Narrative Drive

It's been a while. I've been writing and reading some critical work, and as a result, have binned a lot of the creative work I'd started. Sarah Perry's Writing in Flow was a find, and although it's an interesting read, I find it mostly anecdotal, and wonder if that's the nature of the beast. I've been walking though, and look, I know I've shared this old photo before of Stourbridge viaduct. But here it is now.

This is where I walk the dog every morning, trying to formulate a link between psychogeography and flow in creative writing. This is what I came up with:

Study into the creative writing process is a relatively new field of enquiry. What I am interested in is the process of creating textual worlds, creative idea generation and critical judgement. In effect, what Flower & Hayes (1981) refer to as ‘the inner processes of the person producing the product.’ (p367). Specifically, I am interested in how an area of the West Midlands known as the Black Country might be utilised as a ‘sensation’ or a ‘sensation of place’, or as a concept, within a creative writer’s writing output, and within their writing process. The aim is to focus on the connection between psychogeography and Mihaly Csikszentmilalyi’s state of ‘Flow’, and how these two aspects might work in dynamic close connection in the process of the production of a piece of ‘Black Country writing’ and in the output itself. The title of my thesis is: Psychogeographic Flow and Black Country Writing. It aims to examine the influence of Black Country psychogeographic walking/behaviour and ‘flow’ on the creative writing process and on its writing outcome.

The Black Country:

In the 1800s, American diplomat, Elihu Burritt, in his book Walks in the Black Country and its Green Borderland, described the Black Country as ‘Black by day and red by night, cannot be matched, for vast and varied production, by any other space of equal radius on the surface of the globe.’ Famously, ‘A 13 year-old Queen Victoria was once so offended by the sight of the Black Country she closed the curtains in her carriage as she passed through and wrote in her diary “the country is very desolate everywhere […] the men, woemen (sic), children, country and houses are all black,” and added, “but I cannot by any description give an idea of its strange and extraordinary appearance.”’ (https://www.bclm.co.uk/season/did-you-know-facts/172.htm)

In 1997, I wrote my first degree’s dissertation on the nature of the Black Country dialect and how it might be changing. The first task was to identify the location of this Black Country. I wrote:

‘The main problem with categorical definitions of where the Black Country lies is that officially it has no recognised boundaries…so it is, in effect, shrouded in mystery – a mythical place, almost a concept.’ (Hadley, 1997: 1)

Indeed, according to Mallin (1991) there is an attempt at a straightforward definition, at least in part, as to the location of the Black Country. He suggests two factors: the first criteria for inclusion is that the town must be situated on the underground seam of ‘thick coal’ (p1) which runs thirty feet deep and parallel with the surface, and on which the extraction of ironstone and coal depended (essentially, the ‘black’ in Black Country). The second factor for defining where the Black Country lies is more abstract, however. According to Mallin, the Black Country is where the dialect is spoken. Significantly then, the Black Country is not defined merely by geographical factors, but, at least in part, by a specific linguistic one, and so begins a connection between language and geography.

This is interesting. If it is a ‘place’, there is no Black Country Metropolitan Borough Council; there is no Republic of the Black Country. Google ‘map of the Black Country’ to see how confusing any definition or mention of it is. According to Esther Pickersgill (2018):

‘The Black Country is an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson : 1983, 2006) existing in the minds of its residents, situated within the four Metropolitan Boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton, to the immediate west of the City of Birmingham.’ (2018: 1)

This sense of existence ‘in the minds of its residents’ is pertinent here. Many Black Country folk exercise a sort of topophilia (a love of the Black Country) perhaps without even realising it, and this comes through, for example, in the use of the name within company names (Black Country Roofing, Black Country Computers, Black Country Saddles, Black Country Scaffolding, and so on.) And it comes through, particularly strongly, in the continuing use of the dialect. In 1997, in my dissertation for my first degree, I wrote:

‘The “Black Country Myth” and the idea of the area as a concept is discussed, and this forms an important foundation to this research…and the notion of metalinguistic/metapsychological meaning behind [suprasegmental features] is analysed with particular reference to the idea of Vygotsy’s “cultural tool”, resulting in theories of [a] Black Country linguistic secrecy…Additionally, the notion of the dialect as a complex form of “antilanguage” is debated – a premise which is inextricably linked to the concept of the Black Country as a closed community.’ (Hadley, 1997: i)

In discussing the Anglo-Saxon and Chaucerian pronunciations in the dialect, it was suggested that:

‘the retention of such words once again inextricably links language to geography as well as history, given the comparative historical isolation of the area, resulting from lack of navigable rivers and other road and communication networks.’ (p4/5)

There is no doubt that there are other ‘places’ with a recognisable dialect and a sense of culture (the Shetlands, for example, or Cornwall, or Stoke on Trent, or Wales) but it could be said that the very fact that the Black Country is considered ‘imagined’, or that no-one really knows where it is – that it (possibly) exists as a nebulous state, a sensory threshold – is a good place to start with this current study.

For an ‘imagined place’, though, the Black Country has many ‘real’ aspects: it has its own ‘Black Country Society’ and its own newspaper, The Black Country Bugle; it has its own particular industries (glass making, steel making, leather work, lock manufacture); its own particular food (grey peas and grawty pudding, lardy cake); it has its own myths and legends (‘Spring-heeled Jack’, ‘Who put Bella in the Wychelm?’); it has this distinctive dialect, or dialects; it has its own museum; its own day (14thJuly); it even has its own flag. This breaking of the fourth wall is a significant component of the ‘behaviour’ of the Black Country, which also has its own literature/writing output. (Francis Brett Young, Archie Hill. Anthony Cartwright, Sathnam Sanghera and Catherine O’Flynn, for example). Indeed, an important thematic thread of writing output from the Black Country is rooted in, specifically, a senseof place, where language links itself to geography in a more complex way than simply ‘setting’.

Perhaps, it is nomenclature that is the confusion, the name Black Country, which leads people to look for definitive borders, and towns or areas to fit into a conventional view of place, when, actually, Black Countrynessis a something that is perceived, sensed or felt (or heard). The suggestion that it is this indefinable not-city-not-really-town-not-completely-rural area, with factories nestling in amongst what you might consider public open spaces; that it’s a liminal place were the urban melds with the rural, with hidden farms and stodgy canals and a river that peters out to a stream in places, is, perhaps a rather romantic one. Perhaps it isan edgeland of an edgeland, where lines made by tarmac melt into lines made by walking, but this preoccupation with the Black Country as an actual placemight very well be the wrong direction to be taking, the wrong question to be asking, the wrong path. The nature of the Black Country, it could be said, is more flexible, a variable collection of ideas or ‘traditions’, and this is part of the secrecy, part of the antisocietal view, and where the link between the Black Country and psychogeography begins.

Psychogeography

Psychogeography attempts to calibrate the psychological influence of geography or place. Coverley in Richardson considers it ‘apparent [that] the subject or practice or tradition of psychogeography…is itself by no means a fixed concept, but rather a fluctuating series of ideas and positions whose borders are uncertain and whose meaning is unclear.’ (2013: 103)

Guy Debord’s definition of psychogeography as a practice ‘not inconsistent with the materialist perspective that sees life and thought as conditioned by objective nature…sets for itself the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment (whether consciously organised or not) on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.’ (1955: 8).

Regarding the question of the application of psychogeography, Coverley states:

‘…it seems to me that psychogeogaphy can best be understood through the series of oppositions such questions provoke: centre and suburb, urban and rural, literature and practice, the political and the aesthetic. It is the oscillation between these opposing poles that gives psychogeography its dynamic, as well as a framework within which psychogeographical ideas can be discussed.’ (2015: 104)

Psychogeography, or the tradition of it, is known for its prankishness, its off-the-wallness, of this almost-impossible nature of a firm definition. But its constituents are, generally considered to be a mix of physical and psychological: walking (or wandering, or ‘drifting’, sometimes characterised by the male flaneur or female flaneuse) in an urban environment; the ‘derive’ (‘In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there… But the dérive includes both this letting go and its necessary contradiction: the domination of psychogeographical variations by the knowledge and calculation of their possibilities.’ (Knabb, 1995: 50)); detournement (meaning, loosely, a re-routing, or hijacking, a turning back, or turning round, a subversion); or anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths, jolting them into a new psychological awareness of the urban landscape.

In Maps from the Mind: Readings in Psychogeography, Howard F. Stein and W. Neiderland (1989) describe psychogeography as a Freudian thing which considers the inner life of the individual. Their study aimed to look at what connected someone to place and how geography (whether urban or rural) made a person who he or she was. And in Developmental Time, Cultural Space: Studies in Psychogeography, Stein (1989) says psychogeography is:

‘…the emotional portrait of the feelingof the land…’ (p14) … ‘the psychoanalytic study of spatial representation…an approach that may help unravel why who one is comes to be experienced as indistinguishable from where one isand in turn where and who others are perceived to be in relation to one’s own. Psychogeography is a perspective, not yet another proposed discipline. The scope of psychogeography is the unconscious construction of the social and physical world.’ (p15)

Stein, then, does not see psychogeography as something indefinable or a slippery response to space, but as something that is, in fact, ever-present within the individual.

‘Psychogeography begins with the experience of selfhood in the human body…and proceeds outwards to encompass the world…The issue of boundaries takes us to the heart of psychogeography. Symbolic group boundaries have the quality of dreamlike condensations.’ (p18).

And,

‘As Winnicott wrote: “The place where cultural experience is located is the potential space between the individual and the environment.”’ (1967: 330-71 in Stein 1989: 19)

Tina Richardson considers that psychogeography is, however, changing, and that it has possibly ‘outgrown the limited and exclusionary world of the revolutionary avant-garde.’ (2015: 242) She sites contemporary technology (social networks, websites, blogs and new ‘geo-apps’) as enabling what she refers to as ‘The Psychogeographical Turn’, or ‘more like a gentle bend in the road’. She mentions its connection to placiality, cultural and literary theory, though she concedes that ‘labelling it in any way could be fool-hardy…attempting to define it can be thought to go against what psychogeography represents’ she says, ‘we need to consider what form this psychogeography might take and why, not least because we should think about how it can be used productively in a changing historical, political and cultural milieu.’ (2015: 245) Further, Richardson comments that one of the qualities of this ‘new’ or ‘contemporary psychogeography’ is that it is becoming ‘less London-centric.’ (2015: 250)

It would seem, then, that for all the reasons stated above, the Black Country counts, psychogeographically, as a significant and, really, unacknowledged solid, tangible presence, historically, politically and certainly in its literature output. It seems to follow that by focusing on this notably unmappable concept, any writing set there, prepared, incubated, illuminated and verified there, or indeed, any writing with a sense of ‘there’ takes psychogeography at its word, off the beaten track.

Walking:

Important to point out that creative writing is a cognitive process, not just a physical act of putting words on paper, and since there is a belief that the act of walking changes cognitive function, specifically in terms of improving and increasing creative function.

Michel De Certeau says: ‘The act of walking is to the urban system what the speech act is to language.’ (1988: 97). Richardson suggests that it ‘is the walking itself that is psychogeography’ (2015: 4), so perhaps it follows that there could be a link between the cognitive processes associated with language/writing and the physical act of walking, and therefore psychogeography.

Urban walking is the subject of several recent studies, the results of which imply a link to creativity, but quite specifically. According to Overall, ‘Walking cleanses the brain of the superfluous, allowing new ideas and sensations to emerge.’ (2015: 16), and Oppezzo & Schwartz found that although ‘Walking opens up the free flow of ideas, and it is a simple and robust solution to the goals of increasing creativity.’ (2014: 1142) if a specific single correct answer is being sought in, for example a more ‘logical’ creativity such as finding a word that links a set of three (eg: ‘cheese’ for ‘cottage, cream and cake’) then the results of their study showed that walking might, in fact, hamper this. This was largely due to an ‘overstimulus’ effect. According to Jabr (2014) ‘…by setting the mind adrift on a frothing sea of thought, walking is counter-productive to such laser-focused thinking.’ However, in Oppezzo & Schwartz’ study, participants continued to show certain positive creative benefits after walking, as if, perhaps, walking had caused a creative spark which had continued glowing even after the participants later rested.

The issues, it seems, are two-fold: the question of what type of creativity researchers are looking to affect, and what effect the location of the walk might have.

Berman et. al’s study on ‘The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting with Nature’ suggests that:

‘Nature, which is filled with intriguing stimuli, modestly grabs attention in a bottom- up fashion, allowing top-down directed-attention abilities a chance to replenish…[but] Urban environments are filled with stimulation that captures attentiondramaticallyand additionally requires directed attention (eg: to avoid being hit by a car) making them less restorative.’(2008: 1207)

And though there are other studies that suggest that walking in the great outdoors – amongst ‘nature’ – has been shown to instil a sense of creative thinking (Platt, 2012) Oppezzo & Schwartz found that even walking on a treadmill facing a blank wall improved creativity, and with such lack of any intriguing stimuli, might suggest that the actual, physical act of walking itself fires up creativity, and that the least drama and directed attention on a walk might be a better preparation for creative work.

Psychogeographic walking is something practiced by many creatives. It is considered to be a performative or generative act, and a way of responding to the environment to stimulate thoughts and ideas to become ‘inspired’ to produce, for example, creative writing. Iain Sinclair takes a familiar daily walk to warm-up to writing, regarding it as ‘changing circuits to be able to write.’ (Campbell 2013). More, walking in new places is something Sinclair regards as creating new neural pathways: ‘to go somewhere new is to feel the brain is being remapped, in an interesting way’ that might even lead to a ‘new form of writing.’ (Campbell 2013). Rebecca Solnit considers that ‘imagination has both shaped and been shaped by the spaces it passes through on two feet.’ (2014: 4) and Nick Papadimitriou, in his book, Scarp, says the aim of him walking was to be ‘able to step straight through the racks into an apparent world.’ (2012: 24). Writers, some of them as a matter of course, use walking in their environment to trigger mental journeys to another place and time, in other words, for the creative potential of the act of walking. Here’s Papadimitriou again on walking: ‘I find it lifts my sense of the environment out of its codified framework and into fresh possibilities of interpretation, my eyes wiped clean by the resultant defamiliarisation.’ (p.44). Overall regards the physical action of walking as something that ‘induces a hypnosis of sorts, countered by the wakefulness of body induced by aerobic exercise.’ (2015: 16)

This ‘wiping clean’ ‘demfamiliarisation’, ‘potential space’ and ‘hypnosis’ I believe, are significant and important parts of the psychogeography of the creative writing process which I want to come back to later in my discussion on ‘flow’.

According to Wunderlich:

‘it is through walking that we immerse ourselves and dwell in the representational and lived world…walking is not only a bodily movement but a behaviour of our lifeworld routine…Like any other lifeworld activity, walking is commonly performed with an underlying natural attitude, an absence of conscious attention.’ (2008: 127)

Wunderlich describes walking as ‘an active mode of perceiving the urban environment.’ (2008: 128) which makes walking a haptic activity, ‘contact between the body and its environment’ representing a ‘global touch.’ (Rodaway, 1994: 42, 48 in Wunderlich, 2008: 129).

Richardson says:

‘As the urban walker, you become part of the very landscape you are scrutinizing. You are the biological material connecting the concrete matter of urban space. Also, the physical process of perambulation, of touching the ground with your feet and moving through space, makes the action a material one. The somantic response to the act of walking forms a feedback loop and creates a relationship to the space that can engage the walker in powerful ways.’ (2015: 247)

Walking allows us to sense a place (or nurtures senses of place) and, according to Tuan (1977), there is a close relationship between sensing and emotion. Further, according to Lynch (1960), Banerjee & Southworth (1990) in Wunderlich urban walking elicits an intensification of imagery and metaphors associated with places (2008: 130). Everyday walking, then, creates ‘perception paths’ (Gibson 1979: 195-7 in Wunderlich 2008: 130) which means that interaction with the environment and sensorial engagement occur. Artist Richard Long (1967) demonstrates this in some of his artwork, particularly his ‘physical interventions with the landscape’ in A Line Made by Walking. Lee (2004: 1) in Wunderlich (2008: 130) considers that walking is, in fact, ‘constitutive of placeitself’.

Wunderlich sites three ‘types’ of walking,

What is lacking from this research on walking are explanations as to howwalking might make a person more creative.

It could be argued that walking is something that most humans can adapt to quite quickly as an automatic process, and that adapting to the act of walking means that the brain simply gets used to doing it and displays less and less of a response to the mechanics of it. This is an example of repetition suppression. We can be confident of our movements, and, according to Brandt & Eagleman, ‘The more familiar something is, the less neural energy we spend on it…Repetition makes us more confident in our forecasts and more efficient in our actions.’ (2017: 28-30) And perhaps, leaves more cognitive energy for creative thought.

(Brandt & Eagleton 2017: 27)

Tanner Christiansen (2015) suggests that a potential answer to the question of how walking and creativity are linked is in Edward de Bono’s ‘creative pause’, an idea that suggests stopping and going about commonplace tasks (such as walking) will stimulate creativity. Poet Richard Jones overcomes writers’ block by doing everyday, repetitive tasks. ‘While he’s doing those, something extraordinary is beginning to happen: “I’m dropping down – down into the unconscious part of myself.”’ (Perry 1999 p22) There is a sense in that that the repetitive nature of walking adjusts our focus, inadvertently (and maybe subconsciously) makes us clear our minds – cleanses it – which makes room for creative thought. Of course, the implication of this is that the mind has only limited resources to work with and that walking takes some limited resources from part of the consciousness to focus on the act of walking, but can leave the subconscious resources to work on creative tasks. There isn’t, however, any solid proof of this biological competition, but, according to Perry:

‘The repetitive movement of walking puts your mind into somewhat of a meditative state, beginning the loosening process. It also begins the process of focusing inward, away from everyday reality.’ (1999: 184)

This brings us to the question of creativity itself.

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s 1997 creativity study refers to the idea of creatives (not just writers) using ‘problem setting’. He refers to the ‘Aha’ moment as seeming to happen when a solution is found to a problem brewing a creative’s mind for some time (which could be hours or even years), of them mulling over a particular subject, and the solution being so good (to them) that it is somehow forced to ‘pop into consciousness’. This is what Berkenkotter & Murray (1983)refer to as a ‘style goal’ (Kroll & Harper 2013 p53). It’s a bee in the bonnet, a bug-bear, an issue that the writer has been thinking about or feels strongly about which lurks in their thinking, probably subconsciously, but not always. Perry (1999) in her analysis of writers’ processes, says:

‘People write for the same range of reasons that they do anything else: something outside themselves may be urging them to do it, or they may have some deep interior sense of the need to do it.’ (p37)

What do writers do to release this ‘something’ or ‘sense’ and what is the effect on them when they do?

If we consider that in order for the brain to be ‘cleansed’ and for ‘imagination to be shaped’ or for a ‘free flow of ideas’ and ‘changing circuits’ to occur, then, by extension, there might be a requirement for a freeing up of thought resulting in a loss of the inner critic, a loss of self-consciousness, in order for more areas of the brain to communicate more freely to enable the engagement of the creative process – you might say an opening of the mind. As walkers, we know that often when walking, in addition to this, there might be a feeling of a distortion of time. David Thoreau wrote in his journal:‘Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.’ (2011). Famous flaneur, Charles Dickens ‘cried the whole time his pen-wielding hand was pitilessly doing [Little Nell] in.’ (Atwood P38 in Kroll & Harper p54). This is an example of total emersion in the task of writing here, of a self-control and of actions and awareness merging.

This brings us to the state of flow.

Flow

Flow, or the state of flow, a term coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in 1975, is a psychological state in which there is a feeling of being completely absorbed by the task in hand, of, to coin a phrase, feeling like you’re in the ‘zone’, and of productivity and creativity merging. Flow is defined as ‘an optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best.’

Csikszentmihalyi describes 8 characteristicsof flow:

1. Complete concentration on the task

2. Clarity of goals and reward in mind and immediate feedback

3. Transformation of time (speeding up/slowing down of time)

4. The experience is intrinsically rewarding, has an end itself

5. Effortlessness and ease

6. There is a balance between challenge and skills

7. Actions and awareness are merged, losing self-conscious rumination

8. There is a feeling of control over the task

(https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/mihaly-csikszentmihalyi-father-of-flow/#what-happens-brain)

According to Beard in an interview with Csikszentmihalyi, however, there are nine elementsof flow:

Challenge-skill balance

Action-awareness merging

Clear goals

Unambiguous feedback

Concentration on the task in hand

Sense of control

Loss of self-consciousness

Transformation of time

An autotelic experience (i.e. of an activity or creative work having an end or purpose in itself, not apart from itself.) (2015: 353)

And according to Quinn (2005) in Beard, ‘...flow encompasses four antecedents and four consequences with the definition of flow being the one merging application and awareness.’ (Beard, 2015: 363)

In the interview with Beard, Csikszentmihalyi says:

‘I agree that deep concentration, which becomes action and awareness merging...is the origin of all the others. It’s the origin of becoming one with the activity… of feeling in control…all of these depend on the fact that you are focused on what you’re doing.’ (p364)

Most people, at some point, been in flow: completely absorbed in something we’re working on. It is, by anyone’s standards, a strange, liminal state of consciousness, though in flow, concentration is highly specific, highly focused so that all else: time, physical feelings, distractions, all fall away. Indeed, time can slow down (like slow motion) or speed up (as if two hours have passed in two minutes) but performance is heightened. (Kotler 2014).

Susan Perry inWriting in Flow: Keys to enhanced creativity(1999) discusses four stages of the creative process: Preparation, Incubation, illumination and verification (P16). She emphasizes that these are not separate processes, that it’s very complex and that Flow can be entered at any time in any or all of these stages.She concedes that the experience of flow has been in existence long before the invention of the term. She pinpoints Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (first published in 1878) and the description of the attributes of flow when the experience of farm-owner Levin is learning to mow grass. Perry suggests of Tolstoy that, ‘we can be reasonably sure he is describing his own experience with flow in writing as well.’ (p11).

There is little research into the neuropsychological aspect of flow, however, according to Dietrich, it has been associated with decreased activity in the pre-frontal cortex of the brain (an area responsible for our conscious and explicit mind state). In a state of flow:

‘this area is believed to temporarily down-regulate; a process called transient hypofrontality. This temporary inactivation of the prefrontal area may trigger the feeling of distortion of time, loss of self-consciousness, and loss of inner-critic…the inhibition of the prefrontal lobe may enable the implicit mind to take over, resulting in more brain areas to communicate freelyand engage in a creative process. In other research, it’s also hypothesized that the flow state is related to the brain’s dopamine reward circuitry since curiosity is highly amplified.’ (https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/mihaly- csikszentmihalyi-father-of-flow/#what-happens-brain)

In addition, Ulrich et. Al (2014) refer to ‘flow proneness’ (p195) and have attempted to discover what happens in the brain when a person is in a state of flow. They found:

‘Flow was associated with increased activation in the inferior frontal gyrus…with decreased activation of the amygdala and medial frontal cortex…and individual flow experience correlated with changes in neural activation.’ (p194)

And, according to Yoshida et. al: ‘Flow is associated activity of the pre-frontal cortex, and may therefore be associated with functions such as cognition, emotion, maintenance of internal goals, and reward processing.’ (2014: 30)

What, then, are the links between Flow and psychogeography? Solnit summarises urban walking thus: ‘The body and mind can work together, so that thinking becomes almost a physical, rhythmic act…each walk moves through space like a thread through fabric, sewing it together into a continuous experience.’ (2002: xv). As Richardson points out, the psychogeographic experience is ‘immersive, processual and nondialectical. Today’s urban walking is not about “the gaze”. The walker is both the subject and the object, is seen and seeing.’ (2015: 248)

The characteristics of Csikszentmihalyi’s state of flow, then, could be elicited by walking, including the neural changes created by walking, and this is what I would like to call Psychogeographic Flow.

Here’s Iain Sinclair:

‘[w]alking is the best way to explore and exploit the city; the changes, shifts, breaks in the cloud helmet, movement of light on water. Drifting purposefully is the recommended mode, trampling asphalted earth in alert reverie, allowing the fiction of an underlying pattern to assert itself.’ (Sinclair 2003 [1997]:4 in Loffler 2017:38)

This ‘alert reverie’, or active daydreaming, it could be argued might result from, or be a route into the state of flow.

As walking is a fundamental aspect of psychogeography, we might consider that the consequence of this ‘remapping’ of the brain, might, in part, be because of the effect, or experience, of the geography, or place – that is to say, at least in part, what we experience from the geography, or place we’re walking, causes these effects in our brain, and could result in a state of flow, and there is a possibility that the psychological conditions of consciousness, promote or create or fire-up language that ends up as narrative, as fiction.

Danko Nikolic has written about Ideasthesia and art. (2016) He defines ideasthesia as:

‘a phenomenon in which activation of concepts produces phenomenal experience… According to the present theory, art happens when the intensities of the meaning produced by a certain creation and the intensities of the experiences induced by that creation, are balanced out.’ (2016: 1)

The word ideasthesia comes from Ancient Greek words idea (for concept) and aesthesis (for sensation). Hence, the term ideasthesia means sensing concepts.

Nikolic says this:

‘When talking to some of those artists, I learned that they overwhelmingly felt that ideasthesia somehow described the very process by which they created art.’ (2016: 3)

Julia Prendergast has taken this further. She proposes that self-consciousness is diminished at a primal moment of narrative composition, and agrees that ‘science cannot offer as good a balance between idea and aesthesia as art does.’ (Nikolic 2016: 7 in Prendergast 2018: 13)

Thinking, for a moment, about readerlytheory: Yi-Fu Tuan’s Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes & Value (1974) defines Topophilia as the affective bond between people and place, what Cighi (2008:2) refers to as ‘to include all emotional connections between physical environment and human beings.’. Sten Pultz Moslund (2011:30) makes reference to David Damrosch’s view of ‘world literature as a mode of reading is sometimes talked about as a “form of detached engagement” and in order for a work to “achieve a successful life as world literature,” it must be easy to delocalize: its “cultural assumptions” must travel well rather than being steeped in “regional realism.”’ In his article, Moslund sketches a geocritical approach to literature – what he refers to as a ‘topopoetic mode of reading that revives the power of palatial experiences in literature.’(2011: 30) He further explains that this is about ‘reading not for the plot but for the setting, where the setting of the story is not reduced to an expendable passive or ornamental backdrop for the story’s action. Rather place is experienced as one of the primary events of the story and any action is experienced as being shaped, at least partially, by the event of place.’ (2011: 30). He states that geocritical readings involve ‘a mode of reading that moves away from the representation of place in literature to a direct sense of place or a sensation of place.’ (2011: 30)

In attempting to formulate an idea about the writerlyprocess, I would suggest the term ‘Topoaesthesis’ to mean the sensation(s) of place, specifically whilst walking, and specifically from the perspective of the walking writer. More on this later, though it is worth summarising, so far, the link between psychogeography, walking, leading to neural changes and a state of flow, resulting in a sensation of place (Topoaesthesis). Simply put, the writer, through the act of walking, is allowingherself, or is remapping her brain and is receptive to new creative thought – she is, perhaps more able to harvest creative material at this point; she is, to use psychogeographic terminology, allowing her mind to drift, to wander into new creative ‘thinking territory’. However, how might that creative material be translated into words on a screen or page? Once the idea has ‘pop into consciousness,’ how can a writer convey that to the reader?

The title of my thesis is ‘Psychogeographic Flow and Black Country Writing.’ It is an examination of the influence of psychogeography and ‘flow’ on writing from and in the Black Country.

The project is made up of three sections:

+ a ‘psychogeographic’ critical review of selected Black Country fiction;

+ a new, original piece of creative writing in the form of a short novel;

+ a refective commentary on the new, original creative piece and the process of producing it.

The aim is to investigate the following research questions:

+ How can a methodology based on psychogeographybe used to approach the reading of selected Black Country fiction?

+ How might this approach to the study of Black Country fiction reveal possible connections, in theory and in practice, between (literary) psychogeography, and the ‘flow’ experience?

+ In what ways might such an analysis of Black Country fiction enable, energise or inspire the production of a new piece of creative ‘Black Country’ writing?

In explaining the first question, it’s important to point out Coverley’s assertion that ‘the current revival of psychogeography manifests itself as a literary trend with London at its centre…This history or ideas is also the tale of two cities, London and Paris.’ (2010: 11). Unsurprisingly, then, Psychogeography and the study of literary cities has provided the theoretical frame for previous studies (Kent Chapin Ross (2013) Developing a Method of Literary Psychogeography in Postmodern Fictions of Detection: Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy and Martin Amis’ London Fieldsand Katerina Loffler’s (2017) Walking in the City. Urban Experience and Literary Psychogeography in Eighteenth Century London.) These theses have attempted to define ‘literary psychogeography’. Their focus differs, but both have analysed specific works of fiction in relation to mind and spatial surroundings whilst concentrating on texts set in a metropolis (London and New York). Neither have attempted to add to the bank of psychogeographic creative writing themselves, concentrating on ‘readerly theory’. My first research question will take account of the two methodologies, broadening them by disrupting the assertion that literary psychogeography has, exclusively, cities at its centre and focusing on contemporary Black Country fiction. As others have noted, the precise pinning down of where the Black Country borders are located has been, and remains, a contentious issue, and I have asserted here that the Black Country might be better regarded as a ‘concept’, rather than just a ‘place’. Indeed, an important thematic thread of contemporary Black Country fiction is a ‘sensation of place’, rather than simply ‘setting’. By focusing on the fiction of the Black Country, psychogeography will be taken at its word, not-London, off the beaten track, into an analysis of how writers deal with the ‘Black Country concept’ in their writing and, in the second question will develop the idea of psychogeography further as a creative writing practice, connected to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s ‘Flow’ in creativity. Keeping in mind the definition of psychogeography as the nexus of consciousness and the physical environment as ‘read’ by the senses, of course, reveals the significance of placiality and spaciality, in this case, within creative writing. Relating this to the characteristics of Csikszentmihalyi’s ‘Flow’ in the act of creativity:

1. Complete concentration on the task (of writing).

2. Clarity of goals and reward in mind and immediate feedback.

3. Transformation of time (speeding up/slowing down.)

4 The experience is intrinsically rewarding, has an end in itself.

5. Effortlessness and ease.

6. There is a balance between challenge and skills.

7. Actions and awareness are merged, losing self-conscious ruminations.

8. There is a feeling of control over the task. (Csikszentmihalyi, 2013: 111-13)

Having established connections between psychogeography and the concept of flow, this will provide the inspiration for the second section: the production of a new, original piece of Black Country fiction in the form of a short novel.

The third section will examine my own creative practice under the spotlight of the connections established between psychogeography and the concept of flow, the link between which will provide the critical apparatus. I will also be working simultaneously on my creative piece and my blog: Psychogeographic Flow & Black Country Writing at https://kerryhadley2001.wixsite.com/kerryhadley-prycein order to note connections between critical analysis and creative practice in ‘real time’ and, as such much of my analysis and reflection will relate to creative writing practice, mainly poetics, but will be informed by the work of Mike Harris, Camilla Nelson and Kim Lasky (who’s interest is in the difficulty of creative writing research itself and the critical element), current research on ‘place’, ‘place and non-place’ and ‘space’, as well as ‘placiality’ and work of Henri Lefebvre, Webb & Brien, amongst others.

Methodology:

Essentially what I’m doing is an enquiry into the reading and writing process and writing production.My methodology can be described as ‘agnostic’ practice-led research. Webb & Brien suggest that ‘agnostic’ research doesn’t depend on one single model, but has ‘a tolerance for complexity and confusion, and both a willingness and capacity to be led by its data rather than by a predetermined point of view.’ (2006: 3). ‘One response is to explicate what is involved in our work as university-based arts practitioners, which is in part a bringing together of research and practice.’ (2006: 1-2).

In terms of this analysis, it is important to point out that geocriticism and literary cartography are fertile areas of readerly analysis (see Tally who says: ‘using literary cartography a writer maps the social spaces of his or her world; a geocritic would read these maps, drawing particular attention to the spatial practices involved in literature.’ 2011: introduction.) Little attention has been paid to the Black Country or contemporary Black Country literature, either in terms of readerly or writerly research, so, applying an ‘agnostic’ approach, using a literary psychogeographic readingof some existing literature (Anthony Cartwright’s The Cut, Joel Lane’s From Blue to Black, Francis Brett Young’s Iron Age, and Anna Lawrence Pietroni’s Ruby’s Spoon) I’ll be looking to suggest that the texts demonstrate an engagement with the Black Country as more than simply a setting, and that the active role of the Black Country can be interpreted as a state of mind. I will consider how not just ‘place’, but specifically ‘the Black Country’ plays this role (as both an imagined space and an imaginative rendering of an actual place – what Edward Soja might refer to as ‘real-and-imagined’ place).

To be clear, methodologically, then, this research is not about analysing literature looking for representationsof the Black Country or how the texts could possibly be read through the lens of geocritical theory, but more about how the Black Country is, or could be, interpreted as presentin the texts, informed by a connection between psychogeography and the concept of flow, then reflecting on the findings of such readerly research to inspire the production of a fresh piece of creative writing and subsequent reflection. This practice-based writer-as-researcher is a heuristic approach that allows for a second level of translation through reflection that turns the analytical gaze into writerly research, and is, in itself, a type of psychogeographic act.

Why Psychogeography and Flow?

In both cases, they can hardly be regarded as ‘theories’, they’re more like practices. Michael Maranda is wary of importing ‘theories’ into creative writing research, as they ‘carry with them their own interpretative strategies and…authorise the use of certain dominant metaphors which may or may not be present in the work being discussed.’ (2002). Webb & Brien have much to say about this, which applies here:

Taking literary studies as an example, according to Webb & Brien the focus tends to be on the meaning of a particular work, and the reader/researcher operates from an objective distance, not being the creator of that work and that in that case, the focus tends to be on the ‘aesthetic elements’ of the work (2008: 8). It is possible to see the act of such analysis as an academic exercise, a brain-gym for the academic who is the professional consumer. Webb & Brien suggest that creative research benefits from something other than the use of ‘raw material to explore a particular theory, but one that understands that the creative process incorporates the data, and that the process data must lead to the process of interpretation.’ And that ‘interpretation’ becomes ‘putting material in context, and in perspective, of comparing what was found with what was already known as well as what was expected to be found; of analysing method and measures; and of responding reflexively to the artist’s own practice and shifts in thinking during the course of the project.’ (2008: 8)

Mike Harris agrees that there is a difference between interpretation and creation (you might say, in this case, the ‘reader’ and the ‘writer’), what he calls ‘consumption theory with little or nothing to say about production.’ (2009: 1) He questions the application of literary theory to a task for which it was not designed (ie: improving creative writing practice). ‘One may, for example, use a bathtub for a boat, but generally speaking, boats float better.’ (2009: 5). In order to ensure my research offers a meaningful contribution to knowledge (aside from an original piece of creative writing), it is important to know that Psychogeography, and aspects of psychogeography can, and are, used as a physical practice in the producing of generating creative responses (see Overall, 2015) together with the growing research into the effect of walking on creative thinking (see Oppezzo & Schwartz, 2014), additionally, according to Harris, ‘The theorists who “produce the most explicit multi-dimensional models of the creative process” have been Howard Gardner and Mihaly Czikszentmihayli.’ (Feldman, 1999, in Harris 2011: 177)

Here’s Czikszentmihayli:

‘Creativity results from the interaction of a system composed of three elements: a culture that contains symbolic rules, a person who brings novelty into the symbolic domain, and a field of experts who recognise and validate the innovation. All three are necessary for a creative idea, product or discovery to take place. (Czikszentmihayli qtd. by Gardner in Pfenninger and Shubik,: 128)

But, according to Harris, Csikszentmihaly’s model of ‘preparation’, ‘incubation’, ‘insight’, ‘evaluation’, and ‘elaboration’ (1997: 79), which can be ‘recursive’ as well as linear, and moves towards and end-product, may be flawed. If writers need to be inspired (by, say, psychogeography) and the resulting inspiration is re-conceptualised as ‘Flow’, then there might be an intrinsic need for writers to know, learn and apply (symbolic) rules (‘of the trade’) such as a number of ‘how-tos’ (how to create character/plot; how to write the narrative arc etc.) in order for them to achieve ‘success’ or an approximation of it. These ‘rules’, according to Harris ‘are upheld and enforced at any given moment by ‘The Field’…who act as gatekeepers, or bouncers, allowing desirable work ‘in’ and keeping disreputable work ‘out’.’ Which, of course, ‘…might also include political and moral censors, as well as academic literary critics and theorists in so far as their ideas infiltrate the ‘paradigms’, ‘climates of feeling’ or ‘memes’ within which writers write.(2011: 178). The implication is that the question of ‘creativity’ (a term Harris begins to question anyway) is, ironically, a dependent feature, and that critical readers and writers must exist together for it to exist at all.

How does this contribute to knowledge?

My enquiry aims to demonstrate this triangulation of critical reader/writer/critical-writer to examine how psychogeography and flow can possibly work together in the analytical and ‘creative’ (or ‘production’) process.

To re-iterate: the approach consists of three sections: a readerly analysis of a specific and under-researched bank of literature from the Black Country. This will be the first thesis to link the region’s literature (as a non-metropolitan area) with literary psychogeography.

The original piece of writing in the second section will further explore how literary psychogeography can materialise in Black Country writing and will implicitly interrogate the issue of the Black Country’s ‘presence’ in such writing.

Finally, the critical reflection, informed partly by the ongoing author notes, will offer new insights into the potential of psychogeography and flow (psychogeographic flow) into the process of writing, will explicitly interrogate the effect of (literary) psychogeography on the piece, and might offer ideas about notions of ‘creativity.’

Today though, I'm writing creatively, and I'm channelling identity and I'm thinking about narrative drive. I took the dog for a different walk - along the tow path - to see if I could untangle a couple of writing knots. I'm thinking about who I really need the main character to be, what the initiating incident needs to be, and how, if any, resolution ought to happen. I'm still not sure. I have a LOT of books to read, and there is a lot of 'advice' both in 'real' and virtual form.

On 'Notes on an Unfinished Novel, John Fowles said, 'The most difficult task for a writer is to get the right 'voice' for his [sic] material.' (1977: 141) And I think he's right. I have recently been criticised, quite fervently, for my use of my preferred style: a sort of third person, all-knowing, confessional style, but I like it, and I think that's enough. Meantime, I'm going to try and find my flow. Let's see what happens.

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