The Beginner's Guide: an observation
As I write this, I should be running in a sports hall throwing a basketball into a hoop. But I couldn't. Not yet.
My favorite game of all time is The Beginner's Guide1.
And just a couple minutes ago I played through it again. But this time it compelled me to write something, which I guess will be this blog post.
This is not a review per se, it's more like a reflection on the experience that this game can give, the lessons I've learned from it, and maybe a suggestion as to how it is so important to me.
Few artworks move me to tears, which I attribute to a muscular and hardened history before my time, whose cultural significance has made me stern. However, the few times I've played this game, it had opened up something. (maybe my tear ducts).
It's funny to think of this game as a recurring theme or milestone in my life because I see it as a checkpoint almost. A moment of reset. Which is one thing that actually is explicitly pointed at in the game. There is a recurring puzzle, which as the narrator points out is a predictable checkpoint of sorts, where you have a moment in the darkness between the door of past and the door of yet to come. This moment of rest is what I am usually seeking when I play this game.
The puzzle in question.
Recently, I have been feeling empty, for lack of a better term. In the past half year or even a whole year, I have not been "creatively fulfilled". I have been looking for an answer, an escape. This eternal lacking has been eroding my innards for too long to a point where I couldn't bear it anymore. I tried multiple things to get my sense of self back but nothing was sufficient. Hell, I even created this page with optimism of a future where I share my work and express it outward. But maybe that is not the point.
In the game Davey Wreden is obsessed with his friends work, since it seems to him that Coda (the friend) is not at all concerned with external validation. Davey doesn't understand this and interprets the art or games that Coda is making as a call for help, which can be fixed by exposure. That is not true. As Coda puts it:"the fact that you think I am frustrated or broken says more about you than about me".
I always trusted this innate feeling of not wanting to be seen. Sure I've fantasized about success and fame and money and whatever else. But I have always believed that I create for myself. My work is not for other people. And I gain no worth from somebody remarking that, yes the work is good or bad. It has always come to me in the moment. As Rick Rubin mentions, the art is just a glimpse into the moment of its creation. The monumental reasoning of it is not revealed, just hinted at.
I want to do more creative work. I have been craving for what feels like eternity. But I can't. And I have tried to figure out what is wrong. Why the machine stopped working. Why everytime I try, I figure out a reason or there is a feeling for me to say: "No, this is wrong. No, you cannot do this right now". It's as if I am trying to convince myself that I will never be free again from this burden of judgment. But as Coda said, there are low points. They exist. And they are a part of the process.
When I first wrote here I was wrestling with the idea of financial gain coming from creative work I could do. And then and there I thought, maybe I have figured it out. I hadn't. I have been attacking the symptoms, probably. I don't know what is really the reason for this drought. I could appoint it to my tiredness. Maybe me becoming more independent and fighting with the idea of my future and all the responsibility that comes with it. My externality toward wanting to be the best I can be for other people. not for myself. I think that is a key one. I am unsure.
After playing this game I have felt like I am rediscovering what it has meant for me to be creative once. And maybe taking the steps to address it.
I am impressed that such a short game can convey so much about the reality of being creative. Every single time I play it I find something new that I had dismissed before. A new perspective. I feel this game is timeless. It stays the same, but as I change, I take more and more out of it.