“To have a sacred place is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room or a certain hour of the day or so, where you do not know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody or what they owe you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be.”—Joseph Campbell
JACOB COLLIER
Jacob Collier is a once-in-a-generation musical phenomenon. Collier’s impressive harmonic composition, layering technology, and vast knowledge of music match his infectious energy and passion for his craft. He gained fame on YouTube as a teenager. He showcased his incredible musical abilities through complex compositions and engaged his fans by explaining the intricacies of classic songs. He did all of this from the comfort of his music room in Finchley.
In 2020, Jacob Collier’s popularity exploded. He performed an impressive NPR Tiny Desk concert featuring six versions of himself playing various instruments, singing, and talking to each other over the internet. He also wowed audiences with a similar performance on a Jimmy Kimmel show appearance where three versions of himself popped up on a video call to perform his new single. What’s particularly impressive is that Collier’s musical genius resides in a special room previously used by his mother to give violin lessons. Now, the space houses his digital audio setup and an ever-growing collection of musical instruments.
When talking to NPR about recording music in his room, Jacob said, “That’s what makes the homemade bedroom thing so ‘characterful,’ that you’re feeding off your environment. That this is your world, you’re in the world in which you’re creating things, and you essentially end up describing the things around you. I think that’s a very ‘home-ly’ and honest way of making music. I can’t imagine making music in any other space.”
Jacob Collier is one of many examples of creative individuals with dedicated workspaces. Another is J.K. Rowling, the author famous for writing the Harry Potter series. She’s known for having a dedicated space to work on her books in peace and solitude. She wrote much of the book in a café called The Elephant House, which she said had “the perfect atmosphere for writing.” Georgia O’Keeffe, Thomas Edison, Frida Kahlo, and Ernest Hemingway are a handful of other creative geniuses who had dedicated creative workspaces, too.
IT’S MORE THAN A ROOM
In his YouTube channel, Jacob Collier’s workspace is tidy and organized. This observation brings up an important point: a creative space is more than just the physical location and tools. It’s also about how everything in your area relates to each other. Is it messy or clean? How does it make you feel when you enter your space? Does it inspire you to do something daring?
Psychologist Sabine Kastner wanted to answer these questions and investigate the myth of the disorganized genius. Despite what some famously messy creative thinkers like Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs believed, Kastner found that clutter depletes our mental resources by competing for attention with the problem we’re trying to solve. The question popped into her head while she walked across a street and realized her mind strictly focused on one thing in her environment. She realized that nobody had investigated what captures our attention and what doesn’t.
Kastner faced a problem in her research: how could she replicate the chaotic mess of real life in a sterile lab? Previously, scientists used simple standard shapes to measure the brain’s response to things competing for attention. She knew this approach didn’t accurately portray the messiness of real life, so Kastner took a different approach. Instead, she showed participants pictures of real-life scenes. She asked them to focus on a car or pick out a person from the scene. While doing this task, an MRI machine scanned their brain for patterns.