When I was about seven we had a record player: it was kind of veneered, and I would just lie on my side and draw pictures on it with an old compass. We had this record collection and just by default, because I liked the object, I would stick a record on. I think the first real obsession was with The Mikado and HMS Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan – some of the melodies really affected me, and I found it quite funny and didn’t realise that there could be humour interwoven with classical sounds. It was a bit of a bridge to the classical music world. But no one was teaching me, and as I was scribbling away, I would just put different records on.

Another big step for me which was mind- and heart-blowing was when I first I discovered the second movement of the Emperor Concerto. I remember lying, and just listening to it, and thinking this is a very beautiful thing – and then what I didn’t realise was that the piano was about to come in: that long gentle, waving, soothing introduction, that you don’t know quite where it’s going, and then suddenly high above you have the piano coming in, and I remember just crying. When I find something I like I listen to it repeatedly, so I would listen to it on repeat and get to know it, and feel everything that it has to offer – I’d feel ‘is there anything else like this that would move me this much’? I don’t think good music ever really leaves your soul. Once it’s in, it’s in – it’s a library of sound that can stay dormant for years, but it’s still there, still remains, and shapes who you are.

As a young artist I was invited by Glyndebourne to go and make drawings during the rehearsals for Così fan tutte. I was a bit apprehensive because it was mid summer and I wasn’t sure if I’d like being stuck in a dark place for days, and I’d never seen an opera. You have a few moments in your life which you will never forget – I was sitting in the second row at a dress rehearsal, and was scribbling away drawing the people in the orchestra pit, and then the lights went down, and then the curtain went up and the orchestra started, and it was like being hit by a wall of beauty, and I just burst into tears. I didn’t know what to expect, and what I had expected was so far from what it was, and I will always remember that feeling of the power of the stage, the costumes, the movement, the lighting, the sound, the orchestra, the conductor, all the strings, everybody there – this collective experience. It was just sublime, and I left there a different person.

Making the film of my book was my first real experience of surrendering something to another creator, or a body of people. I was scared, but I loved the process and I trusted them. So by the time it got to working on the children’s musical with Charlotte [Freud] I’d already learnt how to coexist in making something. She was very close to the book and the film, so she understood it. And it wasn’t like she was doing it and just presenting it to me – I heard the various iterations all the way, and was able to say ‘I like that, I don’t like that, that doesn’t feel right’ – which was also very lovely.

What I’ve loved about the book and the film is seeing other people’s responses to it, whether it’s a school who are making their own versions or whatever it is, and whether it’s Charlotte writing the musical, or seeing children respond to it, all of it is part of something much bigger than me. I sometimes feel like we’re all just catalysts for other things, we’re all playing a part in a wider exploration of experience, and we all contribute to it, and I love to feel that the book I’ve made, and the film, spark other people’s imagination and creativity.

The record I couldn't live without

Beethoven Piano Concerto No 5, ‘Emperor’

Emil Gilels pf Philharmonia Orchestra / Leopold Ludwig (Warner Classics)

This work has been with me all my life – if I was to be denied ever listening to it again I’d be devastated.

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