Flow

I have an eclectic taste in books and recently finished reading a classic of popular psychology, 'Flow' by  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, subtitled "the psychology of optimal experience" (links: a TED talk, the book). It is not easy to summarise, though it is possible to do a somewhat better job than the author, who rather strings things out. The central thesis is about how we can achieve the 'flow state' in which we are actively immersed in a concentrated and sustained task over which we have achieved, through practice, some sort of mastery. This is when we are happiest Csikszentmihalyi contends. He observes that we often, though not exclusively, enter these flow states at or through work. To the extent that my current role permits anything much to be concentrated and sustained, I recognise this state and its pleasures. The moments when we are most engaged as scholars and when we are most creative is often within such a flow state.

Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow can be contrasted interestingly with another type of flow: that of the capoeira game (see for example this). A capoeira game is said to flow when the movements are seamless and there are no stops and starts. The game fills the space, following the music. In a game that flows, the moves of the players are interlocked and reciprocal, until at critical moments the flow is punctuated by an attack and some sort of resolution that often is itself interrupted, reversed or subverted. The opposite of flow is when a game gets 'tangled', the players move into each other's space and sequences are appear messy, either static or with  moves in which the players appear no longer to respond to each other. In a good game the players and those around them in the roda, singing or playing instruments experience that moment of absorption that we understand as a flow state.

The concept as interpreted by Csikszentmihalyi is largely solipsistic but capoeira flow is, like a capoeira game, somehow 'co-produced'. Thus whilst I recognise and value Csikszentmihalyi's type of flow it is somehow a more unusual, esoteric, experience. Life is lived amongst people, in the circle or roda if you prefer. Flow is achieved when we do not get tangled, when we use our space, in the interplay with others, in time with the music.