Start Playing...

Notes On Animus Brincandi

I am the most unserious person you'd ever meet. I played a lot as a kid and when life got serious, I still found a way to connect to my inner child. Some of my friends and I have these inside jokes in most of our conversations, you will probably think we are crazy. Stay with me, I'm getting somewhere.

I didn't know I took that habit into my artistry. I didn't just try several mediums of art, they came to me but while in each state, I played around with it, so that I could write limericks and haiku in my sleep. I could imagine a photograph and find ways to recreate it with what I have. Read Robert Frost’s and Dylan Thomas's most famous poem just with one glance and could immediately know the type of poetry it was. Even when I failed most times, I recreated a lot just by... playing. My curiosity led me into several bottomless pits, which formed...the me you are thinking with on this page.

This art of playing and wandering is called Animus Brincandi. It is actually what I am going to be doing right now, so please a penny for thoughts?

Animus Brincandi is latin for the spirit of playing or a playful intent. My Latin is a bit rusty. It is the reason why eighty percent of artists(I don't like the word creatives) are experiencing friction and pauses while creating. In plain terms you are too serious to the point of performing. Here is the twist, animus brincandi is an unserious habit to help the artist create serious and life changing works. It keeps you connected with your art. Keep the vehicle moving while you find shelter.

It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be childish or unserious with your work or art. It is a window of several possibilities. One good thing I love about it, is how different it is for different artists. What it means for a painter is different from how it would mean for a writer or two different writers. Even a photographer would experience it differently, to say the least. I have gone back to the drawing table several times, when bareness was a real thing for me. It was how I connected to the untouched parts of me. Yes, the complexities of being human allows us to have that but you wouldn't reach it for yourself, without releasing the friction between your head, your body and your soul.

I can talk about this all day, until it turns into a thesis I am not ready for. It is imperative I show you why it is necessary in literature. The spirit of play can be explored in literature as the inner impulse that allows language to move freely. Before the rules and structure. It is the moment when writing stops trying to perform and begins to discover. In many ways some modern writers have practiced this form of creative play when writing about grief, identity or consciousness.

Allow me to show you three notable works I have deeply studied. Works of Clarice Lispector, Virginia Woolf and James Baldwin. These writers have embodied this spirit. They actually took this quiet playful intention seriously and it showed in their work. Animus Brincandi is linked to the idea of playful resistance to rigid systems, where play becomes a way to challenge discipline and fixed structures. That's why the works of writers like these are relevant.

Virginia Woolf used form of play as Movement of Consciousness

When I read A Room Of One's Own, I saw clearly her method of thinking. Stream of consciousness, actively thinking on the page as she explored feminism. Although she didn't invent Stream Of Consciousness, she transformed it into a powerful literary form. In her Novels, ‘Mrs Dalloway and To The Lighthouse’, she allowed thoughts to move freely across time, sensation, memory and perception.

This technique reflects Animus Brincandi because

●Thoughts are allowed to roam

●The narrative isn't controlled

●Language mimics the unpredictability of the mind.

I noticed that for her, the mind was her playground of movement. She famously wrote that "Life is not a series of orderly lamps but with a luminous halo surrounding consciousness.” Writing for her had to finish the same shifting light.

Clarice Lispector used form of play as Existential Play

The Brazilian writer explores Animus Brincandi in the most radical form. After intimately connecting with her works, I can tell you that it was a sacred experiment for her. In fact, I got the term from her works. It was through her I realized this was a real thing. Her novels, The Passion According to G.H and Agua Viva are not conventional narratives, that's what I love most about it. These works are acts of...searching instead. Lispector writes as if language is being discovered in real time. Her sentences hesitate, contradicts themselves and circles around emotions that resist definition. In other words, she had embodied this spirit to say the unsayable.

Her writing reflects Animus Brincandi in so many ways;

●Language experiments with philosophical questions

●Narrative dissolves into meditation.

●The writer openly questions the act of writing itself.

She probed the mind edges fearlessly about what couldn't be explained but found a way to express them. Lispector once suggested that writing wasn't about explaining reality but touching it briefly before it disappears.

James Baldwin Used Form of Play as Moral Exploration

His work is deeply serious hence showing a different dimension of Animus Brincandi. In his works, he was dealing with race, faith, identity. Yet his prose often moved as an improvisation, like Jazz. I read his work and I think Jazz. It has this musical rhythm. I can't quite place it but it is best described that way. In his work Notes Of a Native Son and Giovanni's Room, he allowed thought to break open through reflection, memory and emotional revelation.

This style mirrors;

●Musical rhythm

●Intellectual exploration

● Spoken voice

His "spirit of play" is ethical. He uses language not only to explore consciousness but to confront the truth.

Knowing all this, imagine my frustration when some writers experience this rigidness in a way, where they sound like everyone else. Few writers, whose work I love, have complained in so many words. It is a problem and I know how it feels when you are writing or building a body of work and you are trying so hard not to sound like someone else or to be precise, like the last book you just read.

As writers or creators, a true creative voice emerges when the mind allows itself to play. That's where the intimacy with your art is born, it's when your work finally meets its depth. In this state, you have to be able to think deeply. I mean, set out hours to think randomly. Maybe not at night. A writer needs animus brincandi, the courage to play with language before meaning settles. Approach life or a story or your art with; curiosity, creativity, experimentation, the possibility of joy and lightness.

To embody your form of play, you have to;

Write before you know the answer. Don't chase certainty all the time, you are allowed to think on the page.

Allow sentences to wander. Contradict yourself if you must, it expresses the realities of your humanity.

Trust intuition over rigid forms of writing. Releases the pressure.

Treat your language as exploration.

Always engage in your internal monologue as a form of prose.

Every artist has a reason why they create and what they are trying to confront or say. Just as animus brincandi can mean sacred for one, it might be a true reflection for another. One good thing, you find your language.

Animus Brincandi is living language, creative freedom. Its embodiment determines your creative voice. It is a creative discipline that says a lot about you as an artist.

So, start playing...

Until next time.

Note

If you are in your creative journey, you can share your thoughts. Others might learn too. If you are just starting to find your creative voice or in the middle of finding yours, let me know what you are leaning towards.