American Club of Paris - Blog - Literary Corner

Flow, By James Dillon

nospam@example.com (John W. T. Eaton) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 09:00:00 +0200

Flow
The book-dealer at FNAC in Paris checked his computer for the book I was searching for, Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, then he corrected me. “Your book is not called Flow, Monsieur; it’s called Vivre (Live).” I kept it for myself that Vivre is not quite the translation for Flow, but oh well.
The author of this book, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, describes different states that we might sum up as “the psychology of happiness”. How classic, this thing about wanting to be “happy”, or to be in what Csikszentmihalyi considers as “an optimal state of human experience”. Nobody is really opposed to that, yet we are always dragging our life’s baggage along, all our biases and belief systems that we’ve carefully erected. We are real artists when it comes to wrecking our aptitude for being “happy”.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is Hungarian. He has studied Flow for over 40 years at the University of Chicago. He immigrated to the United States after having grown up under extreme conditions during World War II, when he obviously learned first-hand all about unhappiness.
Questions first, then some science
Once he was in Chicago, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi started asking himself a few essential questions. Was there anything else in human existence other than unhappiness? Did we always have to suffer? For example, when we worked, did we necessarily have to equate our efforts to succeed with suffering? Were there any other possible emotional paradigms?
For his research, he interviewed thousands of people from all walks of life, people who considered themselves to be, in fact, happy. He wanted to understand why. For his research, in order to establish scientific validity, he wired his subjects up with sensors to get data such as their blood pressure, the movements of their eyes, the zones in their brain that were activated as they described their intense encounter with an optimally positive state of experience.
He wanted to provide an exact description, a language for explaining this state. When were we “in our flow”, empowered, aligned with what we want in our lives, synchronized with our experience, our skills and our desires? What did that look and feel like?
More than being just simple
The premise behind “being in the flow” is relatively simple. We manage to feel this way each time our motivation coincides with our competence. Then we feel such pleasure that we can actually lose track of time, forget to eat. We are ready to do everything in our power to make this pleasurable moment last. Why would an athlete train over and beyond what his or her coach demanded, returning to the field, the court, the weight-room to work on one technique or another? How is it that a musician can practice hours and hours until the music actually becomes a part of his or her consciousness? The experience itself becomes greater than who we think we are. Our egos slide to the side to make way for this deliberate act on our parts. Still, being in this state of flow is highly demanding, requiring considerable concentration that is not possible to maintain permanently. The fact is that it is too difficult to remain in such an alert, conscious state and energy, indicates to us that flow is dynamic, not static, a matter of whether you’ve got “it” or you “don’t”, which unfortunately is how too many people view “talent”.
The manager’s challenge: adding flow
More often, we do not quite attain this flow-state. We may be in a state of excitement, meaning that we are definitely motivated while not yet skilled enough to succeed in what we wish to do. Obviously, we can also be very skilled at what we do, but we’ve lost our motivation and we get bored. People who say that they love their job know instinctively when they need to refresh how they approach it, catch their second wind; they know how and when to move on to a new challenge.
In the corporate world, it’s the ultimate challenge of the manager or a leader to reveal the skills people on their team have and to create optimal conditions so that they can be motivated to achieve quotas, targets, goals, in fact, their own personal and professional success. That is really what a manager’s “added value” consists of: the ability to open up the opportunity for his or her team to “be in the flow.”
Flow, then, is a challenge to our worldview, which is all too frequently polluted by outright unhappiness, frustration and depression that these times of crisis have foisted upon us. If we let that happen…
By James Dillon
www.mediat-coaching.com

Designers! Get Your Lucky Break in Paris, Capital of Competition.

nospam@example.com (John W. T. Eaton) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:00:00 +0100

What do you do when you can’t afford 4000 Euros for a space in a top fashion trade show? Yet you know there are potential clients out there who would love to buy your designs? If only they could see them just once!

In France, where radio and magazines talk incessantly about the need for young French graduates to show more entrepreneurial spirit, I was thrilled to literally bump into two youngsters from Holland who have plenty of it.

Meet the furniture and jeweler designers – Shanna Deurloo and Robert Jan Snoeks, freshly graduated from the Utrecht School of Art. They caused a sensation at the ritzy “Premiere Classe” Trade Show, one of the biggest and most prestigious events in the Paris Fashion Calendar. Yet they were not even in it.

Shanna and Robert came up with a great idea, worked really hard and took a risk.

They knew that wealthy buyers from all over the world would be strolling in and out of the well-guarded chic and expensive trade fair marquees of “Premiere Classe” right by the Louvre for 4 days. But they could not speak to them. The two ambitious design daredevils would not let their lack of big money and connections stop them from doing business.

They stood outside the tents of the trade show all day and proposed their fine hand-crafted silver and diamond rings from... a BICYCLE. But not just any old bicycle.

“We spent a whole week, 14 hours a day, building the glass and wood exposition jewellery cabinets onto the bicycle. We loaded it into a van and drove to Paris from Holland. Then Shanna cycled our mini-mobile shop to the Tuileries Gardens where the trade show is happening. We had heard about it vaguely in Utrecht. We were not sure what we would find here but we knew there was a show. And that it was very expensive for beginners like us.” explains Robert Jan.

“We’re spending 75 Euros on 3 days in a camping site where we sleep and cook in a tent,” explains Shanna, “We have had orders for our jewellery from quite a few Paris boutiques. People were very curious about our stand and what we were doing here. We carved two tall sculptures of ourselves attached to the bicycle as well as the cabinets. This way we have something prominent that catches people’s attention and draws them to the bicycle and the jewellery.”

The cost of gasoline for the van, the camping, the building materials and the bicycle comes to about 800 Euros. It has definitely been worth trying our luck here.”

Jean-Paul Gaultier once mentioned that he was surprised that young French designers don’t rent small stands in the Paris flea markets to sell their creations in the way London students do at Spitalfields Market. After all, one has to start somewhere to meet the public and get reactions. It now looks as if gutsy Dutch designers are stealing the show in Paris. Bravo!!!

Interview and article written by Edmonde E. Radcliff.

A Spring Triptych

nospam@example.com (John W. T. Eaton) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:00:00 +0200

In-site…
The American Club of Paris offers its members a literary corner…
Contribute your impressions, sketches and images of living and being in France.

James Dillon: A spring triptych

April: Writing is never done
May: The corrida in Nimes
June: Love is not love

April: Writing is never done

Good, a few minutes before the next appointment. Time enough to revise the French translation, which surely needed revising. So many erreurs; so little grammatical proficiency to go on.

Finding an outdoor table at a café on the boulevard, he opened his notebook. Oops! A gust of wind snapped up the two loose papers he’d stuck in it. Gone!

He jumped up and chased them, leaving everything that could possibly be stolen. He recovered one paper immediately, from a chic parisienne in a chic dress. The paper had flown into her face and stuck to her glasses. She’d reacted to this in a matter-of-fact way, handing it back to him.

He checked it. Wrong one. Everything he’d written here could be found on his computer. But that other paper…?

There it was, fluttering gamely by itself, in the middle of the boulevard. Not for long. Whoosh! A wave of oncoming traffic engulfed it. It came up for air; got sucked back down by the car’s slipstream, crushed by the muffler, treaded on by Michelin. Then, there it was again, winging its way in the midst of the boulevard, sporting nonchalant spunk.

Not for long. Whoosh! This time traffic rushing up the boulevard spelled its demise.

The writer tensed on the curb, sure this time his re-write was a goner.

The battle was unequal. All that motorized cavalry charging into the breach… nothing for a poor rag of a paper to do but submit. In and out, under and over. Splat! On the windshield. Thrown aside by the laws of physics named velocity and momentum.

Gone, the cohort of cars. Still loitering where it had no business being: the paper.

The writer braced himself to run to save words, ideas, wishful thinking… Yet another volley of automobiles was served up. Writers don’t die, always, for their words, at least not futilely, ingloriously, if they have a choice.

Still there, this flimsy no-good piece of inconsequential paper, though getting pushed further and further away. He ran along the sidewalk, following it. Another attack from the cars carried it all the way back to the starting point. Nothing for him to do but backtrack on the run, looking desperately for a long enough break in the traffic to just run out there and snatch his words back.

The cars were relentless. Bad idea he had, pulling out corrections just as the evening’s rush-hour was getting underway.

The paper, though, had a teasing life of its own, darting around in the melée.

Suddenly, there were no more cars, in either direction. But there was no more paper, either.

He looked everywhere for it. He needed that paper. Finally, he spotted it flapping against a lamp-post on the other side of the street. With the change of lights, he ran over, knelt down and caught up to it just as it released itself in another flurry of wind. A surprised pedestrian looked down at him as he gave a shout.

“It’s my paper!” the writer proclaimed. “It blew away.” He pointed to the café so far way. “But now I have it.”

It hardly made any sense to the passer-by, but the writer needed to share the good news, that his piece of paper had come through, safe and saved.

He examined it closely. There were the indelible tire-thread marks, Michelin. But the words were intact. They were his.

It was a mighty piece of paper.

May: the corrida in Nîmes
The bull hesitated at the gate, lost in late afternoon shadows, thrust into an arena breathing hot with people. He swung his great head back towards the dark passage that led back into the cooler stone bowels of the Roman-built structure, but it was now closed. He steadied before spotting the first matador waiting for him, holding his bright pink cape.
The bull charged, but the man dodged behind his barrier. Horns thudded into wood. The torèro lifted his head and sighted another matador playing the same game. Briefly aimless, the bull caught sight of his real adversary, a slight figure dressed on black with gold trim, the matador announced in the program, and threw itself into a head-long run. As the matador slipped aside, the torèro tried to stop and turn to catch the man with his fury. 500 kilos flipped head-over-heels and crashed on the ground. The crowd roared.
The matador danced backwards and took up his position, beckoning with his cape and shouting an order to the torèro in Spanish, “Come and work!” The bull struggled back up to an upright position and charged after the matador, who twirled his cape over the bull’s lowered head, a muleta, barking another command. Man and bull whirled and turned in tighter and tighter circles until finally the torèro grunted and the matador stepped off to let the novilleros come and maneuver the bull away to the other side of the arena with their graceful veronicas. The silence of the arena erupted with cheers that the matador acknowledged with a negligent wave of his hand.
On cue, the orchestra played a subdued, solemn air. All too soon, the mounted picadors entered on their horses and took up their positions. The bull sighted the horse and charged, planting his horns into the horse’s armored sides. The picador thrust his pike deeply into the lowered mane of the bull pushing with all its force into his horse. Furious, the bull drove man and horse into the wall. As the picador fought to bleed the bull more, so the bull fought to overturn man and horse, at last succeeding, trying to gore the helpless horse’s under-belly. The picador freed himself and the matadors ran in with their capes to shift the bull’s attention away from the horse, to bring him safely away to the other side of the arena.
As the bull smashed his horns into the barrier on the other side of the arena, men ran to help the horse get back on its feet, shaken yet protected by the coat of metal plating it wore. The picador proudly resumed his position and the novilleros once more guided the bull back to fight the picador, using a series of veronicas until there was only one place left to go, straight ahead at the horse. Again, the pike dug into the bull’s dark mane as sleek blood spread down his shoulder. Again, the novilleros brought the bull away from the horse that was then applauded by the public as it left the arena.
The banderillos now took turns running towards the bull to thrust their brightly tufted banderillas into the bull’s crop. Stunned, the bull circled in the center of the arena, turning on himself. At the far end of the arena, his adversary unfolded his red cape and his sword and readied himself for the final confrontation. Again, he taunted the bull with a strident voice; the bull raised his head and took aim at the smaller red cape, bellowed and charged. One, two, and then a third muleta. “There!” the matador shouted, directing the bull where he wanted him to go.
The bull breathed, pawed the dirt and charged hard, turning his horns to try to catch the man as he passed by. The man slid his narrow hips past, wiped his hand over the bloody shoulder of the beast and swerved into position to take the next charge of the beast, his back turned, the cape guiding the bull behind him, shifting into place, now facing the bull as it returned for the muleta, the red cape moving at the last second away from the matador’s legs. The sequence finished with the cape fluttering around the bull’s lowered horns.
Man and beast stared at each other, the space between them now closed, the red cape only half-hidden by the matador as he stood front and center between the bull’s horns. The matador tenderly grazed the mouth of the dazed bull with his hand and stepped off to the applause of the crowd. Again, the music played its sad timeless tune as the matador paced the bull through yet another series of feints and swirls of the cape. Then, at last, the music ceased.
The matador received his special curved sword and came back to the panting torèro whose blood marked the dirt of the center of the arena. The matador addressed the animal to get the bull’s attention. There was only one place for the sword to go if the matador was to thrust it deeply, a small triangle where the bull’s thick neck met shoulders. The matador took aim and shouted at the bull and stepped quickly forward to kill the torèro.
The bull was swifter and lifted his horns at the last possible second, catching the matador, slicing his thigh and tossing the man over his immense body, the matador’s sword glancing off to the side, throwing him down into the dirt.
The other matadors saved the man and began to take him away, but he yelled angrily at them, shaking himself loose. Limping horribly, he came back to the front of the bull and once again took aim with the curved sword that slipped in deeply, mortally. The crowd roared and two novilleros swept up the matador and carried him quickly out of the arena, the third staying to guide the bull through his final death-throes.
The bull bellowed, swaying, finally only able to stand in one place, waiting, waiting, finally sinking down to the ground under its own weight. This matador approached and plunged his knife into the gaping hole and cut the spinal cord to end it.
The custom has it that the bull receives an ovation for giving such a combat. Horses dragged his body around the circle one time before disappearing into the depths of the arena.

June: Love is not love
June, the wedding month… He had two of them to go to, back to back; neither occasion filled him with joy.
How to go through with the social heaviness of it all? Why did people want to get married at all? Why couldn’t some legal authority invoke higher reasoning and make it extremely difficult to get married, with a monstrous amount of legal paperwork and lawyers when it might make a difference, followed by an easy divorce procedure?

Come on, he sighed. Do your best. Do something magnificent. He signed up on the marriage list. Somehow that felt less than magnificent.

One couple invited him for dinner, on a Friday night well before the happy event, to celebrate. Sure enough, he also received a second invitation for the next day, to celebrate the end of his second friend’s bachelorhood. Back to back, in waves that drained his social magnitude. He went to the dinner on the Friday night: first things first. Saturday lunch would fall into place.

“You know,” the young groom confided to his older friend during the cocktail before the dinner, “I dread tomorrow. My British friends are coming and they are going to do terrible things to me, I can just tell. Do you think you can come along and sort of keep things within reasonable limits?”

“Ah, no, I’m sorry. I, hum, I have to be at another bachelor party tomorrow afternoon. It’s already planned.”

“Oh, really. Do I know him?”

“No, you wouldn’t know him. He’s older, you know, getting re-married. Honestly, I do not know why. I’m trying to think of some decent way to celebrate it.” The older friend looked at the groom quizzically. “That’s what I dread, to tell you the truth. We’ll sit around at lunch and look at each other. We’ve all gone through divorces. Oh, sorry!” he excused himself quickly.

“No problem,” the groom was more than understanding. “So what are you going to do?”

“What do you mean, what am I going to do?” the older friend was puzzled.

“You have to do something!”

“What? Like your British friends, make him run around in nightclubs and embarrass him and all that ridiculous stuff?” There, he had put his foot in it. “Sorry, that’s not my style. It’s really not my friend’s style, either, you know.”

“Come on, you have to do something! Are you his best friend?”

The older man blinked. “Well, yes, I suppose I am, actually, come to think of it.”

“Fine, then it’s decided. You have to do something to mark the occasion. So?”

“So?”

“You know,” the young man admonished him. “You make him sing, or do a silly skit, something like that.”

“Absolutely not! I hate that! He’ll hate it, I know he will.”

“Listen, it’s the end of his bachelor days. It’s a turning point in his life.”

“One more, to be truthful” the older friend said mirthlessly.

There was a longer silence than necessary.

“You have no choice.” The young groom was sticking it to him.

“I know, and that’s what bothers me. There’s nothing spontaneous left. It’s all imposed on us.”

“Don’t be like that! Come on, get into the spirit of it. Are you his friend or not?”

“Alright!” The older man scowled.

“What do you know how to do?”

The older man sighed. “When I was younger, I once offered a toast to some friends getting married. I recited a sonnet by Shakespeare. I memorized it and everything.” Instantly, he regretted confessing it.

“Fantastic! You will do it again.”

“But I already did it. It’s so old, so… awkward! We were hopeful back then because we were young! Don’t you understand that?”

The young man scuttled all of his objections. “That’s why you can do it again. And it’s great that it’s old. We don’t care if it’s awkward. You’re going to do it for your friend. Fine, that’s settled.” The young man’s determination faded, though, after a few brief seconds.

“What’s wrong?”

“I really don’t know what my British friends have in mind. They can get pretty nasty; they enjoy hazing people, you know. Say, maybe I can switch places with your friend!”

“Sorry, can’t help you.”

“Alright, I suppose,” the young groom sighed. “You just concentrate on your Shakespeare. I want a good report!”

***

The next day, he said Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 straight into his second friend’s eyes. It started off with William’s usual paradox., “Let me not to marriage of true minds…” Line-break, change of tone, “…admit impediments.” A bit grudging, which was after all how he felt about his friend getting himself into this mess. “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds…” Everyone around the table held their breath. What came next?

“Oh no! It is an ever fixed mark…” Something about tempests, holding steadfast, never shaking… Shakespeare was talking about Love Eternal. “Love’s not Time’s fool…” He had his listeners; he felt the spell falling on himself, too, as he navigated his way through the hardest part, getting “bending sickle’s compass come” to turn out right, what a relief! Now for the finish…

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

The people around the table greeted the end of Sonnet 116 in silence. The man felt moved himself. Shakespeare was whispering to them down through the centuries about love itself. He had said something that meant something to someone who was going to do it anyway.

So of course the week after, at an entirely different reception, he faced the young groom and his beautiful bride and gave them the straight goods again.

To himself, he smiled, because in the meantime he had turned the pages and re-discovered other sonnets by Shakespeare that were in quite a different tone. Sonnet 138, for example, “…When my love swears she’s made of truth…”
By James Dillon