Play and Not Knowing
Tension and vulnerability
You’ve gathered your music, placed it near your instrument, gotten clarity about what you’re working on, and you’re ready to begin your first repetition of the day.
Or are you?
You’ve done your preparation and now is the time to play.
In that moment of anticipation, you feel a familiar tingle of uncertainty. You want to play well. You even want to play exactly how you’ve heard the music before.
And yet – you may not. And that tingle is a signal of the possibility of not getting it right, not reaching your goal, of failure.
This is the experience before the actual beginning, before play. The vulnerability of uncertainty or even dreadful anticipation. You know that in spite of your best efforts, this repetition may not go as you hope.
We all know this feeling. And somehow, looked at this way, it can appear overly anxious. Why do we think and feel this way?
According to Johan Huizinga1, this kind of tension is essential to play. He says, the player “wants to succeed by his own exertions.” We enter a game “striving to decide the issue and so end it.”
So, our feelings of uncertainty and “chanciness” are not unwarranted. In fact, they’re what we signed up for.
This is the inner game of practice: the rep set2, the score of 1s and 0s3, the goal of three times correctly in a row4, the progressive tempo5 that moves to the next level only when the current one is mastered. These design structures are not arbitrary constraints. They are the containers that make play genuinely playful rather than merely effortful.
The moment of anticipation is over. You begin.
Now you’re riding the train you set in motion. The notes are sounding the way you want, but you’re just getting started. All at the same time you’re thinking, remembering, and doing. Next thing you know, you’re coming to that really tricky spot. You’re anticipating: how does that go again? You try to remember your preparation, suddenly realizing you missed something else.
Have you had moments like this? I suspect – based on my experience – they’re not uncommon. When we’re in the play sphere, we’re hyper aware of the present moment.
So what is your response to that continuously present moment? Do you stay with it, choosing to succeed by your own exertions; making your best effort to discover your current weaknesses and capabilities?
There’s another response. Not being willing to stay with the experience as it unfolds. Regardless of how well you may (or may not) be playing, mistakes go unacknowledged, you fudge your score. You end up not playing by the rules of your own game.
These are two ways to respond to the tension of being in the circle of play. And, if you’re like me, you’ve responded both ways. The result of each is different. There’s the satisfaction that can come from maintaining our intent to play to the end regardless of the outcome. And there’s the letdown that can come from not being willing to witness ourselves honestly and with compassion.
There is a word for that first response. It’s a word we may think applies only to those who face great danger. Yet it can apply to us when we take the risk of being vulnerable, make our best effort, and face ourselves as we are.
That word is courage.
It takes courage to choose to stay with uncertainty, to put yourself into that world of trying to do what you cannot yet do, and to try over and over again.
It can feel safer to just change the rules of the game. And since you’re alone in your own practice room, no one else needs to know.
But you’ll know. And in addition to courage, you’ll have chosen integrity. And that choice makes all the difference between the avoidance of escape, and the courage that comes with freedom.
Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture, Johan Huizinga; also referenced in That Which We Call Play, Entering the Magic Circle, and Repetition as Play
The courage to face the typewriter. The courage to make the first mark. And now the courage to play the first note. I'm getting comfortable living in this hell.
It all pales to the courage needed to open the mail.
Good thoughts! After all of my recent play I will do a 90 minute gig today… all Brahms and all totally intense. I hesitate to call it work, but I like how you describe the unfolding.