Below are three photos that manage to capture the spirit of New Games.
We see people laughing, enjoying themselves and each other, playing
together, in community, and most scandalous of all, actually touching
each other, and most inspirationally touching each other with trust
and love and support, safe in each other's hands.
These are games we hardly ever play nowadays.
This is a photo of the Lap Game. I think the record
is for over 3000 people in one Lap.
Here, we weave a tangled web playing the famous game of
Knots.
And here the most delicious and, given
our current state of enlightenment, least often played of our more infamous
New Games, People Pass.
---
I caught the caption under the "People Pass"
snapshot about this game falling out of favor "given our current
state of enlightenment" and it occurred to me that I have actually
seen this game played at some of the more raucous and rowdy concerts
I have attended. It now goes under the more extreme name of "Stage
Diving" and usually involves a shining moment of glory (climbing
onto the stage with the band) and diving off into the (hopefully) helping
hands of your fellows before you get caught, to be passed around until
you become more...well...grounded. It's funny how the sense of
community you can get from passing somebody around is the opposite from
the message of the music that usually spurs it on.
Michael Weidenbach
Of the games we played at the Deep
Fun session at Esalen, People Pass turned out to be one of the most,
forgive the pun, transporting. We played it during the last session
- the only session we played outdoors. It turned out to be one of those
"hands-on" love fests - a living objective correlative of
the support we had learned to give to and receive from each other during
the intensely, profoundly playful weekend.
( It's a good practice, when playing lying-down-people-pass,
to have someone at the head of the line with a knee to sit on. That
way, the next person to be passed can sit down and then lean back, and
the people preparing to pass the person can easily take over from there.
The person standing at the end of the line is there to help people return
to safely to the ground and get positioned to pass the next person in
line.)
