I create little challenges for myself, like, 'Okay, whatever you do in this song, you've got to somehow work in Greek Cypriots,' or something like that.

I finished touring the last record and I started recording new .I never really left the bubble, which is I think a good thing. I was just very focused. Maybe I should have taken a break or something, and not done such a long push.

When I start asking my friends, "What do you think this means?" And it leads to way more interesting conversations than what it actually ends up meaning in the dictionary. Like "apocryphal," for instance.

When I'm onstage, I'm completely comfortable, and I feel very vital and alive.

In New York, I'm playing in a church, solo, doing instrumental stuff. There's talk of doing more, like, installation-type things with some of the specimen horns I've played through. Just filling a room in a museum with these horn-speaker sculptures and then making loops that run all day, and you walk around the room and sort of mix the sound by where you stand. That's all way in the future, but that kind of stuff is a different way of thinking about performing.

The earth almost looks like it's packed down and dense from so many feet treading over it.

I definitely have to give myself permission, like on "Master Swarm," to rip a lead on that. Just play a violin solo that's - it's a bit showoff-y, but it's fun, so who cares?