An Evening with Mike Gordon

Life is a balancing act. Mike likes to think he learned to live in the moment. He let go of self consciousness, surrendered to each passing moment, and right in the backwoods of Vermont, he blended his body, brain, soul, and heart into one bloody heap of musical intention. On one fateful night after a peak jam session, Mike went deep into the forest, hugged a tree, and vowed to live in the woods and play music every night. So life can be framed by peaks and epiphanies, but it’s a balancing act.

If you reach nirvana through music, that doesn’t mean you can reach it the same way again, since nirvana doesn’t work that way. Well; who knows how it works, but it might require new parameters and be framed by new paradigms with each passing decade.

Life’s a balancing act. When do you live in the moment, and when do you plan for the next? When are you James Bond, so cool without needing to speak, or out of sorts like Gomer Pyle. And when does one actually feel like God (now scientifically proven to be Fred Armisen)? I guess one can act with nobility and hope for the best. I’ll shut up now – this is supposed to be about Mike, not me.

Bass has been Mike’s passion – he learned ways of combining propulsion with flight, opposing integral components of new musical ecstasy. Whatever the fuck that means. Mike set on a lifetime’s journey to make things, and forget about balancing acts. Except when it comes to making things – in which case he’s balancing the moment of now with the moment  of… I don’t know if Mike would even agree with any of this; I’m just kind of saying it knowing he won’t read it. I know, for one thing, that Mike wouldn’t want this bio to be “all about me,” but what the fuck am I supposed to do? I mean, I’m writing about Mike. I was chosen to do it, I’m doing it, and that’s my subject matter. Jeesh.

But life is a balancing act, and after all the bullshit of Inside In, Oustide Out, Upside Down, and whatever the fuck, Mike has kinda gotten inside, and is no longer outside. Yeah, right.

PS I lied when I said that life was a balancing act. Never trust anyone who uses the word “life” in a sentence… Such tripe!20