And this whole period of time of gradually working at being a better guitar player and songwriter have gradually led me to the point where I feel I'm doing a clearer representation of the thing that I've been feeling inside me since I was four years old.

Right now my taste is going more for things that are organic where the people are using all the sonic possibilities in interesting ways.

For me my friendship with Omar Rodriguez from Mars Volta that friendship really means a lot to me because he's another creative person who works as hard as I do.

I don't have an extensive background in theory, but the amount of it that I've learned, I've applied, so I have a vocabulary of melodic and rhythmic relationships. And that's all theory is - it's symbols to help you identify those relationships.

I'm not interested in meeting people's expectations, and I'm not interested in pleasing people.

I write songs because I have to write them, and if I didn't I'd be doing some other kind of music that didn't require a song.

The main thing experience has taught me is that one has to sort of hone their relationship to time, you know.