I don't exactly believe in inevitability. There are other worlds in which I became drastically different flavors of person, I'm sure. But sometimes I think about the way that I've gradually shifted, across the course of my life, towards a fascination with the spiritual significance of play, and wonder how much of that end destination stems from the simple fact that, on some level, I feel driven to pursue entertainment and enjoyment at all costs.

It's not always something that I love about myself. At times, I worry that it means I'm shallow, or even heartless. My instinct in most situations is to look for humor, which isn't always appreciated. Sometimes I feel like I might be hiding my own vulnerabilities, or diverting people from noticing feelings that I wish they'd notice, when I look for what's fun rather than for what's "significant." And as a writer, a thinker, and an artist, I continually fret about what it says about me that I'm so relentlessly driven by entertainment above everything else: whether I'm uncultured and anti-intellectual because of how much I struggle with art that isn't actively trying to engage me, or whether the things I care about expressing are worth saying at all. In my bleakest moods, I feel convinced that I'm just parroting smarter and deeper people's ideas, and that the only reason people pay attention to what I say or do at all is that I show them a good time while convincing them that they're actually thinking.

And maybe none of that would matter if I felt funnier or more entertaining, but I'm usually convinced that I'm not especially good even at that. I'm too sloppy, too imprecise. Not nearly enough of a craftsman to hone my own work, or to come up with material truly worth delivering. There's a punchline for you.

This probably sounds darker or sadder than I mean it to. There's not much of a difference, in the end, between comedy and tragedy. Classic forms of poetry often contain a formal "turn," which is a moment where the subject abruptly shifts from one thing to another in a way that (ideally) generates unexpected emotion. Turns and punchlines work similarly, just as the mechanics of a finely-wrought diversion are functionally similar to the ones that produce harrowing, even brutal stories. When I was younger, it frustrated me to no end that the things I wrote in my most despairing moods typically struck other people as extremely funny. These days, I usually get the opposite reaction: I write about things that I find curious, or produce what I think of as mechanical contraptions, only to be told later that what I've written left someone in tears all day.

One of the inherent paradoxes of play is the idea that mechanics inspire movement. Something which is cold to the touch can nonetheless produce great feeling. I think of Christopher Alexander, who once said he'd realized that the molds which were used to create a certain kind of gorgeous patterned tile were the true works of art, not the tiles themselves: in a sense, the tiles were the beautiful, tangible echo of their silent creators, who possessed a profundity that the tiles themselves did not. Similarly, the beauty of play can always be thought of in two ways: there is the beauty of individual games, and then there is the beauty of a game's rules, which ultimately are what give play a chance to be meaningful in the first place. Behind every joke is the theory of comedy which shaped it; behind every poem is a powerful formal understanding of the rules that govern poetry.

This is not a particularly fun way of thinking about these things—and accordingly I try not to get serious about this subject very often—but I think it's fundamentally correct. Art, language, communication, and play itself are ultimately attempts to create patterns, shapes, and logic for something which feels inherently shapeless, something whose patterns and logic are so sublime that they're nearly impossible to grasp. Too strict a shape, too simple a pattern, snuffs out the thing you were trying to articulate in the first place. Too loose or abstract a shape, and you may not have fucked that thing up, but you haven't snapped it into focus either. The clarity of articulation is a negotiation—and all negotiations are a kind of play.

(One reason why stories about the law—whether courtroom drama, cop-vs-criminal, murder mystery, or even true crime—are so popular is that they are inherently centered around a kind of negotiation that's inherent to their proceedings. The law is musty and tedious; the law inspires tremendous drama. It isn't a paradox that both these things can be true at once.)

Given a choice, I far prefer too-tight to too-loose; I'll take fun-but-glib over deep-but-entertaining every day. I clearly can be very introspective, but I don't always love introspective people; I have introverted tendencies, but fundamentally think of myself as an extravert, and generally prefer extraverts to introverts (though my closest friends tend to screw that binary up). There are a few deep subjects that I'm heavily invested in, but the more invested I get in something the less interested I typically am in people who'd like to have deep conversations on the subject—though really it's that I've learned that the people whose thoughts truly are deepest on those subjects are typically the ones who can talk about those things as if they're making small talk, because they understand the material so well that they don't feel strain in the slightest, no matter how deep the two of you plunge.

I've heard it said that there are two levels of mastery over the subject. The lesser mastery is to thoroughly understand it yourself; the greater mastery is to know how to speak of it to others. Everyone speaks a different language, and it's impossible to wholly understand theirs unless you can put everything else out of your head to focus on the subtleties and nuanced of how they take you in, and how they put themselves back out. This is mastery: to know something so well that it's truly weightless to you, so that it shapeshifts in your hands to take whatever form someone else needs it to become. You might call the lesser mastery the heavy mastery, the kind that seeps deep into your bones, and the greater mastery the light mastery. I am obsessed with the word surface, which connotes both the shallowest layer of a thing and the process of something rising up from tremendous depths, until it at last makes itself known in the most banally sensual way possible. (Sensuality, incidentally, is paradoxical in an inverse manner to play: that which is sensual is experienced viscerally and immediately and without processing, but is often the byproduct of a great deal of thought, labor, and even artistry.)

This is what I tell myself, at least, to justify both my personal preferences and my manner of behavior. If someone hasn't mastered their craft enough to immediately compel me with it, how should I be expected to trust their mastery in the first place? Likewise, why should I bother with the pretense of substance or meaning, when any genuine substance or meaning ought to exist whether or not I bother acknowledging its presence? I have a theory about blasphemy: any meaningful religious experience ought to be able to withstand and even encourage blasphemy, because, if its truth is profound enough, it will convert even the most scandalous attempt to blaspheme into an experience packed with genuine meaning. Similarly, on some level, I'm drawn to lightheartedness because the one thing it's not trying to do is convince me to care—so if I find myself caring about it anyway, it feels earned rather than coerced.

Sometimes, I feel like I use that as an excuse. Like I said, I'm interested in games and play; a part of that leads to my feeling like most modern games are pretty awful, especially given how much time they demand of their player. Yet I squander endless hours playing them—because, in the end, I don't need meaning. I want meaning, I care about meaning, but what I crave is merely fun. I have intense addictive tendencies and I know it: what is entertainment, after all, than a relentless demand for stimulation? The fact that entertainment can be meaningful gives me hope that I, a born clown, might be worth a damn despite myself, but it's also my justification for wallowing, either as a listless consumer or as a lazy producer. (I have a fascination with improv, with jazz, with creative modes that revolve around spontaneity—which is another way of saying that I love the idea of not having to edit myself, or even plan things out in advance.)

What's neat about deciding that entertainment can be meaningful, that art ought to be pleasing and spiritual, is that you can suddenly justify virtually any waste of time as "research." When I reread a book series that I loved when I was ten years old, I'm just "returning to my roots." When I sink a hundred hours into a generic grind of an RPG, it's because that's the only way to "get the feel" of the experience. Don't get me started on how compulsively I watch and rewatch sitcoms. 

And, of course, I still read quite a lot of poetry—though I've noticed I prefer the ones who keep things short. The lovely thing about Anna Swir...

...is not just that her poetry consistently stuns me, it's that it took me all of fifteen seconds to decide that she was worth my time. Every so often, I flip through the collection I own of her work, and within five minutes, have picked up another ten or so poems that I'll be recommending to friends of mine a couple dozen years from now. (Yet at the same time, of course, I can't stand Rupi Kaur.)

Flipping through Swir's Talking To My Body even as I write this, I come across another poem of hers, I think the second of hers that I ever read. It feels like such a perfect part of this conversation that suddenly I don't feel the need to continue my half of it any longer. Whatever I meant to say here, I've said; whatever I intended to share of myself has been shared. I'll let Anna finish speaking for me, and fall silent, and hope that that silence stretches out meaningfully, rather than simply says that I've found a convenient moment to slip off-stage and bolt for the door.