A Recap

[poliphilo]

Lets try again.

When I was walking round Ashton the other day taking photographs I went into a light trance where everything I came accross- tired mothers pushing strollers, boarded up buildings, graffiti-covered bus stops- seemed wonderfully interesting and significant and beautiful. It was as if I were seeing beneath the skin of things.

Inevitably the pictures I took didn't convey much of this (though one or two of them were OK).

You can't photograph a state of mind.

But that's what I was on about yesterday when I was saying ugliness equals beauty.

Comments

[cybersofa.livejournal.com]

Coo, The Doors Of Perception in two sentences, there. Not mushrooms for breakfast by any chance?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

No.....

But If I could prove it was diet-related I'd have whatever it was for breakfast, dinner and tea.....

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

When I was walking round Ashton the other day taking photographs I went into a light trance where everything I came accross- tired mothers pushing strollers, boarded up buildings, graffiti-covered bus stops- seemed wonderfully interesting and significant and beautiful. It was as if I were seeing beneath the skin of things.

This is what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls "flow".

See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060920432/103-1670535-2895819?v=glance

He has a website, too, but I can't find the URL right now.

When I learned about this a few years ago, I was surprised that a)there was a name for it, and b) even though it's something I know well, not everyone experiences it and it is much sought after.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"Flow" is a nice name for it....

I guess it's what I experience whenever I'm doing creative work and it's going well. What made this bout special was that I was wandering around in the great outdoors instead of sitting in front of a monitor.

Usually I'm too busy reeling out sentences to notice that the state of mind I've gotten myself into is anything special.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I understand. the poem I wrote last Friday was like that. And the thing about that is that it was WRITTEN, I didn't have a computer to sit down at and 'type' it. It was like it wrote itself...even if no one else likes it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's a great feeling when you step back from something you've just produced and think, "did I do that?"

BTW thank you for drawing my attention to that poem. I somehow seem to have missed it first time round. I especially like the bit about the "familiar".

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Thank YOU for letting me toot my own horn in your lj. I seem to be very self absorbed, lately.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

And what's wrong with that?

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Been told all my life I'm 'selfish' and want "attention"...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ha, yes, I recognise that one- it was my parents' favourite tactic for keeping me in my place.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's symptomatic.:)

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

You might like Joanna Boulter's poem The Hallucinogenic Effects of Breathing.

(I wasn't disagreeing with you, you know...)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I know you weren't....

But I hadn't really said what I was trying to say- probably because I wasn't really sure what it was.

Thanks for the poem. It captures the state of mind exactly.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Your photographs do capture this, I think. The fact that you can focus in on anything--a different-colored brick, a gob of hair gel--allows you the photographer to say "this means something."

(But I think I know what you mean. Years ago I had one of those moments after seeing The Elephant Man with Anthony Hopkins. I walked out of the theater with a sense of tragedy still with me, and drove home in a daze. When I went into my house, every piece of furniture seemed beautiful, and the light through the window.

That movie, by the way, gave me the horrors. It wasn't about the unfortunate Elephant Man; it was about the director's neurosis, and his dipping into and savoring evil that got to me. But that is off the subject.)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

How odd that a film about "evil" should have brought on such a state.

But I guess that's the theory of tragedy- that it lifts you up even as it casts you down.

[kaysho.livejournal.com]

That is a wonderful state of mind ... when you walk past a tree and notice one leaf, the pattern of the veins, the variations in the colour, contemplate the quiet beauty of the one little spot where a worm had lunch ... and everyone around you thinks you're batty when you call them over and say, "Look at this leaf! Look at this leaf!".

Of course, if we were that way all the time, we'd never get anything done. :)