I've been thinking of trying my hand at rap. I've been recording snippets on my BlackBerry.

I definitely have a Luddite's approach to what's going on. I find that as I get older, I get stupider. For me, the iPhone is harder than reading Faust. I've been hanging out a bit with Lou Reed, and he's the complete opposite. He's into technology and is kind of like a toddler, compared to me, who's like an old 19th-century widow or something.

New York is not the centre for American culture and art that it once was because of the forces of conservatism. Giuliani, capitalism - and then there was 9/11. I really believe that if I leave, it will suffer! Maybe that's why I love it here, because I feel wanted.

I wish I could just relax sometimes and make some money, but I always feel like I have to prove some kind of big, profound point.

I'm a big fan of the Pre-Raphaelites. Millais, Edward Burne-Jones, and I realised recently that my music is Pre-Raphaelite in a certain way, in that it reinvents an older era and romanticises it, puts it in this gilded frame.

All these poses of classical torture ruined my mind like a snake in the orchard. I did go from wanting to be someone, now I'm drunk and wearing flip-flops on Fifth Avenue.

That will to love is very powerful. But it doesn't always win.