A Bit of Optimism - Revisited: How to Turn Stress Into Creativity With Grammy-Winner Jacob Collier

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

Team Simon here! As we take a short hiatus, A Bit of Optimism will return with brand-new episodes on March 24, 2026. Until then, we’re revisiting some of the conversations you loved and we still think about long after the microphones turned off. This week, we’re rewinding to Simon’s conversation with the wildly creative and endlessly curious Jacob Collier. To create something truly original, do we build something new or break what came before? Perhaps the answer is both—simultaneously.  Jacob Collier does exactly that. A songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and Grammy Award winner, Jacob has built a career on blending structure with spontaneity. He’s known for turning entire concert halls into three-part choirs, transforming audiences from spectators into collaborators. His album "Djesse Volume 4" was nominated for Album of the Year at the 2025 Grammy Awards, alongside icons like Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, and Taylor Swift. Although Beyoncé's "Cowboy Carter" won, Jacob snagged his seventh Grammy for his rendition of "Bridge Over Troubled Water." Simon sat down with Jacob in a music studio just days before the 2025 Grammys, surrounded by pianos and possibility. What unfolded was more than a conversation about music. It was a masterclass in creativity, about holding opposites at once, embracing imperfection, and having the courage to follow curiosity wherever it leads. If you’ve ever wondered how creativity really works or how to find your own voice without losing what came before—this one’s worth another listen. This… is A Bit of Optimism. --------------------------- For more on Jacob, check out:  http://jacobcollier.com   ‪@jacobcollier‬ ---------------------------

B flat. What do you mean by arrival and departure? So this is my home. If I'm in F, this is my home. I can exist in the key of F for a while. And even if I go somewhere else, like to a flat, when I get home, you still feel like, ah, I remember this feeding from before.

So the idea of arrival, you could say, comes from being not F, something that is not F, like C. arriving at F, right? And I'm home. And then you can kind of augment that arrival into something much more... Colorful. And the joy of music is how to make the best, most satisfying kind of tension,

and then resolve it. Creativity is about breaking something. Nope, it's about building something. No, it's breaking. No, it's building. Or maybe... Maybe, just maybe, it's both at the exact same time. But how can you build and break something simultaneously, Simon?

Well, enter Jacob Collier. Oh wow, thank you so very much. Jacob is a Grammy-winning musician who has an uncanny ability to turn anything around him into musical instruments, including his audiences. If you've seen any of the viral videos online, he literally turns his massive online audiences into his own personal choirs.

I invited Jacob to join me in a music studio in Los Angeles while he was in town for the Grammys, where his album, Jesse Volume 4, was nominated for Album of the Year alongside Billy Eilish, Beyonce, and Taylor Swift. Get comfy because this is a front row seat to his wildly beautiful genius. This is a bit of optimism. So you're nominated for album of the year for your Grammy. Congratulations. Thank you.

You are nominated alongside some musical legends. Trojans. Trojans. Feelings? I heard the other day that I'm the first artist actually in history to be twice nominated for Elm of the Year without ever having charted. So none of my albums have ever been on any charts. I'm personally deeply proud of this. I was going to say, I love that.

It's kind of a cool stat. I mean, there's no such thing as album of the year. Yeah. This is made up. Someone made that up. I'm deeply honored to be included in the number alongside such luminaries. I'm not taking it too serious. I mean, you've already won. I mean, to be included amongst... Yeah, oh, absolutely.

You know, none of us really know what we're doing. We're just playing around. I don't sit around thinking, you know, I'm bloody brilliant and, you know, Burla so much as just what an interesting time to be Jacob, you know, and what an interesting time to be making music? Because I've made a very unconventional album that is deeply around. in many ways and for it to be counted as, you know, one of those is, it's just kind of a thrill. So I'm just taking each day as it comes.

Love. How old were you when you're sort of folk started to realize that there was something there that wasn't, let's call it normal? I think I had an interesting mind as a child. I think when I was small, my mind was interested in things in a certain kind of a way. Do you have brothers and sisters? Two little sisters. Did you have family done every night?

Yes. By candlelight. Still. By candlelight? Oh, yeah. What was the motivation for that? It's just nice? I don't think there was an agenda.

It's just nice. I mean, your parents played the electricity bill. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's something for motivation. And is your whole family artistic? I would say so. I mean, so I was fundamentally brought up by single mother. And I'm eldest of three.

So we were like a quartet growing up. And there was a deep sense of, I suppose, like, introversion, you could say. We all sourced our energy from within each other. And the thing that was interesting to me when I was growing up was how much I was encouraged to look within myself for answers or inspirations that might arise. So, for example, say I come to the dinner table by candle like one evening and I'm feeling kind of angry, but I don't quite know why, but I'm not feeling angry in a sort of scaled-up way. I'm feeling angry in a small way, like a knotted way, like a way that tugs on itself.

And also, incidentally, I'm like, like, my tummy hurts. So say I feel like this, I'll come to the table and I'll say, guys, I'm feeling like this. and the first thing I met with is oh so that's that's interesting you know so like how did this come about why did this come about and how is it that we can untangle this together because we're all here together and so never I in my memory did I come to the table with with something a feeling or an experience something that was met by judgment you could say well why would why would this why are that and I think that what I learned through music is just that the sheer breadth and power of it to as one of the more fundamental unravelers that

of my inner space, if that makes sense. What I find so interesting about that is, and kudos to your mother, right, for affirming your feelings and wanting you to express them in a constructive and healthy manner. And, you know, I mean, I guess this is a good question, which is when you think about art, so much emphasis has put that artists have to be tortured to create. You know, more songs are about breaking up and loss and stuff like this. And painters, they always talk about the torture. but in this case it's the opposite,

which it was healthy expression rather than a torture. Yeah. Well, I think music like other art forms at its best is a sort of alchemy of sorts. You say, okay, I'm going to take the world as I experience it as it is, and I'm going to morph it into something of value, of light. David Lynch, who passed away just a couple weeks ago,

said that beautiful thing about how negativity is the enemy of creativity, which I really adore. And David is someone who, I think, had a fair amount of inner demons and struggles and forces at play. the way he described it was you know you think about someone like da Vinci who you know lives this life of absolute polymathdom and sort of mental intrigue and struggle but actually when he's when he's working is when it flows at its best and it's at its calm and so i think there's something to that

i've never really subscribed personally to the idea that you need to put yourself in a big mess in order to create things i think that through the creating of things you can solve a lot of life's problems i mean i think music is quite an extraordinary place to do it because if you look inside music, kind of every force at play is in a sense a reflection of life in some way. So in music you have, you know, symmetry and balance and maths

and physics and history and geography and the body and all these things that make life possible. So when you explore it, you're kind of studying yourself. At least this is how I was brought up. Were you classically trained? I wasn't, no. So this is talent? Well, I think it was... And practice. It was

in a sense, I mean, there's a distinction between practice and play. Practice being, you know, when you organize a state of play to solve a particular problem. Like, I just want to learn to go, diga, digger, digger, digger, digger really well and really fast. That's a particular thing I can practice, I can work on that. Right. But I think when I was, when I was small, I was somewhat resistant to, like, liturgical practice.

You know, I'm going to sit down and do this for this much time. My brain's never really behaved in that way particularly well. So I think my approach to learning and practice was to kind of follow the thing that felt interesting and felt like it lit me up. Yeah. Which, yeah, I think when I was, yeah, when I was small, was quite varied. I was brought up with so much different kinds of just music. Did you paint, did you draw, or was music always the thing?

I think when I was small, it was language lit me up a lot. What do you mean? In the sense that the way my mind perceived a particular chord was similar in a sense to the way it perceived a particular relationship between words. I remember being obsessed with just the idea of like, what are many contexts within which you can put a human finger? Right. Like, you know, you say linen on finger or doorbell on finger or hummus or whatever.

You imagine the collisions. Isn't that the name of your new album, Homos on Finger? Homos on finger, yeah, volume four. But no, I think there's something that I learned through my love of words. It's like you have these miniature explosions that happen in your mind when two things collide

that maybe don't usually collide. And you can do this with vocabulary and it's kind of one of the more relatable ways I found of explaining this because you know, you take these two things and you kind of, you know, it's like flint. It's like you make a spark out of these two unlikely things and spark will illuminate something new and you think oh gosh where could that take me that's

that strange interesting and so musically that started as you know i'll take these two notes and i'll go but then it became you know genres because i think genres are an interesting and slightly outdated principle but you know what happens if you try to put a banjo in a dub step drop you know to me it's just interesting it's like oh it's almost like a like a level of disgust that to me is kind of like wired into intrigue creatively one of the things that i love about you the way you the way approach the world and even taking music out of it, I think creativity and inspiration exists in all of us. You know, I think everyone's an artist,

you just have to find your medium, right? And I think what we're talking about, or at least talking around, is the idea of being hyper-focused towards something. Yeah. And finding beauty or inspiration or interest or curiosity, whatever it is, in something. And as you're talking, like,

things are sparking in my head. I love the something. sound of a list. The sound of a list. If someone could pull up on their phone for me, it's the Shell Silverstein, a bendable, stretchable man, and I'll show you what I mean. And there's a Shakespeare sonnet, you know, like, Shakespeare did this a lot in his sonnets, where in the, in the middle of his sonnet, there would be a list of like, and this and this and this and this, and this, and this, and this and I love, I love reading a list. I don't know what it is. And as you're talking about how you find the beauty and language. I don't know what it is about my brain that I enjoy

the sound of a poetic list. Do you have it? I'll show you what I mean. Oh cool. Okay, you're great. I haven't read this in a while, so so bear with me. And it gets, where it gets brilliant is the end. Okay, so it's called Twistable, Turnable Man by Shell Silverstein, right? He's the twistable, turnable, squeezable, pullable, stretchable, foldable man. He can crawl in your pocket or fit in your locket or screw himself into a 20-volt socket or stretch himself up to the steeple or taller or squeeze himself into a thimble or smaller. Yes, he can.

Of course he can. He's the twistable, turnable, squeezable, pullable, stretchable, shrinkable man. And he lives a passable life with his squeezable, lovable, kissable, hugable, pullable, tugable, and they have two twistable kids who bend up the way that they did

and they turn and they stretch just as much as they can for this bendable foldable, do what you're totable, easily modable, buy what you're soldable, washable, mendable, highly dependable, buyable, sellable, always available, bansable, shakable, always unbreakable, twistable, turnable man. Oh, fantastic. That's very, very good.

I love the list. Tumbles off the tongue. I love the list. And the bits in between are just me getting to the list. Yes, of course. You know? And so as you're talking about this, this idea of hyper-focused. The reason I want to talk about it is because I want people to be able to see that they are more

like you than they think they are. Yeah, right. I feel very similarly to this, actually. That is a beautiful poem. And the thing about that list is it's like you have a series of miniature chemical reactions that go off in your brain. But the thing about it is that everybody who's ever perceived language or you can say music as well has experiences a version of this. And the thing I always try to emphasize to people is how similar making music is to listening to it. It's the same exact thing, except the other way around.

So when you listen to something, you know, you might be in a particular mood. you might say oh god and i and i'm trying to reverse engineer the the emotional remedy to my mood and i know that the right song will hit the spot right on it might be like a bonnie vair day but only bonnie vair i can hit the spot or syphion stevens day or earthen of fire day whatever happens to be but your job as a listener in a sense is to kind of to find the right component that matches your energy that will sort of pull it out in a in that gorgeous way that you want to emphasize or get away from yeah i either want to be sad so i'm going to play myself sad music yeah or i want to get away from sadness, so I'm going to play his happy music.

Well, usually the thing that's right for your space will meet you where you are and then modulate you slightly to somewhere else. And so I guess the thing with making music is it's similar. You know, and it kind of comes back to the candle at dinner scenario of how you feel today and whatever you say is actually fine, but it's just where it's just like a stuff is starting point. So you play how you feel where the rest of us make a playlist for how we feel. Exactly.

That's beautifully put. And I think the thing I've learned that, you know, I'm not great at reading the dots and the notes and all sorts of things like this. But I think that for me, I've tried to learn how to be as fluent as possible in music as a language in general. So if I sit down and play how I feel, something will come out that's of some kind of value

based in my experiences. First, as a listener, and then secondly, as a maker, and the whole thing goes around in a circle. And the service you provide to an audience, hopefully, is one of meeting them where they are and modulate them slightly, you know? Because I'm so curious, like, you know, do you make time,

to play or do you find yourself just playing? I think because when you started as a kid, it was something you did for fun. You weren't taking classes. It wasn't like you had homework to do and you had to prepare for the piano teacher. But now it's a career. Yeah. Now there's expectations. Now you have to play at certain times and certain reasons.

Yeah. You have to prepare for things. Has it become a job? Like where does job and joy intersect or separate? That's a beautiful question. I think it feels very much. Because you don't want to be singing the same. songs 40 years from now.

No. Well, so the funny thing about my performance is the things I prepare for are that they're not designed to be the same each time. So the preparation is as much of an internal emotional space one as it is a fingers one. I kind of spent a concentrated period of time towards the end of my teens really getting that language together and sort of understanding, okay, so here's how to create tension. Here's how you release tension. Here's how you ask a question and give an answer.

So here's how you twist or turn or whatever you have the things. And so I think that now when I sit on the stage, I'm not thinking so much about the grammar of it, the syntax of how do I put this thing into words as well. I'm more thinking how do I best articulate the thing that I'm feeling or the thing that's in the room, how do I best turn that into something that can be accessed or related to? So that work, that practice is less about,

I practice for two hours this morning, so I'm ready. It's more like I've changed. tuned in enough to know or I'm just kind of, or I can laugh at myself enough to know, you know, you know, that kind of, as an improviser, those principles end up having more of an impact than any particular skill or thing that you might have. So one of the things that I admire about you, and I find remarkable is your ability to use the audience. And I've been in audiences where musicians have attempted to get us to do the singing,

and I'll be totally honest, it sounded terrible. Right, right. And I admire the attempt, but it has always faced. your work is the opposite which is I'm amazed with these huge audiences that you are making good sounding music with people who don't necessarily know how to make good sound music at what point did you realize this actually sounds good yeah it's not just it's not just doing something you know community-wise it is an ongoing process of like deep fascination for me I mean to take you back to when I was like two some my earliest

As a kid, those sort of woolly half memories that you have at that age, were of watching my mother conduct. Because she's a conductor. So she would raise her arms or move her body, and it was like casting a spell. You know, suddenly the room would be transformed into this thing that had many arms and legs and was just running around and making these paintings. And it was just crazy. It was like, yeah, it was literally like magic.

Right. I was obsessed with it. How can you do that? Go like this and something happens. Yeah. And the thing about it is people would leave the room, not just having played the right notes, but they would leave them just feeling better about themselves and life. They would have been like lit up or lifted up.

And I didn't really question it. I just thought, this is what music can do. This isn't it cool? And she would have students come over to the house and they would come in and downtrodden and they would leave the house and they would be uplifted. But this is worth double-clicking on, right?

Which is you're two years old and your introduction to understanding music was not somebody sitting at a piano. It was your mother, you said it was like a magician. Like your mother raises her hands and music comes out of her hands. Yeah. Well, she was playing music through other people.

Yes. Yes. She was, she was, like, so you see the hands moving and the music comes out. So this is your introduction to the magic of music. Exactly. It's kind of beautiful. It's hugely important. But I never thought I wanted to be a conductor. That sounded super stuffy. You know, oh, I got to get my bat on out and sort of read the parts and, you know, order people around. No. But then, you know, as sometimes is the case, what your parents do and the way that you see them behave just ends up coming out through you. So it was, I can specifically remember the moment where my audience interactions graduated from kind of, kind of, you know, of the Freddie Mercury call and response type thing to like a three-part polyphonic organ.

And it was in San Francisco at the very end of February 2019. And what had happened is I've been singing Blackbird, the song of the Beatles, which is a legendary banger. It was one of my favorite means to an end to get the audience to sing because everyone knows the song.

And so I'd got these loops going at the end of the song through the audience, because audiences like to be loops is one of the things they enjoy. So I had got the middle group. Divide audiences to three, normally to three because three is a nice nice number for audiences. So the middle of it was going singing in the dead of night

singing in the dead of night and on the left they were going singing in the day of night on the right of going singing in the day of night so it's a lovely like triad we call it a three part chord and round around it went and I slowed them down and slowed them down as I liked to do and at the end they just went so singing in the dead of night and they sang this big F major chord and it was great and then

I just kept them there and then I suddenly realized hang on. You want to know, you want to see, you don't know. So I can just, what happens if I just point? So I just looked at a group and I pointed it up. And they all went, ah, like this. And then down, yeah, ah, ah. And so we played around a bit with it.

And it felt crazy. It felt unbelievable because, first of all, I knew at that moment that I was continuing the line that my mother had sort of drawn. But it was different because these people had no music parts. They had no instruments. And there was no plan. There was no rehearsal.

It was just the intuition to know how to operate within a container that I'd given them. And the container was the key of F. You know you're in F. So you know you're in F. That's where your anchor is. That's where your imagination feels. I'm at rest. Harmonically.

So you know how to operate in and around F. Everybody does. Everyone who's ever heard music does. Because being in a key is, I would say, inherent to us. It's extremely deep as a concept. So the idea, though, that I could navigate or move around in and around a key center through them, without uttering a note was deeply moving to me

there is something as you're talking about it I mean and I'm thinking about it and some of the videos of yours you know when you're going like this and then you go like this everybody knows how far to go down and if you go like this everybody knows how far to go down

moving your hand you know very low down and moving your hand just a little bit and everybody gets it right yeah well that's a strange like we take direction yes to your point about it the music is in us. Like, we may not know, you know, how many keys on an octave.

Yeah, yeah. The point is, you may know nothing about music, but you know the distance between notes because we've all listened to music our whole lives. Exactly. And you're playing with that. In other words, the music is in us, even if we don't all have the facility to get it out of us. Exactly, exactly.

So here's the thing about music. It's beautiful. It's very simple at its heart. And the audience choir, as I like to call it, has been, I would say, my greatest teacher in simplifying music because there's no rehearsal and there's no planning and you're working with what people don't know that they already know but they actually do know it

which is always always more than you think it is musically and otherwise people are not silly people really tuned it I love to think about this music really is you can distill it to very very simple axes for example the axis of high and low right everyone understands it everyone gets it everyone everyone children grown-ups everyone it's like here's a high note and there's a low note okay got it because it's speech we all We understand the contour of speech. And then there's loud and quiet.

Everyone gets it. I know, I, I intuitively understand what you mean, loud and quiet, it makes sense. And then there's, there's like many and few, right? Everyone understands those principles. You get it, it's a thick chord like this, and there's a thin chord, just like that. And everyone understands, okay, I get it.

It's like looking at a landscape, because it reflects the world so well. And then the deeper you go into music as a process of learning or play, you kind of like increase the resolution of these axes. So, you know, it starts with every kid. I think I was going to say, I think, when we do it. Go to the piano.

So, okay, so you got high and low, right? Yeah, it makes sense. And you've got, you know, wide and narrow. That makes a lot of sense. You got loud and quiet. But then, for example, there's this idea of like arrival and departure. Everyone actually understands. Everyone has departed or arrived at.

So, what... So if I'm in F, which is the key I was just talking about, and within the key of F, I have, like, localities, you could say. So I have, like, next to all neighbors. So that's one neighbor, B-flat. What do you mean by arrival and departure? So this is my home. If I'm in F, this is my home. I can exist in the key of F for a while.

And even if I go somewhere else, like to A-flat, when I get home, when I get home, when I get home, you still feel like, ah, I remember this feeding from before. So the idea of arrival, you could say, comes from being not F, something that is not F, like C, arriving at F, right? And I'm home. And then you can kind of augment that arrival into something much more colourful. And the joy of music is how to make the best, most satisfying kind of tension

and then resolve it. So even the most gnarly sounding like, like a chord like this. It's like that's a weird sound. But if you're careful, then all those notes can move in directions and go, oh, I see. It's like the temperature of the showers changed. Oh, I get it. You know what I mean? So this idea of essentially movement in and around axes is so interesting. And yeah, if you think about departure and arrival, or you think about inevitability. This is such a, such a beautiful, very subtle thing to describe. One of my favorite things to do with the audience is to sing one. note, I'll say sing if, and they'll go like this. And then I put them in all sorts of contexts. That context. But the exercise that's so beautiful with that to me emotionally is you understand your position in things. The beautiful thing about the audience choir that I found in the last few years is that it works

kind of regardless of whether you're a musician or not. I mean, the more musicians are in the audience, often the faster people can learn. But the challenge really is you need about, you need over 50% of the people to know what's going on. The rest will follow. It's like memoration. They'll kind of follow. But I think the main thing about my audience now is that they are kind of just they're open to it. I'm so curious how you explore different emotions, like real emotions that you have better than happy, sad.

Like when you are angry, whether it's that, you know, not that burst anger, how does it show up when you sit down to let it out? Yeah, yeah. So as I'm playing, I'm like, oh, I see, oh, oh, oh, okay, oh, I get it. Because you start, I don't know where I started somewhere down here. I think we all have our way of, and I'm going to go back to your mother, you know, her trying to get you to express yourselves and affirm your feeling. Yeah, yeah. And I think if you look at so many of the struggles that people have,

we don't know how to express our feelings. So it comes out in frustration or anger or burst or we say things, we say things, we don't mean. And even harder than knowing how to or as hard as learning how to express our own emotions is trying to help somebody else express theirs. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I think to find one's own therapy, some people go to the gym to get it out. Yeah, yeah. Go for a run, whatever it is, you know, go outside and have a primal, primal yell. Do you use your piano as therapy, you know, lovesick, you know, angry, homesick? Sure. You know, is it your, is it your therapist? I would say so. Should we go sit down the chair?

I'm so curious if it's, and this is where I'm getting at, like, you know, poets, right? Poetry, even if that's not for anything. Is it the kind of thing that you just do all the time? Is it that you like, like, I'll give you an example, right? I've had a busy week, you know, and I'd be like, oh, I haven't gone for a run in a while, I need a run. You know? Yeah. Is it that for you?

Like, I haven't been on a plane. that I need to play. It just need to play. It is a bit like that. Yeah, it is a bit like that. There's an added layer when you're in front of an audience because there's something that happens

as you do that, as you explore your feeling through, especially when it goes through other people and back to you. You kind of just learn how you're doing. Oh, I see, I'm feeling like that. But yeah, there's a feeling you get when you haven't played in a while.

And you can sort of play, you can play shows. I mean, you can always tap your fingers. You tap your fingers to do some things. You can do that, but there's a particular kind of play that I was kind of getting into there, which is more about, you take a starting point,

and often a starting point is a strange place or maybe it's a pleasant place or a gnarly place or whatever, and then as you untangle it, it's an immense feeling of catharsis in a sense. You see it, I think, oh, that is, that's the human in me singing, you know, and doing anything. But there's an interesting thing that happens as a songwriter, because improvisation is one thing, right?

You improvise, and all the great composers, someone like you and Sebastian Bach, he was like a master improviser on the organ. I wish I could have heard him improvise. But a composition or a song or a piece or a production is like composition in stop time. So I'm going to play this. Oh, okay, now I'll play this. I'll collide it together and make it make sense sort of on the canvas.

And so there's a funny thing that happens, I think, as a songwriter where you kind of deliberately put yourself in situations where interesting results, or you try to put yourself in situations where kind of interesting results will come out that hopefully can crystallize. But that can be kind of a hard thing to do. I guess I'm curious, maybe this is more of a question to you, but just as somebody who thinks about ideas and puts them into words, distills them into concrete ideas, whether it's let's do a podcast or let's put this on the page or let's have a conversation or let's put together a presentation.

There's something that happens to me on the journey from raw starting point energy life input to distilled output, sensible, kind of done, quantifiable. where part of the energy required to make the idea kind of dies and falls away because in distilling the idea, you have to kind of rid yourself of an amount of the infinity surrounding it, but then you get, you whittlet it down to this thing. I mean, from my perspective, in my line of work, you could say, as a songwriter,

that challenge is always interesting. It's almost like you have to court the idea and keep it alive for long enough for it to continue to sort of burn fuel as you move through the process of raw idea into kind of whittled down a day, into particularly whittled down a day, into sharing the idea, and then in your case,

into maintaining ideas across many, many years. Like, you've said something at this point, and then 15 years later, someone wants you to give a keynote on the same principle, in the same way that someone wants me to play a song,

I wrote 15 years or whatever. Like, what's your relationship with ideas of old, their gestation, and then their kind of continued life? As you have always been. Yeah. So it's a good question.

For years, after I wrote, start with why, that's all anybody wanted to hear from me, but I wanted to talk about new things. And they very much wanted to force me to talk about the old things. And I am proud of my old work. I still live by the principles of my old work, but I have zero interest in talking about my work. I'll answer a question or two if people want. I'm happy to do that. But to give a talk, I actually won't do it. And there's a few reasons I won't do it.

It's not just I am a student and I love to understand things. I don't have to agree or disagree or even like or dislike. I just like to understand. Right? And once I understand something or at least I have a good framework that I'm like, I think I understand this. Got it. I want to move to the next thing I don't understand.

And it's why I like engaging with audiences for new ideas because they ask me questions I haven't heard before and then I get to think. That's my favorite thing in the world to do. So yeah, I don't want to talk about my old ideas. I only want to talk about new ideas because I know my old ideas and I want to know new things. But there's a line from your old ideas to your new foundation. 100%.

I don't disavow them. And I'm proud of them and they are the foundations and all of my work is built on the work that has preceded it. But I want to talk about the new renovation I'm doing on the house, not the foundation built 15 years ago. So are there things that you would, are there any things you would thoroughly disavow? Are there any things you would say, I really don't stand with this anymore? something that you used to hold deer? There are, the simple answer is of course. Yeah.

You know, but there's nothing that upsets the whole thing. There are nuances and tweaks and language that has evolved that I better understand my work and going through life that necessarily. So the simple answer is yes. Can you give an example? Give an example. Yeah. Sure.

So I define the why as a purpose, cause, or belief. And now that the work has matured and I've built upon it, and I stumbled upon the infinite game, which was my last work, I now talk about a just cause. And I was like, oh, I wish I didn't use cause to describe. It's just a purpose or a belief. That's still true. But I want to reserve cause for this other thing,

mainly to not create confusion because they're, kind of different. So, so, like, little nuances like that. That makes a lot of sense. So here's, so here's another question then, or another, another point to make is, over the last three months or so, for the first time ever, I've, I've had this analysis done of my audience, who my audiences. And it was really interesting. And the questions it threw up were kind of beautiful and profound. And for the first time ever really, though, I've always enjoyed to somewhat do this. I've kind of been placed in a position of wanting to, or being asked to or wanted to define what is it that I stand for?

Essentially, what is my why? What is my driving course? Why, Jacob? Why come to a Jacob show? So one interesting thing for example about my audience is that I sell far more tickets than my streaming numbers would suggest, right? And I think it's because

a lot of the things I most enjoy about my work are experiences. I love having experiences with people. I love the audience choir. I love conversations at large with people I love playing, collaborating. Maybe it's with an orchestra, maybe it's with a band, whatever.

but I just love it. And often I'll perform things in the shows that aren't even to do with the music on the record. It obviously depends on the show. But the questions that arise with regard to, what is it that drives me? What are my foundational pillars? I have this dual kind of experience with that

where on the one hand, I have this deep relief of knowing, oh, so that's what was always going on. Because it's like that beautiful Michelangelo thing about everything within the sculpture is already there. You just have to remove what's not the sculpture. Right, right, right. Which I think is very much the case as an artist. all you're working with is what you already have.

It's me watching my mom conduct at age two. That's always going to be there. That's one of my raw materials. But as I've gone on this process of analyzing it all, I can't help but there's a part of me that enjoys, not just inherently will resist it, but will enjoy resisting it because it knows, as the creative part of me,

that there's actually creative juice on the edge of something. Enjoy resisting what? I would say resisting the idea that I, I can be defined as this one thing. And I suppose the question I wanted to post to you was this idea of the irrational, the completely irrational mind, which as a creative person,

all of us have a relationship with, and there is the part of us that can rationalise. And I can say, okay, well, I'm in the key of F then. This is what's arrival, this is departure, I'm making tension, or here's how the audience works, or here's how I think about my next, whatever. But still, when I stand on stage or sit on stage and do it,

there is a part of me that just does not respond, to any amount of data or analysis that I could ever possibly have done about who I am and I'm curious how you feel about the cultivation of that part of you that is just an animal and doesn't want to kind of be put into a box

but also enjoys, you'd almost say being disobedient with regard to what is defined as you. Okay, you're opening a Pandora's box. I assume I might be it. So, okay, so I define creativity as finding order in chaos. Finding order in chaos.

Right? And so, and I would argue that, you know, 88 keys on keyboard is chaos. Chaos. Right? Because you take a, you know, you take somebody, a baby who doesn't, and they bang. I mean, chaos. And finding order in that chaos is what we call music.

I would create the creative expression. And I think artists inherently have a comfortable relationship with chaos. Yeah, I would say so too. And I would argue that chaos is. irrational. You know, we seek order, we seek rational, we seek rules and structures and explanations, that's all that rational stuff and the irrational, the emotional, the uncomfortable, the unscripted, the unknown, the uncertain is where the artist plays. And I think great artists understand that what they do is play.

Yeah. Fundamentally what we're doing is playing. We're playing with pieces of a puzzle. Mine might be words and ideas, your might be keys on a piano, somebody else might be colors and and we become facile in our own language yeah and the example I'll give is it have you ever hung out with dancers dancers yeah so so if you hang out I've gone to watch friends choreograph pieces and the choreographer would be like they will demonstrate something like do this and this then this then I want you to go here bupah and I want you to do this actually no don't do this do this do this do this and all the dancers the whole room does it exactly after they were shown once and there was a change in the middle. And I can maybe remember the first two. And I was like, but what, how, huh? And you realize

it's a language. You know, if you say to me, repeat the sentence, you know, three balloons flew up into the sky and one of them burst and fell down to the, and I could go quite a while and repeat it all, because I understand the language. You understand the context for all the nuggets. I know how the pieces relate and I can, I can put them together without any rehearsal. So here's one thing I'll say to that then. So if we take language as an example, and you can say words or music, whatever happens to be, dance. So you speak that language. I speak this language, I speak that language. Sure, sure, sure. I would say

you spoke about creativity is finding order in the chaos, but I also think an important part of, you could say, making art. This is a different thing from following the instructions of the choreographer or playing the parts as an orchestra member. This is more about as the

maker of an idea, as the source of the why, you would almost say. Is this concept of making or finding chaos in the order? I mean, we all have this feeling, I think, or going through rules, regulations, self-imposed, you know, gatekeepers, things, our own structures that we're trying to resist,

other people's structures we're trying to resist. In my situation, the music industry, which is a very strange, it's an orciating place at times. You think, okay, I'm going to take this rigidity and I'm going to scuff it up. That's creativity. So you're almost finding a way back to the chaos.

Yeah, yeah. But I think one thing that people do... When it gets to order, you have to break it. Well, exactly. And to me, I guess what I'm wondering about what I'm challenges, does the nature of creativity also go the other way? Yeah. Is it just when creativity transforms to order or vice versa?

I think that's a great insight. And I agree with you. I think it's a cycle or a circle, right? Because if you take the infrastructure that exists, you take the system that we reject and we rebel and we break it. It's not enough to break it. You have to then rebuild it back. So I think you're right. I think it's the duality of chaos and order.

and the artist when there's excessive order seeks chaos and when there's excessive chaos finds order. Yeah. And it's that. I kind of like that. But I would also say, I mean, and here's an interesting analogy that's to do with creativity,

but also different, is AI, right? So AI asks us to ask questions. That's our fundamental way of interfacing with it. The more interesting the question is, the more interesting the result you'll get. And it's kind of an interesting process of whittling away

through deeply uninteresting things like mortally uninteresting results to get something that's actually interesting and I've spent so many hours you know for example just just generating images I spoke before about you know colliding unusual stuff I love it it's a beautiful place I've made so many different kinds of stormtroopers

oh god yeah like dressed as as Vikings and just as it the thing I used to do and you know my favorite era of it's so funny the eras of AI are so new my favorite era of AI was mid-2020 because Dali 2 had just come out, but it was before it got really good.

It was before it got really obedient or extremely appropriate or reasonable. I remember drawing it to ask you to draw a picture of children escaping from a garden by a torchlight at night. And because it wasn't quite good enough yet, but it kind of understood the nature of what I was saying. It drew the feeling of children escaping a garden by torchlight, but none of those things were present in the image. But you look at the image, you think, you've had that kind of a day, if that's what I was saying, it's what I was saying. it feels like to be a child. Yeah, it's sort of like. So early AI was actually better. Oh, way better. But this is the thing, this is an interesting thing about music and high resolution. People think when you learn music and the more you train, the better you're going to get,

not true. Because whilst your technique can be refined, the friction between understanding exactly what a thing is and not understanding what the thing is, that's where the most creativity happens because the most amount of change happens between order and chaos. This is brilliant. So the whole Malcolm McAdwell 10,000 hours. Yeah. Right? And this is what we're touching on. Yeah.

Which is the more you gain mastery, what ends up happening is ossification. Yes, exactly. You ossify. I look at people who are quote unquote experts. They've been doing 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, they are the best. And you realize they're stuck. You realize that they're bored. Stagnated. You realize that they are either afraid of change, don't understand how to change,

or the money or fame is too good and they don't want it to change. Threatened, yeah. Threatened. But they're, but generally. Generally the feeling of like boredom is there because they've done it so much. The joy was the figuring it out up to 10,000 hours. And so I think you're 100% right, which is mastery is I think probably creatives is a devil to a true creative. There are different kinds of mastery though, I would say.

You can master, for example, the technique or something, the execution of something. You can also exhibit mastery by your ability to create containers. And this is the thing I'm currently obsessed with mastering. Because I've always required the right container for my creativity to feel safe within. Because if you pour creativity into the open air, it just goes and fizzles and disappears. Or it's too much infinity. So what you need is a container that holds you together. And this is, I think this is something you can master.

What's your container? Well, it could be a song. Could be an album, could be a stage, could be a lyric, could be collaboration. But I think this is, I think this is right, which is though creatives are comfortable in chaos, they don't reject order until it's time to reject the order. So this comes back to the irrational thing, though. Because you can't just improvise forever and have that be satisfying to you or the people. Without input. We do want a container, to your point.

We want the song to be, you know, three minutes-ish, you know, that's about a right, it's good time, you know. So I'm sure everyone who's listening who's ever sat down. to write a song or really, I mean, a whole host of creative activities, knows this, understands this feeling, but it's like there's a part of your brain that just won't do the thing that you are telling it to do. I remember being at school and studying for exams, which is something I really didn't like to do. And I would kind of have to engineer through some kind of strange trickery that I would be revising for the exam by tricking myself that it was in fact procrastination that I was revising. So I would say, here's the task. I'm just going to do this thing on the

side. I'm just going to make some music for one second. and then if I managed to trick myself into thinking that the music was the task and that actually I'm just going to do a quick bit of revision before it's like you have to you're dancing with this really abstract part of you it's like this chimp that's just like

and it will react to kind of anything you give it but I think this is such an interesting conundrum in terms of creativity and it goes back to the thing I was saying to you before about what's your relationship with your old work because I'm grateful that's how if you made me sum it up it's gratitude yeah well I would I was I suppose I'd say

say the same for your work and mine, my old work. But I would say like what is it that keeps you being tickled? It's like, it's like you how does one stop, I guess the question is how does one stop entering into that thing that you described just now of stagnating or getting stuck and of getting bored and just sort of recycling the same order it is. How do you keep someone sharpened? And I think to my mind it's something about changing the container. But it goes back to the conversation we had before and I have gone through periods of boredom. Yeah. And stagnation. and oh my God I'm out of ideas. I've had all of that.

And so how have you, if you had to say it in reductive terms, how have you got out of those? It's what you said, which is I have to break something. Yeah, exactly, to break something. I have to break it. And if I go back and look at my whole career when I was in the corporate world, you know, my career would move well.

I'd get promoted to a level where it was boring and I'd quit. And COVID was a gift. I think I was at a period in my own self, in my work where I was bored. And COVID was this magical disruption where I didn't have to break it, it got broken for me. I can relate to that. And there was so much chaos, I was in such a, I was in, I was thriving.

Yeah, yeah, me too. Now, notwithstanding the sadness, the fear, the uncertainty, all at the same time as a jumble. But from a most strictly creative standpoint, it was absolute magic. Yeah. And the stress of it was fuel. Is there something you've done, an album you've worked on a concert you've performed in, just anything specific that was, what you would consider the pinnacle, the ideal.

Like when you look back, you'd be like, I wish every concert was like this one. I wish every album was like this, or every experience I've had was like, if one was the stands out in your career, which one would it be? It's so hard to say, I would say, I'll start with album.

There are two albums that I think sum up for thing, really the thing, because we're all chasing the thing. And you get close to it, sometimes you think, oh, that's the thing, I've almost got it. So the first time I've made me was called In My Room, and I made it in my room, in London in this very,

in this tiny room. filled with instruments and I made it by myself and it was really exciting I taught it by myself with a circle of 12 instruments in a circle on stage and there was this visual element where I would sort of loop my skeleton in 3D using connect cameras and it was this

multimedia thing that was really really fun and that was like day one in the office so everything was new everything was exciting and the metaphor of the room I stand by today as being a huge one for me massive everyone's got a room of some kind I was like enough to have a physical one the arm I just released this time last year

it's called Jesse Volume 4 is the fourth album in a series of four albums. So this was my reaction to to the solitude of in my room. It was like I'm going to collaborate drastically. I'm going to go big. I'm going to go massive. I'm going to really experience what it's like

to work as many people as possible. The first song on Jesse Volume 4 has over 100,000 people on it. Wow. And that's because not only are there an orchestra that my mom actually conducted it on the album, which is amazing. there's all sorts of choirs, individuals, artists and things.

But I recorded audiences obsessively from 22 to 223. And I didn't tell them I was doing this really at the time. But I would end up in a key and I'd be getting the audience to do certain things, singing up and down, whatever. And in my mind, I was playing the song that was half written in all these different parts of the world, every content of the world. And then I took those audiences home and I organized them into this kind of like anthem of the song. that philosophically to me, it really thrills me because it's made out of people, but it's not, I didn't go in with the direct end.

I didn't go in knowing exactly what I wanted to get. I went in with a container, with a concept of, what would it sound like to have 100,000 people on one song? And then I figured it out, oh, it sounds like this. So of those two experiences, what was the reason you decided to talk about? I mean, you've had many concert. You've done incredible collaborations. You've written some brilliant songs.

Like there's many things that you have done that are magical in your career. What was it about these two specifically that you want to talk about them now? Well, I think that they both contain the thing. Which is? Which I think maybe is about the human voice. I think it's about being a voice and having a voice. I think that my first contribution in this album in my room was about me exploring my own voice.

And being like, what the hell is this? What's the furthest I can stretch this? And the result, though, obviously, I listen back to it now and I'm like, oh, let's just little Jacob, just figuring it out. You know, it's just getting started and stuff. And I would, I guess to second your point, I say I'm very grateful for the album. But I so appreciate the thing that I was catching,

which was this idea of like what I, what, if I close my eyes and listen to music in my head, what does that sound like? What is my inner world feel like? That was what it felt like. And I'm so proud of it. And I still go back to it and think, there is something of this that is in everything I ever do,

that is the truth. Because it's, I mean, I learned to walk in that room at home. It was my ultimate foundation. And then this album I did last year was kind of like the same principle, but in the opposite, which is the voices of everybody else. but it kind of felt as faithful to the thing,

which is very mysterious. And I'm curious how you define the thing for you, but I think to me there's something about really being a self and through the voice, and then accessing that through other people, that feels like the thing I'm chasing. Tell me an early specific happy childhood memory. Specific that I can relive with you.

There was a moment when I was probably about two years old as well. I'm amazed that you had memories from two years old. Yeah, well, I have kind of two main memories when I was two. One is the memory I already gave you, which you already really read it with me. But the second is, I remember sitting on my mother's lap, and she was playing the violin, she's a violinist. I remember looking up and seeing the violin above me

and being like, I'm the violin. Like, I'm the music that's being played. Like, it's me that is, I'm the source of the sound because the violin was going into me and then out. That to me felt very, very exciting. And I mean, yeah, like many memories of that age, it's sort of in this weird dream, half dream state thing. So I think that's where the truth lies.

Because all those three stories that you describe, the two albums and this experience of you sitting on your mother's lap, I think is the discovery that we are all instruments, right? And in the first album, you're the instrument, and you're looking to compose through the different sounds of you. And now basically, you're your mother. and in the first example, you're sitting on your own lap. And the second example, the audience is sitting on your lap.

And I think the idea of being a vessel, the idea of being a container, and the word containers come up a few times. But this idea, I think, of being the messenger for some sort of expression and discovery, I think is your genius. You've touched it a few times, which is, you've touched it a few times, which is, you, you, You make musicians out of people who didn't know they were musicians. You make music out of people who aren't musicians. You said, you know, if half the audience is musical, it just goes quicker.

They just learn quicker. But, and I think that your music itself is so exploratory, formful and formless. Oh, thank you. That I think that what you give us is a megaphone. Like, you're the megaphone, weirdly, and not the sound going into the megaphone. Oh, I think that's so... I think that's who you are. And I think...

That's amazingly put... I love... I mean, just listening to your podcast. I love that moment at the end of the podcast when you say, and basically he's the container. And the reason I love it so much is because it's a thrilling thing to be kind of nestled into one concept. And as a person who is the person they are, it's sometimes it's hard to see it. But I love the way that you put that. And I think it's interesting to me that I feel in...

in some ways, the most myself, when I'm that megaphone for others. But there's something about being that megaphone, which also feels like it is me, but it's also not me. Yeah. And there's that funny dance between, yeah, being one pixel in the image and yet also being the image. Well, I think it's a healthy relationship with ego, right? Which is if the music comes through you, are you the music or you the music or you're just the vessel for the music?

And it's healthy to not know. It's healthy to go between the two. Hop, yeah. You know, it's healthy to have an ego, but it's healthy to be humbled. And I'm just a megaphone for the music. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Not necessarily my music. Yeah.

One question I have for you off the back of that, I think, is regard to catching ideas. Because you are like a maister of ideas, but you're also a kind of distiller of them. And I often think about this idea of being a surfer. It's kind of one of the best ideas I've ever, one of the best images I've ever encountered to try and describe what's going on here. People talk about ideas coming to them from above, some divine place. And they're just completely a vessel,

this idea of I am just a vessel, I'm hollow, come through me. That's not who you are. I've never experienced it in quite this way. But nothing you've explained or said here has that metaphor. Well, the way I think about it is, it is partly that. I mean, there is certainly a mysterious source,

but there isn't a lot of surfing as an analogy. Do you surf? I don't do anything on boards. Really? It's not that I don't want to. I just, I don't, just, I'm not good at boards. Fair play. Skateboarding.

I mean, I also don't do much, I don't do much on boards either, but I've served a couple times and there's an amazing thing about it. It's mostly patience. You're mostly just waiting for the wave. It's being like, okay, when's it coming? And then it strikes. And then when it, but then there's technique required, psychological and physical technique required, when it comes to know how to catch it right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And write it out correctly. I think that's, that's the difference. So what you and I do that's similar. People ask me, what's my creative process? And I always say that it's It's days of guilt and self-loathing Punctuated by hours of sheer brilliance

The problem is I don't know when the hours will show up But the part that I never talk about Is when they do I know how to write them Exactly And I walk, I carry a notebook in my back pocket Because I don't know when it's going to strike I used to keep a dry erase pen in my

In my bathroom And if I had an idea Especially when I'm working on something Because once you're working on something It starts going It starts going. And if I had an idea in the shower, you lose it as quickly as you have it. You're like, oh, I'll remember that later.

You don't. And so my bathroom wall was covered all the tiles with ideas. And I'd stand there and brushing my teeth, reading all these ideas. But the point is, is the difference of what you and I are doing. I think everybody has the moments of inspiration. Yeah. What everybody's not doing is capturing them. It's catching them.

And I think that's, and maybe the artist is the one who learns to catch it. Love it. Would you know any Bartok Bagatells? Do you know that Bam-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum. I don't think I do know that. Okay, so I heard a concert. And I'm going to play it for you and then do whatever you want.

That's so beautiful. God, Bartok's the man. All right, so this is totally a selfish request. I've got a Grammy artist with me. And instead of asking you to play your music, I'm asking you to play Bartok. Okay. Is that wrong? No, I don't think that's wrong.

So it was like, Goosebumps. That was very generous. Thank you very much. I've never been honest that in my life ever before. The Bartok is the man. So good. Thank you for your time.

Thank you so much. It's such a joy. A bit of optimism is a production of the optimism company. Lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbenius, Phoebe Bradford, and Devin Johnson. Subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. And if you want even more cool stuff, visit simmons cynic.com. Thanks for listening.

Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.