For 16 years, I bled jazz. Countless hours alone in my practice shed, honing technique, recording myself for brutal self-analysis, dissecting and transcribing master drummers’ solos note for note. My dream was to transcend technique, to exist in a state of pure reaction among musicians in perfect communion, where improvisation flows as effortlessly as thought.
The years melted away—George Lawrence Stone’s sticking variations, Benjamin Podemski’s concert drum solos, dog-eared “Real Book” charts, college big band concerts, smoky jam sessions, a basement practice routine that nearly deafened Mom. Once I was in NYC, there were classes at Drummer’s Collective.
With intense application, playing became rote. But in rare moments of surrender, it wasn’t me playing the music anymore. The music played me—ideas transmitted effortlessly, without thought, guided by some unseen force: maybe the woman in the third row, maybe the ghost of Tony Williams. In such moments, when fatigue stilled the mind, instrument and music intertwined, a single entity responding not to conscious thought but to some unknown, unknowable force. What ensued was beyond my mental reach.
A refreshing clarity brought instruments closer, revealing those subtle nuances superior musicians express.
In the 1980s, my musician crew and I stumbled upon this “flow” state, which we coined as part of our musicians’ parlance. Or so we thought. Turns out that Hungarian-American psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi was already onto it. “Flow in positive psychology, also known colloquially as being ‘in the zone,’” states Wikipedia, is “the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.”
Flow, or something like it, happens for listeners, reviewer, I’ve chased that elusive feeling. Occasionally, a new piece of equipment—singleended triode (SET) integrated amplifiers by Audio Note (UK) and Italy’s Mastersound; push-pull stereo tube amps from E.A.T. and Shindo; solid state amps from Ayre and Luxman; a digital amp from Technics—have unlocked a similar sonic transcendence. I’ve heard the flow state from inexpensive gear and from ultra-expensive gear. It’s a bit of a phantom, but when it’s there, it’s undeniable. The flow state can be physical and cerebral: felt, heard, and conceptualized.
