Level Six Transformatwo.n: Potions and Enchantments

In play transformations can easily introduce layers of humor, and hopefully humor influences perspective. Transformation also suggests that mastery doesn’t occur only by repetition. More accurately mastery links exploration with creative possibilities. Again if we look back to childhood or to children, we can find special stories or memories of gestures that slightly change expected behavior. I recall with delight the way my child said things like “pi-an-i-yo” and “slipperly “ Attempted mimicry creates pleasure in my ear. Like in the game telephone we whisper a phrase into the ear of a neighbor and a message passes around a circle. I wish the game celebrated auditory transformations all along the way as word sounds deconstruct and reconstruct an expression.

Transformation Exercise #1: Language

Collect a few memories from childhood, which hold a reminder of the playfulness of exploring creative possibilities. These can range from family stories to remembered sayings. Write them on the surface of an object that has at most a tenuous connection to the words in the story or the period in the past. This can be a first enchantment.

While describing my exploration of play I heard about a group of five who bonded during mild adversity. The name of one man’s aftershave provided the short hand for their experience. When the group after traveling a long international distance with cancelled flights and missed connections asked the hotel restaurant hostess for a table; she turned them away. After a moment she paused and asked if the gentleman wore a certain aftershave, which he did. She then proceeded to find a table where moments earlier none existed. The name of the aftershave became a code word for the shared group experience. A scent became shorthand, humorously connecting several people’s memory. The adversity became a savored story. The response to a scent transformed first one person’s experience and then the whole group’s experience. The expected response changed and a private language forms.

All of us tend to generate private language whether, with awareness or without. Language gets transformed and laden with personal meaning.

As we speak, we use private language layered into the public language. Humorous stories pass along through verbal exchanges. Sometimes the playfulness resides in remembering the humor. Sometimes others can be included. Sometimes the next layer of humor comes with the retelling.

Remember to make the effort to value the humor, or the play muse might depart taking the humor with her. The preferred method of play brings the humor forward and lets other feelings dissipate.