a crazy ocean of humanity floating together

by Lisa Stevens

Thirty-year-old Oscar-winning multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter and record producer, Jacob Collier, still lives in the same London house in which he grew up, still messing about with hundreds of instruments housed in what he terms his “magical room”. Collier spends his days there being fascinated by sounds - both instrumental and vocal - that he masterfully mosaics to create a kaleidoscope of music that is uniquely his.

Today he combines sound on a grander scale, guiding the voices of his global audiences as large as 30,000 on an immersive journey of transcendent harmony. Conducting from the stage, he fashions audiences into three groups, using simple hand gestures to signal his audience to sing in various ways - pointing up to signal singing a higher note or moving his hands outward as if holding an invisible inflating ball to queue the group to sing louder. His universally understood language, spoken through his hands and spirit, creates a pathway where there’s only one note the audience would think to sing. And the unified sound that pours forth is akin to something holy.

Jacob Collier conducting an audience choir. Photo courtesy of Jacob's Facebook page. Photographer unknown.

For those of us lucky enough to be a part of this holy experience, as my mother and I were at one of his concerts this past summer, the experience is electric and euphoric, the power of the sound surrounding the voices pulsating every bodily cell. What Collier describes as “a crazy ocean of humanity floating together”, Dawson Keltner, UC Berkeley professor and awe researcher, calls one of collective effervescence. Keltner borrowed the term from French sociologist Emile Durkheim, to describe a felt sense of joie de vivre when you experience being a part of something greater than yourself - in the case of Collier’s audience choirs, being a part of a common harmonious voice. A friend of Collier’s attended one of his shows and told him when he left the show, he could have given any one of the people walking out a hug - that it was a collective experience that they went through together. What his friend felt was something of unique beauty that faded the boundaries between him and the world outside of him.

Collective effervescence, as described by Keltner in his ground-breaking book titled Awe: The Transformative Power of Everyday Wonder (US bookshop/UK bookshop) , is one way to stir up awe. Awe happens when we gaze at a sunset at day’s end, take in an expansive vista, or stand witness to a whale hurling its massive gray body into the air before crashing into the ocean water. Awe likewise can surprise us when we witness moral beauty, when people take actions on behalf of others. We see this on social media channels that bring good news to their viewers - like roads stuffed with Spaniards helping to sweep the streets after the recent devastating floods or a stranger giving out hugs for free. When awe happens, the lines between Self and the other blurs, revealing an interconnectedness - whether that’s Self and nature, Self and art, or Self and other humans singing beside you as if you were one voice of humanity. If a togetherness is to be found in awe, it demands an un-Selfing – this term comes from great novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch and describes a turning away from our inner world outward, onto the world around us.

You don’t have to be an Oscar-winning musician to stir up moments of awe. Awe doesn’t demand that grandeur. Awe sits beside wonder in the illuminated world of a child, where everything is experienced anew.

The First Aconite by Muriel Dawson, 1940's

I grew up surrounded by nature and just outside our front door sat three giant severed tree trunks that patiently waited for my siblings and I to grow tall enough to climb their mighty backs. We created our own lit-up worlds amongst those tree trunks, weaving narratives that shifted with the rhythm of the seasons. We witnessed the awe-inspiring transformation—the sun's warmth fading into the crisp air of autumn, giving way to winter's soft snow and spring's drenching rain—which we very much felt a part of. Each shift of season beckoned us to tell stories explaining the magic. I remember telling my brother, with all certitude, that Jack Frost sprinkles his enchanted dust on top of the sprouts we would see popping up through winter snow to encourage their growth into vibrant blooms come spring. To a child, there is no separation between Self and the natural world, granting them access to a world rich with awe and un-Selfing.

In our current world, we are experiencing the antithesis of this natural un-Selfing – we're increasingly retreating into what Murdoch would call Selfing. This withdrawal is understandable given the profound uncertainty and sheer overwhelm that we're living through. When we perpetually face uncertainty and overwhelm, we draw abrupt lines between our Self and others as a means of self-preservation. This defensive separation, too, is played out on social media, where we witness the fighting of opinions – conflicts that, on a larger scale, escalate into deep national and global divisions founded on battling viewpoints.

Awe serves as an antidote to our uncertain, overstressed lives - and that’s not just an abstract notion. Neuroscience shows that awe activates the vagus nerve, orienting us to openness to the outer world and other humans. The expansiveness that awe instigates transcends opinion, creating a kind of liberation that makes space for creativity and transcendence, the supreme act of un-Selfing.

Awe is more than a momentary escape from our conflicted world – it's a portal to seeing it anew, as we shift focus from our individual Selves to become part of something larger. We discover it in childhood's imagined worlds, in the vastness of our skies, and in transcendent moments of collective harmony like Jacob Collier’s experiments in sound. But our world's deepest need may be for the awe we feel when truly seeing each other – when we recognize the deep well of kindness and compassion that connects us all, as an ocean of humanity floating together.