Everyone has a spectrum of masculinity and femininity inside them. In every individual, a war of misogyny is raging. Every man is repressing and oppressing the femininity within themselves, raising up male values as governing values. Because that's what we've been taught to do, just as every woman has. Misogyny isn't just something that affects women. It affects men.

There are so many more productive things to do than sit around feeling shame and guilt. Beyond touching on shame and guilt in a perfunctory manner, I wouldn't bother with that at all.

No matter how public your work is, it's just a relationship with yourself. And you have to create a little sacred space inside yourself to treasure that... because when you die, that's still what you have. It's what you're born with and what you leave with. It's kind of a story of the way you accompanied yourself through your life.

I think, with music in general, people just inevitably connect with feeling. The opportunity to hear expressed feeling. That's what has always drawn me towards music. It's something where, by connecting to someone else's voice, I feel less lonely. I feel more alive. I feel more connected to the world and to the rest of humanity. Sometimes a voice can be like a lifeline.

What separates people that create from the people that don't is just one's ability to take action despite the fear, you know? Or to suspend the fear, or more commonly, the voice of judgment within yourself that says, "This isn't good enough. You don't deserve to do this. You're not worthy. Your expression isn't meaningful. You have nothing to contribute, just get back to your 9-to-5 job." It's not so much that I don't have all those same voices, it's more just that for some reason as a kid I was shameless enough that could plow through them for long enough to get something on the table.

You need to release yourself of any expectation of what that material should be. Just start letting it be what it's naturally evolving into, even if it means just pulling words out of the dictionary and laying them one after another. Words are everywhere.

Diane Cluck is a virtuosic talent with an emotionality that feels at once ancient and alien. Her mastery of her voice as an ecstatic instrument is so compelling.