All these years of thinking, ending up like this: In front of all this beauty, understanding nothing.

Politics is a part of life and art is about life. It doesn't mean that all the art has to be about politics - in fact, heaven forbid. But politics is a totally legitimate area of focus for any art, whether it's painting or songwriting or anything else, as much as sex is, as much as spirituality is, as much as any other behavior of people is.

But nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight / Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight.

Here's Iraq, where irrigation was invented, where law was invented, where writing was invented. All these things that we consider necessities of civilization started there. And the people who live there damn well know that.

Some people never see the light Till it shines thru bullet holes.

There's so many ways in which Canada and America are inextricably connected politically, economically, socially. There's no stepping away. But at the same time, we don't have a say. Canada is a different country. Sometimes I think of it as Finland in the Soviet era. We're totally free, but we're totally free to agree, basically. If we disagree too heartily or over too sensitive an issue, then we pay a price for that.

Going to places like Honduras, Nicaragua, and various African countries you get to see very clearly what the cause and effect is. We finance the obnoxious elites in those countries and they exploit their people so we don't have to say that we're doing the exploiting but nevertheless we are benefiting from it.