Word Magic: Affective Constellations Conversation Game
There is a new game that I am excited by. It is a communications game, that is, it is a game that helps to expand a person’s capacity for what kind of communication they feel like they can do. Like learning a new language, but the new language is new ways to access emotions in yourself that produce new ways of using your original language of communication. Consider it something like acting, or an acting class, combined with authentic relating games. The idea is to find new sources of energy in yourself, and new pathways for expressing those energies through guidance and setting goals for skills development.
Here is how the game works. You need one other person. Hopefully you start off with somebody who you are pretty comfortable, like a friend at least. I don’t recommend doing this exercise with strangers for the first time you do the activity, because you might not be comfortable enough to see the activity working, and then might not want to try it again!
So you have your person. One person is the “conductor” and one person is the “singer.” The point of the exercise is for the conductor to help the singer find new “voices” to embody.
No actual singing is required. Rather the hope is to find new registers of speaking in yourself, and finding new registers of guiding to guide another person to interesting voices for them.
The theory here is that when people are talking, they are often routing their attention both to what you’re saying, and what they’re trying to say, and what world you both are living in such that what each of you is saying makes sense. People are trying to understand and be understood, and do any number of things such as mediate rapport or try to change someone’s mind.
But somewhere in there they also are in a context inside of themselves while they are trying to process your context and the joint context. While navigating inside themselves, their attention moves to various word clusters that have an affective tag inside themselves. You can imagine the same person using entirely different words, and different emotions attached to the words, when they are with their family members, compared to their friends or when they are at work.
The point of the exercise, therefore, is to see what your own words can do in terms of guiding the other person to different affective sites inside themselves. The words they use may change, as may their tone!
Perhaps they would be speaking from the head, or the throat, or the heart, or the stomach, or the diaphragm, of the groin. There are many options here! The point is to notice in yourself and the other person where the words are coming from, and how your words serve as a guide for them to follow into areas of themselves where the response to you may live.
Over texting, this may show up as different emoji sets you use with different people, different ways of punctuating, pacing, length of text before clicking send, speed of texting and responding.
In real life, it could be stuff like tone of voice, speed of talking, where the voice is coming from (head, throat, chest, diaphragm, heart). The game therefore would be to help guide a person’s attention to different areas in their body that they can speak from, using words alone. The two people will not be touching each other, but the singing partner can feel free to touch their own body, as they notice where they think they may want to be speaking from.
Relationship to word magic is a vast terrain with other artifacts on nearby constellations..
Upstream could be intention, purpose
In the constellation can be inter-relational (accountability, orientation, getting people to a place - convincing, guiding, playing word chess)
Layered beneath the word magic can be *permeability* like ‘letting it in or hit’
Downstream can be the actions and resultant artifacts in ‘real life’ or how it is animated in human ecology
Game Instructions
Game 1
Conductor Prompts
The Conductor suggests where to “speak from”— a body part (head, chest, stomach), or an emotional constellation (curiosity, boldness, tenderness, etc.). Example:
“Try speaking as if your voice starts from your heart.”
“Imagine your words are like beams of sunlight.”
“Let your words come from a place of deep curiosity.”
The conductor is responsible for noticing if the singer has gone to where the conductor expected, or somewhere else, and will continue to guide the singer gently using both personal judgment and noticing how the singer is moving. The goal for the conductor is to slow down their own perception, as a meditation, and to practice noticing how their words affect the singer.
Singer Responds
The Singer tries to answer the direction in an authentic way, noticing themselves where they “went.”
Check-In / Shift
Pause briefly. The Conductor (and Singer if they like) describes what they noticed:
Where did the voice feel located?
Did any emotions shift?
Did new word choices or tones appear?
Game 2
Follow the same spirit as game 1, but this time, the conductor uses “prompts” that are more natural in a conversation. Instead of saying something like “imagine your words are like beams of sunshine” say something like “what is something good that happened today?” However, the conductor is still the role of the “prompter,” and the singer is still in the role of the singer, and they are still doing the same things as in Game 1, while having a natural conversation.