I think sometimes - not always - I write songs that are accessible.

I'm just wearing regular street clothes. Pretty much all the time. In the summertime, or when it gets warm out, shorts and sandals or something like that. Stuff that I don't mind getting a little sweaty.

I subscribe to the myth that an artist's creativity comes from torment. Once that's fixed, what do you draw on?

My favorite term for a new kind of performance is "security theater." In this genre, we watch as ritualized inspections and patdowns create the illusion of security. It's a form that has become common since 9/11, and even the government agencies that participate in this activity acknowledge,off the record, that it is indeed a species of theater.

Obviously, you go through a lot of emotional turmoil in a divorce.

We do express our emotions, our reactions to events, breakups and infatuations, but the way we do that - the art of it - is in putting them into prescribed forms or squeezing them into new forms that perfectly fit some emerging context. That’s part of the creative process, and we do it instinctively; we internalize it, like birds do. And it’s a joy to sing, like the birds do.

The assumption is that your personal life has to be a mess to create, but how much chaos can you allow in before it takes over?