We all have those times in relationships, whether it's work or personal or family or whatever it is, where there's something that's eating at you and eating at you, and you want to say it to the person that you care about the most, but you're so afraid it's going to destroy everything. Like the fear of destruction keeps one from saying what they want to say - when, in actuality, by not saying it, things get worse. Because it's the entropy, the leak that doesn't get fixed.

Once you've said it, you can't put it back. So choose your words carefully in heated moments in personal relationships. Anything you say, people have feelings. If you're thinking something, you keep thinking it and it just sort of slides out, it's gonna happen.

How can you qualify the difference between a sin and a lie.

The blues is something separate from what I do. They connect at certain spots, but blues is different. I wouldn't put it in with what my career has been. That would be a whole separate wing.

I think also there was a lot of coming to terms with where I am in life, where I fit in as a gay man in America, and getting more comfortable with who I am.

It reset and mended my freshly damaged and distorted view of life, and made me recognize that this thing we call music, this primal expression that we reshape and refine and define ourselves with, is the gift I was given. The ability to communicate what others feel but cannot fully express, the passing down and around of songs and stories, from Pete Townshend to Joey Ramone to me, to the audiences who take the time and effort to support our work and give us a way to support ourselves -- I'm thinking this is what I am supposed to be doing.

I'm 44 now; I feel better than I did when I was 34. I've got more clarity now. I wake up in the morning, and I write my blog, and then I go upstairs, and I work on music. And I do that every day. That's what I do. I don't check in once a week and think, "Oh, I've gotta come up with something now." I'm always writing. I was just in a coffee shop in Chelsea last night, just killing time, waiting for a friend, and I sat and wrote enough for three good songs. I love it. This is my life. It's all I do.