Hi Mark,
The essence of what you said was...,
>If your sense of "flow" is dependent on
>your familiarity with your tradition, isn't it possible that "flow" may be an
>aspect of someone else's tradition (or innovation) with which you are not so
>familiar and will therefore go unappreciated by you?
Certainly, this is true. I'm sure that the degree of "flow" I'm able
to reach when listening or trying to play the music of India is
limited because I'm not familiar enough with the tradition. My
experience also tells me that there are musical traditions that do
not produce flow for me because the skill-set doesn't focus my
concentration enough, either in listening or playing. I would
imagine that the level of engagement necessary for "flow" to be
achieved would vary from person to person as their skill-sets vary.
Again, this can be true without assuming that the music with which
each person is engaged has some objective value apart from each
person's engagement with it . I've tried to clarify some of what I
said in the previous email below.
>Being in "flow" is healing -- not because the
>> music experienced or produced is "good music"
[as if the music had an intrinsic value separate and apart from ones
engagement with it]
>-- but because of the
>> self-enriching and centering experience created by the concentration
>> required . . .
[to learn and engage with the skill-set it demands].
>There are many musics throughout the world that are this rich
>> and deep (classical music of almost every tradition as well as popular
>> musics such as jazz and bluegrass) .
[This does imply that certain musics require a more sophisticated skill-set.]
> There are also many types of music
>> throughout the world (especially in the pop-culture of the West) that
>> produce little "flow", and instead produce the kind of psychological
>> anxiety that watching too much TV produces.
>[This does imply that the skill-sets for certain musics are so
>minimal that they do not demand the level of engagement necessary to
>create "flow", but this would depend on the depth of the skill-set
>the individual already possesses.]
This raises an interesting question for me. I love to "go" where
ever it is I "go" when blowing RO and sitting in meditation. I often
wonder if having "no-mind" is "flow". Mihaly Cskszentmihalyi points
out that "flow-experiences" involve getting mental feedback and
feelings of accomplishment or "progress" (like when composing,
rock-climbing, running, practicing an instrument, doing yoga, etc.),
but of course "no-mind" is not that. Would someone like to respond
to the issue of how to juggle the two "mind-states". When practicing
Kurokami, I can have "No-mind" some of the time, but often lapse into
a conscious awareness of my "progress" or an awareness of my
playing-goals most of the rest of the time. How do the rest of you
resolve these apparent opposites?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Feb 03 2003 - 09:09:50 PST