Here Comes Treble: The Zone
...During a recent trio recital at the University of Johannesburg, fellow musicians, Peta-Ann and Susan, page-turner Leon, and I all were privileged to experience the joy and rapture of entering ‘the zone’...
Isabel Bradley enters a zone of pure bliss.
Sports commentators sometimes say that a particular sportsman or woman was ‘in the zone’ during a tournament, when the performer seemingly achieved every stroke, placed every ball or ran every race effortlessly. No doubt Novak Djokavic felt that he was ‘in the zone’ during his winning Australian Open final match against Andy Murray recently… the same could probably not be said about Andy.
Being ‘in the zone’ is defined by psychologists, as being ‘in a state of single-minded immersion’, the ‘ultimate harnessing of the emotions while performing’. They refer to this state as one of ‘flow’, in which ‘the emotions are not just contained and channelled, but positive, energized and aligned with the task at hand…’ creating… ‘a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task’.
The whole premise of experiencing ‘flow’, of being ‘in the zone’, is that technicalities, how and what one is doing, physical sensation, all fade from consciousness, leaving one in a state of unadulterated emotional experience.
Google, books and educators all offer a large amount of information and guidance on what it is to be ‘in the zone’, and how to achieve this state of wonder. Summarised, it requires talent for the task at hand, time, dedication and passion while making the technical secondary to the mental and emotional, intense concentration and a difficult but achievable goal, self-confidence and, in the case of a team entering the same zone, a shared and very strong desire to succeed to the height of their abilities.
During a recent trio recital at the University of Johannesburg, fellow musicians, Peta-Ann and Susan, page-turner Leon, and I all were privileged to experience the joy and rapture of entering ‘the zone’.
Fascinating Flow
The world narrows
Until the four of us are all that exists …
In a bubble of light,
Sound surrounds us –
Instruments and bodies are one,
Flowing together
Into bursting joy…
Applause
And the audience joins us
Here in the zone –
Just for a moment…
An then we return
to our ecstatic, exclusive cocoon…
And when it’s finally ended,
When we’ve bowed and encored
And hugged backstage
And packed our instruments away,
We celebrate,
Still floating miles high,
Somehow, still there in the zone.
But all too soon
The world encroaches,
And floating down from our clouds of ecstasy,
We finally sleep, and sleep, and sleep…
Somehow, that evening, we achieved a state of mind and emotion that can never be guaranteed. We walked on-stage, then just flowed into the zone…
Speaking only for myself, it has taken a life-time of passionate dedication to music to achieve this state of wonder. What a marvellous experience, what a privilege.
Until the next time…. ‘here comes Treble!’
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by Isabel Bradley
