By Jonathan Weiss
Before we begin, I would like to make a special shoutout to appearances. Namely, seeing is believing, looks are deceiving, and perception is an illusion. See what “eye” mean?
But what does Jacob Collier have to do with appearances? As a multiple-Grammy-winning, 25-year-old jazz prodigy, isn’t his music more important than his mien?
Well, the intermission of Jacob Collier’s Djesse Volume 1 premiere concert was a unique moment where my eyes were not transfixed by his act.
Praise to my eyeglasses, which bring into focus the spidery phantom of Jacob Collier, a multiple-Grammy-winning, 25-year-old jazz prodigy, as he flees the audience.
Praise to the ochre walls of MIT’s Kresge Auditorium, behind which Jacob Collier now splashes water on his face.
Praise to Jacob Collier’s Instagram story. In the transient universe beneath my iPhone screen, Jacob Collier proclaims the release of Djesse Volume 1 atop a balcony in Kresge. The pipe organ’s many pipes illuminate him, orange-sweatered, like a Jack-O-Lantern.
Praise to the pipe organ, which today shines a few photons onto me.
Praise to the program’s font, spindly like Collier’s hands, that spells “All Night Long” and “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic.”
Praise to the boy sitting next to me shouting buzzwords like “negative harmony” as his father thumbs through the program.
Praise to my bladder, which throbs against its overflowing contents like a drunken wildlife instructor trying single-handedly to stop an avalanche.
Praise to my daydreaming brain, which forgot to make my legs take me to the bathroom. My fingers, touching the factory-painted green of my chair, search for a memory.
Praise to Kresge Auditorium, which once loomed over me at my elementary school’s Field Day. As I shook the sand from my shoes after a weak long jump, I practiced playing Debussy in my head and gazed at Kresge.
Praise to my piano teacher. I didn’t know it as a ten-year-old, but he graduated from MIT.
Praise to the factory-painted green sign of the “Made By Me” pottery store in Cambridge. I would always scooter around my verdant neighborhood, my ten-year-old left leg stabbing the ground like a ravenous connoisseur’s toothpick, and turn right at the green “Made By Me” sign. Flying down Sacramento Street to the playground, I gathered my friends, and we would ride to my neighbor’s house and play under his magnolia tree. This neighbor, an MIT professor of music, gave me my first keyboard, but I never really thought about that. Such was the defect of a childhood spent dreaming.
Praise to Jacob Collier’s childhood, which was most definitely spent dreaming.
Praise to the intermission of this Jacob Collier concert. Amid the premiere of the four-volume album of a spunky creature from across the Atlantic, there is a pause.
Praise to the members of the MIT Orchestra, who proceed onstage gingerly. They would probably be cramming for their biological engineering exams and computational linguistics exams, pursuits which a cheeky Jacob Collier told the audience were far more interesting than music, if not for the years and years of strumming and humming arpeggios in a moonlit bedroom, wondering.