I feel vulnerable when my ego is threatened - if I get jealous of another band's good time slot at a big festival, if I'm about to get clobbered in a political debate, if I'm trying to impress someone I have a crush on. It's the opposite of openness, letting go, allowing deep feelings to express themselves. For me, that comes from playing music and from kissing.

Almost everything that gets called "universal truth" or "common sense" is actually cultural. And too easily twisted into justifications for all kinds of behavior.

There's part of me that feels a privilege not to do music, but to do what everybody should be allowed to do, which is to do what you're driven to do.

I've found that writing and playing music has so little to do with will, and so much to do with just finding what's there waiting for you.

It's weird to me to even say, "I wrote this song." I never feel like I wrote it; I feel like I heard it.

I love love. Growing up, I always thought it was a state, and I'd wait for it to appear. Now I think it's an activity, a skill, something you strive to create. A constant conversation between emotion and imagination and flesh.

My projects are just side effects of what I obsess over, what I chat about, what random things pop into my head, what I dream at night.