(Piano music)
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Spanish) Hello.
I don't speak Spanish.
(English) Typical English guy, I'm sorry.
We musicians,
we always get asked to play.
They say, "Will you come and do a talk?". And I say, "Yes, I'd love to, thanks".
And they say, "Of course we'll bring a piano so you can play too."
I often think, well, what if Gordon Ramsay
was coming here to talk about something?
They wouldn't bring an oven onstage and say,
"Cook us a fucking cake or something", would they?
(Laughter)
But that's fine, I love playing.
It's sad, but it's true but this thing...
is kind of my best friend. (Laughter)
A lot of you will know that piece,
I imagine, that I just played.
And some of you might know that it was written by Bach
and maybe a few of you will know
that it's his first prelude
for piano in C major.
But I'm going to say something now
that I think most of you won't know.
And this whole conference is about trust, isn't it?
And I'm the anti-trust guy.
I don't trust a fucking thing.
I don't trust anyone, I don't trust anything.
But I do trust music
and I want you to trust me when I tell you this:
There is not a single person
in this room today or watching this online
who would not be able to play that piece of music
within a few weeks.
Even if you've never touched a piano before
so long as you've got two hands and ten fingers
you would be able to play that piece
in five or six weeks.
I've just written a book that explains how to do it.
It shows you how to read music, how to practice...
You don't even need a proper piano,
you can get a cheap electric keyboard and you can still do it.
I just realised it's been 3 minutes into my talk
and I've already plugged the book.
I'm really sorry. I'm not going to do that again.
But the point is that music
that piece is, what - 90 seconds long?
2 minutes? 32 bars.
It was written 300 years ago.
And yet, within it,
it contains the entire universe.
It's magical thing.
I can't think of anything else
in the world in which we live
that it is as universal as music.
Possibly football?
(Laughter)
Not English football because we're shit.
Spanish football definitely.
But music is extraordinary,
Ian foster said,
"Classical music is the deepest of the arts
and it goes deep beneath the arts."
And it's one of those things that it's like a language
that we don't know that we're all fluent in.
It's amazing and so learning an instrument
even listening to music
is something that I think we need more of
in the world in which we live today.
Because that world in which we live today,
it seems to worship extroverts
and we see introverts as kind of freaks, to be honest.
I think it should be the other way around.
Everything we do today is predicated on the idea
that looking outside of ourselves is the right thing to do.
You know we post selfies on Instagram,
we are funny or argumentative on Twitter,
we poke people on Facebook, we swipe on Tinder,
we buy shit we don't need from Amazon,
we eat junk food,
we do so many things looking outside
to try and make what's happening inside
feel just a little bit better.
And weirdly, we've got it the wrong way around.
Two weeks ago I was in Madrid
and I was doing a concert here
and in the concert I was playing a piece of Beethoven.
In the morning of the concert I walk down to the Prado museum.
Oh my God what a place!
And I went to see the Goya paintings.
He did a series of paintings called "The black paintings."
And I did that because
Goya and Beethoven have a lot of similarities.
I guess most importantly they went deaf at the same time, both of them.
They were depressed.
Goya was homeless,
he spent time living under a bridge not far from here in Madrid.
Beethoven was arrested once
because the police thought he was a tramp,
that he was homeless.
But the real reason they're so connected is that,
they looked inside of themselves
to express what was going on in the outside world.
Goya painted the ugly truth that people needed to see.
Beethoven ripped up the rule book and he composed music
that really for the first time in musical history
was about feelings, it was about interiority, looking inside.
It wan't about the glory of God,
making the people paying him happy
it was about feelings.
And the truth is,
all of us today, myself included
we have forgotten
how to shut the fuck up.
(Laughter)
And just sit and be still and just be.
Things are so fast we've forgotten how to listen,
how to really listen and hear.
If I say to my girlfriend,
"Darling, what's wrong?"
and she looks at me and she says,
"Nothing, I'm absolutely fine."
It's not just me, right? That happens to all.
(Laughter)
I know then, whatever I say, I'm in trouble.
There's nothing I can say to that.
If I say to her, "Baby, what's wrong?"
And she looks at me and she says,
"You know, this morning when you said that thing it really upset me."
Suddenly everything is different.
And we have somewhere to go,
we have communication, and dialogue and honesty.
And I often wonder what would happen if we were all a bit more honest
about what was going on in the inside.
It's an extraordinary thing to be able to do, it's a brave thing to do.
Would the world be a better place?
I don't know.
Would it be a more trustworthy place?
Absolutely.
There's no doubt in my mind.
Like I said, I find it very difficult to trust.
Some of you here know
I had a quite challenging childhood and upbringing.
Lots of us have, of course.
We all go through trauma in one way or another.
And I actually wrote a book about it,
that some of you have been kind enough to buy
and some of you have even read it which is very kind of you,
and that book is -
It's really a love letter to music but it also talks about -
it's basically a book about child rape and classical music.
So it's a comedy. (Laughter)
My publishers were so happy,
"Yes this will be in supermarkets everywhere,
everyone wants to know about that stuff."
But the truth is, the reason I bring it up
it's a love letter to music
because music is the one thing
that when bad things were happening
it literally saved my life.
Even today when shit is going wrong
I listen to music and everything changes.
You know they say that the soul resides at that junction point
between our inner and our outer worlds.
That small space between dreams and fantasy and reality.
And my happiest moments
are when I get back to that place
even if it's only for a short time
that's where Bach and Beethoven -
that's the space they inhabited and they created from.
And I want to mention a word, I'm really sorry for mentioning it
the M word:
Mindfulness.
I'm sorry, you know, I often thought mindfulnes meant
you kind of hire a fleet of commando monks with shaved heads
and you climb up a mountain
and you "om" for three weeks, while fasting.
Bach invented mindfulness.
Playing the piano, listening to music listening, really listening...
is mindfulness.
It's where the magic happens.
I'm not a religious man at all.
But I've got a lot of faith
I've got a lot of faith but no religion.
But there is no greater proof
for the existence of God
than Bach, Beethoven, Prokofiev,
Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Rachmaninoff,
Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Schubert,
Schumann, Ravel, Debussy,
Scriabin, Bartók, Hummel,
Haydn, Mozart -
Mozart, fucking hell!
Him on his own!
(Laughter) Oh my God!
And that is a much, much, much stronger list of things
to help us connect to that part of ourselves than
Trimipramine, Fluoxetine,
Citalopram, Olanzapine, Lithium,
any one of the dozens of medications and drugs
that I've taken over the years.
And of course medication is important
it kept me alive for a bit.
But music is where the real magic happens.
Much more than drugs,
much more than self-help books,
I fucking hate self-help books!
They're awful things!
These books you buy...
and the premise behind everyone of them
is that you have all completely fucked up your life.
You've done everything wrong for decades,
you're a complete failure as a human being.
But if you read this book,
I'll convince you to buy the next book I write,
that will say the same thing.
And... (Laughter)
We don't need it because the truth is,
the absolute fundamental truth,
is that every single one of you
is a fucking miracle.
You're perfect just the way you are.
And the way to get in touch with that part of us
is to listen and to connect and to celebrate this idea of interiority.
And music, the saddest thing is that we know how powerful it is,
we all know the impact it has.
And yet progressive governments
all around the world
have absolutely massacred music education.
It's not just in England, although England is appalling.
I was in the House of Lords three days ago,
speaking to a big group of people all about music education.
And I'll tell you something,
non of them have a fucking clue of what to do.
They just haven't got a clue,
they don't listen, they can't listen they don't know how to fix it.
And the truth is unless you have money today,
your kids aren't going to learn music.
They aren't going to know who Bach is,
they're not going to know that piece.
And so it falls on us as people who are creative
and who love music,
and who were lucky enough to be able to listen and explore music,
to share that message.
I think it's so important.
One of the things I really want to do
is to form, to build, to develope an app -
because we need more apps,
there are not enough of them. (Laughter)
And this app will celebrate interiority
and what it will do is it will provide you everyday
with a piece of classical music.
I hate the phrase 'classical music', by the way
I'm sorry I keep mentioning it but there is no other phrase, does it?
The problem is
classical musicians and the people in the industry
they are such assholes.
They keep classical music up here
in a little box
just for them
and just for a certain kind of audience
who are well-dressed and educated and wealthy and they can understand it
and it's such bullshit.
If anyone can suggest a better phrase
for classical music
please let me know.
I did that on Twitter and people were saying things like
mind music
or old music
or shit music.
(Laughter)
But I like inner music.
But everyday what will happen
is that you'll will find this app,
it will send you a piece of music,
it will go hopefully into classrooms
in front of children
and you will send to people you love, you miss, you're thinking about,
you'll send them a little piece of music,
and you will listen to it yourself and just for 5 minutes a day,
you will switch off
and reconnect with that interior part of yourself,
and see what the impact is.
So I'd like to do a little experiment now,
to kind of end.
I'd like imagine that I've given you all
a free iPhone 7. (Laughter)
I've given you all this app on your smartphones
and you pull out your smartphones and you open up the app
and now I want us to go really quiet.
It doesn't matter you can't see me now, this is about listening.
I want us to learn how to listen again, to reconnect to that part of ourselves
I'm going to play you a piece of music by a composer called Gluck.
It's really a love song.
And when I'm playing it I want you to close your eyes and trust
what's going to happen to you.
Trust, listen to your heart beating
feel what a miracle you are
trust this music will tunnel into you
and take you to a place that is safe and extraordinary and powerful.
And I hope that everyday,
you will find 5 minutes
just to connect with something, some kind of inner beauty.
And if it's not learning an instrument or listening to music
it can be painting, or drawing, or cooking, or dancing,
or writing, or photography,
or any one of a thousand creative things
that are a vital antidote
to the the fucked up, crazy full on world in which we live.
And to me that kind of inner beauty,
it sounds a lot like this.
(Piano music)
(Music ends)
(Applause)