When I was young, my mother [folk singer Kate McGarrigle] brought home this recording of Verdi's Requiem and we listened to it from top to bottom. By the end of it, I was a completely different person. It was literally a requiem mass for my former self. I was about 12 or 13. The Requiem just totally hooked into what I was going through emotionally - discovering my sexuality right at the time when AIDS was devastating my community and dealing with intense parental situations.

When it came to using elements of your personal life in your work, my mother was the master, or the mistress. There were three or four songs she wrote about my father - songs about failed love.

As an artist, you put so much into what you do and it can all be torn down in a nanosecond.

I think everybody identified at a pretty young age that I was fairly entranced with myself. And that I had to be tempered.

I have a lot of advantages: I'm not addicted to horrifying pills. I also have surrounded myself with far more caring and upright individuals. And I wasn't abused as a child, so I'm doing okay!

And I am left behind Corrupted crushed and blind All for a dream That in truth was never really mine.

I may not lead the most dramatic life, but in my brain it's 'War and Peace' everyday.