I don't write poetry for the page because my inclination in that area is satisfied by songwriting. "Ornamental Hermit" was a comparatively effortless song to write, which is rare for me.

When I read John Cage's book Silence, I was growing up in Louisville, Kentucky. For me, records were a mode of time travel and geographic travel, interfacing with a much larger world. So it seemed antiquated and backwards that Cage would be so down on them.

There's part of me that is a strict materialist.

If the records that I make have one thing in common, it's that there is little recapitulation, and the idea is that it should end in a place very different from where it began, and that you've heard musicians undergo a change or be irreversibly transformed.

I recall improvisational drummer and composer Michael Evans telling me a story of someone who had the opportunity to meet Cage and give him a record, and John Cage just smiled and said, "You know I have nothing to play this on?"

What a strange thing - that musicians grant permission to places like Ubuweb, and then because it's free, it'll probably be listened to more often than something that is still wrestling with this idea of making a profit.

The instrumental pieces are compositions, certainly, although that's not the language that I instinctively use. They're not scored, and arrangements are often arrived at collaboratively. I always choose to play with people whose input I desire.