Sometimes I feel like I just open myself up like I'm a vehicle for something coming through me. It's like a meditative state I have to be in.

I mean, whose songs don't focus on tragedy and loss?

People seemed to think, you get to a certain age or you get married or you, you're comfortable. And so now there's nothing to write about: that angst is gone. The youthful angst. And that just hasn't happened with me.

Theres so many other things to write about than unrequited love.

Some of their best songs don't have bridges and choruses. So that made me think I should trust my instincts. My songs were okay, I figured. I didn't need to change anything.

As it turns out, now is the moment you've been waiting for

I grew up around poets and novelists and my dad wrote poems about everything - from a cat sleeping in a window to a car wreck he passed on the highway. I learned not to censor myself: that was one of things I learned in my apprenticeship, my creative-writing apprenticeship with my dad.