There’s been a lot of talk in the past few months about a range of important issues: the rule of law, checks and balances, free speech on campuses, whether people’s jobs will continue to exist.

You know what I haven’t heard people talk about much? Oranges. I’ve heard precious little consideration of what you might whisper to an orange before you peel it.

Admittedly, I wasn’t thinking about that either when the basis of this episode got started. Last spring, I heard about a performance at the I Fell building in downtown Bloomington. It was called How to Preserve an Orange, and it was this ritual, participatory performance. I’d heard great things and decided to invite the artist, clay scofield, to do it again, this time at Redbud Books in Bloomington. Redbud is a community space as well as a bookstore.

How to Preserve an Orange was strange and fun and it made me think about experimentation, being in tune with our senses, and play. clay and I sat down in the studio a couple weeks later to talk about the experience, about what it means to train our attention on something, why limiting possibility is important for people who want to amass power, how play can open up opportunities for transformation, and how, as a result, real, deep play can also be risky. Dangerous. Which is a little bit how I felt during How to Preserve an Orange, when clay asked us to ask our oranges to consent to being eaten.

clay is a visiting assistant professor in digital art at the Eskenazi School of Art Architecture and Design in Art. They’re on the board of directors of the School of Making Thinking, and they’re a co-creator of the Deep Play Artist Residency. clay has MFAs in poetry AND in studio art.

This episode includes excerpts from the performance of How to Preserve an Orange. If you want to try it at home, the full recording of the performance is also be available in the Inner States podcast feed. Let us know if you do! Email us at wfiuinnerstates@gmail.com.

Credits

Associate producer Dom Heyob put this episode together. Jillian Blackburn keeps our social media alive and well. Eoban Binder, LuAnn Johnson, Sam Schemenauer, Payton Whaley, and Kayte Young support the show behind the scenes. Eric Bolstridge digs us out of whatever holes we get stuck in.

Our theme song is by Amy Oelsner and Justin Vollmar. We have additional music from the artists at Universal Production Music.