Flâneur

February 13, 2012

I have just learned a new word. Flâneur: one who walks the city in order to experience it. I identified right away.

The first thing I do in any new city is to take to the streets. Not in search of anything in particular. But to take the pulse of the place. Paris to me is an old woman feeding pigeons from her mouth at her apartment window. London is the busy Borough Market with 21 kinds of baklava. Dubrovnik is made of marble and glows translucent in an early evening rain. Instanbul is drinks on a floating nightclub watching the ships come down the Bosphorus. Barcelona is a procession of singing nuns outside a medieval cathedral on an Easter Sunday.

To a flâneur, the streets of a city are not just a way to get from here to there, but a place to encounter life in all its complexity, a place to be surprised, confronted, shocked, appalled or delighted. My home city of Hamilton is full of these contradictions, and you can wander from heaven to hell and back again in a dozen city blocks.

I was introduced to “flâneur” by Ian Leslie in his article on serendipity in the Economist magazine, which I read on the plane last week coming home from Istanbul. He was saying how the city is superior to the internet as a place of serendipitous encounter. I don’t know about that. I expect it is the flâneur spirit and intention that makes the difference, wherever you choose to explore.

Leslie recounts the 1952 study by a French sociologist who asked a student to keep a journal of daily movements. When he mapped her paths onto a map of Paris he saw that they formed a triangle, defined by the points of her apartment, her university and the home of her piano teacher. Her movements, he said, illustrated “the narrowness of the real Paris in which each individual lives.” It doesn’t have to be that way.

Four years ago when I decided to rent out my house and go “walkabout” in Europe for a while, I remember that it was the flâneur spirit that called me out. And the desire to walk the streets of the world just to experience them is what drives me still, whether to the narrow lanes of Istanbul, or just around the block.

Three morals in this story:

1. Many of us limit our steps to a few familiar pathways.
2. But there is a whole world just waiting to be explored.
3. Serendipity is what you run into on the side street that you wandered into just to see where it might lead.

Yours with creativity and imagination,
Darlene

 

How’s the Book Going?

January 2, 2012

Now that I’ve told everyone I know that I’m writing a book that will be published in April and launched with a world wide tour, everyone I know is asking “How’s the book going?”

I like to evaluate my progress based on Edward DeBono’s Plus, Minus and Interesting Scale.

Plus:
It has a title.
It has a structure.
The pages are piling up.
My editor says it is well written and all goes in the right direction and needs only minor editing.
I am working to a production schedule, so I always know where I am against the publication date.
I am only slightly behind on my next deadline.
I wrote both days on the weekend and a little bit today.

Minus:
I don’t write as consistently as I’d like.
I didn’t write at all over Christmas.
I am slightly behind on my next deadline.
My inner critic tells me on a regular basis that I have nothing to say, and that what I do say is not very interesting, and that nobody is going to read the book, and if they do read it they won’t act on it and so I might as well not bother and that if I was smart I would be out there renting my services to someone with money to spend.

Interesting:
Having committed to writing the book, my mind is overflowing with ideas about how to promote it and how to use it as a springboard for adventure.
I am surprised by the insights that emerge through the process of writing, surprised by the wisdom that comes to me just by setting myself a topic and then faithfully writing down what my hand wants to say about it.

Three morals in this story,

1. In any venture, the results are usually a mix of plus, minus and interesting. The trick is not to get fixated on any one category.
2. A firm commitment can make use of even inconsistent actions and gather them together to produce a credible result.
3. Your hand sometimes knows things that your conscious mind is not aware of yet.

Yours with creativity and imagination,
Darlene

 

Space, Time and Other Luxuries


One of the things I like best about working for myself is that I can build in lots of time for reflection. Just now, for instance. I got up this morning and went straight to work, an early coaching call, a proposal due, a flurry of correspondence. Now, at mid-day, I find myself tucked up on my sofa, wrapped in fleece, asking myself how I’m doing and what I’m most wanting and what would make me happy this week.

Having been asked, myself is quick to answer: I want to call up my friend Liz and book her for a joy ride when I pick up my new Rabbit tomorrow; I want to blog a bit, return my library books, and make something nice for dinner; I want to finish the book section I’m writing and send it off to the editor who is waiting for it; I’m ready for the Christmas tree to go; I think I’ll drop by Ikea to buy a slipcover for my sofa now that I’m seeing clients at home again; I want to play around with the plug ins on my new wordpress blog to see if there is anything interesting I could add. Now that I’m clear about what I am wanting, I adjust my schedule accordingly. Reviewing it I feel happy and content.

Of course reflection is not a luxury reserved for the self-employed. Although, come to think of it, it was the first thing to go when I started working full time for someone else. Well, it didn’t go exactly. I am a reflective person by nature, and I’m sure I fit some in. But it is so much easier to reflect in the quiet of my living room in the middle of the day, than in the middle of a bustling office, or squeezed in before the morning rush or at the end of the day when I’m tired and all I want to do is watch So You Think You Can Dance on T.V.

O.K. I take it back. The open space that I am enjoying at this moment is a luxury, and one of the most wonderful gifts of working for myself. Reserves of time and space are mine to enjoy and I have paid the price for them. So I will acknowledge them with gratitude and revel in the luxury of open ended reflection on a winter afternoon. This has been an unaccustomed bounty in my recent past. But I remember, and I like it.

Three morals in this story,

1. Open-ended time for reflection is one of the world’s most exquisite luxuries.
2. Luxuries don’t come cheaply, but they are all the more precious for the price paid to attain them.
3. I am working for myself now, in every sense of the world. And I like it.

Yours with creativity and imagination,
Darlene

 

2012: Brought To You By a Small Woman in Flannel Pyjamas


A book, a show, a world tour, brought to you by a small woman in flannel pyjamas typing furiously on her iMac. This is what you can expect from me in 2012. Sure, there are other goals that I could set. I could stand to lose a few pounds, I’d like to make some more money, and I’m always on the lookout for the perfect lover. But those are perennial wishes rather than goals to which I am willing to commit myself.

In 2009 I recruited 70 Toronto area coaches to set up shop in Starbucks stores along Yonge Street to host what we called Conversations for Power and Possibility with people effected by the recession. The project was a success and I was invited to bring Conversations into other settings, as part of corporate change initiatives and leadership programs. This year I’ve decided to turn the program and the story of its beginnings into a book. I’ll take the book on the road and invite my coaching colleagues from around the world to reprise the Toronto experience.

The first part is the most straight forward. I am at my computer now, approaching the deadline when my editor is expecting the manuscript, working towards a tentative launch date in early April.

Writing is something I know how to do. Planning a world tour not so much. That’s where my friends and colleagues and readers come in. I’m counting on you to come through.

Over the next year I will be deep in the creative process, learning how to do this by doing it, reporting on the experience as I go. I invite you to participate in the adventure, whether by following the progress on the blog, offering insights and encouragement, making connections, hosting a world tour event, or offering project management skills (which I am sadly lacking) to smooth the way. Nobody does anything of significance alone, but just think of what fun we will have together. It’s going to be an extraordinary year!

Three morals in this story:

1. If you are going to set some goals, why not make them really compelling?
2. There is no better way to learn how to do something than by doing it.
3. We are more powerful than we know and more is possible than we can imagine.

Yours with creativity and imagination,
Darlene

p.s. If you wondered where the show fits in, I am making slower but steady progress on an autobiographical show and memoir about living with creativity and imagination in the world. The working title is Just Because You Wander Doesn’t Mean You’re Lost and I expect to have the script/manuscript completed by the end of the year, with publication/production to follow the Conversations for Power and Possibility world tour. My 2012 goals may be a bit ambitious but my imagination is pretty serious about turning itself into reality this year, and who am I to stand in its way?