I like to connect with people through my work. That's my favorite way - meetings of the minds, fans at a show. Those are nice mediated ways of hanging out.

For a while I had somebody that came to clean my house that turned out to be in a band that I really loved.

I read a lot; fiction and non-fiction are the mediums I find most edifying and inspiring. I watch movies and listen to music and take lots and lots of walks. Nature is a nice reset button for me, it's how I get a lot of thinking done.

Living in Portland, which is a predominantly white city, the privilege and the luxury to be able to obsess over a certain kind of minutia, that I think, if you did not have that privilege, would never be bothersome. When people are worried about whether "local" means 100 miles, or 50 miles, or 10 miles from a grocery store, I just think, "Wow. What a privilege it is to have that as a major concern in your life." As opposed to, "Can we afford food tonight?" Sometimes I'm just shocked at what becomes concerning in these kind of communities.

I wrote so much about fandom and participation for NPR that I eventually realized my most fertile way of participating in music is to actually play it, at least in a way that made the most sense to me.

The game Rock Band has been haunting me like a bad ring tone. It gets stuck in my head and momentarily effaces all that I love about music.

I don't think you need to sound like from where you're from. But I think there is something magical and powerful about encompassing something fully and singularly.