Play is a phenomenon of human existence. A world one can escape into. A weapon against sadness, meaninglessness, tragedy, and the incomprehensibility of human actions and the world.\n\nIt is a space in which a person can hide and experience the joy of simply being, where nothing else has a place. There is no fear, dark thoughts, anxiety, uncertainty, depression, sadness, awareness of one\u2019s own weaknesses and imperfections, or failures\u2014because everything exists within play.\n\nTry playing again sometime. To be like a child. Experience being absorbed in your own play and existence. And then tell us what it felt like for you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I love La Strada by Federico Fellini with Giulietta Masina and Anthony Quinn. Masina plays Gelsomina\u2014a fragile, slightly simple-minded, but playful, sincere, pure young woman who travels with the rough circus performer Zampan\u00f2.\n\nWhen I watched the film, Gelsomina firmly took hold of me and dressed me in herself\u2014in my gestures, voice, and way of being. I realized she wanted me to portray her, that she needed to come into the light. Perhaps there is something similarly comedic in both of us that needs to come alive.\n\nBringing fragments of her existence into the light also means understanding my own, touching another part of my identity. That is the magic of play. Through play, our human identity emerges\u2014pieces of ourselves.\n\nAnd it does so in such beautiful, liberating humor and grotesque laughter that everything heavy disappears. Like when the grandfather of little Va\u0161ek in How to Get Daddy into Reform School sighs at his wife\u2019s grave: \u201cYou see, M\u00e1\u0148a, that boy can turn everything into such nonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I looked into the wardrobe and the clothes began to leap onto me. A grey trench coat wrapped itself around me and guided my arms into its wide sleeves. A brown knitted dwarf-like hat jumped onto my head and twisted itself into a strange shape.\n\nRed lipstick painted my lips into a heart shape, and a black pencil, with clown-like precision, created long lashes and drew a clownish nose.\n\nNotes arranged themselves and, through my vocal system, began to produce a strange, playful melody. My legs started to bounce, and my eyes stared straight ahead.\n\nGelsomina was alive\u2014present in my character and actions, in individual situations. Nothing needed to be invented. I only had to let her be, exist, and act\u2014and watch how my own being was fulfilled through her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gelsomina dissolves everything gloomy and heavy within me. Fear of the future. Life becomes beautiful, like for Giosu\u00e8 in Benigni\u2019s film Life Is Beautiful.\n\nOf course, not everyone has the surplus energy to embody a stage character. But I believe everyone can experience play\u2014or life as play. It is something like meditation, where a person exists only in the present moment. Yet it carries an extra spark. One does not take oneself too seriously, because then it is no longer play.\n\nIn play, the whole of life turns into a space of performance, with a stage, props, and a person as a playing character. Play is magic. Truth itself, where what is heavy becomes absurd and what is absurd becomes pure and true.\n\nEverything is rearranged and functions in reversed logic. The serious becomes grotesque, and the grotesque becomes serious. In this inversion lies lightness and truth.\n\nThis is what filmmakers like Fellini, Kusturica, or Jakubisko worked with, what V\u00e1clav Havel wrote in his plays, and what Ivan Vysko\u010dil created in his non-theatre.\n\nBecause in an apparently absurd but truthful space, the powerful lose their strength and the fragile triumph over forces of evil. A parrot becomes more respected and speaks wiser words than a renowned university professor. Loud, crooked hats become more enchanting and beautiful fashion pieces than the creations of the most famous fashion houses. A heart pounding with fear sings louder, clearer, and more soulfully than the most perfectly performed Gregorian chant.\n\nAnd where human fragility and vulnerability become the ground for truth, a fulfilled existence, and a real, joyful, radiant world emerges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is authorial creation and play. A world in its absurd, inverted truth\u2014in a logic opposite to apparent reality. And yet this inversion is almost chillingly real.\n\nEveryone carries within themselves the grotesque nature of their identity and life story. Perhaps what helps them understand it is only a small, unobtrusive grotesque figure\u2014the tramp Chaplin, or the touching village girl Gelsomina.\n\nAnd life, through this moment of insight, becomes entirely illuminated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When you are somewhere and it feels too serious or uncomfortable, try the insight of hospital clowns: imagine people with red clown noses. You will see how the whole situation takes on a different dimension, and people begin to reveal themselves in their true identity. How absurd.\n\nThe clown nose removes the mask, and a person becomes who they truly are\u2014but in complete fragility and kindness.\n\nI tried this once during a church service, and I could not believe it\u2014I mostly just smiled the whole time. It felt as if we were characters from Comenius\u2019 Labyrinth of the World. Perhaps that is why hospital clowns exist. Because absurdity and grotesque elements heal the human soul. Laughter heals the human soul. It disarms a person from themselves.\n\nIn its absurdity, the world\u2014and the human being\u2014is more truthful than the seemingly serious illusion we call reality.\n\nAnd so a question arises: what if God is one great colourful clown with a huge childlike heart, and our only task is to imitate him and laugh at ourselves? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
P.S.: Do you know what you cannot put a clown nose on? Evil. Because evil cannot bear a clown\u2019s red nose.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hra je fenom\u00e9nem lidsk\u00e9 existence. Sv\u011bt, do kter\u00e9ho je mo\u017en\u00e9 uniknout. Zbra\u0148 proti smutku, nesmyslnosti, tragi\u010dnosti a nepochopitelnosti lidsk\u00e9ho kon\u00e1n\u00ed a sv\u011bta. Prostor, v kter\u00e9m se \u010dlov\u011bk m\u016f\u017ee schovat a za\u017e\u00edvat radost z pouh\u00e9ho byt\u00ed. Kde nic jin\u00e9ho nem\u00e1 m\u00edsto. Nen\u00ed tam strachu, chmurn\u00fdch my\u0161lenek, \u00fazkost\u00ed, nejistot, depres\u00ed, smutk\u016f, vn\u00edm\u00e1n\u00ed vlastn\u00edch slabost\u00ed a nedokonalost\u00ed, proher. … Read more<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2339","page","type-page","status-publish"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t