Dear Reader,
You don’t need to actually know a person to love him or
her, right? That is the case with Joe Kramer. He was a real
person, but I met him in a book. Flow: The Psychology of
Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Harper &
Row, 1990) was on a dauntingly long list of required reading
for the Ph.D. interdisciplinary program I was preparing to begin.
It is a book that explores the nature of experience through
identifying “flow – a state of concentration so focused
that it amounts to absolute absorption in an activity.”
As an artist and writer, I am interested in how creative experiences
might be explained and what hallmarks were identified in the
process. Why did time disappear when I painted or worked on
a poem? Why did I feel exhilarated when a problem presented
itself. Flow… did not disappoint, and in the bargain,
I met Joe Kramer, the subject of one case study.
For over thirty years, Joe was a welder in South Chicago who
was much admired for his ability to have “mastered every
phase of the plant’s operation.” Not only that, if
any machine, complex or simple, broke down, he would cheerfully
take on the task of fixing it. He was fascinated with the prospect
of discovering how things worked. For Joe, the bigger the challenge,
the better. He transformed work into happiness, but his creativity
did not stop in the factory.
There were two vacant lots on either side of Joe’s modest
home, which he and his wife eventually were able to purchase.
Joe’s imagination went to work and out sprang rock gardens,
terraces, and hundreds of plantings. Instead of dragging hoses
through the terrain, Joe installed underground sprinklers, but
as he did that, he envisioned another idea – rainbows!
But he needed a sprinkler head to produce a fine enough mist
to catch sunlight and create the spectrum of colors. Since those
sprinkler heads were not available, you guessed it: Joe went
to his basement and made several. He could flick two switches
and “activate a dozen sprays that turned into as many small
rainbows.” A new problem arose. Joe worked all day and
the sun was less than reliable (clouds or seasonally shortened
daylight hours), he thought up a solution: floodlights. Now,
Joe and his wife could sit there at night surrounded by fans
of color, light, and water.
Joe Kramer saw beauty as a potential ally instead of an impossible
dream. He would think: What CAN I DO to make this happen, instead
of THIS CAN NEVER BE. I thought about Joe Kramer when I painted
dozens of flowers on a door frame. Now, as we enter the hallway,
the long New England winter is fitted with the idea of hibernating
plants waiting to bloom. I thought about Joe Kramer the other
evening when I pressed the remote for a Sunflower Laser Light
installed high on a post by our friend Al Pantano. Now, hundreds
of green, blue, and red points of light are directed into our
garden. Flow is waiting. Magic is possible.
