I want to turn you on

A collection of existential reflections on freeze tag, art, and criticism.

The game of freeze tag requires at least three players: one to chase and “freeze” and two or more to run, be frozen, and unfreeze each other. On my elementary school playground, we’d fashion epic games of freeze tag, all grades, all cliques, all races. I feel like there were hundreds of us, but much more likely, we were about a dozen. The progenitors of the game would make a circle of our toes and eenie-meenie-minie-moe an It. Others would drip in to join after we started. We’d scatter across the map of the United States painted on the ground, under the jungle gym, around the four square grids, weaving in and out of games others played, running away from the pursuer.

Here are life lessons I’ve learned from freeze tag:

(1) In a game of freeze tag, the unfrozen can’t afford to be selfish - they have to be attentive to who has been frozen and to unfreeze as many players as possible. Because (a) the more runners there are, the more distracted It will be from you and (b) if everyone else gets frozen and you, eventually, do too, which you will, there will be no one left to unfreeze and It wins.

But some inevitably will only focus on It and ignore the frozen, believing their evasion of the pursuer satisfactory play.

(2) There are no allegiances in freeze tag. It doesn’t matter who your friends are but towards whom lies the clearest path? To whom can you make it without getting caught yourself? Sometimes you don’t make it.

(3) Tagged, you realize that as hard as you’d been working to avoid getting caught, it’s actually kind of nice to be frozen, to catch your breath. At least for a moment. Eventually you wave your arms and scream for the attention of someone who can unfreeze you. It doesn’t matter who they are, they need you in the game and you need them to get you back in the game. Win, win.

That’s how it goes: you avoid being frozen. You unfreeze as many as you can. You accept when you have been frozen. You call attention to your frozen state. You get freed. And you do this over and over and over and over until recess ends or your mom says its time to leave or a critical mass tires of the game and chooses to play another.

Jimi Hendrix said that his reason for being an artist was to ‘turn people on.’ The phrase is often sexualized. Because we live in a pornographic society and he was an attractive man in the middle of a sexual revolution who bared his chest and performed cunnilingus on his electric guitar.

But to turn someone on is simply to inspire them to desire continuity, to unfreeze them. Some call it raising consciousness or kundalini awakening. Isn’t this what all artists are doing?

But there’s a difference - and I’ve noticed that this is where people sometimes get lost - between being turned on, activated for your own continuity, and being fluffed, technically excited for the continuity of an other (person, industry, system). I think this is the fundamental thesis underlying my criticism practice: a lot of shit is fluff, and you can see the difference if you care to.

Some people prefer fluff, they don’t want to be turned on. They want to feel the pleasure of continuity without the responsibility of it. I accept that fact, keep my distance, and still call fluff fluff.

(5) Everyone gets eenie-meenie-minie-moed into being It in a game of freeze tag at some point or another. Or maybe we even volunteer. Its freezing power is hardly enviable. It never gets to catch a breath.

(5) Here’s my definition of depression: You’re frozen. You can either enjoy the rest before calling for the warming touch of a comrade or you can follow It with your eyes, imagining you’re still being chased while not moving.

(6) The world got bigger and the game got smaller. A single word or image can freeze an entire identity group within seconds without the physical work of chasing and touching each one that It used to take. But the challenge is also the advantage: Once you see how It plays, you can unfreeze yourself by tapping your commonalities with a yet-unfrozen identity. I can’t give specific examples without freezing people. Look at what’s trending on social media. People of what identity is that trending among? What part of you exists beyond the frozen identity? Crossover and use your mobility to unfreeze the others. Boom - you’re a trickster.

Artist has, historically, been the unfreezable group.

I am a single parent to one child, and sometimes we find ourselves at the park alone and play freeze tag with just two players. How’s that possible? It’s not and that’s the point. When you get tagged, an impossible imaginary event has to occur to unfreeze you - you narrate it: “I just got struck by lightning and now I’m a running generator.” And you move according to the conditions such an event would create (per the example, buzzing across the field).

I’m an individual person and sometimes when I’m alone, albeit not physically, I find myself playing one-person freeze tag. And I just let It run itself ragged.

My son recently revealed to me that the game of tag (freeze or any other variety) isn’t allowed at his school. As a delicate millennial, I usually avoid such criticisms, but I couldn’t help thinking what kind of delicate millennial bullshit is that?

Thank you for being here,

Lydia