What Flow Is
I haven’t posted for a while, mostly because I’ve taken a step back from serious dance but also because I ran out of stuff to say. The two are probably related, since I’ve never been short of thoughts when I was steeped in the dance. Now I’m old and lazy, but I did have a thought a while back that I’ve shared with a few friends.
Liquid flow was always a favorite discussion topic of mine. Not the mechanics of it, new ways to create it, or what it could become, but what the illusion was metaphysically. The definition of flow has been a tired and useless topic for many and dangerously limiting or elitist for others, but I have always appreciated a fresh perspective on the topic, or in this case, an aerial perspective.
On my way home from a business trip, I looked out the window of an airplane to see a river down below. A river from that height is a motionless thing, a single jagged line dividing the terrain. But everything that makes up the river is in constant motion—rushing currents over top of undercurrents causing riptides and cyclones, a motion invisible to us if not for clues from refraction and swirling silt.
The illusion of flow is akin to the river and its currents. The illusion is not a concrete one like mistaking a man for machine, but an abstract one of motion and stillness. Whereas the popping style of animation shows motion through stillness, liquid seeks the opposite from the other side of the fine line, stillness through motion.
Motion can only be seen relative to its environment and the same for stillness. So which is the illusion? If you consider both simply as conceptual tools for understanding, is there even an illusion?
“Truth and illusion. Who knows the difference, toots?”
