The first half of high school, I had a girlfriend, and then the second half I got to know these guys who would just get stoned and jam. I had struck the goth thing by then, but I still thought of myself as Ian Curtis or something.

My goal is to make something special and pure, and that keeps me going, keeps me busy on the path of sobriety.

It's just about pushing yourself to realms that are uncharted. I love to get to that place where I don't know what kind of music I'm doing, I don't know if it's any good, I don't know if it's anything. It's a big question mark. The idea is to have interesting results. That's my bottom line. Not just a creative fantasy world or something like that, but a mood too.

The world is full of bands and bullshit, and if I'm doing a stupid art project like rock 'n' roll then I want to spare my audience as much as possible.

The things that keep me awake at night are things like textures and instrumentation and plotting out what things are going to do and what the sounds are that I'm trying to capture.

If somebody ever says something is a mature theme, it's bound to not be. I mean, you shouldn't fall for that. You can make it sound mature, but anything that's about being mature is pretty immature.

It was not designed for me to be 35 and still doing the same thing. But in another sense, it's like I've had an extended adolescence. It helps that I look young, too.