I liked rock music going back to the '60s, but I never ever had any desire to be a rock musician and when I started doing a band it was experimental music.

Music is about imagination. It's about thought. It's about creating something from nothing.

I want the music to be ambiguous. Its tone gives you a context in which to start visualizing what you're feeling with the music.

Occasionally I hear a band that blows me away. For instance, there's a musician in Oakland named Weasel Walter who has a band called the Flying Luttenbachers. Go see the Flying Luttenbachers when they're in your town. He's one of the greatest rock composers who ever lived, and he's struggling and living like a poverty-stricken hermit.

It's crucial that people are on the right measure at the right time.

There were a lot of people doing new and interesting things with rock. But I wanted to take it farther than that. My real influence was punk. I must have listened to the first Patti Smith album 300 times.

Whatever works for the piece I'm thinking about is the way I write.