When you're improvising, you're relying on this connection to creativity.

Whether I go to English-speaking countries or non-English-speaking countries I can just modulate to what works for them.

An improv artist's best instrument is their ability keep their antennae clean so they're able to receive what I call the connection to creativity. It's the thing that you see in any amazing moment that any human being is performing. Whether it's watching Michael Jordan navigating through all these attackers and then suddenly rising up and putting the ball in the most amazing way, or watching an actor on stage playing Shakespeare, but not thinking about the actor anymore or the stage or you or the chair, any of these kinds of moments of transcendence.

If I can learn a couple of phrases in Italian but do mostly weird, absurd music things, people will like it.

I always composed music as a little kid.

When I'm at the piano, and I'm improvising some song about something, it usually oscillates between factual, absurd, and sincere.

I'm always trying to see things from different peoples' perspectives, to understand why they love something.