Now that I believe in God, I have an extra layer of saying I'll write about what I write about and assume that I'm being offered the opportunity to illuminate something important. But when you think you are too important, you become some sort of fascist.

Youll almost encounter a superstition amongst musicians, people sort of go through strange rituals, what they need to do to write a song.

A lot of the songs are pretty unmasked. If you listen to "As Cool As I Am," it's not all that different from what you were hearing from Ani DiFranco and some of the other indie women artists of the time. It was still in that context, still seen as folk music.

There was a lot of distance between the Dar of The Honesty Room and the Dar of Mortal City, so there was no attempt.

Why wouldn't you want to be the envy of your neighbors by being so good and so generous and so smart in how you use the power that you obviously have? That's my patriotism.

But social justice and the environment are very tied together in my head.

I fear that to fall in love with you is to fall from a great and gruesome height.