I'm fascinated by Catholic mystics, even though I grew up Mennonite in Pennsylvania.

Instruments of a trade are really fascinating to me. Things that enable you to do your job better. Rehabbing houses is really fun to me. I love taking a space and seeing the potential, gutting it, and putting it back together and I love the tools used to do that.

I'm a true believer in not forcing anything. I hate forced art, forced anything.

Hearing your voice and your instrument kind of breathe in the room, it affects the way you perform the songs. For instance, if you have that reverb, you can give the songs a little more space. You can play them a little slower or you can play less of the guitar part and just let it open up, which I really love. It's so nice to play a listening room, because the audience feels a certain way too.

Whether or not you're writing fiction or you're making sculptures. You're trying to create a space. You're trying to make something where your own epiphanies and your own desires and your own understanding of the world can reveal itself.

I kind of talk about songwriting in the sense that it's really not my job to try to state hard truths. I'm not out to say this is what truth is, this is what's false, this is reality, this is not reality. What I prefer is to try to create a space where truth can move.

Art that I like the most is born out of free association. I try to let my mind open up and see what comes out.