★★★★½ 

Introduction

In addition to having the most unpronounce-able name in all of western psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is also one of the most prominent “positive psychology” theorists and researchers around. It’s no surprise that his book, Flow: The psychology of optimal experience, describes the “state of concentration so focused that it amounts to absolute absorption in the activity.” What might surprise you is Csikszentmihalyi’s claim that flow (optimal experience) is not elusive or mysterious, that it doesn’t just come and go at random. Rather, he asserts that flow can be cultivated, courted, and put to use in our self-development.

I’ve chosen to re-read and review this book because I think that so many of us art-makers have experienced flow, and could benefit from Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas about how to create it and experience it more often.

I’ll cover some of the book’s content below, but you can skip directly to my opinion if you prefer.

Content

Csikszentmihalyi’s optimal experience (flow) is “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it” (p. 4). Sound familiar? In his research on the matter, he found that,

Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not passive, receptive, relaxing times… The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Such experiences are not necessarily pleasant at the time they occur. The swimmer’s muscles might have ached during his most memorable race, his lungs might have felt like exploding, and he might have been dizzy with fatigue — yet these could have been the best moments of his life. (pp 3-4)

He also believes that true flow experiences are unique in that they represent an internal re-ordering, and that each time you experience flow, you become a more complex person. He means “complex” in a good way, here — that we become more dynamic, more able to take on challenges, and more engaged with the world each time we allow ourselves to push past difficulty and experience flow in our work and leisure. In other words, these optimal experiences are the fertile ground for growth and personal development.

The book, originally published in 1990, is a different kind of treatise on happiness than most of the self-help books you will find. Csikszentmihalyi’s research focuses on life-work satisfaction (“happiness”), and at the time of publication, he was using some interesting techniques to get self-reports from participants in all walks of life. He would give each research participant a pager and a log book. At random intervals throughout the day, the pager would beep and the participant would record what they were doing, and how they felt, etc. What he discovered was that certain people experienced high levels of satisfaction at work or at play, but not in the ways you might expect.

For instance, we might naturally assume that people experience flow more frequently when they are at rest than when they are at work, but Csikszentmihalyi’s studies suggest the opposite. Because flow is more likely to happen when you are focused on a task — when you are pushing yourself a little bit — it is actually more common for flow to occur at work unless your leisure-time involves similarly challenging activities such as sports, music, art, etc.

The good news is that there is a very specific set of variables that combine together to create flow, and that once you understand these variables, you can (to a certain extent) control them and use them to experience flow more often. That elusive feeling of being completely “lost” in your work need not be so elusive. I will discuss those characteristics of flow in a future post.

Chapters of this book include:

1. Happiness revisited
2. The anatomy of consciousness
3. Enjoyment and the quality of life
4. The conditions of flow
5. The body in flow
6. The flow of thought
7. Work as flow
8. Enjoying solitude and other people
9. Cheating chaos
10. The making of meaning

My opinion

 ★★★★½ 

I give this book 4.5/5 stars. As a person who truly enjoys those fleeting moments of flow that come during my creative (and other) work, it was truly liberating for me to believe that I could control that experience to some degree — invite it more frequently and more deeply into my life and use it to the benefit of myself and others. I have put the principles of this book into practice and, for me, they hold true. The ideas described in “Flow” have encouraged me to spend more of my leisure time in challenging and/or creative pursuits, rather than just sacking out on the couch and watching TV. 

Because Csikszenmihalyi is an academic, a researcher, and a professor, the book does at times run the risk of becoming a bit dry and technical. It was an early attempt to describe his research findings to the general public, and you can tell sometimes that he is either out of depth (writing about topics that were recent research discoveries and, therefore, not as well articulated or understood) or off on theoretical tangents that are of interest to him but may not necessarily be of interest to the reader. Mercifully, he resisted the temptation to fill the book with footnotes and references, and instead includes a detailed appendix with running academic commentary in case you want to know more about a particular subject. Without this appendix format, I would have given the book a lower score.

Finally, the book was published in 1990, and can sometimes feel a bit dated. You get the distinct sense that the spectacular arrival of the internet and its resultant complex global climate would contribute interesting ideas to this discussion. I would be interested to read his more recent publications, but haven’t done so. This book still stands as the best introduction to his thoughts and ideas. I believe this book has the capacity to enrich our lives  on a personal, creative, and professional level and I highly recommend it. 

Have you read it? If so, what did you think? If not, does the idea interest you?

 ★★½☆☆ 

Introduction

Nina Wise is a performance artist who has “taught improvisation since 1972.” Her book, A Big New Free Happy Unusual Life: Self Expression and Spiritual Practice for Those Who Have Time for Neither, boasts one of the longest, most confusing titles I’ve ever read! Clearly, this is a book that aspires to be all things to all people.

I have actually owned this book for many years because a good friend (a free spirit, spritely, fairy of a friend) recommended it to me. In all those years, I have never been able to get through reading the entire book. I decided to give it one more shot before I parted with it, read it cover to cover, then sold it almost immediately after listing it for sale on amazon. I guess that speaks to (a) the popularity of the book, (b) the allure of the title, or (c) my incredible ability to miss the point.

You can read an excerpt of the book on Powell’s.com. You can also skip the overview and get straight to my opinion.

Overview

Here is one of those books that encourages you to either read it all the way through or skip around at will. Its chapters are written in a self-contained way, so that you can take only what you need and leave the rest. The main thrust of the book is that modern life suffers from a lack of freedom and play. Wise has taught workshops for many years which encourage people to lose their inhibitions, try new things, express themselves, move, yell, twirl, and dance their way to personal insight.

If you’re having a hard time envisioning what that means, you may find this video helpful. In fact, there is an entire selection of videos of Nina’s work available to view on YouTube.

Content

The reclamation of our creative spirits is an easy and enjoyable journey. We only need to devote a modicum of courage and short, but regular, periods of time to find our way back to our essential nature, which is unfettered, playful, and free. (p. 7)

Wise wants us to play and experiment and express ourselves. She divides the book into self-contained chapters that cover a wide spectrum of creative outlets, potential collaborations, and (oh, yeah, we almost forgot) spirituality. These topics are:

• Dance and movement
• Singing
• Visual arts
• Writing, words, poetry
• Creating in pairs
• Group play
• Love and passion
• Prayer
• “Bringing art to life — Improvisational Being”

At the end of each chapter, she outlines a few activities and experiments for you to try. She helps out by giving some basic rules that are designed to facilitate freedom and expression while carrying out these activities.

1. Begin each practice from stillness, and take a moment to empty the mind of thought.
2. Be true to whatever you are feeling physically.
3. Respond to emotional impulses as they arise moment to moment.
4. Include everything.
5. Surrender
6. Surprise yourself.
7. Take risks physically and emotionally.
8. Make mistakes.
9. Commit to what you are doing.

And once in a while, she even takes these rules one step further. For instance, apparently dancing newbies need a bit more instruction and cajoling in order to really get the full benefit. So, for the dancing chapter, you get even more recommendations.

1. Commit to what you are doing, whatever it is.
2. Don’t care if you are good at movement or bad at movement.
3. “When you feel confused on your feet, rather than trying to push away the confusion, dive headlong into the morass. When you feel awkward, rather than trying to be graceful, forge deeply into the awkwardness. When you feel stuck, rather than trying to be free, melt into the center of stuckness. When you feel discomfort, rather than longing for comfort, surrender to uneasiness. Be more confused, more awkward, more stuck, more uncomfortable until you fully dissolve into the heart of these feelings. In the core of the place you have most avoided, the most unpleasant feelings dissolve and in their wake, the wildness erupts inside you and insists on speaking itself through your body.”

My take on it

Wise seems like a nice person — even a fun person, an engaging person, a silly, inspiring, “totally awesome” person. According to the book’s endorsements, she is close with some of my favorite writers (Natalie Goldberg, I’m looking at you) but aside from having taught improvisational workshops (whatever that means?) for many years, I’m having a hard time figuring out exactly what her credentials are. Unfortunately, this comes through in the book. Most of her assertions are proven illustrated through anectdotes — experiences that she has had or she has encouraged her students to have. The idea here seems to be that, “Well, just trust me. I’ve seen this work.” Worse, her tone sometimes comes across as a little holy or boastful. It’s probably just me, but I found it to be grating.

It seems that Wise’s specialty is movement/dance, and (judging from videos of her performances) the integration of spoken word with movement/dance. That said, I’m unclear about why she has decided to write a book that encompasses these modes of expression plus visual art, singing, poetry, and other media. Even less integrated is the concept of spirituality (although the subtitle boasts it to be part of this amazing new life you are going to have) which is relegated to one chapter toward the end of the book.

I’m also concerned about her lack of training and expertise in the context of her role as a facilitator, teacher, and educator. For example, she tells the story of post-operatively being instructed to walk around her hospital ward. Well, she and her friends decided to take it one further and dance around the ward. This seems to have aroused glee, exhilaration, and general euphoria in the participants, but as a therapist who works in a hospital setting, I worry. This dancing is thought to have sped up her healing process, but there are many patients for whom this activity may pose a danger or risk. In short, if you can read this book as a general conceptual overview and not actual instructional expertise, you’re probably better off.

Listen, I’m sure that in the early days of licensure, medical doctors balked at the idea of becoming credentialed, licensed, and certified to practice medicine. Lawyers didn’t always have to pass the bar, did they? In this day and age, however, there are credentialing processes in place for becoming an expressive therapist — associations that have been formed to ensure that those who are trying to help others have completed certain levels of training, supervision, and education in their specialties. This is my bias (obviously), but I know a lot of other people who wouldn’t pay someone to even cut their hair unless that person were state licensed to do so. I’m sure the ranks of dance/movement therapists would be only too happy to welcome Nina Wise as a colleague, should she choose to pursue the credential.

I’m hesitant to be so critical. The suggestions and recommendations from the book that I’ve listed above are solid, and are concepts that I use with my clients and in my own art-making. Even still, I find the book to be a little too much — too many topics, too wide a scope, too broad a base. It’s pretty obvious throughout the book that dance and movement are her forte; even the “additional tips” in the dancing chapter lead me to wish that Nina had focused on her specialty instead of reaching out in every direction.

Rating

 ★★½☆☆ 

Overall, I give this book 2.5 stars.

The pros: Fun, “unfettered” suggestions to free up your creativity and launch you into creative expression. The author seems to practice what she preaches and has a passionate connection to the topic. There is a little “something for everyone” here, if that’s what you’re looking for.

The cons: Beyond personal experience, the author does not seem to have any credentials, education, or certification to back up what she suggests. The book tries to cover too much ground and to be all things to all people. Sometimes the message of the book gets lost in the author’s personal anectdotes and reminiscence.

Who is it for? I think you’ll benefit most from this book if you are an uptight, corporate, or tightly-wound person who has never made time for creative expression in your life. If you sense that some element of creativity is missing, but have no idea where to start or what might most appeal to you, this book is for you. It will give you a tiny taste of every major expressive media and encourage you to experiment. Then, once you have found a niche or a direction, maybe you can branch out and find your way. In other words, this book is best suited for absolute beginners in the world of creativity.

 ★★★★☆ 

Introduction

The PBS Series Craft in America is available on DVD and I rented it through Netflix. It contains one DVD with three “episodes.” I’ve caught snippets of the episodes on my local PBS station, but was under the impression that the only way to get your hands on a DVD was to pony up during the pledge drive. Silly, silly Mal. It can also be bought on Amazon.com.

If you like, you can skip my review of the content and get right to my opinion on it.

Overview

The three episodes, beautifully and cinematically directed by documentarian Dan Seeger, are called Memory, Landscape, and Community. I was especially touched to find that the intricate theme song of the series is Simple Gifts — the lyrics of which are the inspiration for my blog’s title.

It’s interesting to note that the series won a Peabody Award. So did Stephen Colbert, so you have to take that for what it’s worth (Hi, Stephen! If you’re reading this, call me!) Here’s a nice summary of the series from the good folks at Peabody:

“Craft” is a term packed with many meanings. This series of three interrelated, one-hour programs sets out to unpack those meanings and to explore the history and continuing significance of craft work. Each of the three topics provides unusually specific focus for this task. Memory examines the history of craft movements in America. Landscape situates craft and craft workers both geographically and in terms of the materials used in creative activities. Community again places people and objects within contexts, in this case the very special networks of schools, mentors, pioneers and practitioners. But all this conceptual elaboration is presented through the most exquisite visual framing, the focus on the works themselves. Clay rises on the wheel, formed into pots. Glass melts into stunning shapes, fiber is woven into fabric, scraps of cloth are sewn into quilts. The treat for the viewer is in what is seen, in watching beautiful objects emerge, and what is said, as craft makers explain what it means to be so intimately involved in these creative endeavors. For examining processes as old as human experience and as fresh and vibrant as the latest local craft fair, a Peabody Award goes to “Craft in America.”

Before we get going, it’s important to mention that when this documentary speaks of “craft,” they are not necessarily speaking of pompoms and glitter. These are not camp crafts or kits or any other type of “quick and easy” projects that you can buy at Hobby Lobby. Rather, the emphasis is on practical, durable, hand-made items and the artists who make them. It is a documentary about hand-made products which highlights the making process. That’s what I ultimately like about it.

Content

Part 1: Memory

This episode features two furniture makers, two basket makers, and a blacksmith.

Glass, clay, wood, fiber, metal. Human hands transform humble materials into works of function and beauty, creating objects that hold the memory of who we are as people. How are the traditions of craft kept vital by today’s finest artists? And how has the legacy of craft been re-imagined as a modern art form?

There is discussion of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the Arts & Crafts Movement. I appreciate its emphasis this episode places on learning from (and breaking with) the traditions of the past.For instance, at one point the blacksmith, Tom Joyce, talks about how he spent years learning the traditional skills and techniques of metalwork before he could branch out into more modern and ”artistic” applications. The basketweavers are both grounded in the traditions of their ancestors (African American slaves and Native American Indians, respectively) but have found a great personal meaning and purpose in their modern creations.

As may be expected from an episode called Memory, there is also a lot of talk about handing down traditions and questioning those who came before.

Part 2: Landscape

This episode features two jewelry designers, another woodworker, two ceramic artists, and a ski lodge. Seriously.

Sweeping pastoral vistas. The refuse of city streets. The limbs of a particular tree. The headlines over the morning paper. Artists look to the world around them for inspiration. How does landscape influence the act of creation? And how do artists translate this influence into a landscape shaped by their own hands?

We are invited to reflect about our surroundings and how they contribute to the process of making art.You might think that this episode would be locked into discussions of trees and flowers, but I was highly intrigued by the work of Jan Yager, who uses drug paraphernalia found in her rough Philadelphia neighborhood and transforms them into visually interesting pieces of art. Her commitment to using materials found in her immediate vicinity — no matter how ugly or rough — is pretty inspirational.

A break in the documentary’s form occurs when they highlight Timberline Lodge — a ski lodge built after the Depression by the Works Progress Administration which employed not only welders and brick-layers, but also apparently artists and craftspeople. It seems like a strange inclusion in the documentary, but it (mostly) works.

Part 3: Community

This episode features glass artists, ceramicists, quilters, two more jewelry artists, another basket weaver, and a roster of craft schools and organizations.

A quilt made for a loved one. A piece of jewelry passed down from one generation to the next. Crafts connect us to other times, other places, other people. How do simple, beautiful objects bind us together and how do they come to embody our sense of community?

This episode sticks most closely, in my opinion, to its theme of community. It shows artists working in residences, schools, and other group settings. Readers of this blog will be glad to see that a modern quilting-bee community, Mississippi Cultural Crossroads, is highlighted. Not surprisingly, with the exception of the glassworkers (a craft which I imagine is extremely difficult to complete in isolation), most of the artists featured in this episode are women. This makes sense, given what we see of women finding communities of creativity even here online in blogland.

My take on it

The people and products in this documentary are so lovingly and generously filmed that it will sometimes take your breath away. I frequently wished that I could reach through my television to caress a particular curve of a rocking chair, or feel the weaved texture of a basket or a rug. Fortunately, the camera does a pretty good job of caressing for us. Truly, these episodes are shot with a cinematic view and there is plenty for the eye to take in.

As someone who truly enjoys learning about not only art but also artists and their process, these episodes are jam-packed with gems. Please remember, however, that I am an art therapist and I could sit and listen to people talk about their artwork and their creative process all day every day. (Oh wait. I do. But, I never get sick of it.)

There are things about the documentary which fall a little short for me, too. For instance, I found the organizational structure of the episodes a little baffling. The worst offender of the episodes in this sense is Landscape — which inexplicably (and jarringly) leaps from highlighting artists who are making art based on their physical surroundings to an artist that makes art in protest of war. Huh? This episode also features Timberline Lodge, which is a cool collaboration of artists that came together during a difficult time and… therefore… wouldn’t it fit better in the episode called Community?

Also, those of us who are trying to incorporate art wherever we can in our modern, average lives may have to dig a little to find useful ideas from these full-time, studio-based, livelihood artists. I believe the gems are there, but I had to kind of commit myself to not being jealous of their set-ups. That said, the quilters are of course just everyday women. None of us should find this to be much of a surprise, I guess.

I was also struck by what is missing from this documentary — as I alluded above, it lacks a taste of everyman, of common folks who are using art or craft to enrich their lives. Because of this, there are great swaths of media that are not discussed. The episodes deftly avoid highlighting fine artists (painters, sculptors, and the like) in favor of crafts-people who are creating beautiful (yet largely practical) art. However, I would have liked to have seen more time devoted to things like embroidery, sewing, paper arts, bookbinding, and other more accessible media. I found myself wondering more than once, “Really? Another furniture maker?”

Finally, the “episode” format of this documentary is very tantalizing. My one remaining criticism is that there are only three episodes, with  no apparent plan for continuation. If they could reduce the production value a little, we might get fewer sweeping vistas and perfectly-lit images of glazed pots, but if it would have resulted in a longer-running examination of art and artists, I would have been glad of it.

Rating

 ★★★★☆ 

Overall, I give this DVD 4/5 stars.

The pros: Gorgeously filmed, beautiful work. Lots of artists are highlighted and they talk at length about their lives and their creative process. There’s an emphasis on getting back to handmade, simple objects and moving away from machine-made.

The cons: Organization is a bit loose and, at times, jarring. Many of the arts and media highlighted are out of reach of the average Joe. Potential for an interesting, ongoing series is somewhat wasted with only 3 episodes.

If you’ve seen this documentary (or choose to watch it in the future), please comment on it below!