I wanted to lift the aspects of the lyrics and imagery that I found sincerely powerful and touching, plus the amazing musical extremities, and make my own thing. That's what making music has always been for me. Synthesizing a nonexistent kind of music that I wish existed because I wanted to listen to it.

I've always written songs with a visual counterpart in my mind that no one else can see.

I like the idea of politically charged music a lot, but it usually seems to be preaching to the choir and ineffective.

I am still not taking my "career" in music for granted. It is constantly surprising that it works. Generally my thinking about the future has this assumption of an impending apocalypse.

People's attentions spans are getting shorter and shorter. I don't want to cater to that necessarily but, just for myself, it feels like more than 40 minutes of music is too much.

If my music is political in a way, and it might be, it's in the way of generating a sensitivity in people, a deeper awareness of the world around them. That's my goal, at least.

Profound thoughts and profound experiences get revealed to be tricks that we play on ourselves, and poetry gets revealed to be just, like, some dumb words that somebody put in an interesting order.