Flow gets a fair amount of attention these days, and rightfully so. When we can do what we do, even though it is complicated, difficult, dangerous, or just pure fun, with little to no thought about how to do it, we are in the flow. Uncertainty about how to do such a thing might cause a little glitch that spoils the flow, at least for a short time.
That concept of flow thus seems to refer to total comfort with materials and process, requiring many hours of practice to achieve. It’s easy to understand how this establishes trust in oneself; a pianist performing a recital wants to be in that state. There’s another use of flow, however. It’s a mindset that can be employed at any stage of learning, so long as one is willing to learn from mistakes.
Either path to flow involves trust. Since I attempt to develop flow in my aural theory classes, I’ll use that setting for my examples. In one case, trust comes from knowing your materials cold, having deep confidence about the answers or one’s abilities. In the complementary case, it’s about trusting the process, trusting that the mind figures things out pretty quickly on its own, without the intervention of conscious thought. As I play intervals or chords for my students to identify, I can adapt to their errors, providing immediate comparisons, allowing them to hear a correction without my identifying it verbally. This process creates deep, trustworthy learning that is musically useful. Musicians need to be able to use their knowledge in the instant, without having to think. I say “complementary case” intentionally, as one gains flow in this manner much more readily if one works to know the material fully, approaching things in the context of normal use as well as in a more absolute, technical manner.
Heisenberg, in his description of the confounding realization that matter can be understood as both particle and wave, eventually states that classical physics views matter as form, while quantum physics views matter as process. This explanation brings together a few insights I have had over the years. One is the flow issue: do we want to work hard to be sure we never make mistakes, gaining certitude in our answers, or are we willing to accept errors on the way to their elimination through engaged practice? I’d say both, please!
There’s yet another connection here. During my graduate school years, I had a great class in musical aesthetics, with Dr. Kenneth Jacobs at the University of Tennessee. The final paper was to be a summary of all we had read, an assignment I rather resisted because it seemed uncreative. So I dutifully summarized all the authors’ work, and waited for inspiration on organizing the paper. Then it flashed: the writings divided clearly along the lines of the authors’ view of nature. Was nature to be dominated, used for making products, or was the aim rather to cooperate with nature? One side wrote about music as a product, something to be consumed, and the other wrote about music as a process, something to participate in.
This question, of music as process or product, is on my mind a lot. I’ve seemingly turned toward the process orientation with my piece, Groundhog Night, and I’ve always thought that knowing how to figure something out was more important than just remembering it. Especially I think of process as I prepare to teach Contemplating Music with a focus on John Cage and Pauline Oliveros. Very much eschewing the notion of note accuracy as the foundation of musical achievement, these two composer-thinker musical activists brought us sound-producing processes that lead us to ponder the nature of our relation to sound and music.
I began this essay writing about total comfort with materials and process as the essence of flow. Cage and Oliveros contributed work that enables flow in performance. It seems a radical sort of trust to allow the process of doing to teach. When one is able to relax the mind, accept errors as part of the learning — in a moment-to-moment sense, attaching to neither right nor wrong, engaging in “The Heart of True Entrusting” — one might indeed allow flow as a path for learning.
Let’s get real: much of learning happens this way already. Academic studies and everyday life emphasize being right, and we are all twisted by that reality. We learn to be ashamed of being wrong. But learning in flow is a path followed for a very long time in many professions, and by children everywhere. It’s a path advocated in many religions, and even modern 12-step methods. You see it on bumper stickers: “Let go, let God.”
It’s not easy to let go of wanting to be right all the time, but not worrying about it in the moment makes it more likely to happen.