Everybody has a direct view of the person "behind" the art, so there is going to be a certain amount of awareness of who is making songs. But I like paintings where you can see the brush-strokes.

I prefer artists who are creative more than artists who are technical, I think everybody would agree with that.

There are people who are great technical players like Eric Clapton, and there are people who are great intuitive songwriters like Daniel Johnston. There are sometimes people who are great at both the technique and the creativity, the two sides of the coin, maybe Jimi Hendrix.

I realized I was not a great musical technician, if I was going to make anything interesting it would have to come from the creative side of me and not the craft side of me.

A lot more people will want to hear a 5-minute singing cartoon about Communism in China than will want to read that PhD thesis, and that's the power of it even if a lot of details will be missing - that's the reason something like that often has more impact on society.

I don't think talking about myself making songs is a very interesting topic, there are so many other more engaging things to think about and write about.

Unfortunately most easily-digested entertainment has as much actual content as a Spongebob Squarepants episode, so the trick is to try to fit actual nourishing content into enjoyable entertainment.