Yeah, anybody can go in with two turntables and a microphone or a home studio sampler and a little cassette deck or whatever and make records in their bedrooms.

Do I wear a helmet? Ugh. I do when I'm riding through a precarious part of town, meaning Midtown traffic. But when I'm riding on secure protected lanes or on the paths that run along the Hudson or through Central Park - no, I don't wear the dreaded helmet then.

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?

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

Sometimes I write stuff that strangely predicts what's going to happen in my life.

I wanted to be a secret agent and an astronaut, preferably at the same time.

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.