THE BODY IN FLOW ■ 113
nious sounds is not only enjoyable, but like the mastery of any complex
skill, it also helps strengthen the self.
The Joys of Tasting
Gioacchino Rossini, the composer of William Tell and many other
operas, had a good grasp of the relationship between music and food:
“What love is to the heart, appetite is to the stomach. The stomach is
the conductor that leads and livens up the great orchestra of our emo
tions.” If music modulates our feelings, so does food; and all the fine
cuisines of the world are based on that knowledge. The musical meta
phor is echoed by Heinz Maier-Leibnitz, the German physicist who has
recently written several cookbooks: “The joy of cooking at home,” he
says, “compared to eating in one of the best restaurants, is like playing
a string quartet in the living room as compared to a great concert.”
For the first few hundred years of American history, food prepara
tion was generally approached in a no-nonsense manner. Even as late
as twenty-five years ago, the general attitude was that “feeding your face”
was all right, but to make too much fuss about it was somehow decadent.
In the past two decades, of course, the trend has reversed itself so sharply
that earlier misgivings about gastronomic excesses seem almost to have
been justified. Now we have “foodies” and wine freaks who take the
pleasures of the palate as seriously as if they were rites in a brand-new
religion. Gourmet journals proliferate, the frozen food sections of super
markets bulge with esoteric culinary concoctions, and all sorts of chefs
run popular shows on TV. Not so long ago, Italian or Greek cuisine was
considered the height of exotic fare. Now one finds excellent Viet
namese, Moroccan, or Peruvian restaurants in parts of the country
where a generation earlier one couldn’t find anything but steak and
potatoes for a radius of a hundred miles around. Of the many life-style
changes that have taken place in the United States in the past few
decades, few have been as startling as the turnabout concerning food.
Eating, like sex, is one of the basic pleasures built into our nervous
system. The ESM studies done with electronic pagers have shown that
even in our highly technological urban society, people still feel most
happy and relaxed at mealtimes—although while at table they lack some
of the other dimensions of the flow experience, such as high concentra
tion, a sense of strength, and a feeling of self-esteem. But in every
culture, the simple process of ingesting calories has been transformed
with time into an art form that provides enjoyment as well as pleasure.
