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.

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.

Most of the smart things I've ever thought or written came vis-a-vis my body.

When I was a kid, I was told that I had a biological father, but that he didn't have much importance. I had an adoptive father who was present, who loved me, who was up to the task. And he was. So, I didn't question that story, until I was thirty-two, and suddenly realized that I was curious, that he did have something to do with me.

When you conceal inner reality, this pressure builds. You often don't expose yourself until it reaches extremity, a breaking point, and what emerges is a dramatic shift - at least in the eyes of others, from whom you've hidden the truth. So, dropping out of high school was like that for me. I was fine, I got straight As, I had friends, and then boom, I was like, I'm done.

I can only see right in front of me when I'm writing, you know? I never think of it as raw or personal or anything but where I'm at in the moment. But I can see it sort of after I finish.

S&M is just a set of practices that get classified as a single category, when more accurately they are a part of much larger set of behaviors: expressions of love, and self, and play, and even art. There is no hard line between "vanilla" sex and S&M sex, or any other kind of relation between people.