All the folks I play with come from jazz backgrounds or at least appreciate spontaneity within the parameters of a pop song.

Most of the songs that I appreciate are lyrically vague.

I've never approached classical music in a formal way, ever. I couldn't read very well. I'd have to play every piece and internalize it, almost as if I had written it myself.

Anyway, I'm digressing, but this is just kind of this 10-and-a-half-minute, ambient - you hear cicadas and birds and the wind outside and crickets as I'm swelling the piece. I could never do that on a pop record. I could, but why would I want to be agitating?

It's like you don't know you're making a record unless you're half-killing yourself.

If you take a little time, let's say three weeks off, after recording a song, and you listen to it every other day, you're just going to know eventually.

What you see at the Field Museum is only like, 10 percent of the collection. It's birds of paradise and passenger pigeons and in all these drawers that pull out, these specimens come out and it's spectacular. And it worked out.