When so many of our dreams had come true and yet I still saw that so many of my friends were in a lot of pain... I saw their pain from a different perspective and realized that I can't just sing my way out of all this suffering. I have to try to understand human nature and myself and the nature of suffering and a lot of these other issues on a deeper level.

I decided at 10 I wanted to be in a band; everyone else wanted to play football.

I'm trying to find peace in the world, as it is. I'm feeling this sort of slow stripping of my mind, like the layers of an onion. I'm starting to see through all these little structures that have been imposed on me by my society that tell me how I'm supposed to view my life and the world. What I'm supposed to find to be important and what is not. Sometimes you see through so much of it that you feel like you're just a leaf blowing on the wind.

When I tried to grasp at either what I love or what I hate, I destroyed the very ability of being able to really penetrate the essence of either. By trying to understand it, I would just crush it.

I went to Louisiana Tech, which is just down the road from where we lived. It was an easy college to get into.

The music is supposed to be healing.

Usually, I create tunes that are fragmented. I think the biggest obstacle for people with their creativity is that they feel they have to sit down and create this finished, polished product.