Are these emotions? Are these feelings? Are these the building blocks of feelings, or mere building blocks? You have a medium, but what are you pushing through it?
-droqen (meaning and metameaning)
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is theory where I go when I’m afraid to share a real feeling? We could spend eternity describing the parameters for beauty and die without ever finding it.
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Has letterclub helped you find meaning? Is there something else we should be doing together instead now that we are where we are?
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if you’re finding beauty, finding meaning, where are you finding it? How have you connected with things lately? How are you doing?
These are great questions! I have been eager to answer them for the past month… I think I have answers, but have been struggling to put them to words. The first question is a hard one, so let’s go in reverse order, to build up some momentum before we face it…
Finding Beauty
I have been finding beauty, and meaning. In life in general, through being more at peace with my self, my determinations, my relationships, and my anxieties. Living in the present. Dreaming of the future. Appreciating the past. Remembering to be patient. I am doing well. Not always, but often.
This is – not specific. Metameaning only, perhaps. But the meaning is there. Let’s see… Last month I went on a trip to Europe with my partner. We spent a lot of time walking in nature, looking at megaliths. Photographing fungi and rocks and trees and sunsets. Last year we bought our first house, we are learning to take good care of it, and dreaming about how to make it fully ours, slowly making progress. My job is engaging but occasionally overwhelming; I am seeking to do a better job at taming it. In all these things I find meaning. In all these I am reflecting on my relationship with the world around me, learning to shape it where I can, to choose HOW I want to shape it, and otherwise adapt where necessary.
And in games. Let’s come back to games in a bit.
Letterclub
Letterclub has been a big help in my quest to find meaning. We started letterclub at a time when I was not finding meaning in much at all anymore. Our discussions encouraged me to better understand what it was I was looking for. Everyone’s energy was invigorating, your ideas inspiring. I agree our discussion of Haiku Games was a form of metameaning – seeking to understand the shape of how we might relate to our world – find meaning in it – rather than any specific meaning that we wanted to feel. The form of meaning.
After becoming so disillusioned with my past interests in mathematical and puzzle formalisms, I wanted to connect with something again. And if it wasn’t going to be form, then it must be content. As if meaning could only be felt in relation to content. I think, after all of our discussions, after accepting responsibility for the way I relate to things and find meaning in them – after deciding to make Haiku Games about ‘the sun’ and routinely getting discouraged by my ability to sculpt the form of my games, after letting my curiosity repeatedly succeed in drawing out energy to practice games in search of beauty in formalisms, I have realized that I have found the meaning and beauty I was searching for back where I left it. But I have a new relationship to it now. Less image-based, more focused on the moment (of practice).
What should we do together now? I think continuing to work together to understand the way we find meaning in games, the questions you posed to me, is really what we were doing with Haiku Games. There is still a part of me that wants to understand the content side of this games equation better, and Haiku Games will always stay within arms reach of my mind for that purpose. But even in my formal games, there is always the meaning that I draw from them which I can push back through the medium. Reverence. Patience. Practice. Frustration. Grit. Whimsy.
You said, again, that you are ready to transcend form. Great! What are you curious about? What could you learn more about by pushing through your forms?
Theory
Theory is another form to love. We can escape to it, or use it as a crutch to feel closer to an emotion than we are. But I think emotion is always going to be a more immediate feeling.
Emotions
I described the journey I’ve recognized in my game design practice: ‘a focus on movement mechanics in a grid, and a reverence for mechanical interplay in that space’.
Maybe these are not emotions. I think I am mostly driven by curiosity. But I have been recognizing, as I work on combojumper more, as it gets closer to a finished form, that I want to imbue it with more of the emotions I feel when playing, when contemplating, when relating to it. There is room in every corner of the form to do so, and I can sense a growing curiosity to capture these feelings in that artifact. But these are emotions in relation to a specific formalism. Something broader than just what combojumper is, an incomplete trap for the feeling such that is must be. But still, I think it is a relation to the formalism I see behind a lot of problem solving, the moment-to-moment of adventure, the pursuit. These are things I feel at my job, when working on games, when learning about anything, when wondering about anything. These are real life feelings! But as I live a life steeped in formalism, as a programmer, a mathematician, as someone historically afraid of my interpersonal emotions, that is what a lot of my emotions are in relation to. And that is where my curiosity is idly aimed. Maybe, as I continue to grow, when a healthy relationship with forms is sustained for some time, my curiosity will be redirected. But I’m not sure I want to force it.