Thursday, July 27, 2017
Roger Federer and Art
When I heard that Roger Federer liked
modern art, I was immediately curious about what, and though I never found that
out, the search itself was interesting. Most of the listings you get if you put
his name together with art are paintings of him and articles about his playing
as art. The best is the 2006 David Foster Wallace piece in the New York Times
describing him.
Beauty is not
the goal of
competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression
of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war.
The human beauty we’re
talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic
beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or
cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’
reconciliation with the fact of having a body.(1)
A decade later he is still winning grand
slams. Mihaly Czentmihali wrote that the creation of one’s own self can be as
exciting as writing a symphony. What moves me about Roger Federer and Serena
Williams is that they have done just that, created a work of art that sculpts
both body, skill and character out of the whole of themselves. Roger and Serena
are examples of embodied art in the realm of immediate intelligence.
When someone is centered and expressive of
the core of their being, that’s art. It takes skill to reach a relationship
with a mode of expression that enables it to be a natural extension of the
body, responses finely tuned to go where intuition leads. The body/mind knows
what it knows and can act before thought. This metaknowledge is part of the
initial feeling. Not just comprised of emotion, our feelings are as complex as
we are, responses from the whole picture of our background in combination with
our current state. Because Roger Federer has developed so many ways to hit a
tennis ball together with all he’s seen about how the opponents play he’s
developed a body/mind response that’s highly sophisticated yet unencumbered by
analysis. Like any artist he extends the range of what tennis can be.
In a short
piece in Art News, Andrew Russeth quoted a Sports Illustrated interview with
Roger Federer saying he liked modern art because it helped him keep an open
mind, that as he gets older it gives him inspiration. Watching tennis at its
best inspires me to stretch my own capabilities. Excellence is always inspiring.
Modern art
opens the mind by pushing the edges of perception. This enlarges the scope of
choices. Looking at art increases sensitivity to intuitive response and
awareness of how we’re led by underlying overall adjustments, the inclinations
that move us before we’ve figured them out. Art attunes our feelings to
meaningful form and so builds the scope of understanding. The brain is
structured to mirror the spatial world and understand the meaning of things by
how everything looks within it. The more in harmony we are with ourselves and
what’s happening around us the better we can flow with it. Focused attention
comes after immediate attention reacts.
Tennis is
a demanding and artful sport. Players styles are unique and bigger doesn’t mean
better. Women’s tennis is treated with the same respect as men’s and provides
just as many opportunities to be amazed.
The players we like best are as personal as the art we like, each with
an individual style of meeting the challenges posed by another. This year’s US
Open will include record setting players, still at the top of their form. It’s
an opportunity to be both impressed and inspired.
Friday, June 30, 2017
Deep Perception
Perception is continuous, the mediator of our relationship
to the world and in that role, the place where meaning starts. Our sense of
where we are is built from the ongoing dance of body in environment that leaves
impressions we crudely label as “uneasy” or “tense” or “calm” or “uplifting.
These automatic adjustments are shared by all beings that move around in the
world and though as humans we may have gained some power to articulate them,
each of us knows how specific and perhaps never to be seen again the fleeting
qualities in any given moment. Yet in the moment the meaning is clear to us.
Deep perception is where the rich inner life takes place, the anguish of a
secret tragedy hidden behind the smiling selfie, confusion and uncertainty under
the surface while projecting mastery to those around you. The contradictions of
being human are the stuff of drama, literature and art. It’s an area that goes
ignored by the compartmentalized demands of life until art comes to resuscitate
it. The play or music unlocks the feelings that come from that level of
knowing. But visual art has several advantages. First it is not time based.
Revelation can be immediate, an insight born of the change in perception
created by the image.
Because vision is always directing attention behind the
scenes it can lead our thoughts forward. What we see initiates associated
images triggering thoughts and ideas that underscore what the image means to
us. It helps us see the personal pattern that led us to a particular painting.
The stronger the feeling we have about what we see, the deeper the connection
to individual emotional themes revealed by the artist’s expression of this
sense of life. By boiling down essential patterns art offers the structure by
which many analogous ideas can be constructed. Put an elementary school child
in front of a painting and ask them what they think is going on and you’ll see
this generative imagination work. That’s why talking about art has been shown
to be so effective in building a child’s intelligence concretely demonstrated
in higher test scores. (http://www.vtshome.org/)
Since there are no wrong answers there is free use of language and expression.
Perception is so important to our navigation of being,
developing our sensitivity to deep level patterns can only be a benefit to
human intelligence.
Though meditation is best for training attention in the
present moment, looking at a painting can provide a personally chosen
enrichment to reflection, to add a level to the meditation that gives room for
associations to flow and change. Whether you choose from visionary art that
transcends the purely human or a modern portrait that resonates with
existential confusion, the choice is led by deep perception of your current
state and clarifies what you need to see.
We navigate the world
guided by perception in the moment and haven’t had to give the visual level
much thought because it does its job so well without conscious attention. But
the world has become too complicated for linear processes to handle. We need
the speed and overview of perception to see the patterns in the whole that
guide attention to what is out-of-balance. Developing the range and sensitivity
of immediate reactions to the overview means becoming more attuned to visual
structure. Allowing room for deep perception gives us time to pause and reflect
on the meaning of what caught attention and allow space for a more thoughtful
response.
First posted in July 2015
Thursday, May 25, 2017
Capacities
When I heard
about a recent Ted talk that got “thunderous applause” and a standing ovation
what made it especially thrilling was that the talk was about the fact that we
could give a guaranteed income to all the poor of this country for a quarter of
the defense budget.
This reminded me of a quote from a previous president,
General Dwight D. Eisenhauer.
“Every gun that is
made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense,
a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not
clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It’s spending the
sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its
children.”
The current
president’s proposed budget takes from the people who need it most to give to
those who have plenty already, a blatant dismissal of the actual needs of the
country’s population in favor of already bloated defense spending. This wastes
the potential of so many who won’t be properly nourished and educated and thus
never have an opportunity to offer contributions based on their own
capabilities.
We find out who we
are by finding out what we can do, what we’re capable of, what we love most, which
open up abilities we didn’t know were there. To eliminate fear of poverty or
being in a position where humiliation is part of the price of a paycheck, people’s
own inclinations could begin to assert their presence. The idle TV and facebook
time is because people are so tired. Their happiness and well-being are not
built into the equation of modern success. Even if they achieve the advertised
result of wealth and status, it’s no safeguard from sadness and disappointment.
The limited goals
and avenues presented as the road forward often lead away from the untapped
resources that all humans have within themselves. Instead of mimicking the
indulgent rich, discovering a world of what they like to do develops an
original person with a unique contribution. Pursuing many interests builds a
brain of many circuits filled with skills and observed patterns for future
analogy. The nuclear accumbens, often called the pleasure center because of its
role increasing dopamine, has many inputs from the prefrontal cortex, location
of our most evolved capacities, areas of imagination and problem solving,
analysis and planning, putting words on the undescribable. Taking interest in
something and action in relation to it stimulates more dopamine, giving greater
focus and concentration. It’s a system that rewards personal development.
Who knows what problems could be solved,
innovations discovered and culture advanced if we treated human beings as our
greatest resource. The work of Martha Nussbaum argues that quality of life in a
country is not shown by GDP but by opportunity to find “what each person can do
and be” In her book “Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach” she
presents an evolved model that focuses on respect for everyone’s ability to
define themselves through their own capacities. She writes ,“The Stoics taught
that every single human being, just by being human, has dignity and is worthy
of reverence”.
Verbal fluency has
dominated history and created a mindset that separated out things from the
whole and pinned them down with labels. Visual intelligence embeds everything
in context. Everyone has a perspective to offer on a big picture built from their
accumulated visual experience. This is a unique set of understandings at the
base of a unique visual mind that each has to offer. Economic growth without
human development does not tap the potential of the majority and is an enormous
waste of the resources of a country.
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