Monthly Archives: July 2010

July 27, 2010 · 7:04 am

The Joy is in the Work

I’m making my way through Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi‘s great book Creativity again, and chapter 5, “The Flow of Creativity”, challenges me to examine some deep places in my life of creative work.   Csikszentmihalyi’s seminal work on the study of happiness–Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience–proposes that states and experiences of deep joy are very different that what we normally think of when we think of that which makes for happiness.  Weekend grilling, beach vacations, the various temptations of body that all seem to roll back the difficulties of life and create moments of ease and peace…these are things that are far from the world of what Csikszentmihalyi calls flow.   (See the Wikipedia article for a condensed explanation of the various components of flow.)

Csikszentmihalyi’s book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention is based on interviews with ninety-one “exceptional” individuals, leaders of innovation and cultural change in a wide range of “domains.”  The list of interviewees is a Who’s Who of brilliance, some famous, some not, but all of whom have made deep and powerful contributions to the world in the sciences, the arts, the humanities, religion, sports, and business and economics.   The book is an exciting read for me–I love looking into the minds of these kinds of people–but it also brings me up short as I think about where I am in my own pursuit of creative work.  In this time of transition from full and part-time ministry to full-time freelance writing, acting, directing, and teaching, I am deeply entrenched in an evaluation of my values, my heart, and my motivations for the work.

Here’s the opening statement of chapter 5:

“Creative persons differ from one another in a variety of ways, but in one respect they are unanimous: They all love what they do.  It is not the hope of achieving fame or making money that drives them; rather it is the opportunity to do the work that they enjoy doing.  Jacob Rabinow explains: “You invent for the hell of it.  I don’t start with the idea, ‘What will make money?’  This is a rough world; money’s important.  But if I have to trade between what’s fun for me and what’s money-making, I’ll take what’s fun.”  The novelist Naguib Mahfouz concurs in more genteel tones: “I love my work more than I love what it produces.  I am dedicated to the work regardless of its consequences.”  We found the same sentiments in every single interview.”

Csikszentmihalyi then goes on to explain that it’s the process of discovery that is the most compelling aspect of flow, and that our “expansive” tendencies are balanced by “conservative” tendencies that favor the status quo largely because of entropy.

Why does all this talk of flow and fun and loving what you do bring me up short?

Truth is, what I love to do…what I know I love to do…isn’t as much fun as it once was.  What I mean by that can be captured by a phrase that I used to use all the time, almost mantra-like, not because I needed to, but because it was simply the truth of my understanding of things.  That phrase was the title of this blog post.  “The joy is in the work.”  To be fully engaged in discovery, in writing and acting and making moments, with all its passion and sweat and faulty starts and reworking, with its potential for all manner of success and failure…this is sheer joy if the whole heart–the whole person–is in it.

Discovery is a primary human action.   I have to say that one of my favorite things in the world is to work with actors in teaching situations.   I will always cherish the moments where actors young and old make discoveries of moments; small, profound, imaginative understandings of a character in action, and emotion and life and intelligence and need and desire move across their faces and bodies in waves that are strong enough to break your heart.   That’s why audiences around the world pay big money to watch stories of human beings in action, making discoveries of mind, soul, heart, and body, and making decisions of pursuit based on those discoveries.

What I know is that these days I’m not yet in the “flow” of the work I love to do.  I’m rusty, fighting back all the fears that naturally come with the territory.  But if I don’t want to take on the fears, I should just sit down and shut up, because it is part of the nature of the fun to work at that which challenges us to our very core, given that we have the faith that we can rise and meet that challenge.

Faith.  There’s that word again, the way of moving through the world for which we were designed.

Saturday afternoon, in the second act of Man of La Mancha, I made a discovery in the prison scene early in the act that propelled me powerfully through the rest of the play, and I was in a deeper state of flow than I’ve been in a long time.   Emotion both dark and light was close to the surface and the moments slammed into place with clarity and force.  It was sheer joy.  Did the audience get anything special that day?  I really don’t know.  But my faith is that if I’ll stay true to the process of discovery, the work will grow, get richer.

Push back the entropy…discover…pursue joyful work…for God’s glory and the needs of the work, the whole heart is required…

Your kingdom come…

1 Comment

Filed under art, Daily Life, Faith and Art, Theatre, Writing

Tagged as ,

July 24, 2010 · 7:32 am

Questions about Art and Critique

This post is simply a list of questions to consider when addressing the topic of art making and critique/criticism.

  • Are there artistic values and standards that apply to all forms of art?
  • Can those values and standards be articulated and meaningfully discussed?
  • Are there values and standards within a particular discipline (painting, acting, etc.) that are identifiable, unique, and agreed upon within that field?
  • Do the values and standards of a given field apply equally to various “classes” of art, such as “fine” art, “popular” art, “folk” art, “amateur” art, or “professional” art?
  • Do the values and standards of a given field apply equally across styles (realism, idealism, classical, baroque, American Musical Theatre…name your stylistic difference.)
  • What are the critic’s pre-assumptions concerning artistic values and standards?
  • Which of those pre-assumptions do you agree with?
  • Do the artistic values and standards of an international center (New York, Beijing, London, Moscow) apply to those working in the same field in regional and rural settings?
  • How do the various purposes of art making within a given particular context impact the use of critique and evaluation?
  • What is the point of critique and evaluation, anyway?
  • What is the role of self-critique and self-awareness in the creation of increasingly vibrant, relevant, and helpful work?
  • What is the point of trying to create “better” work than before?
  • What are the spiritual implications of living with the tensions of critique, both public and private?
  • Do the gatekeepers (critics, experts, leaders in a field of expertise) of a particular domain or discipline have a legitimate function, or are they merely extensions of a class-based call to power?
  • To what degree is criticism inherent in the act of making and distributing/displaying/performing art forms?
  • What is the personal responsibility of the artist in confronting the dangers and vulnerabilities inherent in bringing their art to a public?
  • How do we take the conversation regarding art making and art receiving beyond the point of “Did you like it?”  and “It’s just your opinion?”
  • Does anyone care about the conversation regarding artistic values and standards?   Should we?

That’s enough to drive your coffee conversations for awhile.   Add your own questions, as well as any references that might be helpful in sorting all this out.  Truth is, the questions may sound rather esoteric, but those of us who make art deal with them in the most practical terms every day.

As Cervantes tells his servant as they exit the prison…

“Courage…”

3 Comments

Filed under Faith and Art

July 23, 2010 · 8:28 am

Wondering About Critique…

Here’s a pretend letter from a pretend reader of a blog dedicated to thinking through various issues related to art-making and Christian faith.

“Dear Blogging Person,

How does a working artist deal with criticism?  I don’t mean mean-spirited people dishing out vindictive diatribes, but the simple, ongoing critique of one’s work that comes from all corners.  Evaluation is what I mean, I suppose.  (Public evaluation, especially.)   From family members to writers for the biggest media outlets in the land, everyone’s got an opinion.  (It’s all just opinion anyway, isn’t it?)  Given that I’m a typical artist, with my own inner nuttiness going crazy with insecurity and self-doubt, I find that I oscillate wildly between the ecstasy that follows one person’s rave and the debilitating depression that hits when someone in the paper or on the jury confirms what you always knew was true anyway, that your work was substandard to start with, and probably always will be.  I know about faith and believing and giving glory to God and all that, but come on…give me some practical advice here to keep me from just quitting what I’m doing, knowing there will always be people way, way better than me at what I do.  I used to have great fun doing what I do, but now not so much.   And one other thing: if I believe the good stuff and let it make me feel all rosy inside, don’t I have to take the bad stuff, too, even if it only soots up my soul?  (Soots isn’t a verb, but you get the idea.)  Thanks for your no doubt helpful answer.   Tom.  (as in ‘doubting.’)”

Before I get to answering poor Tom, how about you?  What do you tell him?   And yes, we are all talking to ourselves about this constantly, aren’t we?

And just to reveal one of my biases, I’ve always been a big fan of criticism, especially when its informed.

Thoughts?

3 Comments

Filed under art, Faith and Art, Theatre

Tagged as , , ,

July 22, 2010 · 7:14 am

An Audience’s Misty Eyes

The eyes of an audience mean more to me than their words.   At last night’s talkback after Man of La Mancha, there were audience members who were meaningfully lost in the experience of the play, eyes a bit misty.   The “magic” of the play was working on them; you could see it.   Simple delight was there, but more than that, an experience of live theatre was traveling through both their emotional centers and their intellect.   You could see them tumbling around inside their hearts, reflecting on their own roles in the play, where they stood in relationship to the ideas tossed so cavalierly into the air by the “mad knight.”   We all think we’re “Aldonzas”, broken, less than we might have been, beat up, perhaps halfway to hell because of what’s in our hearts.   But Quixote looks Aldonza straight in the eye, not blind at all, but seeing more truly than any of the others, and tells her she is beautiful, pure, and “the woman each man holds secret in his heart,” Dulcinea.

And a few in the audience last night wondered if there was anyone in their lives who believed in them as Quixote believes in Aldonza.    “Is there anyone to see me,” perhaps the person in the third row, second seat, asks, “as someone other than the ugly fraud that I accuse myself of being every day?”

For me, the question is this:  do I see people as they might be, as they could be, or even, as they most truly are?  And do I treat them from that center, from that reality?  If what Cervantes suggests in this 500 year old story is at all true, then we have such power in our hands to be transforming agents of the realism our time is so in love with, so cynical about, so angry over.   And perhaps all is political, perhaps all is sheer and mere power play, but I believe we live in a world where the simply human transactions of respect, courtesy, kindness, belief, faith, and most powerfully, love as Christ lived it, have the power to change everything, one day at a time, one person at a time, one impossible dream at a time.

I see the mist in the eyes of the audience as what some call the shekinah glory.   The arrival of God’s presence and grace traveling on the windy voices of actors breathing in and out words and songs of the world not as it is, but as it ought to be.

Breathe, Jeff, breathe…

1 Comment

Filed under art, Beauty, Faith and Art, Great Stories, Spirituality, Theatre, Writing

Tagged as , , , , , ,

July 15, 2010 · 6:00 am

Each Man’s Life Is But A Breath

So says David the King in Psalm 39.   This psalm gives us an image of a man wrestling with God, his relationship with Him burning in his chest.  He resolves not to speak, but then must.  He asks to know how long he will live, knowing that a “man’s life is but a breath.”

From the story of God forming humanity from the dust of the earth in Genesis 2, wherein he breathed into man “the breath of life”, to the outpouring of the Ruach (Spirit or breath) of God, to the notion that the scripture is literally, “God breathed”, breath holds a profound place in the story of us.   Breath keeps us alive, one cycle of inhale/exhale at a time.  To think of God breathing, each inhale/exhale birthing worlds, spirits, and truths, is to be reminded of Paul’s idea: “In Him we live and move and have our being.”

I struggle to breathe well when I’m performing.  Many people have said it to me over the years…I work too hard.   Knowing that breath provides the energy and structure needed for concentrated muscular effort in the performer’s major tools, speaking and singing, for years I have tried to figure out just how breath works.   And for years it has eluded me.    There is a simplicity to it, a trust that the body already knows how to do what it’s training to do.  As I sing and speak on stage, there is constant creative energy pouring through the body, and various body positions create pressure and tension that demands breath.

What’s on my mind is the relationship between muscular effort and breath.   The breath is what’s needed if life is to continue, and the muscular strength and direction provides mobility and physical action.  This relationship speaks to me of the tension between the Spirit of God (ruach in the Hebrew, pneuma in the Greek), and the exercise of our muscular (both physical and psychic) energy and will.   As followers of Christ, we constantly use the language of allowing the Spirit to work through us, or allowing Christ to work through us, knowing that we can’t do this or that that our walk of faith requires.  And yet, the muscularity can be applied by none other than ourselves, even as, in faith, we believe the Spirit of God to be providing “the strength” for muscular action we are taking.  And we speak of taking control, short-circuiting the work of the Spirit, which seems to me a lot like holding the breath instead of breathing.  Obviously, to hold breath is to cut yourself off from the very source of your life.  You turn red and pass out when you do it, and as a performer, it’s much the same.

In my current role in Man of La Mancha at Taproot Theatre, I walk a tightrope between the muscular energy I’ve chosen to apply to the character of Don Quixote, and the breath I need to sing the songs.  Last night’s performance was an experiment in moving deeper into a release of tension and depending more completely on breath and ease, and there were pluses and minuses as I moved through the play.  Again, it reminds me of the daily experiment we go through trying to find the balance of Spirit-life and human-life, which in my mind makes up what Dallas Willard and Richard Foster call “The With-God Life.”   My shortcoming as a performer echoes the shortcoming I have in my day-to-day world…I need more breath.

I know David is referring to the brevity of a man’s life when he says “each man’s life is but a breath.”  But as I was reading along in Psalm 39 this morning, it just hit me (or did the Living Word speak to me?), reminding me that the breath of life, on multiple levels of literal and metaphoric reality, belongs to God, and that our lives are given to us one breath at a time, each inhale/exhale a small life of its own.

Today, I will breathe…

Leave a Comment

Filed under Daily Life, Faith and Art, Spirituality, Theatre

Tagged as , ,