I just think music is one of those frontiers where people really want the "I" to be you.

I'm like, 'Would you be the person in the room that would boo when Dylan went electric? I know I wouldn't. Or are you the person that left The Beatles after 'She Loves You,' or 'Drive My Car?' You weren't on board for 'Revolution 9' or 'Day In The Life,' were you?'

I don't really make records chronologically.

You're part of the human fabric of experience. You don't have to have cancer to write about cancer. You don't have to have somebody close to you die to understand what death is. Definitely, the more you live, the more experiences fall into your spectrum. As a writer, you must have been told: Write about what you know. But Kafka didn't. Gogol didn't. Did Shakespeare write only what he knew? Our own selves are limitless. And our capacity for empathy is giant.

I remember somebody handed me Siddhartha when I was I think 18, and I started to read it and I just really didn't like it, and I left it and it was just gathering dust for years. Then maybe five years later, the world shook as I read it.

I knew all this Beatles music. I knew the songs phonetically. It was like my whole experience of that music was out of focus, and somebody put the perfect glasses on me, and all of a sudden I could see everything.

You are always growing, so maybe the way that you bring the songs forward and translate them is more mature.