CanCan the Game

Here are a few thoughts regarding the healing magic of the CanCan.

I didn’t set out to make a game. I set out to create a complete system that would show how colors FEEL in relationship to one another. There had to be some shapes because the shapes that colors appear in, and through, also contribute to the great variety of our visual experience.

My original thought was, You can read the world. What is the alphabet? I made an alphabet of the visual language. This alphabet has four shapes, onto which are draped all the colors of the rainbow plus black and white, in two-color combinations both positive and negative.

It became a game at some point when I cut up my original hand painted templates and saw that they could be considered increments of color. Matching color was an obvious mechanic that suggested itself.

So when you play with the tiles, and set yourself the simple task of matching and touching color tile to tile, you automatically and effortlessly create an interwoven and integrated color document. You are using the “alphabet” to compose a vision. Because you are attending to the simple rules of matching, you are free from the mental pressure to “make art”. So “art” makes itself while you focus on the game.

The tiles themselves might suggest different things and possibilities to different people. This is why I stress that people can disregard the rules and just play with the tiles any way they feel inspired to.

However, I think playing a simple game adds to the remedial effect of using the tiles because it creates an almost accidental unfolding of an organic interwoven design. The unfolding of this design is perceived or registered in a deeper part of your brain than the part that is focused on matching, touching and flipping, and it is a deeply soothing experience.

The colors come together in ever more satisfying ways as your board fills up. You think about how to maximize your wild tiles, they can help you win by giving you extra unlimited flips and thus playing the most tiles.
Matching the shapes and flipping more tiles are complementary activities to the building with color that is the foundation of the healing aspect of the game. Contemplating the rainbow of colors has been shown to be healing to the endocrine system.

It was very important to me that there be no counting or scoring during the play time, and that though you can win with strategy, this fluid color-focused process that is going on underneath the play can continue uninterrupted whether or not you win. This fluidity is what imparts calmness and a sense of well-being as you play. Moving between the flow of color matching and the forward thinking of shape matching and strategy brings a state of BALANCE to the brain.

Don’t you think that’s something that a lot of moms would be happy to hear about for their kids, and themselves?

I straddle at least two worlds.

One is the world of “possibility”, of “manifesting”, the financial slash business slash investment slash capitalist slash who-you-know slash asset-and-credit world…which to me resembles the “all you have to do is intend it” attitude of The Secret and other have-it-all philosophies…Just attract it! I work with this….attitude is powerful…intention and attention are ultimately powerful. I call in what I choose to receive, I envision….yet is there a smugness, an unconsciousness, a neglect of some physical facts?

Another world I live in is the uncertain day to day world of making of a living, of rent and bill to bill, of falling behind, and catching up, of nice bank managers who waive an overdraft fee, of dreaming of getting my carpet cleaned, of odd jobs extended by kind friends, of house sitting, of watching my bank account online like a hawk…trying not to burst into tears when the check I just put in thinking it puts me ahead, is eaten and gone already by insurance debits I forgot about…

Just normal stuff for people in this world at this time. The world of actual survival. I’m resourceful and I’m lucky and there is freedom and power in negotiating the bare ground…

How do these two world views reconcile in FACT? I choose to receive abundance, AND I better get on Craigslist and see if there’s a job for me. I choose freedom, AND I go paint railings in the wind because rent is due.

I’ve grounded stuff. I can do it. Murphy looked at my palm and said I could run an empire. On the other hand (omigod, no pun intended!) Lily looked at my palm and said I would never be rich but I would have enough. Can both things be true? Well, it’s just a palm, just a story, and maybe they’re both wrong.

Who knows? Not me at the moment. The reward of patience is patience….. it will be revealed…IT being some kind of world I can inhabit whole-heartedly. Maybe just the world of patience…. maybe that’s where the worlds do collide…

I’m writing this in the lobby of one of the highest end apartment buildings in downtown Seattle. We painted a condo in here, and I scratched a very expensive coffee table laying what I thought was a soft rounded Haitian wood sculpture on there, to discover at the very end of the job that it had metal hardware that scratched the very delicate, impermanent and therefore extremely costly finish of the coffee table that looked just like metal. In my mind the materials were mutually kind. In reality one ate the other at my expense. So now I am here to receive the repaired and refinished piece of metal which has cost me 500, easily what I made on the paint job….and now the condo is for sale for 1.8 million. No quibble, I scratched the table. But it’s one of my details. It’s one of the things I look at. I grew up lounging in properties like this.

And now the guy is late delivering it and my parking will run out in one minute.

In another mood I look at my vision of jumping into a big black delivery truck and inwardly shrink at the thought of throwing myself out into the world alone. I’m not young, and I need so much quiet and solitude.
I feel like one of the least social people I know.
Even my closest friends scoff when I say this, most people think I’m very social and sociable.
But I’m not. Not all the way in.
Or I have not yet been.
Social.
Maybe I’m starting to become more social, which might mean, become more available?
I definitely notice people are talking my ear off.
People seem to want to pour the contents of their hearts right into my ear lately.
Maybe I’m more there to actually hear them than I was before.
But how much do I share?

I prefer to stare.
(Or am I sitting on a volcano?)

I do not know.
I am a fish out of water at the moment, waiting to sprout some feathers.

Writing a business plan is all about knowing what you want. For yourself and for your thing (business). It’s also about knowing the best order of events to accomplish this thing you want, given your realities and circumstances.

What do I want?

In general, I want to populate the world with little clones of my baby whose name is CanCan. Why? Because it’s growing up. Because it wants to go out there. It doesn’t want to sit in a warehouse looking good.
Also because I want to see how far I can take it. I want to see how far we can go.

I want to travel. I love to have something to bring to the places I visit. I don’t like being a tourist, gawking. CanCan is a wonderful ambassador for a country I’d like to represent. CanCan country, a world of Possibility.

Speaking with a toy and game distributor today, I got the sense of myself as being in a well-known category of single-item vendors. Mike said more than once “Single item, its not an easy road”…harder to find a distributor, harder to sell your product, harder to be remembered…etc.

Of course I would like to have a distributor for CanCan. It would be very good to have some marketing support.

However, if that is not to be, I will continue to be the A to Z of CanCan, the game, the business, the sales, the service, the dream. There’s an elegance to that proposition.

I will get in my CanCan delivery truck and drive. First the west coast. Then the southwest. Then the mid west then the east and midatlantic and southeast. Coming back home to reload, and reorder.

The truck of my vision is shiny black, brilliantly emblazoned with CanCan logo, colors n graphics.
And there are precedents. Some readers may recall Ahura Mazda, my wagon of yore. Or the Bonneville wagon…
All the travels will be TAX WRITE OFFS. It’s genius.
I know how to travel. I know how to maximize. I know how to sell, nobody sells CanCan better than I do.
I have friends and supporters everywhere. Well almost everywhere. Always happy to make new friends

I’ve done the ground-breaking work locally. Now comes a tailwind of buzz that pushes it along. Now comes marketing.

A brochure
A press release
An article
Someone will see what a great story this all is.
But the story only gets better as I keep going, so I keep going.

I envision videos of my stops and stays along the way. Video blog posts!

There is money. CanCan receives investment. To purchase the vehicle, to drive me all over this land.

Simon says CanCan will succeed in spite of my math issues. Which is encouraging even though I don’t think I have as many issues as all that. I will demonstrate my math abilities in the business plan financials.

But in general it seems to me that it is cost effective to put me in a vehicle and allow me to drive.

I’m sitting down to write my business plan. I have a short-form template I can use…six pages!
The first question is

Who Are You

and you’re supposed to have an opening one sentence pitch that will make your investors want to keep reading…pitch…I might slightly stray from the business plan rules…because I’m here to tell ya, business is fun.

I’ll be grateful for any comments to help me craft this plan. This is a beginning. This is not yet a business plan, these are ideas…Ready? Begin.

I am CanCan, the Game of Color and Creation

What is color?
You can’t say what color is, you have to SEE it
Black red orange yellow green blue purple white
Color is half of what we see. The other half is shape.
Color is healing.

What is creation?
Creation is the appearance of something from who knows where?
Creation is the free activity of a relaxed and open mind
Creation is purposeful
Creation is child’s play

Wouldn’t it be great if we could help kids (of all ages) tap into their own creation zone? Wouldn’t it be great if we could soothe their (our) fevered brains? And make it fun?

We can.

CanCan is a puzzle-building board game that uses multicolored tiles on a black velvet game board.
It’s a luck and strategy game for the whole family.
CanCan is a healing game.
Can Can is art in a box.
It’s color!
It’s a game you can win, but nobody loses… How can this be?

Because everyone participates in the creation of the final interwoven design.

Mission and Vision

My mission for my own life has been to RELAX. My mission in creating CanCan is to provide a structured activity that helps you relax… It’s a meditation.
Children playing CanCan will not come running crying to their parents while, or after, playing. They will grow absorbed and quiet.
They will experience the direct effects of color on their brains*.
They will make something beautiful.
Yet never will they have to be told to go be creative or make something beautiful.
Because it’s a GAME. And it’s FUN.

*Contemplating the rainbow of colors has been shown to soothe the endocrine system.