Lewis Hyde on Work vs. Labor and the Pace of Creativity

On the osmosis of willful intention and flow.

After last year’s omnibus of 5 timeless books on fear and the creative process, a number of readers rightfully suggested an addition: Lewis Hyde’s 1979 classic, The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, of which David Foster Wallace famously said, “No one who is invested in any kind of art can read The Gift and remain unchanged.”

One particular quote seems to resonate deeply with those of us who work in the loosely defined creative field.

Work is what we do by the hour. It begins and, if possible, we do it for money. Welding car bodies on an assembly line is work; washing dishes, computing taxes, walking the rounds in a psychiatric ward, picking asparagus–these are work. Labor, on the other hand, sets its own pace. We may get paid for it, but it’s harder to quantify… Writing a poem, raising a child, developing a new calculus, resolving a neurosis, invention in all forms — these are labors.

Work is an intended activity that is accomplished through the will. A labor can be intended but only to the extent of doing the groundwork, or of not doing things that would clearly prevent the labor. Beyond that, labor has its own schedule.

…

There is no technology, no time-saving device that can alter the rhythms of creative labor. When the worth of labor is expressed in terms of exchange value, therefore, creativity is automatically devalued every time there is an advance in the technology of work.”

What seems to be the defining characteristic of labor, the differentiator that sets it apart from work, is that it involves, or can induce, a state of what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls flow — a kind of intense focus and crisp sense of clarity where you forget yourself, lose track of time, and feel like you’re part of something larger. If you’ve ever pulled an all-nighter for a pet project, or even spent 20 consecutive hours composing a love letter, you’ve experienced flow and you know labor.

Now, the question becomes, how do we bring this to work.

HT The 99%

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It’s Only with the Heart One Can See Rightly: A Hand-Drawn Quote from The Little Prince

“…what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince is not only one of my favorite children’s classics with philosophy for grown-ups, but is also among the finest books on optimism ever written. Its highly quotable and memorable wisdom endures as a timelessly existential lens on the world. From Hand Drawn Quotes comes this lovely visual rendition of one of my most beloved quotes from the classic:

It’s only with the heart one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

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Tango: The First Polish Short Film to Win an Oscar, 1980

Everything that could happen in a room, happening.

You might recall Blok, a wonderful 1982 experimental Polish animated film, using a single continuous shot to take a voyeuristic tour of the different apartments in a building. From the same era comes Tango — a clever and spectacularly executed 1980 film by director Zbigniew Rybczynski from Polish short-film studio Se-ma-for. The cinematography, capturing multiple events taking place simultaneously in a closed space, was so complicated and required such precision that Rybczynski worked on the film for nearly a year, eating and sleeping on the set.

In 1983, Tango became the first Polish film to win an Oscar.

Tango appears on the altogether excellent two-disc DVD Anthology of Polish Animated Film.

Thanks, Mark

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