Crossroads: Music

Last week, jazz brought me to Buenos Aires. My friend and colleague Dominic Alldis had asked me to take over one of his ‘Virtuoso’ seminars for a large marketing and advertising agency.

Together with Fabian, Pablo, Marcelo and Rodrigo, four superb jazz musicians from Buenos Aires I demonstrated the ins and outs of a jazz performance for an appreciative audience. The audience, mostly consisting of account managers, could ask questions at any time. Topics discussed were the role of leadership in jazz, how jazz musicians approach conflict and mistakes, how improvisation works, how one can create something ‘out of nothing’ and the individual roles of each instrumentalist.

What struck me the most was one remark by one gentleman – especially since I recently rote about this subject in my previous post. In that post I wondered whether ‘flow’ is always present, but is only sometimes attainable when we tune into it, or, whether ‘flow’ is only present when we create the right circumstances for it to emerge.

In Buenos Aires, the gentleman mentioned that he couldn’t understand why the musicians, as soon as something nice was established in the music, would change it into something else. He suggested that a creative flow in music could be reached when one stays with an idea, not by moving away from it all the time. I suggested that the flow was already there, and what he perceived as ‘changes’ were actually variations on top of the flow. We continued our talk – comparing points of view - afterwards and came to discuss the role of routine and repetition in the emergence of ‘flow’.

One can say that there is a difference between a physical routine and the routine of the mind. The physical routine can help us to get into that sweet state of ‘flow’. The gentleman in the group gave the example of his five-hour bicycle rides that would put him into this state. The repetition of a physical movement brought him in the trance-like state that we call ‘flow’.

People who meditate often tell us that the repetitive thought process of the mind is exactly what keeps them away from the spacious natural state of ‘flow’. It is the routine of thinking that creates the distracting background noise in our mind. Some people who meditate use the power of repetition to still the mind by mentally repeating a mantra. This repetition helps them to become more awake, relaxed and focused, whereas the automatic continuous thought repetition makes them confused and stressed.

One can believe that the bodily repetition of a physical movement – and the repetitious movement of our breathing - can bring us into that state of ‘flow’ where things appear to happen effortlessly and where the experience is giving us a wonderful awake feeling. On the other hand, careless, automatic thinking can create fear, restlessness and stress in us – the opposite of the calm energetic and inspiring values that ‘flow’ can create in us.

Repetition is an important ingredient in jazz music, and in many other trance-like styles of music. For me, this is an interesting process. When we hear something for a second, a third, and a fourth time we have the ability to let go of the idea that we have to hear new ideas in order not to get bored. We let go of that, and start to appreciate the repetition of that one rhythm – or one musical idea. We stop to listen intellectually and start to feel the rhythm – or the piece of music – with our body.

It is when we listen to the music not only with our mind, but with our heart, soul and body that we say we get a ‘kick’ out of the music, or we experience the music bringing us more concentration and relaxation. It is then that we can get into a trance or need to move and dance to the music.

Pianist Keith Jarrett is a good example of a musician that uses repetition as a form of art. During his solo concerts he often stays with one idea, focusing the listeners attention on how he is performing the music instead of what he is performing.

I get a similar feeling when I listen to John Coltrane solos. Each chorus -meaning each harmonic structure-form of the song - is repeated many times during his solo. Each time the solo grows in intensity and energy, bringing the listener in a captivating trance. With Coltrane’s solos, the form or chorus – the unit of time consisting of 12, 16 or 32 bars – is repeated. Often in Jarrett’s solo concerts, the musical idea itself - often a short unit of time - is repeated. In a similar way we find repetition used in tribal music, minimal music and techno or dance.

I feel there is a lesson to be learned from this. I guess that in life we deal with repetition in various ways. Repetition can bore us, and can lull us into oblivion. With each repetition it can make us more ‘automatic pilot robots’ and tired.

But it can also create a trance-like state in which we experience each repetition of a motive or a movement as filled with more energy, more effortlessness and with more intensity.

It was during an intimate performance in a folk music club that I heard the Aca Seca Trio. Their music is absolutely marvelous and although I couldn’t understand the lyrics the music went straight to my heart. I can advise everybody to check out Aca Seca’s website and hear some great Argentine new music.

Today I have been teaching piano classes again at the Music Conservatory in Groningen. That's high up in the North of The Netherlands. From where I live that's two hours sitting on the train to get there and two hour to get back to Utrecht. A nice opportunity for me to do some reading and to take an appreciative look at the northern countryside of The Netherlands.

One student asked me how one can practice to get in the 'flow', - how to enter 'the zone' - that magical spacious place where only enjoyment of sound resides and where no distraction from thoughts or fears appears.

This jazz piano student - as well as a lot of other music students - has read the book Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner in which he speaks of 'the space'. And 'Flow' is well described in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book 'Flow'.

After some exchanging of ideas we arrived at the question: Is the state of 'flow' always present, but do we sometimes lose touch with it? Or, does flow occasionally happen to us - like an accidental trip - but is in reality non-existent?

It seems we have a couple options, concepts and explanations about our experience with this 'flow'.

We can believe that this state of 'flow' is constantly present in our life. We can believe that life is a flowing ever-changing creative process, and that we're a part of that - and connected with the centre of it. We can allow ourselves to experience this flow effortlessly, at any time. That's very much like the 'Force' in Star Wars. At least, that is the impression that I get when I hear the wise words from Yoda, the Jedi master:

"My ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it. Makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us, and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you. Here between you, me, the rock, the tree, everywhere. Yes, even between land and ship."

We can compare the 'flow' - this space - or this force that connects and binds us all, with the 'Force' in Star Wars, or with the Matrix. I just watched the movie I Love huckabees and I very much enjoyed watching how the main characters deal with the existential question whether we are all connected - made of the same stuff - and that this connection makes everything meaningful, Or, that we are all separately existing beings and that life is meaningless.

So, we can believe in a space and a force that is bigger than we are and that connects everything in and around us. Somehow though, we lose touch with this force - this flow - because we start having thoughts and worries about the future - about our future agenda. Or, we start thinking about events in the past - all the things that in our limited view 'went wrong'.

The second option; We can belief that this space - the zone, or this sensation of flow - is a temporary state of mind. But we are able to create this state of 'flow' by force of willpower - by effort.

A third option would be not to get lost in a yes or no debate, not to get carried away by either extreme, but to choose not to choose any concept of what 'flow' is and how it is achieved, and keep an open mind to accept 'flow' in any way it appears in the present moment. We don't need to freeze or label our experience in fixed explanations. We learn to appreciate flow whenever we are aware of it.

This is what Anthony de Mello, 1931 -1987 Jesuit priest, psychotherapist, writer says in his book One Minute Nonsense:

"The Master persistently warned against the attempt to encompass Reality in a concept or a name. A scholar in mysticism once asked, "When you speak of BEING, sir, is it eternal, transcendent being you speak of, or transient, contingent being?" The Master closed his eyes in thought. Then he opened them, put on his most disarming expression, and said, "Yes!"

Different people have different ways of perceiving and explaining the world around them. Different people have different views about what the zone or the flow in reality is. It is comparable with love. The same questions arise. Is love always present as a creative and sustaining universal force? Or is love just something we fall into or out of when we please? Try to explain love. It can only be experienced. The same is true for the 'flow' or the 'space'. Or 'God', Creator or 'Spirit Energy', or whatever you want to call the higher force, for that matter.

More de Mello:

"A .. belief is not a statement about Reality, but a hint, a clue about something that is a mystery, beyond the grasp of human thought. In short, a ... belief is only a finger pointing to the moon. Some ... people never get beyond the study of the finger. Others are engaged in sucking it. Others yet use the finger to gouge their eyes out. These are the bigots whom religion has made blind. Rare indeed is the religionist who is sufficiently detached from the finger to see what it is indicating - these are those who, having gone beyond belief, are taken for blasphemers."
Antony de Mello - One Minute Nonsense

Today I saw again that most students practice the piano with lots of doubts, fears and thoughts in their mind. That keeps them from getting to that 'space'. It definitely keeps them from sitting relaxed behind the instrument with an open mind and a open heart. After experimenting we noticed that it works pretty good to focus on feeling and sound with total concentration during practicing. Doing that, we practice to be in the present moment with an 'empty' mind. We're then resting our awareness - our being - in the sound of the piano and in the physical sensations of our body. Focussing on our breathing also helps to keep our attention in the present moment. When we stop thinking about 'what' to play, we discover that our body, the arms, hands and fingers, know 'how' to play. Better than we think, or dare to believe.

I guess this is easier said than done because we have been training ourselves to live in the explanation of life instead of life itself. We have trained ourselves to take the words and symbols by which we explain our human experience as hard facts of life.

Let me give you some examples. Everybody can probably experience day and night, we can see the sun rising and setting. We can witness this happen every day - that's a magnificent part of nature. But we invented the 24 hour system to create a meaningful theory of our experience of the time between two sunsets. This could also have been 26 hours or just 8. We assume that 24 must be right. We assume a lot of things. We assume that what is outside of us - the things, objects and people - are more real than what is inside of us. These are all collectively accepted agreements by which we organize our lives.

The same is true for borders between countries - we take them as hard facts, but they are invented by men. The same is true for directions in space. We have words for 'right, 'left', 'in front', 'behind', 'up', 'down', and we tend to think in these terms only. But around us is a scope of more than 360 degrees. Much wider than the few words we have for only some directions in space. The same is true for everything that we label.

The question is; at what age do we start to take these explanations - these stories that we tell ourselves and the people around us - for hard facts? And when did we lose sight of the fact that these are just inventions to help us operate in this magical ever-changing world? Who says 'tomorrow' exists? Do we really think that we can walk a thousand miles? That is a fantasy; we - our body - can only take one step. After that step we can again see whether we can take another step.

"Even a 1,000 mile journey starts with a single step". Lao Tzu – (founder of Taoism, wrote Tao Te Ching also "The Book of the Way"). 600 BC-531 BC

The same is true for the piano and the art of improvisation. We put so much conceptualizing - so much words and symbols - in between ourselves and the source of pure sound and rhythm. Keith Jarrett often speaks about the art of improvisation. Jarrett speaks of the 'flame' and the 'fire' in his liner notes of his Cd Vienna Concert.

The inside of liner notes read: "I have courted the fire for a very long time, and many sparks have flown in the past, but the music on this recording speaks, finally, the language of the flame itself."

The space, the zone, the flow, the flame, fire, are all names for the same creative spacious force. We put theories and explanations between us and the direct experience of this 'flow'.

"You've got to drop something. You've got to drop illusions. You don't have to add anything in order to be happy; you've got to drop something. Life is easy, life is delightful. It's only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings." anthony de Mello - One Minute Nonsense

We can become aware that music notes are simply symbols that indicate what note should be played when. But there are many more tones and pitches than those we are able to notate. Our notation symbols are pretty inadequate when it comes to giving us information about quarter tones and bending notes. Our music notation system is even less designed to tell us how to play a note. We have some symbols that inform us how loud or soft we should play a note. But the are many more subtle nuances of volume somewhere between f, ff, fff, f, p, and pp. We should be aware of the limitations of our music notation system and move beyond it in our awareness of dynamics and touch. We do not have to limit ourselves to the invented symbols, and can realize that we can play many more un-notatable nuances in dynamics. The fact that we cannot notate them or put them into a 'system' does not mean that we cannot play them on our music instruments.

Theory books can get in the way of us and the meaningful flowing music. Although these books have some value in helping us to organize and structure sound and rhythm, they are very limited in explaining creative flow, free play and spontaneous improvisation. They describe the 'what' of music, not the 'how'. These books are only good for reference. They give us some tools to communicate with each other about some aspects of the music. And it is important to have a certain foundation and understanding of the theory of music. But having a lot of cognitive knowledge about scales, chords, melodies does not mean that we can be creative improvisors. It just means that we have this knowledge - knowledge is not skill. But knowledge can help us to start walking the path and to get the experience we need to learn what its all about.

All the theories about what scales to use where, and the theories about chords and voicings are all somebody's personal explanation of his or her experience with sound. It is their individual system. We can get inspired by such a system and learn from it. But it is still their way. We do not have to see this explanation - these theories - as 'hard facts'.

"Neo, sooner or later you're going to realize, just as I did, there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path..." Morpheus to Neo in The Matrix

Another obstacle is our own concept of how we 'should' sound - how you 'should' play the piano. It is like having a personal PR agent inside of our heads, making sure that we create and maintain a spotless image for our friends, colleagues and audience. This agent makes sure that we show ourselves as being smart, perfect and flawless. For some reason it is not okay to show our limitations and weaknesses. Accepting ourselves how we truly are - with all our strengths and weaknesses - will create the sense of peace and freedom in us that allows us to stop thinking about how we look, sound or smell and will start to focus on the spacious present moment. In that place that we call 'now', we can find the space and the flow.

Once, I asked Herbie Hancock if he could give me a piano lesson. He told me that he had only one advice for jazz students; go to a disco or club and do some all night dancing! At the time I did not get it. I was a lousy dancer. I didn't see what that had to do with being a great pianist. I wanted him to show me all he knows about 'what' to play. I was a bit disappointed. A lesson from him would have been so good for my 'image'. Now I see that he was pointing me in the direction of 'how' to play. I guess dancing is for him a way to get in touch with the knowledge of the body. The body knows about rhythm and flow. It is born that way. When we dance we can learn about rhythm, flow and movement in ways that no book ever can. The body is a great teacher.

As infants we relate to the world with song and dance. That's all we had at that moment to communicate and learn. Bjorkvold decribes in his book The Muse Within how every child uses dance and singing as tools for communication and learning in his or her environment. At that age we can only be in the present moment. At that age it is all play. We do not even have the choice. But then at some age - probably around the time we learn to tell time, learn to memorize the alphabet, and learn to count the numbers - we learn to be in real space and conceptual space at the same time. Probably we feel more safe and secure in the conceptual space in which we learn to operate under the governance of our mind, and start to slowly lose touch with the real - present moment - space. More and more we are operating in the conceptual space until, at one moment in our live, it is the only space left from which we operate. It is at that moment that we forget about the other space and start to fully live in the world of our explanations, language and concepts.

Stephen Nachmanovitch writes in his book Free Play in an inspiring way about the difference between 'game' and 'play'. In Game there are set rules - in Play the rules are invented by the players at the time of playing. In Game the is a referee, in Play all can be referees or this role can shift from player to player. In Game the is a winner and a loser, in Play all win because the play is joyful for all. Game focusses on the results, Play on the process. This is a wonderful way to remind us of all the games we are involved in. We are busy with so many games that we forget to play. In true play there is full focus in the present moment - with one's total being and full attention. Being an creative improvisor at the piano - or whatever instrument - is no game. It's all play.

Creative musicians can operate from that spacious 'now' place - from the real non-conceptual space. Creative improvisators tell others about that place. Creative improvising musicians are the storytellers that speak of that magical place. We help others to remember that behind the conceptual place with its helpful but limiting concepts, explanations and tools, lies a limitless, spacious place full of possibilities, wonder and magic. Every soul has the natural born ability to enter that place - that zone - and start to become the creative genius that hides inside. Artists can help others to realize this. Creative improvisors visualize the magic of that place in sound, rhythm and harmony. Tell those stories. Let's play!

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your paying small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." Marianne Williamson in Return to Love