ALIENATION / PLAY

Look at all of the connections occurring in your life. Maybe think of yourself like an old-fashioned telephone exchange. Here’s a link to a short film about Enfield telephone exchange that will help you understand.

To do this properly you need to find a way of representing your connections: a list, a scribble, a drawing, a model made out of plasticene. It doesn’t matter what as long as you feel like it’s your way of doing this. And don’t try and do this in your thoughts because keeping too much in your thoughts is part of the problem we are trying to deal with.

Look at all of these connections: meetings with friends, paying for something at a shop, answering the telephone, speaking to a colleague at work. Go through them one-by-one and ask yourself ‘how much am I trying to fit in with something when I do this?’ Then ask yourself: ‘is there some small thing I can add to this exchange that might make it more me.

This exercise is about you finding your way of doing something that may involve an element of compliance – but which respects a sense of you. It’s about becoming more properly connected to the world so that if life is like a game it’s as much your game as it can be.