aesthetics of joy

It’s been a hot summer (today was no exception) and since the first taste of this ebbing-and-flowing heat wave, I’ve been thinking about swimming pools. There is no greater luxury or greater joy in a midsummer city than a swimming pool, a cool watery oasis in a desert of hot reeking concrete. Last summer there was the frenzy of the Gowanus dumpster pools, now converted into a public attraction by the Bloomberg administration for Summer Streets. Before that, the most talked-about New York pool was the floating pool lady, a barge converted to a pool by the city that debuted in 2007 in Brooklyn, and that docks in a different borough each summer. I haven’t managed to swim in either, but this summer I’ve been the benefactor of the generosity of a friend with a private pool, a backyard gem in the East Village that is all the more tantalizing for its secrecy.

After a couple of years living in Sydney, it’s hard to be without a pool. There, private pools are rare, but the public ones are ubiquitous and stunning. There’s the Andrew Boy Charleton pool, a 50m beauty that makes you feel like you’re literally swimming in the harbor. There’s also the North Sydney pool, right in the shadow of the Harbor Bridge. And there are the ocean pools, so beloved by Australians that they have their own culture, a culture robust enough to be the subject of a documentary: Sea Pool: A Life in the Ocean, teased in the video above. Bondi Icebergs, shown in the teaser, is particularly amazing; fed by crashing waves, it is briny and bracing all year round. Membership requires that you swim every weekend, regardless of the weather. Do that for five years, and you’re a member for life. It is the ultimate pool-lover’s pool club.

A frigid pool on a hot day is a delight; on a cold day, it is a trial. This may be an illustration of the difference between joy and happiness. Joy is immediate, momentary. It reacts to stimuli that accompanied the satisfaction of needs over the many generations of our evolution. A hot body in a cold pool is one step closer to homeostasis, and the aesthetics of the swimming pool (cool, shimmering blueness) are all designed to advertise that temperature-regulating function. Hot and cold in tension, moving towards balance: there is a certain kind of harmony there. A cold body in a cold pool, on the other hand, stands in defiance of emotional logic. The winter swimmer must see something beyond the immediate, because the proximate experience is discomfort, possibly even pain. Past the trial must be something: the satisfaction of completing a goal, the strength of physicality inured, the delight of an invitation to a company of like minds. It’s the pre-frontal cortex that envisions and plans this, that looks past disharmony towards a greater future pleasure. Joy, arising unconsciously from the limbic brain, revels in a more immediate gratification.

Along with the harmony of the pool, there is also freedom. Buoyant, liberated from gravity, we float in effortless space. We glide on the edge of another world, one in which the usual rules of movement are relaxed and transformed. I’m reminded of a moment in the John Cheever story The Swimmer:

To be embraced and sustained by the light green water was less a pleasure, it seemed, than the resumption of a natural condition, and he would have liked to swim without trunks, but this was not possible, considering his project.*

The waterborne lightness of swimming does feel natural, even in the truly unnatural setting of the swimming pool. And it feels freeing, even though the pool is a fixed, bounded area. The pool becomes an oasis, a space where the rules, both natural and cultural, are different. Not only are we free to move differently, but we are free to act differently: We do spontaneous headstands, splash around in silly patterns, lounge indolently. We are a bit more childlike, and perhaps more like our real selves. Childlike pleasure is often a breadcrumb on the route to joy, and the child’s love of the swimming pool is a clue to a delight buried within most of us.

Do we grow out of the joy of the pool? Ellen Meloy writes in her ode to the pool, a chapter called “Swimming the Mojave” from her memoir, The Anthropology of Turquoise:

The human body needs the embrace of water. The fifties boom in California swimming pools, and the attachment of pools to the culture of a mobilized America, announced affluence, comfort, and good climate, and it made the embrace available in controlled circumstances: big recreational bathtubs gone outdoors, with no worry about what might lurk in their depths. For everyone but children, for whom it is a baptism of sheer joy, a pool holds more chlorine than wonder.

It’s true that a pool can be fake, and chemical, and wasteful. In a backyard, it can be mundane. In a desert, absurd. But I still think there’s always a glimmer of joy in the swimming pool, regardless of your age. It’s in the faces and movements of those in the video above—a visceral pleasure, a reawakening of body, a liberation of spirit. A pool may be an artificial experience, but the joy is all real.

*The Swimmer tells the story of a man who decides to swim home from a party, dipping into all the pools along the way.

Sea Pool: A Life in the Ocean, by Jason Wingrove
More teasers here and here

{Thanks, Sarah, for the link to the video above, and the swims!}

This was a nice find in an email from a reader this week: a visual poem called “How To Be Alone” by filmmaker Andrea Dorfman and writer Tanya Davis. The joy of being alone is an interesting contrast to all the recent research about how important social connection is to joy and to long-term happiness (some of which I alluded to in my most recent Core77 column). At first it seems that hanging out alone is antithetical to joy, especially given social stigma against it. But I like the poem’s observation that often when you’re alone is actually when you meet the most interesting people. That’s certainly been my experience when traveling — it’s easiest to be alone as a stranger in a strange land, and people often surprise me with their friendliness. I still have friends today that I met on solo adventures in various parts of the world.

Being alone is also an optimal time for finding “flow,” Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s name for being absorbed in creative pursuits. There is also social flow, for sure, but the individual kind has a certain kind of satisfaction to it because it’s all yours.

Solitude is often painted as deprivation, but it can just as easily be self-indulgent. I don’t think I’m one of those people who will ever strap on dancing shoes and go to club on my own (maybe because I just don’t go to clubs that much even with others), but I do savor a little bit of time out every week (this blog being a big product of that). I’ve always been that way too — as an only child growing up in the suburbs, I spent a lot of time watching the world go by from the branches of an old beech tree. It’s nice to see this simple pleasure encouraged, not in the typical authoritative self-help tone, but in a matter-of-fact, yet whimsical way. I like the idea in the poem that to be alone for those not used to it is brave, rather than something you should feel normal doing. We evolved to seek companionship. We find safety in numbers. Solitude can feel unnatural, but rewarding.

It’s not a typical aesthetic of joy. It may even be a counter-aesthetic of joy, in the traditional sense. But I think there’s a quiet delight to be found here.

{Thanks, Johnny.}

Well, I’m back after a longish, unscheduled break. Let’s call it a summer (working) holiday. But wow, did I miss it. I don’t plan on taking this much time away from the blog again for a long time. There are just too many interesting and joyful things to write about…

Before I launch into some thoughts on the things I’ve been reading and observing in the last few weeks, I want to just say a quick thank you to everyone who has commented, sent me an email, or sent me links recently. This summer has left me breathless, and I haven’t had a chance to respond to everyone yet, but rest assured that I will, and that I appreciate the kind words, the thoughtful recommendations, and the healthy debate you bring to my inbox. Thanks!

On my mind today are the aesthetics of nature. A big part of my thesis for Aesthetics of Joy is that joy evolved to guide us unconsciously towards things that would have been beneficial for our survival (or more accurately, the survival of our genetic material). It stands to reason that since during the bulk of this evolution humans were nomadic creatures living in an environment with far more trees than skyscrapers, natural environments are going to be replete with stimuli that make us feel joyful. Bright sunlight, ripe fruits, wide open spaces—these primal joys hold clues that give context and meaning to many of the things that delight us in the modern world. And as the research supporting evolutionary theories of psychology continues to accumulate, the evidence suggesting the connection between aesthetics of nature and our wellbeing is beginning to mount.

On his Frontal Cortex blog, now on Wired.com, Jonah Lehrer has a great discussion of some findings from the emerging field of ecopsychology, which looks at the relationship between nature and the mind. (I first wrote about this field of research in February, here.) One study, dating back to the mid-1990s, looked at female housing project residents, some of whom were living in apartments facing city streets and basketball courts, and others who had views of a grassy, landscaped courtyard. The women were tested on everything from attention to their ability to cope with life’s challenges, and those with the more natural view tested better on nearly every measure. Similarly, in a 2008 study led by Marc Berman at the University of Michigan, students who were given time to walk through a park before taking a series of tests performed better on measures of attention and memory than those who had walked through city streets.

According to psychologists, views of nature are restorative. They seem to allow the brain to reset and concentrate again. This reminds me of an insight noted by Chip and Dan Heath in their book Switch: Willpower, they observe, is finite. When you expend a lot of effort trying to control cravings, desires, or emotions in a certain situation, it can be draining, leaving you with little energy to control yourself in others. I wonder if there’s a similar mechanism going on here. Functioning in urban environments takes a lot of mental energy. It requires high alertness, and it’s sensorially complex; there’s a lot to process. I wonder if views of nature provide a reset because they are simply easier on our brains, evolved as they are for processing the stimuli in this environment.

This may be, but it’s not the whole story. Another study, also cited in the article on solastalgia I quoted in my February post, adds another piece to the puzzle. The study, conducted by Peter Kahn, took participants and stressed them out with a series of math tests, and then gave them one of three views to look at: a window facing out onto a tree-filled view, a plasma screen of the same view, and a blank wall. Those looking at the natural scene had the quickest stress reduction (measured by a decrease in heart rate). Those looking at the blank wall had a much slower return to normal heart rate. We could’ve predicted that. Subjects who looked at the nature scene and the plasma screen both looked at their views longer than those looking at the blank wall. Also a no-brainer. But surprisingly, the subjects who looked at the plasma screen showed virtually the same stress-reduction pattern as those looking at the wall. So while we’re drawn towards a views of nature to relieve our stress, it has to be real nature. It’s not something we can trace to one aesthetic element—like the color green or the contours of the leaves—and bottle it. It’s the full multisensory, immersive aesthetics of nature, all together, that foster wellbeing and joy.

Apparently, the kind of nature matters too. Lehrer’s post mentions another study that demonstrated that people who spend time in parks with a greater diversity of plant life score better on tests of psychological wellbeing than those who spend time in less biodiverse parks. A patch of grass may be green, but it’s not nature. A diverse park is more like nature, naturally, and probably a lot more like the environments in which our brains grew up. Variety, as much as greenness or leafiness, is an aesthetic of nature, and it seems it does us a lot of good.

Another fascinating insight about our brain and nature comes from an interview with Mark Changizi, an evolutionary neurobiologist whose latest book explores new research on human vision, on the Neuronarrative blog. Changizi observes that one of the reasons its so easy for humans to read (those of us who are literate read thousands of words in a day) is that our letterforms mimic natural shapes. He suggests that if our words looked like barcodes or fractal patterns, we would not be able to process them nearly as quickly. He says:

To be easy on the eye, writing needs to “look like nature,” just what our illiterate visual systems are fantastically competent at processing. The trick of that research direction was making this “writing looks like nature” idea rigorous, and coming up with ways of testing it. I show that there are certain signature visual patterns found in nearly any natural environment with opaque objects strewn about, and that these signature patterns are found in human writing. In short, writing has evolved so that written words look like visual objects.

I have to pause to marvel at the beauty of this insight, which is nothing short of thrilling for readers, writers, and typographers all. But as the awe subsides, I wonder if this fascinating insight holds a clue to applying aesthetics of nature to design in ways that really do foster our wellbeing. I’m sick of seeing wallpaper that looks like birch trees or tables with grass growing in the middle put forth as design’s  solution to the urban condition. Can’t we do better? As the plasma screen experiment demonstrated, a picture of nature isn’t going to cut it, and while it’s certainly a fine idea to have some plants around, I think we could go about “bringing the outside in” in a more sophisticated way. Perhaps there are visual patterns or spatial arrangements that better mimic a natural environment, design ideas that can be applied to urban planning, architecture, interiors, and products to provide some of the same benefits. It’s encouraging to think that we may be on the cusp of learnings that will help us bring more aesthetics of nature into our citified lives.

Of course, there’s another implication here, not for the design of a home necessarily, but maybe for the design of a lifestyle. Get outdoors. Do it often and especially when you’re stressed. Because no matter how well we’re eventually able to design to mimic nature, there’s no substitute for the real thing.

I am a big fan of snow. I know it’s inconvenient. I know it piles up in big drifts that make it hard to get around. I know you have to shovel it within 4 hours in Brooklyn or you’ll get a ticket. I know it looks pristine for about 30 seconds in the city and then it turns poo-brown and ugly. I know all this but there’s really nothing you could say that would make me love snow any less.

My first reaction to snow is always a visceral call to memories of childhood joy: “Snowday!” Just the barest snippet of a winter weather forecast or a “storm warning” brings a rush of delight. As a child, a forecast of snow meant I immediately put down the books and pencils and stopped doing my homework, and started dreaming of sledding and hot chocolate and the general indolence of a holiday in the middle of the week. Occasionally the snow failed to materialize, and I was on my way to school with a pack full of unlearned knowledge and bad excuses. But usually the comforting voice of the local radio announcer would announce my school closed along with my best friend’s, and we would grab our matching orange plastic sleds and head for the hills. As an adult, I see snow, and I turn right back into this little girl (in the red, on the left):

There’s a personal joy for me in those memories — in having them and sharing them. But I think there’s a deeper, more profound joy to be found here, one that is more universal because it derives from the aesthetic experience of snow. There’s something magical about snow, the way it drops from the sky with the lightness of cotton, and yet rests so heavy on the earth. There’s a sense of awe created too, by the extent of its scale, both macro and micro: snow covers everything, quickly and indiscriminately, and yet miraculously, because the scale of each flake is so diminutive.

These are common joyful elements that I have written about before, but looking at the commonalities illuminates the many facets of snow’s delight. With its lightness, snow is like bubbles, feathers, dandelion seeds, marshmallows, and meringue — transcendent things that are made of and at home in the air. With its scale, snow can be like the ocean, the redwoods, or the Grand Canyon — awe-inspiring in its vastness. And yet, as tiny things, snowflakes are like jewels, like haikus, and like hobbyist’s miniatures — joyful things made precious by the intricacy they possess in such small scale. Snow’s magic is the magic of invisible sources, of something from nothing. A snowfall is a slow-unfolding abracadabra moment of a rabbit being pulled from a hat, an extended display of the tangible emerging from the intangible as it blows and accumulates into drifts.

Underlying all of this, for me, is a kind of joy of transformation. Snow is itself a shapeshifter, first light, then heavy; small, then large. It is moldable, a substrate for transient sculpture, be it snowman or snowangel, or merely a snowweapon in the form of an icicle or a ball. But more significant is what snow does to what’s around it. In this sense, snow is an intrusion, a new element that transforms its context by its presence. Snow’s intrusion into a city is all-encompassing. Snow’s color and texture redefine the setting. Its volume and density redefine the action. It blankets, it bleaches, and it slows. Snow changes our behavior; it gives us permission to be more playful. And snow changes the feeling of even indoor spaces, making them more intimate and cozy.

The pleasure of this transformation is heightened because we know it won’t last. Days, sometimes weeks, after the first magic act of its appearance, snow performs a second one, disappearing into what seems like nothing. We revel in it because we know it’s an evanescent joy. And we’re not sorry to see it go because we know that like all true delights, it will come again.

{Thanks to Rachel for inspiring this post!}

These variegated poufs of carnations are like a gorgeous brand of cheerleaders’ pom-poms. I love how this arrangement makes a prosaic blossom seem so luxurious. They’re so tactile too — you can just imagine how the cool, feathery petals would feel on your hands.

{flowers by BORNAY}

This week New York magazine offers some very random happiness tips from a cross-section of New Yorkers — everyone from a personal trainer to an interior decorator to a physician specializing in biorhythms. It’s interesting to see how many different lenses there are on what makes us feel good. The advice runs the gamut from pedestrian (“Exercise more!” — Yawn…) to altruistic (help people with strollers up subway stairs) to just plain odd (eat Greek yogurt). My favorite is the advice to paint your walls yellow. Mine happen to be a pale buttery shade — something I never would have picked, but can’t bring myself to repaint because it’s just so bright and cheery.

See the list here. Joyful illustrations by Jim Stoten.

When I moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn, I discovered something I had missed without realizing it: the sounds of the birds. Now that I live on the top floor of a brownstone with a lush, critter-friendly backyard, I find myself at ear-level with the most amazing array of birds. This morning they were really going nuts, reveling in the warm cloudy day. I captured a few of their calls to share with you.

I’m off the Met to see the Vermeers and the new American wing — I hope you’re having a joyful weekend!

Listen to the birds

Image by the always wonderful John&Fish

Stephanie and Mav of 3191 have this serenely joyful aesthetic that always leaves me inspired. I think it’s because their  lenses reveal the intense pleasure in simple things, with a focus on contrasts and textures. Their photos become like abstract compositions, with ordinary elements balanced like a squares in a Mondrian painting or steel plates in Calder mobile.

It’s a great example of a different kind of aesthetic of joy. Not the high-energy, celebratory kind I often embrace here on the blog, but a quieter version. There is a sense of domestic peace in their images, but the emotion I get is not sedate contentment, it’s a slow rising tide of delight, a buoyant energy simmering just below the surface, like a pot of water just before the crescendo to boil.

I loved this back to school post by Mav. I had exactly the same sentiments when I was going back to school. School supplies were the balm that soothed the nerves and stoked the anticipation. They’re just so beautiful too.

I’m a big fan of Christoph Niemann’s Abstract City blog on the NYT. His post on the supposedly simple pleasure of sleep makes me laugh, but it also makes me think seriously about the design of joyful experiences. These graphics may be a sweet, comical way of representing subjective human experience, but they’re also a brilliant way to distill out elements of experience for any kind of designer. What I’m trying to say is that they may be created as art, but they function as a tool.

Time as an axis reveals much. I love the oscillation of the “cool pillow” — a perfect sine wave illustrating how a little peak of joy can be reached again and again from a small, sensory pleasure.

Enjoy: Good Night and Tough Luck

These unpretentious paintings by Eric Zener capture the simple watery pleasures of a suburban summer. Something to savor in these last few aestival days…

via Wide Open Spaces

I love love love these wonderful videos of flowers growing and blossoming in time-lapse. I get a visceral wave of joy watching each one.

Above, the ornithogalum reminds me of popcorn popping open. Below, the tiny blossoms of the eremurus sparkle like firecrackers, stamens bursting out of their centers all right on cue. And last but not least, the daisies, which remind me of that beautiful Mia Michaels piece danced by Jeanine and Kayla on the So You Think You Can Dance finale (which I watched in its entirety at 1 in the morning the night I got home!). The way that they rise and bend, growing in bursts, the struggle palpable yet  beautiful — it may sound silly but they make me feel inspired.

There are more on munich timelapse’s page, and each one is captivating in its own unique way.

Ornithogalum blossom one after the other / timelapse, Three flowers dancing / timelapse and Eremurus flower / timelapse from munich timelapse on Vimeo.