With touring, it's like you're in this car and you've got this much fuel. You know that if you drive carefully and take your time and search your way so that you don't take the wrong turn, you'll have exactly enough fuel to go where you're going. You are empowered as you go by your audience.

It is the artist's responsibility to be the oracle, to abstract where you are - that is our responsibility - we're not there to look glamorous. We're there to tune into the frequency of the Earth and the connective tissues of those things that we are responding to - language, colour, costume, literature, poetry, cuisine, perfume - these are the things that make up the desire to throw paint on a canvas, these are the things that create the excitement for building a new language!

We always have a basic structure for a piece of music, but we encourage the musicians to elaborate on whatever they feel at that particular moment. There's a definite conversation happening on stage. I think it is very important for us as creative musicians, to instantaneously describe any energy that is visible at that time.

I suppose musicians have the kind of arrogant attitude that they can actually offer the world something, because through their passive power, they're able to be the strongest arms that they can be, incredibly strong. That's what keeps us going.

There's the false security of feeling a great force of love from your audience one day and then the next morning you wake up and you're exhausted, and that love is something you have to reach for the next day.

Years ago I sang on a track using that voice and someone asked, 'Who is that terribly depressed man?' But Patrick loved it. He said, 'You sound like a young boy, like a child, like an old woman, like an old man,' and really, we all have all of those things inside of us. I don't do any vocal gymnastics to make the voice better as I age. If it comes out rougher, then it's true to what's happening. Singing is who I am. I didn't train for it, any more than I trained for anything else I did. I probably should take better care of myself physically, but it goes against the grain.

Music is a place to take refuge. It's a sanctuary from mediocrity and boredom. It's innocent and it's a place you can lose yourself in thoughts, memories and intricacies.