Drue [Langlois] and I started making music together before we started the Art Lodge, so I guess musical collaboration came first. The music we made, and our performances, always had a visual component. I could never play an instrument, so these other elements compensated for that a little.

I waste a lot of my time documenting my "search for great esoterica" online. It gets so complicated trying to identify or give credit to all of one's influences.

I think it's great that people now have access to Pro Tools and other recording software at home. I've never understood how anyone could be comfortable in a recording studio

These days, I find it harder to listen to really trebly lo-fi recordings. At the same time, without the old limitations, these new technologies require self control. So much of the software seems to be about correcting imperfections - quantizing, Auto-tune - and, to me, those corrections can really drain the life out of a performance.

I have to listen to music while I'm working. Music is essential. It's at the top of the pyramid for me. I've always felt disappointed in what I've made when I held it up to the music I love. I try not to compare them now.

I'm fond of online testimonials: people writing about their experiences with ghosts or drugs or bad boyfriends.

In art school, I started to see Pettibon in magazines, and I figured it out backward. I was into the idea that someone could show work in galleries while making album covers and photocopied books.