Interview with TAMARA MURPHY by Merinda Dias-Jayasinha

In The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann writes, “Into a section of mortal time music pours itself, thereby inexpressibly enhancing and ennobling what it fills”. I second this vivid illustration, one describing the timeless state called ‘flow’ that many experience when playing or listening to music. Music allows me to disappear from myself – time becomes motionless if I’m listening to the right album at the right time.

Recently I sat down with Tamara Murphy to discuss this phenomenon, her music, and more. Murphy is a Melbourne bass player and a stalwart of the music community. She has released nine albums and has appeared on more than thirty recordings by other artists. She has toured Australia and internationally, performing in Japan, China, Europe, the UK and America. Currently, Murphy performs with Kate Miller-Heidke, Ali McGregor, Harry Angus, Clio Renner, Andrea Keller, Nat Bartsch, Paul Grabowsky and her own group, Spirograph Studies, as well as with many others.

Murphy feels that Mann’s sentiment regarding flow can be applied more broadly: “I mean, it’s tricky ... but I think everything in our lives does that, in a way, because it just depends on how you’re connecting whatever it is that you’re doing. I’ve had some really great experiences where I’ve totally had that flow thing kick in. There was one really strong one I had, I was right at the end of third year, when I finished uni, and was lucky to be in some playing situations that were way above my head. I remember getting to this gig and not feeling very match-fit. The soundcheck was the rehearsal, and I remember turning up and just going ‘I can’t do this, like it’s going to be so bad ... what am I going to do?’ So I remember sitting down just before the gig before we went on and having this quiet moment with myself – just going ‘okay, all I can do is what I can do and if the people don’t like it, that’s their problem’”.

Flow state is the result of diverting our brain’s full capacity to a single task, one in which we are immersed. Researchers have shown that our brain’s prefrontal cortex, an area that generally focuses on introspection, shuts down during periods of intense engagement, such as while listening to or creating music. As Jonathan Berger, a Stanford University Music Professor, writes, “the sensory cortex becomes the focal area of processing and the ‘self-related’ cortex essentially switches off”. This flow state has been described as “losing yourself” by neuroscientist Ilan Goldberg. During these connected, intense moments, time can appear to stop or cease to exist at all.

“At the time I didn’t think about that little moment,” Murphy says, “but it was almost like a little prayer, a little ‘giving my ego away’ thing. I stepped on stage and I remember the first 30 seconds of the gig and the rest of the whole set, it was like an hour's set-can’t remember anything. The whole thing just went and it was a total flow thing with the band, big listening from everyone, it was this great experience and I cannot remember any of it”.

As a vocalist and musician, I’ve also felt that flow: that elevated feeling, which seems to emerge at my best gigs, after which I often have little recollection of the music making. Weightlessness takes hold and I feel suspended in all parts of the room. I feel invincible. Maybe the key to a ‘successful’ career, or rather, to feeling confident in yourself and your playing, free from self-doubt during and after a performance, is to reorient our practice towards the focus required to enter into that flow state, to boot out that inner critic.

“I think I’ve always tried to get back to that state, all that musical flow thing is like, if you’re thinking things - your brain is narrating itself [and] you’re not 100% doing the job.” Murphy elaborates, “It’s almost like that zen, meditative thing of 100% of your being, being there, and you know when you’re watching a great movie, or looking at a beautiful artwork, anything that can be transportive. I think all those things can take you there in the same sort of ways. I think if you’re really letting yourself go, they can all do the same thing. I think that’s part of the art, I think it’s one of the reasons why practicing meditation is so good for musicians because you’re literally practicing that focus of putting yourself back [in a connected space] and also you catch yourself thinking stuff”.

“It’s such a good way to be,” Murphy says, “but I think there’s a time and place too. Like it’s great to get into that flow if you can when you practice, but it’s more like, when you’re practicing, you’re consciously trying to add new information in, like following a new cooking recipe, you can’t just improvise the whole thing, you’ve gotta try out the flavours and see how they work together, see how it feels to play it and how it can fit into your language and your vocabulary. Ultimately that’s the end goal but I think there is a time and a place – you can’t be like that all the time otherwise, we'd all be walking through life in a daze”.

In a daze, Murphy most certainly is not. Her band Spirograph Studies is charging ahead with a new record, Lowlights, releasing October 15 2021. The second album from the group after 2019’s Kindness, Not Courtesy comprises seven new compositions from Murphy (bass, vocals), brought to life with Luke Howard (piano), Sam Keevers (piano), Fran Swinn (guitar), and James McLean (drums).

On the album, Murphy says, “I feel like this one is a lot more/all the tracks are really different stylistically. One of the tracks is this cute, little ditty of a thing, that actually Sam Keevers plays on and does a solo – we normally don’t do solos in this band. Then Anteloper [the first single off the record] totally rips off some neo-soul things and then becomes this anthemic thing in the end, then there’s some jazzy, freeish things. It's just like this real magazine, like a lot of different things all next to each other. I felt like I needed to document that stuff to start the next thing.”

As we wrapped up our conversation, Murphy says, “I’m just trying to get back to being more intuitive in what I’m doing, and so for me Spirograph Studies is a band where I'm really trying to do that and not put out anything that I’m not 100% happy with”. I wish I had the space to document more of what Murphy and I spoke about, but one thing’s for sure – Tamara Murphy is an invaluable contribution to Melbourne’s music landscape.

Spirograph Studies’ second album, Lowlights releases October 15th, 2021. It is available for pre-purchase on the group’s Bandcamp along with their first single, Anteloper.

Dingo: Issue 2 came out on October 1

Highlights include: the amazing story of Howard Belling, Jazz in Adelaide, the place of the Bigband in education, art, community and its place in government policy as well as lots of news, reviews, education and more!

REVIEW OF "THE LAND OF IF" CD by ERIC MYERS

Eric Myers' review of "The Land Of If" CD by the Ball-Hanlon-Schulz trio (trumpeter Eugene Ball, double bassist Ben Hanlon and accordionist Antony Schulz) was published in The Weekend Australian newspaper on Friday, September 10.