Play Anything by Ian Bogost

First, pay close, foolish, even absurd attention to things. Then allow their structure, form, and nature to set the limits for the experiences you derive from them. By refusing to ask what could be different, and instead allowing what is present to guide us, we create a new space.

… creativity reveals itself to have far less to do with our own desires and vision and imaginations, and more to do with the world outside us, and how seriously we are willing to take it.

To stave off ironoia, we need not resist the crass material world nor transform it into artisanal affectation. A gentler touch is needed, a more careful physical therapy: to spend time with things, to visit with them, to give them a chance to be exactly what they are. To shut up for a minute and allow the universe to hum without recourse, without appeal to moralism or nihilism, without trying to take it as a petting zoo or a Death Star, without always caging it in Instagrams or problematizing it in think pieces or strip mining it to fuel the ovens of our own contentment.