I do believe that we all have these stories inside of us, these scars that we compulsive worry as we do wounds, and that drive for redemption, to change the story or resolve it, governs a lot of what we do in love. We are irresistibly drawn to opportunities to reenact those traumas out of a desire to heal, not to punish ourselves.

Sometimes I see my students, especially the ones with a gift for the lyrical, reaching far outside the realm of their own experience for language and images. I understand this impulse. We think, in the beginning, that striking exotic words together will create something entirely new. That we must be worldly in our vocabulary. We idolize the styles of other writers and don't trust or perhaps yet know our own.

Music isn't seeking to comment on the experience or transmit some finding about it - it is only seeking to express it. The vicarious experience is much more accessible. We all recognize the sound of that howling, because we all have a similar howling inside of us, however we heed it or hold it or muzzle it or repress it or live in bondage to it.

The lovers enter into a story together - "this how we met, this is how we were meant for each other" - and then at some point (in my experience, at least), the story splits, and they no longer share it. Then, you either change the story, or you break up. I've always broken up.

I always wished I could go to confession. I was so full of things I couldn't name and had an instinct to hide. I felt burdened by the loneliness of my interior life. I wanted some container that I could empty myself into, some ear that would never be shocked, even if it offered me some kind of penance.

Anyone who makes a life of what they love is a hero to me, and it's important for those people to be visible in every kind of life, every kind of love, every kind of work.

I'm always writing to a younger version of myself, or a young woman who is like I was. I want that girl to know that I really existed and that it all went down that way.