I feel like I'm stepping into a place of spiritual contemplation every time I enter a studio; it's always had a certain magic to me that has never worn off with familiarity.

I always liked the magic of poetry but now I'm just starting to see behind the curtain of even the best poets, how they've used, tried and tested craft to create the illusion. Wonderful feeling of exhilaration to finally be there.

My faith, inasmuch as I have any, is more like a kind of Joseph Campbell thing, and even that frequently finds itself tested to oblivion in siren waters.

Now I'm having to live with sales of around 50,000 per album - but I'm pretty content with my place in the general scheme of things, even if it's meant I don't drive a fancy car and can't afford grand vacations.

I don't know to what extent someone can BECOME an artist - you either are or you aren't - and if you are you'll HAVE to make your way to some kind of sickly light, no matter how terrible the soil you were seeded in your nature will out somehow.

The school was prone to dishing out punishments for anything creative that didn't fit with expectation - I just followed the logic and figured the folk club was probably much the same.

I took the process of doing as much myself as I could like a duck to water. I set up my own label and publishing, etc, and it was a fun learning curve two decades ago.