Mike Gordon Discusses Flow State on ‘Science Friday’ Podcast

Mike Gordon, photo by Rene Huemer

Yesterday, Phish bassist Mike Gordon appeared on WNYC’s Science Friday podcast to discuss flow state and the research into it that he’s funding with Dr. Greg Appelbaum. In conversation with host Flora Lichtman, the artist and his collaborator delve into their understanding of the mythicized level of clarity and the work they’ve done to approach it.

With 40 years of musical experience guiding his reflections, Gordon speaks with confidence and candor on the feeling he chases night after night on stage. A significant portion of the episode is devoted to the bassist’s attempts to describe the intangible flow state, which offers some enlightening insight into his thought process while performing. He finds that the phrase he generally uses with his Phish bandmates is “hooking up.”

“They would say, ‘Okay, we were really hooking up,’” Gordon says, “because the thought is that music is a communication, and improvisation especially is all communicating, between us and the audience riding on the energy. But hooking up is really important, and it doesn’t happen readily: you have to cultivate it, and train yourself to do it… you know, like in a conversation, if you only listen  to yourself, then it’s gonna be a very bad conversation.”

But beyond the discursive character of live interplay, Gordon says the feeling can be “religious experience, transcendence, self-actualization, whatever you want to call it that can’t be put into words. We don’t attempt those grandiose words. Instead, we’ll say, ‘That jam was amazing!’” Later in the conversation, Godon offers one of the most powerful characterizations of the flow state, calling it “a different level of being human.”

Appelbaum’s contributions to the podcast center on their efforts to reliably measure the phenomenon. The researcher says that in the project’s early days, they focused on finding and isolating the moments when artists or athletes are in flow, then examined the brain states in those moments to discover that the brain acts differently in a noticeable way. As they’ve become more capable of relating the loss of self-consciousness and its physiological signals, they’ve begun to question application – pursuing the possibility of triggering visual or audio cues by brain waves.

One of the most engaging moments in a thoroughly engaging conversation is Gordon’s step-by-step evaluation of a significant “Bathtub Gin” jam, tracing the song’s evolution from its basic structure into a free-form section in a methodical analysis. “We’re playing notes and patterns not for the sake of playing notes and patterns,” the bassist says. “We’re playing notes and patterns for the sake of getting into a dream state and transporting our consciousness in ways that we’ve learned to cultivate over the years just by doing it.”

Listen to Mike Gordon’s Science Friday interview at sciencefriday.com, or through all other podcast platforms.