Bonus: Rashida Jones on her father Quincy Jones

Rashida reflects on her father's nocturnal lifestyle, synesthesia and music writing habits.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
I was going to say something else that I was interested.
It was about your father being nocturnal, you know, and
that's so what was that like having a father that?
Did that mean he said more during the day? Did
you know?

Speaker 2 (00:16):
I wanted to say all of it?

Speaker 1 (00:21):
So did you What was that like?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Well, I think I've decided that I'm semi nocturnal genetically,
because I do think it's genetic because I know people
who are just mourning people and then people who are like,
you know, I'm just like low energy until like noon,
and then I'm like, what are we doing? So I
think if I had my brothers, I would probably work

(00:45):
at night and I'd probably go to better around like
two or three. My dad didn't ever go to sleep
before seven am, wow, since he was like sixteen, because
he started at the jazz clubs in high school and
then from there it's like his life was at night.
So he'd go to sleep at seven and he'd wake
up at like three pm. So in order to see

(01:07):
him and hang out with him, A, I would see
him after school. He was waking up when I came
up from school, and then b I would often like
go to sleep at the appropriate time, you know, when
I was eight or nine or whatever. And then I
would wake up at like one am, and I'd tiptoe
up to his room and he would be usually working
in the bathroom. He'd have all of his like sheet

(01:28):
music like splayed out on the bathroom floor, and I
would just go hang out with him, and then I
would eventually fall asleep on his lap or something or
on the floor. So that was like a common practice
for me, and that was.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
A image seeing your father. I have a friend who
used to his father was a screenwriter in Hollywood. He
used to kind of tiptoe into his father's study in
the middle of the day and his father would be
asleep on the sofa and he'd wake up and he'd say,
can't you see I'm working?

Speaker 2 (01:58):
No, I actually can't. I very much cannot see that working.
It is working. I agree in apping is working, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
But it's lay on the on the on the floor.
But he took you in, you did he never know?

Speaker 2 (02:13):
He never was like to be your sisters.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Did they do that as well? Really?

Speaker 2 (02:17):
No, I think I'm more nocturnal. I am sort of
like and I really like I loved watching him in
process because he did love to be undisturbed, and he
sort of knew he could do that when everybody else
was asleep. And there's something I think for him that
was like cozy about knowing he was like in the
safety of his home with his family, but then could
also do his work. You know, what was his What
was he doing was he he was scoring. He would

(02:40):
he'd be scoring, or he'd be writing charts for to record,
he'd be looking. I mean that's also like I've always
had just such awe over that, Like you just he
could look at music and know what he was looking
at and hear it while he was looking at it
without actually listening to something, which is just an amazing skill.

(03:02):
But he also he had synesthesia. I feel like people
talk about having that a lot. It basically is like
you see sounds, oh you have there's some connection between
two of your senses, so you can you know, you
hear like some people will tell you that one color
is directly related to a number, or you see, like

(03:23):
when he hears music, he sees colors for each note
and it's very specific and it doesn't change. Yeah, So
I think for him it's such an all encompassing, all
sensory experience to work on music that I don't think
he even needed to hear it in a weird way.
You know, when he was working on it, did you were.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
You encouraged to play an instrument? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, I play piano. I kind of peaked at age twelve.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
But you know what I did too, not them in
any range of yours. And then recently, I all about
ten year years ago, I started taking piano lest Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Okay, we need to talk about that. Yes, I want to.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Do that comes back. Yeah. I was reading and I
went straight to the classics. You know, Yes, I've been
playing the same Mozart sonata for a very long time.
But there's something about the focus that you actually there
with the teacher next to you, and I'm going to
have to get it's very kind of quiet.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Nice.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
I started last year. I started trying to teach myself
how to read because.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
I have a teacher.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Okay, Yeah. It was good though. I just I just
kind of plunk through and I got better. It's just
like it's just you just do it over. I was
practicing every day, and I was doing my back conventions,
which is how we first learned how to play. And
you know, you get a little bit better every day
and I'm still terrible. Just the feeling that you can
get better at anything. As you get older, it is

(04:52):
like it's hard to remember that. Yea. So it's good
to be bad at something and then get a little
better every day, or.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
To just remember some something that from your childhood that
comes back, you know, A say, I remember I must
have been very, very very young when I took piano lessons,
because I said to someone the other day. The teacher said, Ruthie,
I can tell you didn't practice, and i'ment, how can
you could you tell? And she said, oh, a little

(05:18):
bird told me, and I believed her. You see, I
must have been either very stupid.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
Or very young.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
Who's that bird? Bird talk can tell you that? I
wasn't pride to say so. I hope I was really young,
like two or three.