, unexpected, strange things surfaced in myself, in other players, in the warm, fluid, seemingly innocent interactions between us. We sent gestures and words across the rapidly-formed neural network of grainy rectangles, some tracking a setting sun from thousands of miles apart, others tuning in from brutalist brick walls or gleaming kitchens. We were in all these different worlds, and yet, I kept being surprised, again and again, by how quickly and vividly we were sensitizing to one anotherâ able to surface and re-surface deep and spontaneous responses in our collective body. We played a game of word association and strange, irrational words kept returning across different players, like recurring dream symbols or freudian slips; this doesnât make sense here, yet here it is again. We laughed. Laughter is an involuntary response to the irrational and absurd, and ever appropriate in the space of play.
We followed it with a game of movement association, sending gestures across the zoom screen and elaborating them in our established sequence, our alphabetically coded synaptic order. With each playerâs improvisation, the possibilities for new deviations exploded, every one a surprise, a revelation. The idea of âthe bodyâ expanded to include our digital devices, movements became bigger and more dramatic, some players collapsed loudly out of their chairs, others jumped over their computers, out of the frame of the screen altogether. Again we laughed to release the surplus electricity generated through our extra-sensory stimulation.
It felt like we were very rapidly assembling and training a conscious collective nervous system.
The culminating game, HATS OFF, invited us to visualize, probe, and remove our internal obstacles and distractions to being fully present. Sir Lyra said it is a game for relationships, a good practice to do when preparing to spend time with others. You witness each other take off your masks, put down your baggage, and can then just be there, unburdened, fully alive together. I donât think we got to this final state, but we glimpsed a bit of the raw intensity it might entail, and were relieved to retreat back to our shells â enough vulnerability stretching for the time being. I have the feeling the game itself could be a way of hanging out for hours or years, playing burlesque with our mental and emotional ghosts đ»đđł
image above: evidence of play â visualizing some of my obstrusive âhatsâ from last night
Here are some preliminary findings to support our collective integration:
our bodyâs edges are not where we think they are. they are fluid and perhaps even gaseous, they penetrate space and time and make quantum leaps. parts of our bodies exist in other bodies, right now. our bodies are distributed and assembled, and are constantly re-assembling with other material and mental forms.
an interaction can feel âfakeâ or contracted when the option of spontaneous, authentic response is paralyzed or blocked. in the language of the nervous system â the transmission is inhibited. in our guts, there is something called monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) that blocks the effects of dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a chemical substance that naturally exists in humans and many plants and animals. known as âthe spirit molecule,â DMT is released during birth and death, and produced in the pineal gland when we dream. but we cannot feel its effects most of the time because of the presence of MAOI and the many MAO inhibiting substances we consume (coffee, soy, dairy, alcohol, meat). increasing the bioavailability of DMT can help us feel euphorically interconnected to all beings (a state that perhaps an intense game of HATS OFF can also achieve!), so that it might become actually impossible to internally inhibit an authentic and spontaneous response. it feels helpful to me to think about relational dynamics in terms of inhibitors, stimulants, and catalysts, because the parallels and implications are so powerful. we donât necessarily need entheogenic drugs. we can be each otherâs medicine, a game can catalyze a shared trip, a play lab can be the space of ceremony. we play to remember we are always playing.
we are profoundly attached to our burdens. our distractions and obstacles are ours, they are cozy and comfortable. taking off obligations, anxieties, bad habits, worries even just temporarily in our private imaginations, we find ourselves awkwardly unsure of where to put these cumbersome or chaotic entities. we hide them in our backpacks or closets, roll them up to retrieve later, when we might need them again. how many âhatsâ are we hoarding and holding on to?
some âhatsâ â distractions, obstacles to full-bodied & wholehearted presence â are so tangled with one another, that untangling them feels impossible to begin. some are so complicated and heavy, they feel like they can talk and walk and think better than our selves, and we canât even imagine whatâs underneath and outside of them. this is a situation that might warrant some external help. iâm imagining a kind of primate grooming assembly line, but for our psyches.
we can be each otherâs mirrors and magnifying glasses and massage therapists and acupuncturists. we can reflect and probe and put pressure on points that need relief. we can be that for each other even as strangers on a screen, maybe even better than if we were old friends sharing a beer. what if we related to every being we encounter as something like that⊠like what? a mirror neuron?
a neuron is an âĄïželectrically excitable cell âĄthat communicates with other cells via specialized connections called synapses. a mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another.
thereâs always so much more than is visible to the eye. our vision is very important and endlessly helpful for coordinating and connecting to one another, but there is so much more going on that we donât see. letâs just remember that.
A GAME GIFT đ
I feel called to share two.
Sir Lyra offers the game of Movement Association, which is like Word Association, but with movements. I was impressed by how beautifully it worked on Zoom. You need an established order that people can easily follow without referencing too much (we made ours alphabetically with our names, and practiced a few rounds to get fluent). Once an order is established, the first person performs a movement and the next person free-associates a movement in response, the third responds to the second, etc. With each round, the movements may get bigger and more experimental.
This is a game Iâve been playing with myself for the last week to develop expanded body awareness and it feels related to the themes of synthesis and synaptic play. Itâs inspired by some ideas from the Alexander Technique. Whenever I remember, usually while Iâm out on a walk, I play around with trying to be aware of my body as More Than Just Me. Iâll add another personâs body to be aware of â my partner walking alongside, my cat intently hunting a fly â and try to feel the space, tension, and attention of both of our bodies and energies simultaneously. Itâs fun to do it with someone at a distance â I like adding running kids while I sit on a bench, because our combined energy is so delightfully contrasting. Or even objects like a leaf, or a heavy metal bench, to feel into different weights and lightnesses of being. Let me know if you play it and come up with a better name or any more variations!
đ§If youâre impressed and intrigued by the ceremonial arts of Sir Lyra Hill (as you well should be), consider joining the weekly Multi Cult Virtual Ritual â it happens every Sunday at 2pm Pacific Time. Itâs 45 minutes of joy, exploration, connection, and play. A different special guest teaches or entertains you for 10 minutes each week. Iâll say this: itâs impossible to regret the time you spend there! Sign up here. You can also support Sir Lyra on Patreon and receive an amazing zine called Pleasure Hex!
đ Don't miss any more labs! The Ludic Liberation Lab meets every 2nd Thursday of the month, 6-8:30pm EST, so add it to your calendar. WE'LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH ON NOVEMBER 12th!Â
đ§ĄIf the experience brought you value and you'd love for our research into playful liberation to continue, AND you have the means, please consider making a donation of whatever you can via paypal or venmo. Your feedback (and personal findings!) are also extremely meaningful and important contributions â please send them to ludicliberation@gmail.com. If you design liberatory games and want to lead a lab, just ask!
i feel you in ways we will never fully understand,
n a t a l i a Â
Gamemaker/Destroyer