Tim Minchin sits beneath the towering glass prow of the Sydney Opera House, the spring sun pouring down on him like a benediction, as he pounds the keys of a grand piano.
He's going wild — either barely hanging onto the threads of a musical idea, or masterfully improvising.
Either way, we may be in the middle of filming him for an episode of Creative Types, but when Tim is at the piano, the world disappears.
"For me, it never felt like work," the Australian musician, writer, actor and comedian tells me.
"It was always a compulsion to play. I thought, 'If I want to be an artist, I have to create something that no-one else can do.' So, I never stopped trying to make what I do better."
Unable 'to not go there'
When we meet, we're both a little bruised: I had just lost my mum and was going to fly straight from this shoot to give her eulogy the next morning.
Tim's mum died the year before. We agreed losing our mums was made easier by us both having large, nutty, hilarious families. "But we are going to have to talk about it at some point, aren't we?" Tim muses.
He's not one to shy away from talking about the hard stuff.
"You know me well enough to know that I quite like going there … I suffer from an inability to not go there."
It's probably the greatest secret to his success that Tim Minchin goes there.
With musical hooks, hypnotic rhythms and interlocking lyrics that tighten around you like a finger trap, Tim has always jumped into the no-go zone: songs about religion, war, sex dolls, even the middle-class hypocrisy of his adoring audiences.
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But these days, he seems to have slipped its grip.
"It's not very trendy to talk about religion anymore, but it hasn't gone away. Religious extremism hasn't gone away. But it wouldn't be right for me to be doing that now because I'm a well-known 49-year-old wealthy white guy with a lot of power and a big platform.
"I'm no longer an agitator. And I've written [Broadway musical] Matilda. I don't want to be stuck in one mode my whole life."
Jobbing muso to Broadway
Any break in play and Tim is drawn back to the keyboards.
His playing is virtuosic — fast, clever, emotional while tightly held — but he is quick to knock down praise: "I know a lot of jazz musicians and I know I'm a fraud — or if not a fraud, I'm down there and they're all up here."
As he prepared for our filming, Tim spends time on the keys. I'm pacing my dressing room, practising and memorising my questions, fixing the shape of the conversation.
I realise, as Tim punches out arpeggios next door, that he is doing the same thing, just with music.
His piano of choice is a Yamaha: brighter in sound than its moodier cousin, the Steinway, which he says suits his style of playing better.
In a mark of the ultimate success, that even he seems to find shocking, he's fulfilling the dream of a lifetime and having a Yamaha grand made just for him, just for home.
When the musical you write for the London West End wins seven Olivier Awards and five Tonys and is still playing 15 years after it opened, you can do that.
"I had got used to being a sort of jobbing muso," Tim recalls.
"I had always been someone that people said, 'You have talent and flair' and all that, but then suddenly I had awards and people writing about me. And part of your ego goes, whoosh! And part of you goes, 'No, I'm just an idiot.'
"To suddenly get attention … you have to figure out how to not become a monster, but to also go with it, to not cap yourself."
Tim does seem a little changed: he's not so spiky, not so quick to judge. Life and experience have chamfered the edges from him, as it does.
"What I'm interested in now is not limiting myself in terms of what I'm trying to make [audiences] feel," he says.
"I just don't see why there's any reason I should put any limits on myself whatsoever."
Watch Creative Types with Virginia Trioli: Tim Minchin on Tuesday April 15 at 8.30pm on ABC TV, or stream the whole series now on ABC iview.
