Teasing is an art.

Sometimes its palette is crude, its routine and transitions rough or rude, its delivery little more than a heavy-handed coloring outside the lines, but still it is trying to say something without saying it literally or flatly.

Other times, teasing is more tuned-in, as when it breaks up emotional logjams-in-waiting by adroitly disrobing and jousting with foibles and sore points. Teasing then gets in our face in a way that allows us to more easily lose face; our self-importance and its neurotic sidekicks find a quick and relatively painless deflation in the artful presence of teasing’s pointed humor. Teasing can be the short way home.

Relationships devoid of teasing easily flatline into deadening associations. Maneuvering around the eggshells of psychospiritually correct, let’s-not-offend-anyone relationship doesn’t make for much intimacy. A frozen dance of wallflowers. Teasing can get us back out onto a dancefloor where there is plenty of room for passion and color and multileveled movement. Toes may get stepped on, extravagant flourishes may occur, but there is no doubt that aliveness is afoot.

At the same time, teasing, if it has heart, doesn’t overplay its hand or force us to move, and nor does it shame us, though it may bring us more into touch with the shame we already carry. Through its penetrating angles and creative turns, teasing can provide channels through which our previously held-in shame can flow and dissipate.

Tuned-in teasing pulls down the pants of our neurotic rituals before an incisive yet compassionate eye, putting down our sweaty fretting and fussing without putting us down. An incisive yet affectionate lampooning this is, surfing the edge of discomfort while providing enough good humor to give that edge more roundedness, more softness. Teasing can be very cost-effective therapy. It is impromptu psychodrama.

Skillful teasing provides a dramatization that deflates our self-possessed dramatics.

Its wit and exaggerations of delivery create an instant stage, under the lights of which our habits mill about like dazed cattle waiting to be branded. Here a moo, there a moo, no longer masquerading as a you, unzipped by teasing’s touch, leaving not more drama, nor more bovinity, but only refreshed us, only liberated energy.

Good teasing finds the edge, sets up camp there, takes in the view, and delivers, finding a vital, sparky balance in its precarious positioning. The ledge may cave in, the tent blow away, the weather suddenly change, but teasing then finds fresh ground, if only for a moment. Its lack of solid footing only sharpens its focus.

Teasing is conversational catharsis, using laughter in the same way that awareness of deep loss uses crying. It can bananapeel our overdone concerns, with invisible clowns lining both sides of our spill. Teasing can lighten our load.

Teasing trips us up on our way down. As much as it may flabbergast, shock, irritate, annoy, discombobulate, or insult us, tuned-in teasing invites us to realign ourselves with what-really-matters.

Teasing is a simultaneous testing and tasting of uncertain or potentially turbulent waters. It may nudge us toward deeper waters, but it does not shove us. It may broadly hint of bigger steps or risks, but it does not demand them. In its edgy yet friendly presence, we may find unexpected room to consider things we wouldn’t have otherwise considered. We might even get to rehearse some new steps, without the usual critical eye having so much power to hobble us.

Teasing’s intent matters as much as its delivery. If we do not have the well-being of the other as a priority, then we’d do better to not launch ourselves into teasing that person. If, for example, I am angry at you, and I start teasing you, I may find myself crossing the line into sarcasm and even contempt, while telling you that I am just joking when you express your hurt at what I am saying. We don’t tease to score points, although we might blow the whistle on our desire to do so, right in the midst of teasing, which only adds to the life-giving energy of our teasing.

Teasing lets us sniff out uncomfortable edges with more-than-usual looseness. It scouts ahead for signs, absorbing data -- reactions, movements, attitudes -- so quickly that its next sentence may well be modified on-the-spot to better suit the terrain just around the next corner. In teasing’s instant dramatics, we simultaneously are our roles and are not our roles; all we need do is plunge in, scriptlessly alert, ready, curious.

Well-delivered teasing tests the health and resiliency of our edges, keeping us fluid, even if our bones are brittle with age. It is the leavening of healthy criticism. It is raw theatre, psychologically astute theatre, theatre of the practical absurd, with funny-bone scaffolding, wonderfully irritating savvy, and annoyingly awakening scene shifts, ever turning shit to wit.