I'm not afraid to be a Russian Jewish romantic in my approach to anything, even in my animal divinities, or anything about the feeling.

I never made any money from my music. I don't make that much; I make it flip-flopping between five and ten different disciplines.

I found so much fun in the light shows and the multimedia shows of the hippies. That was when I was a student in the 1960s, and I was in New York, so I learned how to deal with writing, recording sound of other people, performance art - because that was a new territory, and I liked everything that was new and provocative. That interested me more than becoming anything specific.

I never became primarily a musician! I've always been a wanderer and I'm always bored.

For Jewish people, salmon has a special meaning, not just because it's a flavor we've had all along our diaspora. Salmon also have this special return-to-their-roots desire. At the end of their lives, salmon try to swim back to when they were born. Even if they can't, they have this obsession. We as diaspora people love that a lot about salmon.

People never heard bells in Western music sounding really cataclysmic. You hear that more in Russian music or in Asian, Indonesian traditions.

I actually started as a singer in Brooklyn, and I lived in a community. To get out of the ghetto of my community, I was a musician.