I just think the reassurance and the steadiness and the hands-on kindness can make a huge difference.

Empires are doomed. They become more diffuse, more broke, demagogues rule, and so I was just pointing out some similarities between past empires and what's going on right now. They all have had to apply more and more harsh rhetoric of superiority and divine right to justify the building of hegemony.

Some of us have such incredible things that can keep us from acting. We have the luxury of drinking such good wine, and having such good information at our fingertips. I can look up anything on my computer. And I can call any friend at the drop of a hat on my cell phone. And I can have beautiful clothing and great food in a world where people are being tortured. I have some responsibility for that.

I have odometer readings, kids; all sorts of measurements of what I've been doing for the last 20 years. I get it. I get that it was a while ago.

What happened on "As Cool As I Am" was, you know how in the `90s, "the personal is political, the political is personal"? That was a really big thing. Choices you made about how you recorded and what instruments you used and how much real versus how much synthetic. Those were choices that were seen as very political at the time.

Mortal City was really influenced by geography. [The song] "The Ocean" is the Pacific Northwest. Southern California and New York also figure into songs, and Iowa. "February" is very much about New England. "Mortal City" is Philadelphia. The whole album is this anthropomorphized landscape where the metaphors live in this geography.

The very best thing you can do is to try to write a song that has some sort of impact.