"He had a very clear formula that he taught all his students," he says of Field. "It was really interesting because after I learned what that formula was, I started to see it in every movie. He kind of invented this formula. Basically, you tell people what the story is in the first ten or fifteen minutes or less and then after that the conflict comes and there's a resolution and then there's foreshadowing in between. It's really interesting. Around that time I started doing that. I don't know if that was the initial inspiration behind it, but I do remember checking that book out and it being huge."
Akinmusire says his previous release, 2011's When The Heart Emerges Glistening, was about presenting his ego, "like putting my ego on a mantle and presenting all its ugly parts and its beautiful parts - all the ugly parts and beautiful parts of myself. That's what that album about - me talking about the things that keep me up at night or things that make me smile."
But with the imagined savior is far easier to paint, on the other hand, he says he wanted the album to not be about him and didn't want the songs to be about what he went through. So a majority of the songs on the exceptional disc are about fictional characters he came up while a few of the cuts are based on real people like "Asiam (Joan)," inspired by Joni Mitchell, or "Ceaseless Inexhaustible Child (Cyntoia Brown)" based on the teenage killer who was sentenced life in prison.
Akinmusire says coming up with the fictional characters on the imagined savior is far easier to paint as well as writing and playing from a different perspective brought him to a place where he was able to deal with the ego a little bit more.
"Sometimes that's what it's all about when you're creating - how are you addressing the ego," he says. "Maybe sometimes it's your ego, maybe sometimes it's other people's egos. Maybe it's the band members' ego. That's kind of what I was going for with this album."
