Monday, July 05, 2010

GPNW 2010: The Believers

I mentioned in my quick rundown of Go Play NW 2010 that I was able to play Chris Bennett's "role-playing poem" The Believers, which I'd been curious about for quite a while. I had a terrific experience with it, and really like the idea of using similar short-form exercises to warm up before a longer play session. Something else that I wanted to share, though, was an artifact I ended up with when we were finished. In the 'Contact' phase of the game, the players are given the following instruction:

"While the first player is describing their belief, the other players should each be taking notes, writing down single words or phrases they hear that are evocative to them. For example, you might write down 'spinning lights' or 'scared out of my wits.'"

I'm finally getting around to putting away some of the stuff I brought back from Seattle, and amongst the various character sheets, fliers, and other ephemera in my bag of games, I discovered that I still had my Believers notes:

Susan

still alive, thirteen
lipstick smeared across my face
I shouldn't have let Mark...
went out to the ravine
I jumped
I felt so free

Kingston

Weekly World News
you drink three beers
when it ended, I didn't know what to do
who's going to hire a man with Batboy on his resume?
I was driving
my car was upside down
there's no way you can drive your entire car up into a tree

Darin

reoccurring dreams
people over my bed
one time I woke up
the person in my dream
the foot of my bed
it was calming
the dreams went away
just last week they started coming back

Sunday, July 04, 2010

4th July 2010: "They should never touch the ground"

Here's some footage of one of my favorite Fugazi songs, "Facet Squared," at a 1993 show in Nashville. "We draw lines and stand behind them. That's why flags are such ugly things." Happy birthday, America.


Thursday, July 01, 2010

Interruption IV

I just finished Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch this morning:

"I remember a feeling that caught me as I hung up the telephone once, a kind of sadness. I realized that my inner knowing had told me to say something, and I did not pay attention. I thought, with regret, back to other times when I had heard that voice and ignored it. The simplest yet most elusive lesson in life is learning to listen to that guiding voice."