Jon Batiste — The Quest for Originality and How to Get Unstuck

1. 0:00 – 1:46

   Start

   1. JBJon Batiste0:01

      Youngster, take your time to find the prize. There's no rush. Pace yourself. What doesn't kill you makes you strong is what they say, but until you experience it, that's the only way. The texture that that added to me immediately in retrospect is why I continue. The inner knowing that these experiences, which are just a series of unfortunate things at an unfortunate time, can be exacerbated in your mind and in your psyche, especially if you stew in it. So I think, and I would tell this to the youngster, that happening to you is the gift of your arrival because it allows for you to figure out upon entry how to process all of the discomfort that's to come in different forms and different ways. So pace yourself. Take your time. It's your time. It doesn't all have to happen right now.

   2. TFTim Ferriss1:30

      Yeah. [upbeat music]

2. 1:46 – 3:16

   Is the secret to long life embracing the mundane?

   1. TFTim Ferriss1:46

      We would go to the farmer's markets, and you'd see people who were 98, 103 walking around shopping, tending garden, active. They were still engaged.

   2. JBJon Batiste1:55

      That's absolutely incredible-

   3. TFTim Ferriss1:59

      Right

   4. JBJon Batiste1:59

      ... because all of those things you would think of are mundane and that you are trying to get away from doing.

   5. TFTim Ferriss2:06

      Yeah, exactly.

   6. JBJon Batiste2:07

      That's what I'm trying to retire from.

   7. TFTim Ferriss2:10

      Yep.

   8. JBJon Batiste2:10

      Or I want to outsource that, which that almost becomes a way of life. It's like a philosophy.

   9. TFTim Ferriss2:17

      Yeah, totally. I remember I was reading different books by Kurt Vonnegut, who's one of my favorite writers.

   10. JBJon Batiste2:22

       Ooh. Oh yeah, Kurt, yeah. [laughs]

   11. TFTim Ferriss2:24

       And he had in his... I think it was an essay. He was like, "If people tell you the purpose of life is not to fart around, don't believe them." He's like, "I go to the post office. I wait in line. Most people don't wanna do that." He's like, "But that's the connective tissue," all those in between moments.

   12. JBJon Batiste2:38

       Right.

   13. TFTim Ferriss2:38

       I mean, if you're only celebrating the huge this, the huge that, the big events, I mean, you're missing like 98% of your life.

   14. JBJon Batiste2:45

       Oh, man.

   15. TFTim Ferriss2:46

       You know?

   16. JBJon Batiste2:46

       Wow. There's something about that I think about often. How do you maintain a flow state in waking life throughout the mundane? How do you embrace the mundane and find the muse in the mundane without having to go to some sacred place?

   17. TFTim Ferriss3:06

       Yeah, exactly, to take a time out.

   18. JBJon Batiste3:08

       Like, b- I have to go and plug into something else to connect-

   19. TFTim Ferriss3:13

       Yeah, totally

   20. JBJon Batiste3:13

       ... versus just being connected.

3. 3:16 – 4:13

   The gift of mistakes.

   1. TFTim Ferriss3:16

      The muse in the mundane, how do you-- how have you found that or how have you tried to find that?

   2. JBJon Batiste3:23

      Mistakes.

   3. TFTim Ferriss3:24

      All right.

   4. JBJon Batiste3:24

      Mistakes are amazing. Mistakes are brilliant. It's a, it's a gift to go about your day and for something, either a mistake or something that you didn't plan, an interruption, some seeming calamity happening-

   5. TFTim Ferriss3:42

      Yeah

   6. JBJon Batiste3:43

      ... that allows for you to not only respond but to create. And then in that moment you have the ability to discover something that's much greater than anything that you could invent or, or, or devise because there's something that happens with the synapses and the way that you respond to seeming calamity that brings you to your highest potential.

   7. TFTim Ferriss4:12

      So

4. 4:13 – 6:42

   Why did Jon wait until he was 10 to speak?

   1. TFTim Ferriss4:13

      I have to ask you about something I read when I was doing research for this, which is always fun because I get to be like a creepy stalker online for people I know.

   2. JBJon Batiste4:20

      Yeah. Yeah.

   3. TFTim Ferriss4:21

      Which otherwise would be very strange and-

   4. JBJon Batiste4:22

      Right. [laughs]

   5. TFTim Ferriss4:23

      ... and, and uncomfortable for everybody. And I was reading this piece from The Guardian.

   6. JBJon Batiste4:27

      Mm-hmm.

   7. TFTim Ferriss4:27

      And I wanna ask about introspection because you're very reflective-

   8. JBJon Batiste4:32

      Mm-hmm

   9. TFTim Ferriss4:32

      ... and I admire that. I mean, you seem to have cultivated self-awareness in a lot of what you do. In this Guardian piece they said maybe that's because he didn't speak until he was 10 or something along those lines. Did you not speak for a lot of your I guess childhood given the framing that they put in the article?

   10. JBJon Batiste4:51

       Man, you know what's amazing is those years, I don't have so many memories of those years either, and I don't understand why. I've just started to excavate that more and more in the last year just trying to figure out what was going on, what was the context. And for all intents and purposes, my life has truly been blessed. I've had such a great upbringing, but there was something about being born into the world that felt like I needed to observe before I participated. Felt like I needed to watch what was happening and synthesize what was happening, all the different perspectives, all the different personalities. Growing up around a lot of colorful personalities, a lot of sounds and rhythms, a lot of life, life force energy.

   11. TFTim Ferriss5:47

       Yeah.

   12. JBJon Batiste5:47

       And a lot of danger. So I think the aspect of being in all of that, meeting my natural state, my innate makeup, it was deeper than introspection Something that I still have yet to put words to or fully understand in my early years put me in a space where I was observing and gathering, observing and gathering, observing, gathering, and then eventually it became, okay, let me emerge into a new era. Let me try to mold some things. And it started with music. Let me try to mold the, the, the world around me. Let me try to shift things and create things and influence things, dare I say.

   13. TFTim Ferriss6:35

       Yeah.

   14. JBJon Batiste6:36

       Let, let me try. In little ways I would start, and then it extended far beyond music.

5. 6:42 – 7:31

   How music and performance entered the picture.

   1. TFTim Ferriss6:42

      What age would you say that was? Hard to pin down, but-

   2. JBJon Batiste6:46

      Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

   3. TFTim Ferriss6:48

      [laughs]

   4. JBJon Batiste6:48

      You already peeped it out, Tim. [laughs] It's like it's, uh, around 14 or 15. It was music that allowed for me to have a opportunity to present myself. Onstage, you have to present yourself in a way that is amplifying aspects of what's inside. And ultimately, you have a decision to make as a performer to decide how far between who you actually are and who you've created to project on the stage are you. How far in between-

   5. TFTim Ferriss7:26

      How big is the jump, the discrepancy between those two?

   6. JBJon Batiste7:30

      It's a choice you

6. 7:31 – 9:08

   An early exercise in winning over the room.

   1. JBJon Batiste7:31

      make.

   2. TFTim Ferriss7:31

      How do you think about it? Because I remember chatting with Andrew Zimmern, TV host, does a lot of different things, and he said, and I'm paraphrasing, but he's like, "Be very careful about who you are in episode one, season one because you could paint yourself into a corner where you have to be that guy now forever if it's popular."

   3. JBJon Batiste7:46

      Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

   4. TFTim Ferriss7:47

      How have you thought about that?

   5. JBJon Batiste7:49

      I thought about it from first the perspective of how do I get to a point where all that's within me, all these things that it's, that I feel, these ideas that I have, this vision becomes a reality. So that took so much stepping outside of my comfort zone. We call it throwing, throwing, throw yourself in the water. When I was in college, my band and I would go in the subway and we would play for people. We wouldn't ask for money. We wouldn't busk. We would just play concerts for people who weren't expecting a concert, to just get to the point where we were fearless about presenting art and also wanted to change the atmosphere in this, this community of a train station that has all these people from different walks of life now locked in the train together. [laughs]

   6. TFTim Ferriss8:42

      [laughs]

   7. JBJon Batiste8:43

      So it's a certain aspect of winning them over that we worked on. How do we create harmony in this scenario? And then that extended, now let's go and strike up a conversation with people that we don't know and talk to them about things that they're going through, and then let's share some things that we don't wanna share that we're going through.

7. 9:08 – 11:04

   Choosing the personal facets that art expresses.

   1. TFTim Ferriss9:09

      I have a big question for you. This is related, I think it's related to all of this, and I've wanted to ask you a lot, and Molly's getting excited and stretching over here, so I think it's a good sign. So the question is about how to choose where you go on this quest of originality. So it, it seems like that was part of your life pretty early, f- maybe 15, 16, 17. The phrase that keeps coming back is, is quest for originality.

   2. JBJon Batiste9:38

      Yeah.

   3. TFTim Ferriss9:38

      And of course, we're all original. We're all-

   4. JBJon Batiste9:40

      Everybody

   5. TFTim Ferriss9:40

      ... one of a kind.

   6. JBJon Batiste9:41

      Yes. Yes, sir.

   7. TFTim Ferriss9:42

      But in a saturated world, in a busy world, with so many facets of ourselves, you can go in a million different directions. You have a lot of choices. So how have you chosen which pathways to explore, right? Like interacting with these people on the subway, playing some of the instruments you've played that I know were not assigned to you at Juilliard. [laughs]

   8. JBJon Batiste10:04

      Yes. Yes. Yes. [laughs]

   9. TFTim Ferriss10:06

      So how do you, how do you pick which aspects of yourself or which scent trails to explore?

   10. JBJon Batiste10:12

       You have to understand what is it that's yearning to be expressed within you, even if you're dreadfully afraid of it. You can have something within that seems so far away from the reality of your current state that it couldn't possibly be for you.

   11. TFTim Ferriss10:39

       [laughs]

   12. JBJon Batiste10:40

       In your mind and every fiber of your being is telling you, "This isn't what I should be pursuing. This isn't who I am," that's the one right there. That one right there.

   13. TFTim Ferriss10:54

       The scary one.

   14. JBJon Batiste10:55

       This isn't who I am.

   15. TFTim Ferriss10:56

       That won't go away.

   16. JBJon Batiste10:57

       Yeah. [laughs] But it's, it's, it sticks with you and you, you start to say, "Oh, it's not going away."

8. 11:04 – 16:10

   From a disappointing grade school performance to the Grammys.

   1. TFTim Ferriss11:04

      Could you give an example? Like do any examples come to mind for you personally?

   2. JBJon Batiste11:07

      Oh my gosh. Well, performing, um, for me, my first experiences with performing were traumatic at best. I mean, the level of performance anxiety that I still have is, is unbelievably paralyzing to the point that I've, I've developed mantras and different ways of, of reaching for what's inside and also just a greater sense of purpose and philosophy that, that really is a foundation that lifts me to the point of taking the stage and sharing it because it's bigger than oneself, right?

   3. TFTim Ferriss11:49

      And did you feel that yearning to perform? Was it an image? Was it a feeling? Was that the yearning?

   4. JBJon Batiste11:55

      That was part of it. I remember my first time on a talent show dancing, which is another aspect of it, dancing, something that I was not naturally accustomed to doing besides just at family functions. And it wasn't something that came natural to me. I was more of someone who was a spiritual mover versus the most precise dancer. But I went on a talent show with my best friend. We were in elementary school at the time, and he goes on stage. He was a very natural dancer. And he convinced me to join him on the talent show stage in front of the entire school from K through eight. The whole school, all the teachers, everybody just gathered in the auditorium. The music starts playing. It was like some sort of de-decrepit Michael Jackson beat-

   5. TFTim Ferriss12:46

      [laughs]

   6. JBJon Batiste12:46

      ... like Fisher Price that you dance. [beatboxes] [laughs] You know that vibe?

   7. TFTim Ferriss12:52

      Oh, yeah. Casio SK-1. I remember. [laughs]

   8. JBJon Batiste12:55

      It was going, man. And I get up there-

   9. TFTim Ferriss12:58

      [laughs]

   10. JBJon Batiste12:59

       ... and I'm going in, at this time, what I knew was the Running Man, MC Hammer.

   11. TFTim Ferriss13:06

       I remember.

   12. JBJon Batiste13:06

       You know that?

   13. TFTim Ferriss13:07

       Oh, of course.

   14. JBJon Batiste13:07

       The pants, parachute. [laughs]

   15. TFTim Ferriss13:09

       Yeah. You gotta be careful. Can't ride any horses with that, but yeah.

   16. JBJon Batiste13:11

       Yeah. [laughs]

   17. TFTim Ferriss13:11

       You can dance with them on.

   18. JBJon Batiste13:12

       [laughs] Yeah.

   19. TFTim Ferriss13:13

       [laughs]

   20. JBJon Batiste13:15

       Can't ride no horse with that. What kind of horse get on?

   21. TFTim Ferriss13:18

       [laughs] No, you gotta get away from that.

   22. JBJon Batiste13:22

       I said, "Man, listen. Let me try the Running Man." That didn't work.

   23. TFTim Ferriss13:25

       [laughs]

   24. JBJon Batiste13:25

       Everything I turned to didn't work. "Okay, let me try to do the Moonwalk." Keon just did it, too. That didn't work.

   25. TFTim Ferriss13:32

       [laughs]

   26. JBJon Batiste13:32

       It was a mix of cheers and laughter, both this sort of excitement by what he was doing from the audience and also this sort of just what is, what is wrong with this child to think that he could be up there? And it was just so m- I was mortified. And I remember leaving that scenario and thinking I would never take the st- I had so many moments. That's the thing that, that, that, um, I remember most about performance early on. Every moment I tried to perform, I faced rejection and left thinking, "I don't ever have to do that again."

   27. TFTim Ferriss14:12

       [laughs]

   28. JBJon Batiste14:13

       "There's nothing in that for me." Now fast-forward, you know, I'm thinking about that, that dancing moment because it came back to me again a couple years ago when we were at the Grammys and we were rehearsal, and I'm leading this performance with 30 dancers, and there's a moment where we all run, and we go break the fourth wall. We jump into the audience, and we run from the stage. And the, and the vision Jamel McWilliams and I, we, we were coming up with this vision of let's just break through the screen. Let's break through any pretense. Let's build an energy with our collective here, this group of us, that just permeates every soul watching. I remember even saying at some point on the stage, "Touch the screen. Get a blessing."

   29. TFTim Ferriss15:06

       [laughs]

   30. JBJon Batiste15:06

       And I felt like it was almost like w- Tony Robbins motivational speech meets-
9. 16:10 – 22:39

   Cultivating suspense and shifting modes of creative expression.

   1. JBJon Batiste16:10

      ... it, it's electricity. It's community. It's what the world could be. It's an aspirational vision of, of us. It's-- I thought for a while, I was like, "What is the field [chuckles] that I enter into to create this or to, to, to cultivate this? What is that space?" And I didn't have words for it for many years, and it evolves over time, and it requires performance, but it's so much... I've never said, uh, shared this, but I even think, you know... I mean, we already getting deep, so why not?

   2. TFTim Ferriss16:50

      Yeah, let's go for it.

   3. JBJon Batiste16:51

      But this, this idea has led me to places that in recent times I don't know how much longer I will be performing or be a musician.

   4. TFTim Ferriss17:05

      Why is that?

   5. JBJon Batiste17:06

      I've never said that, but it's been coming up in the last... I mean, Suleika and I have talked about it before just because we have that type of relationship of exploring and, and challenging each other, but the form of the vocation is shifting. And the gift of music for me and its meaning in my life and its application within the vocation is also shifting.

   6. TFTim Ferriss17:34

      Do you know where it's shifting to or do you just feel the tectonic plates shifting and you're like, "All right, let's pause and pay attention"? How are you experiencing that?

   7. JBJon Batiste17:43

      Man, it's such an intuitive thing. It's such a trust-based relationship. You don't force it. You don't force it. You can't force it. It just tells you when it's time. And-

   8. TFTim Ferriss18:00

      Is that a sensitivity that you think everybody has or do you think you have greater sensitivity to feel that and to sit with it even though it's might be uncomfortable to not have a compass pointing you in a certain direction?

   9. JBJon Batiste18:12

      You know, when I was in college There were times when they sent me for psychiatric evaluation. In those early years, there may be some root to, you know, your, your first question about why wasn't I speaking? There may be some root within the way that my psyche was formed and for me also the superpower within that that's allowed for me to develop a relationship with, with presence and with being that allows for me to trust and have faith, and also just the natural state of an artist is to have complete faith, unwavering faith in the ability for you to make this thing real that no one sees or can experience yet but you, and you have to do your best with words which fail to describe it, to communicate to collaborators to potentially join you, join the ranks of building this thing. You know?

   10. TFTim Ferriss19:10

       Yeah, I do. I, I do. I think [laughs] I don't wanna turn this into a confessional on my part, so maybe for another time.

   11. JBJon Batiste19:16

       No, go for it, man. [laughs]

   12. TFTim Ferriss19:18

       Well, well, I, I do-- There are experiences on the maybe far end of the spectrum. You have mystical experiences, which by definition are ineffable, right? They, they are-- They, they translate very poorly to words.

   13. JBJon Batiste19:31

       Yeah.

   14. TFTim Ferriss19:32

       And then there are these felt senses and these evolved capabilities that also predate language, so it's very difficult, if not impossible, to apply clean prose to describing them. And to that extent, I, I do think I feel what you're saying, and I'm curious, as you-- as these things are taking shape in your body and your mind, these things you feel that are not yet externalized, [sighs] how much of it is waiting and how much of it is sort of tickling the muse for these original concepts or ideas or impulses? Are there ways that you help yourself to generate or be receptive to new directions and new ideas?

   15. JBJon Batiste20:23

       You know, I was checking out Alfred Hitchcock the other night. Suspense. If you think about the device of suspense in, in cinema that he mastered, and you experience that through the things that he created. At least for me, that was something that brought me back to an understanding of the muse, which is this idea that suspense is created when there are stakes and when you don't know what's gonna happen on the other side. So you th- then have to put everything on the line that you believe in, that motivates you, that powers you. You have to put it on the line in order to move toward whatever your desired outcome is in a limited amount of time, and sometimes without enough intel or intellectual processing of the information to even know which direction you wanna take it in. You just have the moment. So for me, I love to create these pockets of suspense, these pockets of pressurized creativity or pressurized experience that leads me to discovery, that it pushes me forward, and I think about things that are not music, like cinema or, you know, I, I-- There's so many things that are not connected to the actual craft that I draw from much, much, much more than actually thinking about the inspiration of music and the fruit of the craft itself.

10. 22:39 – 27:44

    When perspective drives motivation more than stakes.

    1. TFTim Ferriss22:39

       If we take a closer look at the stakes and the unknown, I'm wondering if I'm hearing you correctly because it was just a week ago, I was having a conversation with a number of friends, having dinner, drinks, and I posed a question which was: What do you do when you get stuck or you're feeling stuck-

    2. JBJon Batiste22:59

       Mm.

    3. TFTim Ferriss22:59

       You wanna f-- You want to push yourself in a new direction. And there were a lot of different answers, but there was one common thread, which was, in effect, I need to book the theater, so I write the play. A, a feeling of getting in over your head where you commit to something, and then you figure out what that thing is gonna be. But now you have something like on the schedule, people are involved, and then you're in the dark groping around, and you kind of figure it out. And I'm wondering if you apply some version of that in your own life, if that's what, in a sense, you mean by like stakes and moving into the unknown, or if it takes other forms.

    4. JBJon Batiste23:36

       That was the gateway drug. But what happens for me at this point is the zoom out, and the zoom out is this perspective on all things: time, the perspective of your lineage, the understanding of your lifespan, all these things that require you to zoom out to really assess and feel in your marrow to grasp. And it makes those commitments feel minor to me, even if they're attached to some monetary outcome or some consequence that is deemed ... dangerous in our metrics on these things almost become so irrelevant to me that it requires me to have another motivation in order to really reach the thing that is most impactful and most resonant within.

    5. TFTim Ferriss24:37

       Mm-hmm. What kind of, what kind of motivation motivates you these days?

    6. JBJon Batiste24:40

       So when you have the zoom out, when I come back to the creative process, it's almost, it almost has to be the opposite of what it used to be, which is, you know, let me put myself in a position, throw myself in the water, and figure out how I'm gonna evolve and do something. Then it eventually went to how do I bridge this into a whole nother craft? How do I create? You know, that's why I love the idea of what we call genres, which are just silos that promote ignorance.

    7. TFTim Ferriss25:11

       [laughs]

    8. JBJon Batiste25:12

       But that's fun for me. That's not based on a truth. So the zoom out helps you to, to assess all the, the truths, the laws. This is what is, right? And then the motivation has to come in the opposite way of force. It has to come almost like a dream comes to you in the night. You can't do anything about your dreams per se, but feed the dream machine. You can't generate the opportunity for you to have a certain dream.

    9. TFTim Ferriss25:52

       Right.

    10. JBJon Batiste25:52

        You can perhaps interact with your dream once it arrives-

    11. TFTim Ferriss25:55

        Right

    12. JBJon Batiste25:56

        ... and it's so ephemeral. Even remembering your dreams oftentimes can be difficult depending on what space you are in your life. It makes everything that happens delicate, and it makes everything that I commit to, in some ways, very tenuous when it comes to the m- the mammoth mechanics of our industry. And I'm getting to a point, which is a part of the realization, where perhaps there's not a context within the industry and the mechanics therein that as they exist today, that I can find true inspiration from. There's a constellation of inspiration that crosses so many spectrums of society, and I can't access it if I play by these rules.

    13. TFTim Ferriss26:42

        Yeah. If you're, if you're in the silo playing by the, the laws in quotation marks, right?

    14. JBJon Batiste26:49

        And the zoom... Exactly. And the zoom out gives you such a perspective on that, that it makes you fiercely prepared for when the dream comes because then you'll embrace it because it's your top priority. It's the, the chief motivation, but you can't make it come.

    15. TFTim Ferriss27:11

        Yeah. But you're primed to receive it when it shows up.

    16. JBJon Batiste27:13

        You're ready. You... And for me, that's... So when I don't have inspiration or I have a block, I do nothing. I live. And it's absolutely because of the deeper inspiration [laughs] that I, I'm blessed to, to feel. I f- I feel it's been cultivated. I, I, I'm connected to it, and I know it's real. It doesn't have to greet me every day.

    17. TFTim Ferriss27:39

        [laughs]

    18. JBJon Batiste27:40

        I know it's there.

    19. TFTim Ferriss27:41

        It's like an old friend. Not a lot of maintenance required.

    20. JBJon Batiste27:43

        Yes.

11. 27:44 – 35:43

    Spiritual practice and grounding mantras.

    1. TFTim Ferriss27:44

       So let's say the muse makes an appearance. You're receptive, and, uh, you're not grasping, but your hands are ready to catch, right?

    2. JBJon Batiste27:54

       Yeah.

    3. TFTim Ferriss27:55

       And then you go into execution mode on whatever it might be or you start exploring. I wanna come back to something you mentioned, which was the performance anxiety and the mantras and various things you use to ground you. What are the mantras that you-

    4. JBJon Batiste28:10

       Oh, wow

    5. TFTim Ferriss28:11

       ... have landed on?

    6. JBJon Batiste28:12

       [laughs] Well, I haven't shared all of them. I share some, two of them we share at the shows when we perform often. One is, um, one that I, I thought of for children, and I thought of for the child within me, and it's, "I feel good, I feel free, I feel fine just being me." And you go over and over and over and over. I feel good, I feel free, I feel fine just being me. Circular melody. I feel good today. Oh, so good today. I feel good, I feel free, I feel fine. One, two, three. Bum, bum, bum. Bum, bum, bum.

    7. TFTim Ferriss28:52

       Mm-hmm.

    8. JBJon Batiste28:53

       Bum, bum, bum.

    9. TFTim Ferriss28:53

       Bum, bum, bum.

    10. JBJon Batiste28:54

        So everybody sings along automatically.

    11. TFTim Ferriss28:56

        I've seen it.

    12. JBJon Batiste28:56

        Everybody snaps.

    13. TFTim Ferriss28:57

        I've seen it because I was in Moody Theater in Austin watching this just extend into the audience.

    14. JBJon Batiste29:03

        Yes.

    15. TFTim Ferriss29:04

        Amazing to watch.

    16. JBJon Batiste29:05

        Oh, man.

    17. TFTim Ferriss29:05

        Amazing to experience and participate in too. Uh-huh.

    18. JBJon Batiste29:08

        I was so... Man, that was such a great, great feeling seeing you there just 'cause I understand you get it on so many levels. You really understand it's such a spiritual practice. It's not so much about me showing up and playing instruments or, you know, look at how great the band, look at the, look at this dance, look at the... More and more, more and more, and it always has been, but more and more, how do we continue to refine this spiritual practice, this ritual of community, of sharing, of artistry? And what are we pointed at? What do we focus this, this life force energy at next? So those mantras for me are the... If you don't live it and it's not a part of you, it's not gonna come out of the instrument. What we play is life. What we create is life. The quality of the human being, the quality of the vessel, even a broken vessel, which is oftentimes the most effective, the most relatable, the most universal. But there has to be that space in you that you've saved that is the sacred space. It doesn't have to be... Of course, there are great ways to cultivate physical world sacred places and practices. But it has to-- So for me, those mantras and my prayers and that sense of understanding how to always know if that's there, and if it's not there, it might be time to take six months, a year, whatever I need to take off so that then I can know that it's there. But right now I'm in a period where it's very strong, so it allows for me to be fearless, which is something that, um, I haven't felt that this strongly in a while.

    19. TFTim Ferriss31:01

        Oh, yeah. Gotta ride the wave then.

    20. JBJon Batiste31:03

        You know what I mean?

    21. TFTim Ferriss31:04

        Yeah, you gotta paddle for the wave.

    22. JBJon Batiste31:05

        Yeah.

    23. TFTim Ferriss31:06

        What other mantras can you share?

    24. JBJon Batiste31:09

        Oh, man, this is deep. You going in. [laughs]

    25. TFTim Ferriss31:11

        I'm going in.

    26. JBJon Batiste31:12

        Damn, man.

    27. TFTim Ferriss31:12

        I'm going in. Scuba gear intact.

    28. JBJon Batiste31:15

        Tim.

    29. TFTim Ferriss31:16

        [laughs]

    30. JBJon Batiste31:17

        Yeah. You know-
12. 35:43 – 38:48

    Surrender, acceptance, and growth through health challenges.

    1. TFTim Ferriss35:43

       So when would you be inclined to say to yourself that last mantra? Like, when would that-- When would you apply that in your life?

    2. JBJon Batiste35:51

       There's so many things that happen to us with our health. Um, you know, as I, I talk about Tulaika a lot. I love her, as, as you know, but-

    3. TFTim Ferriss36:05

       She's great. Yeah.

    4. JBJon Batiste36:05

       She, uh-

    5. TFTim Ferriss36:06

       Had her on, had her on the show.

    6. JBJon Batiste36:07

       Yes. Yes. And I also borrow a lot of phrases from her when it... This, in particular, this idea of being between two kingdoms, this idea of the kingdom of the well, the kingdom of the sick, and we all exist in this in-between space. And we have a passport for both, which is something that she created this understanding of that through the way she lives through it, the way she gracefully moves through this time with such grace, with such power, with such clarity. I think about that. I think about how there's a certain surrender that's required of all of us in times when we deal with health challenges, whether it's us or a loved one. And you find yourself in moments where there's literally nothing that you can do to take away pain or to take away the unknown and the anxiety of waiting. So that's an opportunity for a great amount of growth. That's an opportunity for a lesson to be instilled in a way that almost nothing else that I can think of affords you the chance for. Thy will be done.

    7. TFTim Ferriss37:24

       Thy will be done. [sighs] Yeah, this, uh, coach I worked with for a while, he used to say, "This is your pop quiz from the universe" when something unexpected would pop up. He'd be like, "All right, all that meditation you've been doing-

    8. JBJon Batiste37:36

       Let's see it. [laughs]

    9. TFTim Ferriss37:37

       ... let's see it." [laughs]

    10. JBJon Batiste37:39

        Let's see, bro.

    11. TFTim Ferriss37:39

        This-

    12. JBJon Batiste37:40

        Come on, bro.

    13. TFTim Ferriss37:40

        You've been-

    14. JBJon Batiste37:41

        Let's go

    15. TFTim Ferriss37:41

        ... rehearsing. This is game time. Let's see how it goes.

    16. JBJon Batiste37:43

        Yeah. Yeah.

    17. TFTim Ferriss37:44

        He'd be like, "All right, all that meditation you've been-"

    18. JBJon Batiste37:46

        Oh, Tim, you know what I'm saying, when you-

    19. TFTim Ferriss37:47

        "... doing."

    20. JBJon Batiste37:47

        ... you in that moment.

    21. TFTim Ferriss37:48

        Yeah. I've had a lot of sympathy for watching you both go through that journey, and I can only imagine what it's like. I mean, I, I have been, of course, and most people listening have been in a position where they feel powerless to help or they don't know how to help a loved one. But had a lot of sympathy for a challenging road, and also really been in awe of how much growth both of you have exhibited through the challenges and pain and so on. In any case, I just wanted to say that.

    22. JBJon Batiste38:20

        Oh, man. It means a lot to hear that. It feels like a privilege to go through it together in the way that we have seen it. It's shifted into almost the orientation of blessing, and that's not to say that the difficulties are any easier. It doesn't change the nature of hard things. They're hard. But there's something about life, there's a

13. 38:48 – 42:07

    The fuzzy line between blessing and curse.

    1. JBJon Batiste38:48

       truth, [laughs] there's something about going through the fire that is so required and something about suffering that is so essential. This idea that we're meant to run from pain or run from difficult things and find the most leisurely and, and completely frictionless existence possible is such a lie.

    2. TFTim Ferriss39:18

       [laughs] Yeah.

    3. JBJon Batiste39:20

       It's not just a lie because it's not possible, but if it were possible, that would kill you the most.

    4. TFTim Ferriss39:29

       Yeah, it would rob you in so many ways, which is, of course, easy for me to say sitting in this comfortable-

    5. JBJon Batiste39:34

       Yeah

    6. TFTim Ferriss39:34

       ... chair right now.

    7. JBJon Batiste39:35

       Yes.

    8. TFTim Ferriss39:35

       But in the midst of it, it's sometimes hard to see it. At the same time, there was an astrophysicist, Janna Levin, who was on-

    9. JBJon Batiste39:41

       Hey

    10. TFTim Ferriss39:41

        ... the podcast some time ago, and I'm gonna butcher this quote, but it's more the concept for me that has really stuck. She said something along the lines of, "I used to look for the underlying path that would help me navigate around obstacles, and then I realized there is no underlying path." Like, the obstacles are the path through which you discover yourself, through, through which you learn, through which you grow. Like, that is the path.

    11. JBJon Batiste40:06

        That's the path. Yeah.

    12. TFTim Ferriss40:07

        Take those away-

    13. JBJon Batiste40:07

        That's it

    14. TFTim Ferriss40:08

        ... and then you're just, just a free-floating essence of comfort, and that's just not the human experience.

    15. JBJon Batiste40:16

        Yeah.

    16. TFTim Ferriss40:16

        And also, you're talking about blessings. Uh, so I could imagine, uh, even an earlier version of me would say, like, "Oh, come on now. I mean, I suppose that's helpful, but maybe it's delusional and it's overly optimistic," but it's deeper than that, and I think that misses the mark because given a longer timeframe, given all the unknowns, it could be a blessing, it could be a curse, but you can't know which it is over time, and it depends a lot on your perspective, so you might as well choose blessing. Right? That is the more enabling perspective. And since you can't know, it's a coin flip. Choose the side of the coin that is most enabling, it seems to me, at least. In the abstract, it's easy to say, you know? [laughs] Taxi runs over my foot, we'll see how I do [laughs] later today, but...

    17. JBJon Batiste41:04

        Well, it, it's that, and it's also you only will know when you are there. You have to go there to know there. Y- you only know what it can be for you when you're in the fire. Everybody can talk about what they would do-

    18. TFTim Ferriss41:23

        [laughs] Yeah

    19. JBJon Batiste41:24

        ... when they are there, right? We can all say, "Man, if that would've happened to me, I would, you know, slay the dragon."

    20. TFTim Ferriss41:36

        [laughs]

    21. JBJon Batiste41:37

        Uh, I would... You know, whatever you think you would do most often is not what you would do, and that's not because you're not who you think you are. It's because there's so many other factors you can't know. And for many things in my life that I think about, the things I've learned the most from are when I've embraced the discomfort and realized what I was made of through it.

    22. TFTim Ferriss42:05

        Let me just sit with that for a second.

14. 42:07 – 48:42

    Growing up bullied as the “least talented” in a musical family.

    1. JBJon Batiste42:07

       Yeah.

    2. TFTim Ferriss42:07

       Do you have any favorite failures? Now, I put failures in quotation marks because this is something that at the time seemed crushing or seemed awful that actually in some way set the stage for much bigger or better things later. Do you have any of those types of- ... slips or rejections or failures that come to mind?

    3. JBJon Batiste42:33

       Wow. I feel like my life is riddled with them.

    4. TFTim Ferriss42:37

       [laughs]

    5. JBJon Batiste42:37

       And I also feel like I move through them fairly quickly. Not cavalier, but there's a sense of understanding it now that I didn't have then, that it's a-

    6. TFTim Ferriss42:53

       How do... Yeah, how do you move through them quickly? Why do you think that is?

    7. JBJon Batiste42:56

       It's because I know they're for my own good. Not that they're all for my own good. I guess the reason is because I don't actually believe that failure exists. It's not that it's necessarily for your own good, but failure doesn't exist. There's opportunity for you to take something from the experience. And even if the experience is reinforcing something that you already know, it's reinforcing something that you already know. It's an opportunity for you to see this, this experience, this thing that you wanted, this thing that maybe you hoped would work out but didn't work out. All of that adds to the fabric and the richness of your character and your experience and your knowledge base so that you, as I say, you go there to know that you have been there. I've traveled that road. I've played those notes. I know that piece. I sung that song. I own that. That's, I, I own that. And there's always on the other side of everything the opportunity for transformation.

    8. TFTim Ferriss44:04

       Can you tell a story of, of any... I'm not gonna use the [laughs] word failure. Growth opportunities that you encountered before you turned into Jon Batiste and kind of marquee lights, right? 'Cause you've really popped in a huge way.

    9. JBJon Batiste44:21

       Yeah, I mean-

    10. TFTim Ferriss44:22

        Yeah, I mean, since I, since I first met you ages ago in probably Utah or wherever we happened to be.

    11. JBJon Batiste44:27

        Yes.

    12. TFTim Ferriss44:27

        It was, I can't remember initially where it was. But before that, can you tell the story of any incidents where things didn't go your way and how you metabolized it?

    13. JBJon Batiste44:39

        Man, I grew up between Kenner, Louisiana, which is a very old school Southern town, old country, railroad tracks running through the middle of it with canals, provincial Southern town just outside of New Orleans, and New Orleans is another planet. And I grew up, you know, as a kid getting bullied for all types of things, man. When I was in school, I'd get bullied, whether it was, uh, "Man, you, are you okay? Are you with us? Are you slow?" Your feet, your nose, your hair, all these aspects of self-esteem that were attacked. So then you go through life in these early years with no real understanding of what you have of value to offer the world, what you have to connect with. So fast-forward, you get to a point where you discover music, but it's still something that, you know, amongst my family, I was the youngest and least talented. When I was growing up, I didn't think that I would ever be a performer because there were 30 other people who had that covered.

    14. TFTim Ferriss45:48

        [laughs]

    15. JBJon Batiste45:49

        It wasn't like-

    16. TFTim Ferriss45:49

        That's just wild to try to paint a picture of that in my mind. [laughs]

    17. JBJon Batiste45:53

        People-

    18. TFTim Ferriss45:53

        That's a, that's a lot of performers, yeah

    19. JBJon Batiste45:55

        ... people don't get that. They think, oh, you were born with a tambourine in your hand and you came out singing.

    20. TFTim Ferriss46:02

        [laughs]

    21. JBJon Batiste46:03

        This is not the case. There was a glorious awkwardness that was a-

    22. TFTim Ferriss46:07

        [laughs]

    23. JBJon Batiste46:08

        ... a decade or more before I touched the instrument. I started at 11 years old, late bloomer in the context of everybody around me. Now, there were so many bad gigs, bad performances, and I was known as the kid who would play expressionless. I would be playing and it would be all well and good, but my face would have no expression. None. It would be like I was shut off. So I get to the point where there's a long period of hours and hours in the practice room and performances between 14 and 17.

    24. TFTim Ferriss46:44

        Where were you at the time? Still in-

    25. JBJon Batiste46:45

        In New Orleans.

    26. TFTim Ferriss46:46

        New Orleans. Mm-hmm.

    27. JBJon Batiste46:48

        Living in Kenner, going back and forth to New Orleans, you know, performing at night, going to two schools at once. Just this idea that, you know, you had the art school in the evening, then in the mornings you had an academic school. Still getting bullied, still also becoming somewhat of a young musical phenom, but not the best one. [laughs] So there's like still not really like, eh. You, you don't really know where you fit or where it's all going.

    28. TFTim Ferriss47:17

        And was, at that point, was piano the sort of key to that phenom perception? Or was...

    29. JBJon Batiste47:23

        It was the piano. That was the thing. That was something that, you know, I'd alternate between playing in clubs, you know, at 14, 15 years old, that I wasn't supposed to be in at night after going to school, and then I would also on the weekends be doing classical piano lessons and piano competitions. So alternating between those two realities and also going and really finding this sort of tribe, my peers, starting bands with first my cousins, Travis and Jamal, who were older and multi-instrumental and inspired me. Then Troy, Trombone Shorty Andrews, who's maybe at the time we met 11 or 12, he had been playing for a decade and touring the world. So we start bands, we're doing club shows, we're doing all these things, and constantly just presenting things that are experimental and pushing ourself to do things that we've never done. I didn't have a desire or a real push to go into music. Until I was maybe 17 and I moved to New York on my own. And the first story of failure-

    30. TFTim Ferriss48:38

        Matt, pause you for one sec. So okay-
15. 48:42 – 51:15

    Jon’s visionary mother guided him toward piano.

    1. JBJon Batiste48:42

       Yes.

    2. TFTim Ferriss48:43

       What did the conversation look like when you're informing friends and family that you're gonna move to New York? All right, what was the drive behind this? How did that go? And then we're gonna get back to the cliffhanger.

    3. JBJon Batiste48:56

       I felt like there was a great deal of support. My mother is a visionary when it comes to understanding what someone could be. She was the driving force of the piano being the instrument that I focused on at 11 versus, you know, several other things that were in the periphery. I could have chosen the drums or-

    4. TFTim Ferriss49:18

       And just in brief, why did she think that was a clutch move?

    5. JBJon Batiste49:22

       I s- I don't understand how she does it, but she does it.

    6. TFTim Ferriss49:25

       Or she just saw-

    7. JBJon Batiste49:26

       That's the thing. That's the thing

    8. TFTim Ferriss49:27

       ... you have a piano player inside of you.

    9. JBJon Batiste49:29

       Yes. Yes. Even if she didn't see that fully, she saw that the piano is the right direction for you to take in music.

    10. TFTim Ferriss49:41

        All right. Is it because it's the option that opens up the most options or is there more to it?

    11. JBJon Batiste49:46

        I don't know if she had a vision. She mentioned sometimes that there's a sophistication to the piano that she was attracted to, that felt like it was the instrument for someone who is gonna apply all of their forces and all of their abilities. It's the conductor's instrument. It's the maestro's instrument. So I know that that was a part of her thinking. It's the thing that's gonna allow for you to be as highbrow or as lowbrow as you want.

    12. TFTim Ferriss50:18

        A very prescient, incredibly powerful-

    13. JBJon Batiste50:22

        Deeply

    14. TFTim Ferriss50:23

        ... directing, right? Because when I look at what you're capable of doing, part of the reason it seems to me that you're able to harness this broad spectrum of options is because you have that highbrow card to pull out. And if people want to nitpick or they wanna do this and this, you're like, "All right. Let me just sit down for a second."

    15. JBJon Batiste50:43

        Yeah.

    16. TFTim Ferriss50:43

        And then they're like, "Okay, I take it back." [laughs]

    17. JBJon Batiste50:45

        Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    18. TFTim Ferriss50:46

        Which buys you permission to do a really wide range of things.

    19. JBJon Batiste50:50

        Yes.

    20. TFTim Ferriss50:51

        Yeah.

    21. JBJon Batiste50:51

        Yes. That is her thing. She's, she's very clairvoyant. You know, it's also a leadership quality she has. You know, she was an environmentalist before it was the en vogue thing to do for many years. You know, she, she would... At, at a different time, not having been born in the South, a Black woman like her would be a CEO

16. 51:15 – 52:13

    Parental support for Jon’s relocation to New York City.

    1. JBJon Batiste51:15

       of a company. It's a different thing that she has that's... It, it's significant to think about now in retrospect, all the decisions that she made, which eventually led to New York. I mean, led to me graduating high school a year early, moving to New York as a minor at 17, and her supporting that. My dad also supporting that as a musical mentor. My first musical mentor, he was the one who was like, "Okay, New York is where cats really play, bro."

    2. TFTim Ferriss51:43

       [laughs]

    3. JBJon Batiste51:44

       "You, you going-- You know, in New Orleans, we play, and then there's, like, a, a legit thing with, you know, the cats in New York. They're a little stiff-"

    4. TFTim Ferriss51:53

       [laughs]

    5. JBJon Batiste51:55

       "... but you'll, you'll learn a lot." So he supported that, too, from a different angle, right? And [laughs] so I, I went up there and he's like, "You know, if you can, uh, if you can make it in there, you have a lot to come back with." It... The, the vision was never, "Oh, you'll go there and stay."

    6. TFTim Ferriss52:10

       Stay there. Mm.

    7. JBJon Batiste52:11

       You dig? [laughs]

    8. TFTim Ferriss52:12

       I do.

17. 52:13 – 57:07

    Serious setbacks that almost made Jon quit Juilliard and music altogether.

    1. TFTim Ferriss52:13

       I do. You were saying your first failure. So you get to New York, what happens?

    2. JBJon Batiste52:19

       It's a disaster.

    3. TFTim Ferriss52:20

       [laughs]

    4. JBJon Batiste52:23

       Man, listen. [laughs]

    5. TFTim Ferriss52:25

       Molly's like, "I'm listening."

    6. JBJon Batiste52:27

       You dig?

    7. TFTim Ferriss52:27

       Mm-hmm.

    8. JBJon Batiste52:28

       I went to New York and within the first week, I'm in the subway traveling around, and I pass out on the platform.

    9. TFTim Ferriss52:42

       Pass out on the platform?

    10. JBJon Batiste52:44

        Yeah, as I'm out. And I'm like, "What's going on? What's happening here?"

    11. TFTim Ferriss52:49

        This doesn't happen a lot. I pay attention to this. Molly's sitting right next to you.

    12. JBJon Batiste52:55

        Hello, Molly. Hey.

    13. TFTim Ferriss52:56

        It's my, my external nervous system.

    14. JBJon Batiste52:58

        Hey.

    15. TFTim Ferriss52:58

        So you pass out on the platform.

    16. JBJon Batiste53:00

        Yes, yes.

    17. TFTim Ferriss53:00

        That sounds dangerous.

    18. JBJon Batiste53:01

        Yeah, very dangerous. Luckily, there were some friends there who could catch me and take me to... Which at this time it was, I think it was Roosevelt, the ER. The one that's right next to Lincoln Center.

    19. TFTim Ferriss53:13

        Mm-hmm.

    20. JBJon Batiste53:14

        We went there. I'm there. They say, "Oh, you're exhausted and maybe you're having, um, some migraines or something." They give me Tylenol, tell me to go away. I'm having night sweats. I'm, I'm basically feeling this sharp pain in my lung, and then I start to pass out again. I feel this intensity. Meanwhile, the second day that I was there, before all this happened, I'm in the dorms at Juilliard. I'm unpacking. I'm doing all the things. The bunk is up. I fall off the bunk and basically fracture a rib, if not close to it. They do the X-ray. They're like, "You got, you, you got a lot happening." Now, this is the, this is the wildest part. I go back to the ER. They say, "You have walking pneumonia that you've had for two weeks. You have to stay here overnight, over a few days while, you know, we give you the IV fluids and the antibiotics and all the things." I missed the orientation of the school year. I missed all the things that you kinda get acclimated to, and there's nobody that is in New York. I have a, a second cousin who lives in Harlem who I get acquainted with, and we become closer during this time. But I remember thinking, "Am I supposed to be here?" From falling out the bunk- And I'm like, "No, I can't miss this." So I go back. I'm just in there. Next thing you know, I'm fainting in the subway. Oh man. Oh, I'm just exhausted. I gotta cool out. Next thing you know, I'm in the nights, I'm sweating. I'm- something's happening. That's my lung. It's crying out. You know, it's, you've had pneumonia. You've been walking around with this. So between that being the first year of me being in New York, first time at Juilliard, first time being away from home, it, it completely felt like a, a crash and burn scenario. It's time for you to get out of here.

    21. TFTim Ferriss55:16

        All the signs point to the exit [laughs] .

    22. JBJon Batiste55:18

        Everything's telling me at this time internally as I'm sitting in the hospital, I remember those days, it was like three or four days I was there, and I felt this sort of... As a kid, you're like, "I don't wanna tell my parents, but I also don't feel like I belong here. I need to get out of here." And it's also this kind of, there was a dichotomy of coming from this very rich cultural heritage and this beautiful expression of excellence and pedagogy, but Juilliard being this European classical legitimizing entity that especially as a young Black kid pushing the boundaries of what generationally my family has achieved, and also musically eventually wanting to, you know, become a disruptor from inside of all of it and just in the most benevolent way, rip it all down [laughs] and build it again a different way. Knowing that that was somewhat of a motivation and then landing and sort of [snap] dead on arrival felt like it was ultimately the type of failure that it almost not only made me go home, but quit music. Just kind of just like, "This isn't my profession. I can just go home. I can-- I had a whole bunch of things I could've done other than this." You know, to sitting there by yourself thinking about, "Is this a message?"

    23. TFTim Ferriss56:54

        So what happened? You're here. So what, what, uh, resurrected the confidence or the direction?

    24. JBJon Batiste57:03

        Just an inner knowing, man. You gotta just know.

    25. TFTim Ferriss57:05

        All right. Hold on, hold on.

18. 57:07 – 1:00:14

    Jon’s advice to a younger musician enduring a similar path of hardships.

    1. JBJon Batiste57:07

       I don't have a-

    2. TFTim Ferriss57:08

       Now, I believe you. I believe you, and I, I underscore it, and you have-- you're a sensitive guy. When I say sensitive, I mean, like, your instrumentation is sensitive, right? You're like a jewelry scale, not some, like, scale at the sports club in New York that's five pounds off, right? You're, you're down to, like, the nanogram. So you have sensitive instrumentation. So you're thinking to yourself, "Man, I, I really thought A, B, and C. Here I am. I've had this 12 car pileup of disasters. Maybe I should just go home." What did the voice, what did the little whisper say that started to tilt it back in the other direction towards that inner knowing? What was the feeling? And I mean, uh, that's one question. If you wanna take it a different angle, I would say, let's say there's a, there's a, there's a kid 10 years from now, basically you, very similar, from Kenner, Louisiana, is at Juilliard, sends you a letter. All these things have happened. Different set of disasters, but he's like, "I really don't know if this is for me. There-- I could go back and do A, B, and C." So very similar situation. What do you say to that kid?

    3. JBJon Batiste58:17

       So youngster, take your time to find the prize. There's no rush. Pace yourself. What doesn't kill you makes you strong, is what they say, but until you experience it, that's the only way. The texture that that added to me immediately in retrospect is why I continued. The inner knowing that these experiences, which are just a series of unfortunate things at an unfortunate time, can be exacerbated in your mind and in your psyche, especially if you stew in it. So I think, and I would tell this to the youngster, that happening to you is the gift of your arrival because it allows for you to figure out upon entry how to process all of the discomfort that's to come in different forms, in different ways.

    4. TFTim Ferriss59:37

       Mm-hmm.

    5. JBJon Batiste59:37

       So pace yourself. Take your time. It's your time. It doesn't all have to happen right now.

    6. TFTim Ferriss59:48

       Yeah. You know, as I'm listening to you describe the, the gift of these unfortunate events because it's preparing you for the discomfort to come, it makes me think of psychological and spiritual calluses. It's like, oh, now you can do some real heavy lifting.

    7. JBJon Batiste1:00:06

       Yeah. Yeah. Now you... Yeah, yeah. [laughing] That's

19. 1:00:14 – 1:05:20

    How Jon owns what comes his way rather than allowing it to overwhelm him.

    1. JBJon Batiste1:00:14

       right.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:00:14

       So the sensitivities I, I wanna double-click on again just for a second because personally, and I've seen this in friends, busy, busy, busy, go, go, go, 100 miles an hour trying to do everything all at once, and that hasn't been me forever, but there have been periods of time when I'm like that. And when I'm in that gear, I wouldn't say if someone were to ask me, "Do you feel a deep sense of inner knowing about where you're gonna be a year or two from now, where you want to be?" I'd say no. However, if I slow down a bit- If I declutter my mind a bit, not necessarily watching paint dry, but I create the space, whether it's through meditating, whether it's through exercise of a certain type, like I just did archery before I came here, which clears my mind really well, then the volume of the competing voices in my head has been lowered enough that I can hear things, right?

    3. JBJon Batiste1:01:11

       Mm-hmm.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:01:12

       Uh, and I'm wondering if you have ways to do that for yourself, or if the signal's just so strong you don't need to do that. But, I mean, you have a lot of projects and commitments, and I'm sure you have a million opportunities presented to you. When things get noisy, how do you help yourself to hear the inner feelings and voice and so on so that it doesn't get drowned out?

    5. JBJon Batiste1:01:39

       Oof. Man, Tim, we have to own what's been entrusted to us to own. We really have so much that is divinely bestowed upon us. And you wake up every day as a steward of it all. And then you get up and you have a choice. Do I pick up my phone? Do I give my mainframe away to some other thoughts or ideas or visions or distraction, if you wanna even call it that? It's a choice. Whatever. I don't really... How did I set that intention prior to laying down to rest? What am I feeding into my psyche? What am I watching? The eye gate. What am I listening to? That's why I make music a certain way, 'cause I know that for some, that's gonna be a fueling prerequisite for them.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:02:58

       Mm, it's gonna be their-

    7. JBJon Batiste1:03:00

       They're gonna-

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:03:00

       ... fertile ground.

    9. JBJon Batiste1:03:01

       Y- Y- Yes. Some- something powerful is gonna emerge from that. So for me, it's like owning a car. You have this thing and it's, it's on lease. And to me, that's it. I don't, I don't try to hear, as I was saying before. It's like a, a dream. If it comes, I don't rely on that to be the thing. And I have ways, like for you, archery connects you or primes you to be connected. I've strayed away from the desire to have this mystical encounter at every turn in order to prove the existence of be still and know. This is so funny how that's come. When you evoke these mantras [laughs] they-- I'm telling you, man. [laughs] But so that's not a real thing. That's not a real need for me in order to, to own what I've been given. Now, to own what I've been given also when it comes to how to be primed to hear and to receive the download is found in the mundane things and also the basic things. Do you drink enough water? Do you get enough sleep? Do you fill your heart with love when you can? Do you fill your mind with good things? Not even just things that are of good report. Of course, it's great, but also information that will empower you with what you have. For me, I've studied music as an empowering force for what I have. I've studied many things, music being chief among them. That's going to ignite me based on what I've been given. What ignites you? How do you surround yourself with all of that? And then this is the real... Okay, now we, we have a sense of that to some degree. There's-- We have a lot of experts in that to some level. The flip is, how do you cultivate giving it all away all the time?

20. 1:05:20 – 1:07:39

    Cultivating generosity without being drained.

    1. JBJon Batiste1:05:20

       How do you give it? The measure of your greatness is the measure of your generosity. How do you give it?

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:05:26

       Okay. How do you think about that?

    3. JBJon Batiste1:05:29

       How can you-

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:05:30

       Give it? Now, this is sharing the, the thing that you have on lease.

    5. JBJon Batiste1:05:35

       That's-

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:05:35

       This thing you've been endowed with.

    7. JBJon Batiste1:05:36

       That's hard. That's hard. 'Cause you can cultivate portals of giving. You can donate. You can give your time, which is the highest level of giving in terms of, uh, intentionally giving of your time is the highest level that you can go. But can you give of your time and your resources and your energy in a way that's not regulated by a, a, a, a portal or something that you set up in advance? Can you live in a posture of giving? Can you create a generous temple within? And can you walk through the world and live in a space where you're unfettered and unbothered by the need, but also you've preserved, you've, you've maintained a vessel so that you don't completely rid yourself of your life force energy. You don't want to be drained. There's many things that can drain you and pull from you, and there's darkness in the world. So then the discernment comes with this sort of awareness, and there's spaces in time when I'm much, much more aligned with that, and it's so clear And so many moments of the deepest, most lasting impact and inspiration have happened when I'm in that space. It's maintenance. It comes back to, like, the... It's so simple. It's so simple. And we feel good when we do that because that's how the machine was made. We have joy when we do that. We feel purpose when we do that. We f- it's like the machine was made a certain way. If you take care of the machine that you have, it's gonna function a certain way.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:07:26

       Yeah, you gotta do the maintenance. May not be sexy, but the machine needs maintenance.

    9. JBJon Batiste1:07:31

       That thing need... Come on.

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:07:33

        [laughs]

    11. JBJon Batiste1:07:34

        Get it together.

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:07:35

        [laughs]

    13. JBJon Batiste1:07:36

        Come on, doctor.

21. 1:07:39 – 1:09:49

    Jon’s billboard is invisible — but with deep posts.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:07:39

       If you could put something, metaphorically speaking, on a billboard, right? So this isn't an advertisement. It's to get a message, a feeling, a quote, anything out to the world. Just pretend that hundreds of millions of people would see it, billions, who knows. Could be anything. What might you put on that billboard?

    2. JBJon Batiste1:07:59

       I don't know if I would take that opportunity.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:08:01

       Tell me why.

    4. JBJon Batiste1:08:02

       I don't feel called to do that. And I also don't feel like we're in a time where anything without context can be received purely.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:08:19

       Tell me more about that.

    6. JBJon Batiste1:08:21

       W-

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:08:21

       This is a, this is a thread that I think I'm also pulling on in my own way, so I wanna hear more about what you mean by that.

    8. JBJon Batiste1:08:27

       Everything is received now based upon the context that we have defined within different cultures and all of our culture of humanity, and the stereotypes and the practices, the, the sociocultural practices and all of the ways we relate to each other and exist. We have decided to go in the direction of believing that I can look at you or I can hear something of a snippet of you, a fragment of Tim, is all I need to understand. And whereas there's a proliferation of data and we're more connected now than we've ever been, but we're not w- in, in-- We're, we're, we're for that. But all these other forms that we have propped up as primary separate us from depth.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:09:34

       Yeah, it's the, the surface level that doesn't lead to the deeper levels. It prevents us from getting to the deeper levels in a sense, right? If we-

    10. JBJon Batiste1:09:43

        So do you... You don't, you don't wanna traffic in that anymore-

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:09:47

        Oh, no

    12. JBJon Batiste1:09:47

        ... in any way.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:09:48

        No. I mean, I...

22. 1:09:49 – 1:16:16

    My rough draft of five deep handfuls.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:09:49

       The reason I started this podcast 10 plus years ago now was to be able to get into the deep water.

    2. JBJon Batiste1:09:57

       Yeah.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:09:57

       To have the space for that, and to hopefully, at the time I didn't know, but attract a listenership who also felt a thirst for the subtleties that you can only touch upon and the holistic edges of a person or a topic that you can only get access to when you have the space, when you have the time. So I resonate a lot with that.

    4. JBJon Batiste1:10:23

       Sometimes things take multiple listens, multiple exposure. If you feel something from something, that's your first signal, the emotional connection. Something even if you don't understand why or something relates to something you experienced or something that you heard of, you want, you aspire to, has been revealed. There's clues or tips or some vision.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:10:52

       Right.

    6. JBJon Batiste1:10:53

       That's just the first thing. That's how you know that there's many, many, many more layers-

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:10:57

       [laughs]

    8. JBJon Batiste1:10:58

       ... there-

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:10:59

       Yeah

    10. JBJon Batiste1:10:59

        ... for you.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:11:00

        Yeah, totally. I was just thinking as you were saying that of this book that [laughs] I've read so many times called Awareness-

    12. JBJon Batiste1:11:07

        Yeah

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:11:08

        ... by Anthony de Mello. I think the subtitle is The, The Promises and Perils of Reality. In any case, really fun book, very short, and I've read it on Kindle, but I've also read it in paperback over and over again. And what strikes me is each time I read it, because I have one copy with highlights over time, I highlight different things whenever I go back because I am a different person in a different situation or a developing person in different circumstances with different feelings about things. And it's just remarkable how each pass reads like a new book almost.

    14. JBJon Batiste1:11:48

        This is the thing that I've been thinking about for years, this idea that as people, whether creative or not, but it applies to the creative obviously. We only have two, maybe three ideas in life. We have two ideas that we are constantly refining, recreating, presenting, refining, recreating, presenting, and it's your life's idea set. Then if that's the case, how much, and I ask you this because I wanna know if you made a list of the five books or the five things or five places, 'cause I love your, your list. It's, it's inspired me. What are the five things that you know you could possess in this lifetime if you had to wipe everything else away and the only knowledge and the only inspiration, only experience The only everything that you could draw from were of this five. 'Cause I'm reaching a point where that's almost something that I'm willing to live by. Instead of the pursuit of more knowledge, more understanding, more broad vision and connectivity, how do I go as deep as I can within a handful of things that are for me and leave the rest?

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:13:34

        Yeah.

    16. JBJon Batiste1:13:34

        Which is a radical, like [laughs]

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:13:37

        Yeah.

    18. JBJon Batiste1:13:37

        So for you, if you were to play that game, what are the five-

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:13:42

        [laughs]

    20. JBJon Batiste1:13:44

        ... things?

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:13:44

        Maybe, maybe you should have a podcast. Maybe that's your next [laughs] next thing.

    22. JBJon Batiste1:13:47

        There's the man.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:13:47

        I will, I will give it a shot, and then I wanna ask you the same thing because what's a cool twist on the question is it's not just books, documentaries, people, but experiences or beliefs that could be in the list.

    24. JBJon Batiste1:14:04

        [laughs]

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:14:04

        Then it gets really interesting.

    26. JBJon Batiste1:14:06

        It's [laughs]

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:14:07

        Right?

    28. JBJon Batiste1:14:07

        I, I've- yes. [laughs]

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:14:08

        Then it gets super interesting-

    30. JBJon Batiste1:14:10

        [laughs]
23. 1:16:16 – 1:24:33

    Jon’s answer in musical improv.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:16:16

       interestingly, so I very rarely go to concerts. But when I attended your event, it resonated differently because it wasn't unidirectional.

    2. JBJon Batiste1:16:26

       [sighs]

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:16:27

       It was not the sage on the stage or the performer on the stage inflicting sound on the audience. It was a collective experiment, and there was a lot of emergent participation and interaction, which changed how my senses metabolized the whole thing, which is very interesting.

    4. JBJon Batiste1:16:43

       Wow.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:16:44

       So I didn't feel any overwhelm at all-

    6. JBJon Batiste1:16:46

       Wow

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:16:46

       ... at that event. But on a, on a pure decibel level-

    8. JBJon Batiste1:16:50

       Yes

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:16:50

       ... it wasn't overwhelming, but you're in a concert, right?

    10. JBJon Batiste1:16:52

        Yes.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:16:52

        [laughs] And it's, it's a cozy venue.

    12. JBJon Batiste1:16:54

        That's right. [laughs]

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:16:54

        Yeah. [laughs]

    14. JBJon Batiste1:16:54

        It's like, oh.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:16:55

        You feel it.

    16. JBJon Batiste1:16:56

        Yeah.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:16:57

        So the... I would probably talk to myself about the sensitivity, uh, because I've viewed it as a liability for a long time, but I think there are different ways to frame it. That's what comes to mind for me. What about, what about for you?

    18. JBJon Batiste1:17:07

        [sighs]

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:17:09

        Yeah.

    20. JBJon Batiste1:17:09

        Man. Wow. You, you mind? I could play my answer.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:17:16

        Yeah. Let's do that.

    22. JBJon Batiste1:17:17

        'Cause it's in abstract form but rapidly approaching clarity.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:17:26

        Let's do it. Yeah, absolutely, 100%. Where are we gonna do that, over here?

    24. JBJon Batiste1:17:31

        If, I mean, is that okay if we go over-

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:17:33

        Yeah, we got the lav mics on. We can just wander over.

    26. JBJon Batiste1:17:35

        Oh, we don't need... Okay.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:17:36

        Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's, let's give it a, let's give it a shot. I'm excited about this. [piano music]

    28. JBJon Batiste1:17:58

        So see [piano music]

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:18:06

        Ooh.

    30. JBJon Batiste1:18:07

        Oof. I do these concerts [piano music] where I'll, I call them streams. It's like stream of consciousness.
24. 1:24:33 – 1:38:35

    Jon’s upcoming album: Beethoven Blues (with bonus blues tutorial).

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:24:33

       So I have to ask you, because I f- I, number one, I'm excited about it. We can do it here. I don't know. I don't need to sit down, but Beethoven Blues.

    2. JBJon Batiste1:24:41

       Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:24:43

       Beethoven Blues.

    4. JBJon Batiste1:24:44

       Yeah, yeah, the blues.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:24:45

       So I am excited about this.

    6. JBJon Batiste1:24:47

       Yes. It's gonna be amazing for sure.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:24:49

       Especially after our conversation.

    8. JBJon Batiste1:24:51

       Wow.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:24:51

       Even more so.

    10. JBJon Batiste1:24:52

        Wow. Wow.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:24:53

        And after spending a little more time hanging out.

    12. JBJon Batiste1:24:55

        Yeah.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:24:55

        It's been a minute.

    14. JBJon Batiste1:24:56

        Yeah.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:24:57

        Because, 'cause now I'm thinking about the music as something that I can ingest.

    16. JBJon Batiste1:25:04

        Yes.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:25:04

        Something that I can let feed me.

    18. JBJon Batiste1:25:08

        Yes.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:25:09

        Inspire in the sense of breathing in.

    20. JBJon Batiste1:25:11

        Mm-hmm. That's right. That's right.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:25:12

        So could you say a bit more about how that came to be?

    22. JBJon Batiste1:25:16

        You know, the idea is something that I feel uniquely positioned to do is hearing Beethoven's music and not just playing it as it says, you know, on the score, but being in conversation with Beethoven and extending his music. So as we talked about, you know, this idea of streams, this sort of spontaneous composition, if you were to take Beethoven's music and exist within the music as if you were co-composing it with him and adding all these elements that many of which, all of which existed after his time on Earth. So you have things like flamenco music or gospel music-

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:26:06

        Flamenco

    24. JBJon Batiste1:26:07

        ... soul music, jazz music. [plays piano] And blues primarily, which to me is the not just musical innovation of the 20th century, but an innovation of human expression and spirituality.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:26:28

        Could you say a little bit more about that? Because I, I listen to blues-

    26. JBJon Batiste1:26:32

        Yes

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:26:33

        ... but I want to understand why you feel that way about it.

    28. JBJon Batiste1:26:38

        Ooh.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:26:38

        And I, and i- it's not that I disagree, but I wanna understand the magnitude of what you're saying.

    30. JBJon Batiste1:26:43

        Yes, yes. Blues is a form of music. It's also a form. It's a 12-bar form. It's a sound. It's a style. It's an inflection. You can sound like the blues without playing the blues. If you moan or you cry, the instrument wails. [plays piano] That idea is something that is about our existence and the human condition, and the blues is an allegory for the human condition in sound. It's a musical allegory that exists within the context of a cultural movement, so that's something that has not happened and has existed before it had a name. So for s- for you to find things like that in the world that are foundational to our existence, and then to figure out, how do I name them and identify them so then they can be shared? And then furthermore, how do you create a whole system that not only becomes its own form of musical engagement, social, sociocultural engagement, there are dances, there are blues rituals, juke joints, stomps, boogie-woogie, all this that we've grown accustomed to. Now I can also implement that into other spaces of music, which becomes this democratic expression of humanity. So what I started to think about with the blues is there are forms of music that express that aspect of the human condition and that, that pathos, that pathos, but didn't have all of the language that we have to acutely express it and also include the range of c- cultural diasporic reality that has existed since.
25. 1:38:35 – 1:40:23

    Taking the hypotenuse to catharsis and other Parting thoughts.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:38:35

       just gonna put this album on repeat and listen to it 1,000 times.

    2. JBJon Batiste1:38:38

       Oh, man.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:38:39

       I mean, 20 minutes of that? I mean, that feels like-

    4. JBJon Batiste1:38:45

       [laughs] You

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:38:46

       ... that feels like taking the hypotenuse to catharsis.

    6. JBJon Batiste1:38:50

       Ace. [clapping]

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:38:54

       You know?

    8. JBJon Batiste1:38:54

       Yes.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:38:55

       Yeah.

    10. JBJon Batiste1:38:55

        That's, that's it. That's the idea.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:38:57

        Yeah. Wow. I feel very privileged to even watch you do that.

    12. JBJon Batiste1:39:05

        Brother, thank you. I'm, I'm grateful for you building this space and allowing for folks to come in and share who they are and what they have to offer, and then it becoming this feedback loop of us all growing.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:39:22

        Yeah.

    14. JBJon Batiste1:39:22

        Of us all learning and growing together. That's you, man.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:39:27

        Right.

    16. JBJon Batiste1:39:27

        Thank you for that.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:39:28

        Thanks.

    18. JBJon Batiste1:39:28

        That's powerful stuff.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:39:29

        Thank you. I love doing it. How did this end up being a job? Crazy.

    20. JBJon Batiste1:39:34

        [laughs] Hey, man.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:39:36

        Man.

    22. JBJon Batiste1:39:36

        Blessing of life, right?

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:39:37

        Jon Batiste, jonbatiste.com. Beethoven Blues, go get it, everybody.

    24. JBJon Batiste1:39:41

        Mm. [piano keys playing]

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:39:44

        Good to see you, man.

    26. JBJon Batiste1:39:44

        Yes, brother.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:39:45

        [laughs]

    28. JBJon Batiste1:39:46

        We all the way in now.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:39:47

        Yeah. [laughs]

    30. JBJon Batiste1:39:48

        Be-doo-wee. [tapping chest]

Episode duration: 1:40:28