I had an unspoken treaty with myself to never lie in my lyrics, so, for a long time, when I wrote love songs, I would use genderless pronouns, like "dear" and "darling" - like some kind of granny!

A lot of me figuring out how to love myself more involves finding the things that I'm ashamed of and looking them right in the eye. And something I always find beautiful about Jesse's work is that he finds beauty without any calculation. People say that his work is dark, but he never sees it as such. For him it's all almost about educating people to process why they feel disgust.

It's very human to try to put things into boxes, and it's hard for us to reconcile with grey areas, and yet somehow that's the area I find the most poetic, the juiciest.

It struck me at some point that the things I wanted to say had to be wordless. I had to renounce words in order to go deep into the practice of making materials and textures that would express what I'm trying to say more accurately.

I do love the idea that something can make you forget that you're listening and just transport you to somewhere else in your head.

First thought, best thought. I live by that when I make my own music.

When you actually make a new friend, and you make music and laugh really hard together, that can give you a lot of confidence and nourishment and encouragement.