The Alpha-Flaneur

[alden]

explains why, when I pursue my own interests and personal expression without concern for outcomes, armies of babes seem to come out of the woodwork, to my surprise and delight. When I try to reverse-engineer that magnetism and focus too deliberately on it, the she-wolves retreat.

The Art of Seduction, a corallary study in Style....once you allow Style to emerge, seduction is inevitable.

In the first instance you embody YOU and that is about as attractive a potion on the market. The ladies see this wonderfully spontaneous and magnetic image..



In the second instance you are calculating, imagining, posing, comparing, .......and consequently what the creatures you desire see is this instead



The three headed monster always searching for an identity relative to others and to the self who is unknown



Cast the demons away and be glad for it!





Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience contan many lessons about style and non-style.

Cheers

[hectorm]

....once you allow Style to emerge, seduction is inevitable.
Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience contan many lessons about style and non-style.

Beware, although Blake was an unorthodox Christian of the dissenting tradition, I believe he still deemed irresistible seduction as a deadly sin.

[Rowly]

Never seek to tell thy love !

[alden]

One of the great actors of our time (and sadly there are very few) talks about creating characters by looking at the world like a child does. Let all the wonder and amazement, emotions, sensations charge through the body like a child at play. Everything is possible. No fear, only boundless curiousity, affection and love. Paradise not lost, not only not lost but everlasting. With refreshed, essential senses play becomes creative and the character emerges. (Remember actors were originally called "players.")

And this same exercise of playing helps us find ourselves. Set the world of experience aside for a moment each day. Enhale the world with the eyes of a child. It is one of the fundamental ways of tracing back to our essential selves. There lies the magnetism of your style. Follow it,trust it.

Cheers

[Costi]

Amen, Michael!

And not being afraid of making "mistakes", asking questions with the earnest desire to learn, or re-learn if necessary.

And also being genial without deliberately looking for originality. Originality then arises naturally.

Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind.

for

GREAT men are more distinguished by range and extent, than by originality. If we require the originality which consists in weaving, like a spider, their web from their own bowels; in finding clay, and making bricks, and building the house; no great men are original. Nor does valuable originality consist in unlikeness to other men. The hero is in the press of knights, and the thick of events; and, seeing what men want, and sharing their desire, he adds the needful length of sight and of arm, to come at the desired point. The greatest genius is the most indebted man.

Yet tradition and heritage need not be an obstacle, when properly assimilated:

Thought is the property of him who can entertain it; and of him who can adequately place it. A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but, as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.

And finally - though this is not just about Shakespeare's writing, which made the subject of Emerson's essay:

The appeal is to the consciousness of the writer. Is there at last in his breast a Delphi whereof to ask concerning any thought or thing, whether it be verily so, yea or nay? and to have answer, and to rely on that? All the debts which such a man could contract to other wit, would never disturb his consciousness of originality: for the ministrations of books, and of other minds, are a whiff of smoke to that most private reality with which he has conversed.

Do you hear the Delphi in your breast? Do you listen?

[Costi]

An addendum: my brother's acting teacher had a moto:

"Don't focus on success, focus on the process".

Very widely applicable, way beyond acting...
According to a summary of his "method", he "aimed for students to develop a psycho-emotional „mechanism” specific to the transformation of conventions in life truth, unlike the old acting school in which students were taught how to play theater. He always said that the art of the actor has nothing to do with theater."
Similarly, Style has nothing to do with clothes or objects in general. The stage is incidental, a witness. The essence is the inner process.

[Gruto]

An addendum: my brother's acting teacher had a moto:

"Don't focus on success, focus on the process".

Very widely applicable, way beyond acting...
According to a summary of his "method", he "aimed for students to develop a psycho-emotional „mechanism” specific to the transformation of conventions in life truth, unlike the old acting school in which students were taught how to play theater. He always said that the art of the actor has nothing to do with theater."
Similarly, Style has nothing to do with clothes or objects in general. The stage is incidental, a witness. The essence is the inner process.

That is very much theory, Costi. In real life, well, real acting, the stage will have an impact on the actor. Period. An analogy could be the game of a tennis player, which is affected by his oponent's way of playing.

I admit it can be a very good strategy to forget reality focusing on your inner "spirit" to maximize style or seduction but I cannot see it revokes the force of the Other.

[Costi]

Gruto, the inner process includes the other. Includes, not opposes. It is not a soliloquy. But you don't do things for the sake of the others, the focus should not be on effects. Any actor can tell you that if one does their part well and truthfully, the stage partner(s) will be inspired to give their earnest best, too.
This is not forgetting reality, it IS reality, your inner process is reality, which you need to make manifest as best you can. Everything else is interpretation, as in your interpretation of "opponents" - you see things in terms of oppositions, of tennis games in which one tries to score against the other. There are many other kinds of interaction.
The stage, if considered as a place of validation sought out deliberately, can have a great impact on the actor indeed - a negative one: he will focus on it and "act" to please the audience, to have facile "success", instead of being true. Some of the audience will applaud, unaware of how profound the experience could be if it were not a mere "show". The actor will think he is good at it and stop questioning his means, thus missing his chance at greatness. Vicious circle complete.
But you already know what style is, so why do you even bother?... I don't, I am guessing, I intuit, I take shots at explaining it (to myself first and foremost), I keep looking and the day I come with THE definitive answer, somebody please shoot me. However, I am beginning to grasp pretty well what Style is NOT. And it is NOT a game. Playing - yes, but not a game.

[Rowly]

"Don't focus on success, focus on the process".

I have always found this attitude helpful in so many ways. I have refined it for myself and come up with the principle, " Have no value on the outcome!" NVO.

If you focus on winning a game of tennis...you will try too hard, and things will not flow.

If you really want a date to go well...she will pick up on it and interpret it as neediness.

If you are trying to master a difficult piece of music...you will be frustrated and it will not come easily.

On the other hand.....

If, you let the girl see that you like her...but wouldn't lose any sleep over it...she will be interested in you and see you as a challenge.

If you relax and enjoy the game..you will play better.

If you enjoy the process of losing yourself in trying to get a handle on a particular piece of music...it will become like a meditation and will relax you....and, the piece will come in its own time.

If you spend a few hours getting your hands dirty in the paints ( even though you have limited skill)---even if you bin your work...it has been a success because you were enjoying the process. By removing your ego from anything, I find...everything is a success because you succeeded in not valuing the outcome !

[Rowly]

This is not forgetting reality, it IS reality, your inner process is reality, which you need to make manifest as best you can. Everything else is interpretation, as in your interpretation of "opponents" - you see things in terms of oppositions, of tennis games in which one tries to score against the other. There are many other kinds of interaction.

That's what I mean....don't block your inner process with your ego !

[alden]

Costi


Sounds alot like the most intriguing speech in Hamlet, the Speak the Speech:


Hamlet: "Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this
special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For
anything so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end both
at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere, the mirror up
to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image,
and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now
this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful
laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve, the censure of the
which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of
others. Oh, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others
praise and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that neither having
the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man,
have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's
journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated
humanity so abominably."

One needs hold the mirror up to himself.

In the world of a child there are no mistakes, no questions, nothing to learn, no opponent, no other. These come with Experience.

Cheers

[hectorm]

This is not forgetting reality, it IS reality, your inner process is reality, which you need to make manifest as best you can. Everything else is interpretation, as in your interpretation of "opponents" - you see things in terms of oppositions, of tennis games in which one tries to score against the other. There are many other kinds of interaction.
However, I am beginning to grasp pretty well what Style is NOT. And it is NOT a game. Playing - yes, but not a game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TYyhRbQ ... re=related

[Costi]

so much for "reality"...
and playing together

[Costi]

The chains...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave
...and the barless cage:

[NJS]

There is some interesting reading in this thread, However, the OED gives the following definitions:

flâneur: A lounger or saunterer, an idle ‘man about town’.

rake: A fashionable or stylish man (or woman) of dissolute or promiscuous habits.

I suppose that the lives of flâneurs and rakes often raise a titter of laughter but it always seems to me to be a titter tinged with pity and, ultimately, with deprecation; probably because, although leisure and idleness may be admirable states in proportion with industriousness, most people do not admire those who spend their lives in avoiding all endeavour.

It must be sound advice to prosecute a serious endeavour by concentrating on the process but, if it is a serious endeavour, then there must surely be a general drive towards succeeding in it. The British these days, I fear, take the state of the jolly dilettante too far, especially at tennis where, year after sorry year, they are thrashed at Wimbledon: Henman Hill; Murray Mount; Bumbler's Bump.