Flow

When Tyrus was fourteen he found himself completely immersed in discovering harmony on a keyboard.  He said he couldn’t wait to get home from school every day to get back to the learning, and that he even had to be reminded to eat.  As a piano teacher who studied music education, I remember reading about flow and according to a Wikipedia article on the concept, flow “in essence, …is characterized by complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting loss in one’s sense of space and time.”  It also is described as the “‘optimal experience’ in that one gets to a level of high gratification from the experience…One’s capacity and desire to overcome challenges in order to achieve their ultimate goals not only leads to the optimal experience, but also to a sense of life satisfaction overall.”

This definition explains Tyrus’s conviction about knowing his abilities.  I believe he was so absorbed in learning harmony at the level of flow, that it ingrained him ultimately with the ability to get out of the way and let music move through him.  I also believe that his experience was made even more powerful by the music he was learning.  Gospel music is some of the most inspirational and personally helpful music I’ve ever played.  

When I’ve felt flow as a musician, it was like falling in love.  Those intense periods of musical growth in my own life have made me feel happy in an out-of-this-world way.  I want my students to know this feeling, but it’s often a challenge to help students find flow in practice.  There are too many students who absolutely dread the time spent at their instrument, finding it difficult to do much more than focus on learning a difficult passage further complicated by a score loaded with lines and black dots.  Of course not everyone may find their flow in harmony like Tyrus, but I suspect that music with it’s many components of melody, harmony, rhythm and expression, is a universal conduit for it.  Part of my job includes finding the music and the components of music, that mean enough to the student, so that flow is even a possibility.

Do you know what makes you lose all perception of time and space?  I’ve discovered that preparing this podcast lands me there, along with playing and teaching music.  Talking with Tyrus has inspired me to seek more immersion and spend more time with the the most consistent love of my life, music.