I need punk rock. It's the medicine for me, but it's bitter and sickening. If you don't need it - if you're happy and healthy - run toward that.

My entire education in music was in reading interviews with bands like Stereolab and finding out about Brazilian music or a Romanian composer. You expose yourself to what people you look up to admire.

I've got this thing where I always kind of diss the older stuff and favor the newer stuff. I mean, it's not just my thing; every artist or musician is like that, I guess.

You gotta have friends, and it's really hard to have friends that don't operate on the same schedule as you or do the same kind of things you do, because they don't understand it. And then you realize that your friends - your real-life friends - it's not that they become fanboys of you but they become more interested in what you're doing than how you're doing.

I don't think it will ever be lessened. Because I always move on to something else - and the music that I listen to, that I ingest, is a lot different than what I put out. I'm always becoming obsessed with the next phase of my musical vocabulary.

The first thing I think I ever played in public, aside from singing in church, would have been - and this is a true story - when I was about nine or 10 years old, I was obsessed with Twin Peaks. I played the theme from Twin Peaks on a little tiny Casio keyboard. People politely applauded. I just fell in love with that song and thought it was very heartbreaking.

Unfortunately it's hard for me to be a fanboy for anything these days just because I see so much music.