PLAY

Artist: Scary Panda

It wasn't suppose to rain this week.

What's the name of that book by Ram Das?

I went to bartending school for three weeks. It took two weeks longer than it was supposed to. Mostly because I took breaks to go to my car and have shots of vodka from my trunk. The teacher didn't care and he knew because I told him.

I never became a bartender. But I got whatever certification it was from that dude.

I don't like people. They annoy me. They're dumb. I'm a people.

When I was younger I took singing lessons from a dude named Lee. He knew his shit. He had toured the world. Who cares if he was as a synth player in an 80's band. He did it.

He told me almost every time I saw him to go out and do karaoke. I thought it was a dumb suggestion.

When developing a skill, it's important to be vulnerable. That's why Lee told me to do karaoke. He wanted me to realize the passion in what I was doing through the intensity and vulnerability of performance. You can only truly achieve growth through failure and you fail the best when you're uncomfortable. That's when failure hurts the least and we can actually draw away from it the lessons we need. To be uncomfortable I had to be in new, different situations. I had to extend my reach. But, like so many times before, I grew too attached to the comfort. The comfort of not telling myself it didn't matter. Of telling myself I was good enough. Of telling myself it's ok to fail (which it is). But I think vulnerability includes the wanting to not fail. That's what makes practice best. And practice...well...practice is play. And play is essential...

Because it allows us to be creative. Released from the pressure of expectations, play allows us to be ourselves and think in our own box.

Now I'm old and I've been taught to think play is foolish. And it is. Foolish. But not bad. Foolish but still important. Foolish because we're all fools.