Creativity Quote by Tom Jenkinson

Jenkinson is puncturing the fantasy that “simple” music is easy. A few chords, a basic idea, two or three sentences: it sounds like discipline, like a return to fundamentals. Then the moment his hands touch the instrument, the plan dissolves. The verb “evaporates” is doing real work here. It’s not that the idea is rejected; it just can’t survive contact with the physical act of playing. For a musician whose reputation is built on complexity and left-field structure, that’s less confession than diagnosis: his default state is motion, deviation, the brain rerouting in real time.

The subtext is about authorship. He’s describing a tug-of-war between the self who intends (the tidy, conceptual planner) and the self who performs (the impulsive engineer chasing interesting errors). “Whatever direction” isn’t laziness; it’s a respect for emergence. In electronic and experimental music, especially the kind Jenkinson is associated with, the studio and the machine aren’t neutral tools. They’re collaborators that generate surprises, push back, and seduce you into overbuilding. Starting “strictly basic” is almost a dare to his own process.

Culturally, it’s a neat rebuttal to the listener’s demand for purity or “stripped down” authenticity. He’s saying the stripped-down version may be the least honest one. The most truthful thing he can do is follow the derailment, because that’s where his voice actually lives.