I was a sound engineer, and all of these gurus and shamans would come, and I would record the workshops they were teaching. And I took part in a shamanic journeying workshop, and this woman leading the workshop had brought Ayahuasca, which is a Peruvian hallucinogen and contains DMT.

So Nemerov showed us this picture, which is of Apollo flaying Marcius. You don't think of Apollo as being the sort of person who would skin someone alive. But the story behind it was that there was this guy who was a really great musician, and all the women loved him, and people started saying he was the best musician in the world, so Apollo got jealous and he challenged this guy to a musical dual. They would each play a song and the muses would judge who was the better musician.

Like the ability of all the musicians to end the song at the right time. Or when it's time for a chord change, but nobody knows what the chord should be, and you all, you know, it all just changes, magically, at the same time. It's when you pick up your phone to call someone and that person is calling you.

This is the world. I don't really believe in hell or heaven or an after life at all, I believe this is it. It can be a paradise for you, if you've got the right mindset. Or it can be a total nightmare. The song is just about remembering these moments of, you know, these epiphanies or magical moments of clarity that I think everybody has at some point in their life, often, while they're taking acid or something like that, or while they're doing really intense yoga.

Most of the musicians that I'm playing with now have jazz backgrounds, so they're comfortable with improvisation. And they all know to make eye contact with me, and I'll give them some kind of sign when I think that the song's ending. Or maybe I don't even have to, because they all sort of feel it at the same time.

I remember reading a book that was on songwriting at some point that I found in my dad's store, and just... I did not relate at all. I've always hated structure of all kinds, it just doesn't work for me. I can never fit into the schedules of other people. It's like putting a schedule on your song, and it doesn't allow you to be moved by your own music.

Ayahuasca is a brew that's made from the vine, which is the hallucinogenic element. And then there's also this leaf from a bush. And the vine is supposed to be the masculine and the bush is supposed to be the feminine, and this female shaman did a tea drinking ceremony with us, where we drank Wyoosa. And the intention was to go and find pieces of your soul that were missing and bring them back to your body so you could live more fully with yourself and it's called soul retrieval.