Jason Mraz interview

After an extensive European tour, Jason’s currently on the road in the US and, more importantly, providing answers to the Living Questions... Living… For The City "I love Amsterdam. I love how it’s a bicycle friendly town. It’s really all about the pedestrians and the bicycle. I love the relaxed laws they have over there…! It’s a city of young people, it has a great arts scene, it’s a big university town, it always feels very fresh. It also has its share of shadiness too, of course, the sketchy corners of town. But you have to check it out. I was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, but moved to San Diego about 10 years ago. I was driving around the US looking for inspiration, and having adventures, and I stumbled onto San Diego. They had a really cool acoustic music scene happening, in various cafes, and I was looking for a home in music and it was in that city where I could immediately participate. I felt like I had family right away, in both the audience and the other musicians there, and it’s where I settled down and where it began." Living… On A Prayer "I didn’t really have a religious upbringing but I love looking to religious theory and new philosophy stemming from religion. It’s inspiration for music, and it helps me to create music and share music, to reason with music. Music is very therapeutic for me, and music definitely becomes my spirituality but if I don’t check in with my spiritual self aside from music then the music can become difficult." Living… For The Weekend "To be quite honest, the ultimate weekend would be at home. I spend so much time on the road a good weekend would be spent at home. I’d wake up early, go to the beach, have a nice long surf, come home and wake up all of my friends and room mates, have a huge breakfast and sit around the kitchen table, chatting, telling stories. We’d maybe hang around the pool, maybe back to the beach again, we’d all pitch in for dinner… it’s very much just participating in a community and not going any further than the beach, which is about eight miles from home. Then I just want to go out to my stoop, with my newspaper, on Sunday morning. That’s how I want to see the world." Living… In A Box "The best present I’ve ever given is… well, I offer up my home to people. I’ve done it four or five times in the last four or five years and I watch these people come to my home and they usually come with a share of problems. Maybe a drinking problem or drugs or they haven’t been inspired to work on their art. Where I live we don’t have a television and there’s a very, very slow internet speed, there are no neighbours. There really is nothing else to do but till the land: I live on an avocado farm and we do a lot of gardening. Or there’s painting, or you work on music – something that becomes a creative exercise. And I’ve watched people’s lives awaken and become just so… divine. I’ve seen lots of people find purpose in their lives after they’ve come to our house. I don’t ask them to do anything other than contribute creatively to the home. So that’s a gift I continually give. And it’s also a gift I get back, definitely. When I go home, I love having those people there. They become my community and watching them, hearing what they’ve been through, listening to their stories, it’s amazing to hear. But the best gift I ever received is Alan Carr’s The Easy Way To Stop Smoking. I got it about three years ago and carried it in my backpack for about eight months before I read it and I thought ‘I’m going to challenge this book’ and it worked. I just stopped smoking. That’s a book I’ve given away now about 20 times…" The Living… Daylights "You know what? I’m afraid all the Bond films kind of blur into one big Bond film in my mind… My era would be Roger Moore. My mum took me to see Octopussy and that’s such a random Bond film. I was about seven or eight, right on the age where I was really just on the edge of loving going to the cinema. We’d see things every week and Octopussy was my first Bond experience. I don’t recall the theme for that one. I’m sure they weren’t just singing Octopussy over and over again, because I’d have remembered that…" The Living… Years "I’ve had some great times in my life but yes, certainly, I would say that right now is one of the best times. But I’m the kind of guy who says that again and again and again. I practice gratitude, it’s one of my things. I practice it more than I practice yoga and other things I should be doing to take care of myself but I just wake up every day and I’m floored at what I get to do, who I get to see, who I get to meet, how I get to do it and how I’m rewarded for it. Just the act of travelling and playing music should be the reward but the fact I get paid to do it as well is just insane. We recently played our biggest show in Europe, in Amsterdam, for 5600 people. That was a great event, it was a full arena, everyone was rocking with us and throughout the day I’d received a handful of omens and wonderful coincidences from the universe just letting me know that everything happening was supposed to be happening right now. And I stopped myself at least twice that day and said: ‘you know, this could be the greatest day of my life.’ It was wild." Living… TV "DVD is definitely my saviour. I lived in London last year when I was making my record, and when I was here I got hooked on The Mighty Boosh. Between those three discs and Bruce Parry’s Tribe series, those two programmes were my comedy and compassion, those are the things I like in programming. Bruce Parry is so amazing. It’s not just amazing that we get to see these places, but I think he teaches us new ways to interact with each other. The way he earns the respect of these people and earns his place in their community… I found myself behaving differently when I’d show up in different communities. I didn’t see any reason to put a wall up between me and somebody else, or to judge someone else. His programme was just so humbling, so natural. There’s an album that corresponds to the new series, Amazon, and I co-wrote a song on the album, just because I fell in love with the show. I insisted on meeting Bruce and doing anything I could to get attention for his programme and more importantly the charity his programme supports, Survival International, so I have to give a shout out to Bruce Parry."